ENGLAND IS SLOWLY ADVANCING.

39

petre and charcoal are there, and the strong arm of power cannot forever keep them asunder. The trouble will come when they begin to mingle. The middle classes are safe, because they are right. They are free from those wretched and dangerous elements which have, in all nations that have passed away, laid the mains which by the explosion overthrew governments and society.

B

XVIII.

UT the great work of regeneration is slowly going on in England, and she may thank her fortune that her Constitution is unwritten. She makes her Constitution as she goes along. It began with the Magna Charta, and it has been like many of her old structures, growing part by part, and all the time making in the concrete a pretty complete whole; so that without any further form than concurrent votes of both houses of Parliament, and decisions in courts of final appeal, she is saved from those necessities that have sometimes pressed on us, to go through the forms of constitutional amendments, to which we are so rigidly held by the conditions of our own Federal Constitution. In this respect, England appears more Democratic than we. She has, indeed, a refined and eliminated element of Republicanism which sometimes shows itself. When all England is roused, and the angry cry for bread comes howling up to the British Parliament from the starved millions, if some relief is not given or promised, a single vote of lack of confidence in the ministry brings a change and saves a revolu tion; while under our boasted Democratic liberty, if we happen to put into power, as we have two or three times, a bad or incompetent man, and with him a bad and incompetent set of counsellors, we must either rely upon the omnipotent power and beneficent mercy of Almighty God to remove the President and his creatures of mischief to better or worse worlds, or grin and bear it till the four constitutional years of humiliation and disgrace are passed, and we can once more go on our way.

40

ACHIEVEMENTS IN REFORM.

This elasticity of the British Constitution, and this inherent love of justice and of liberty, and this sacred regard which British monarchs and British nobles must pay to the rights of the people, when the people demand them, is a great lack in our American system of government; so that the American who goes bragging around the world about the intrinsic superiority of our administration of government over that of all others, is the fair object of ridicule. I love justice, and above all I love it as towards foreign men, and foreign governments. The recent events that have occurred in the United States, may well humble us, and put an end to all this balderdash about the essential superiority of Republican over monarchical forms. What I have complained of most, and shall complain of still, is, that England in the comprehension of her statesmen has not yet found herself generous, or just, enough to concede a better system of social life, and remuneration for labor that would lift her valleys up, without tum.bling her mountains down.

XIX.

ES, the great work of regeneration is going on in England. Her statesmen know enough to yield to the pressure which would force a reform, rather than defy it and provoke a Revolution. This was proved when the great Reform Bill was passed, and the rotten borough system partially abolished. It was made true again, when O'Connell, outside of Parliament, carried the Catholic Emancipation Bill through over the heads of the House of Lords. This was true when the Corn Laws were finally abolished. This was true when the Irish Encumbered Estates Bill became a law. This was true when, in name at least, property in human flesh and soul was abolished throughout the empire. This was true when a larger liberty of voting was granted. Again, when some concession was made, small as it was, from the Government to take a portion of some of the fruits of heavy taxation, to devote to the education of a few of the people. It will be true hereafter, when any well-prepared

ENGLAND NEARER LIBERTY.

41

English boy can enter an English university—when the sacred right of the ballot shall be conceded :-above all, when such a union of Church and State as the union which now compels the believer in one religion which he loves, to support another which he abhors, shall be abolished.

The legislators of England have generally had among them brave, bold and humane advocates of the rights of the people. And looking back over the last two or three decades, I cherish with glowing earnestness the hope which has dawned through many clouds of distrust and despondency, that a complete regeneration of the condition of the British people will be achieved, without much of the violence and blood of Revolution.

The beneficent changes which have occurred, have not been ushered in by tempests. They have been wrought out silently and effectually, as far as they have gone. The surface has remained the same, while the center has changed. England may be no nearer a Republic now, than she was a century ago, not half so near as in the time of Cromwell. But she is nearer liberty. The spirit of Reform has entered British legislation, and it will do its perfect work; for what Anglo-SaxonNorman men undertake, they are sure in the long run to perform. Conservatism itself has achieved reforms against which the Whigs fought twenty years ago. England is nearer freetrade with all the world, than either of the great parties of this Republic have ever been willing to come. Her great statesmen have at last made the discovery, which the political writers of Italy made more than two hundred years ago, that civilization, and the true policy of every nation require that all obstacles which the barbarism of former ages had raised to the free and unobstructed intercourse of mankind should be leveled. And in the abolition of her navigation laws, she has shown a more liberal policy towards foreign nations, than we have ever offered in any period of our history.

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SIGNS OF DANGER AHEAD.

XX.

I

HAVE said that I never desired to make out a case against Great Britain as towards the United States, since she has made it out herself. Efforts enough were put forth by good citizens in the United States, and good subjects in Great Britain, during a long course of years, to heal the wounds that had been made between the two nations, from the Stamp Act to the sailing of the pirate "Alabama." But the most peacefully disposed men on both sides have lost their courage, because they have lost confidence in their ability to work, through peaceful means, the accomplishment of results which seem now to defy even destiny itself. It is more true with nations than with individuals, that ages are sometimes crowded into hours-that the flash of a sabre may do, in a second, what a whole generation has grown tired in waiting for-that exhausted patience among men and governments may assume the prerogatives of the Almighty, and make the bolt and the flash come together. Beware, however, where the bolt may strike.

This is all true in our own history of later days. The enemies of our own household undertook the overthrow of our Union, and to wind up our history as a first-class power. England has given them all the encouragement, aid and comfort which she dared to give. The course she has taken now looks strange enough, and in after times neither she nor her historians can explain her conduct to themselves. Men forget, on both sides of the Atlantic, that England will live in America when she shall have died at home.

ENGLAN

XXI.

NGLAND owes much of her progress to the spirit of liberty caught, at first, from her own wild hills; a spirit which was kept alive and invigorated by the fierce struggles through which she had to pass. More favorable circumstances than those in her history could not have combined for the

ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM.

43

formation of a free, brave and generous people. In the freedom of her political institutions, she was for ages in advance of the rest of the world; for the democratic principle had crept into her Constitution, long before mankind had elsewhere begun to question the divine right of kings. Many a time were English tyrants made to bow before the indignant Briton. Thus was the pride of the Norman princes humbled, when upon King John the assembled barons imposed the Magna Charta. Thus, too, did the nation avenge the insolence and tyranny of the Tudors, on their weakened and helpless successors, when a haughty line of monarchs went down in misfortune and blood, and the sceptre was grasped by the great Cromwell.

M

XXII.

UCH has been said against Cromwell; but none deny that it was under his splendid administration English liberty assumed its broadest character. Scenes of riot and anarchy existed, it is true; but they were accompanied with blessings, for the absence of which nothing could atone. They waked in the bosom of the people those fires of liberty which have been the hope of England to this hour; fires, too, from which our own altars were kindled. For it was during that great struggle, with the sound of contention still in their ears, and the shout of liberty, mingled with prayers to God, still on their lips, that the Puritans bore away with them all England had ever known of political or religious freedom. England was unconscious at the time, that the greatest of her offspring were taking with them the fruits of that Revolution to a forest home, where they would rear an empire that could not be conquered.

History tells us, that after a great effort the human mind settles into repose, and rests satisfied with past achievements. After the restoration of Charles II., who never should have been permitted to wear a crown, the flames of liberty seemed to go out, and the reign of tyranny again commenced. From