Читать книгу An Australian Ramble; Or, A Summer in Australia онлайн

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In the matter of the Suez Canal, Englishmen are paying rather dearly for their faith in Lord Palmerston. It is to the credit of M. de Lesseps that he conceived the idea, got together the money, and carried it out, and by that means, as a patriotic Frenchman, secured for France an influence in Egypt which, not to put too fine a point on it, has not worked for the advantage of either Egypt or ourselves. The officials of the Canal are French, the official language is French, the neat little stations, with their painted wooden houses, protected here and there by a palm tree struggling for life, are pre-eminently French. Fortunately, Lord Beaconsfield bought some shares for the nation, which gives us a locus standi. But the Canal, you feel, ought to have been designed by British engineers and paid for by British gold. It is emphatically England that keeps it going. The stream of steamers ever sailing up and down by day or by night are chiefly English steamers built in British shipyards, sailed by British captains and officers, and filled with British goods. It is true France subsidizes her steamers to struggle with England in all parts of the world. It is equally true that Germany does the same, but they cannot beat the British merchant and shipowner, who will not yield without a fierce struggle the supremacy it has taken them centuries to build up and sustain, and if the Canal manages to pay a dividend, it is because of the constant passage of British ships. As we were steaming along the Canal in one of the finest steamers of the Orient line, and of any line, we met a French steamer on her homeward trip. Mounseer looked politely at our crowded deck—his own seemed deserted, though they do tell me that the accommodation on board the French ships is remarkably good, and then our steerage commenced singing with heart and soul ‘Rule, Britannia.’ They ought not to have done it, I know. It was a breach of good manners; but if anywhere we may be pardoned for singing ‘Rule, Britannia,’ it is in the Suez Canal.