confined to the higher orders. The mass have been below the current of advancement-busy in toiling for bread. What has England's prosperity been to the poor? Machinery has only lessened the value of their honest labour; commerce has only increased the luxuries of the rich; books, though as abundant as the productions of the earth, have done nothing for the toil-worn craftsman, whom drugdery has left no time to read. The world has moved on, but has brought to him none of the blessings civilization should profusely scatter in her progress; and while every other land is filled with the elegant productions of English art, the poor enjoy none of the abundance they so liberally dispense. Commerce, which in our times seems to unite with Christianity in achieving the world's redemption, is to them a bitter curse. Is this the nation once the freest on earth? It is now more polished, opulent, and splendid than ever; but it has also within its bounds, deeper suffering and more crying wrong than it ever had in the days of its ancient obscurity; and this suffering and wrong seem the more intense and unnatural in contrast with the spirit of the age. England's people, who have been so long bowed down in silent sorrow, are now starting from their dream-like stupor. They are looking anxiously abroad to find the occasion of their miseries. They drop the hammer upon the anvil; they pass from the clank of the factory, and ask for bread; it is not given: they will know why it is the English labourer must starve in a world of plenty. Once deeply stirred to a sense of injury and wrong, these men will not be silenced:: "Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, English legislators begin to feel this; and ever and anon committees are appointed, whose reports are so charged with human woe that they almost turn the reader's brain to madness; and bills are then passed ostensibly for relief; but the evil is not reached it is all shallow legislation. : Carlyle observes, "You abolish the symptom to no purpose, if the disease is left untouched. Boils on the surface are curable or incurable small matter while the virulent humour festers deep within, poisoning the sources of life; and certain enough to find for itself new boils and sore issues; ways of announcing that it continues there, that it would fain not continue there." Thus England's wise men cheat themselves, and the people for a while, by passing laws to quiet their fierce discontent. It is "It a silly expedient to play this game. is the resource of the ostrich, who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish head in the sand, and thinks his foolish unseeing body is unseen too." No man who feels in his own soul the lofty spirit of the age, and tracks the progress of the car of Liberty, as it rolls among the nations, can believe that England will be able much longer to breast herself up against the advancement of humanity: the majestic movements of God's Providence can be clearly seen; a train of causes is in operation too mighty to be resisted. No; England can do all that mortal power can do; she never vacillates, is never fainthearted; but she cannot successfully oppose the spirit of the age. She has rife within herself the direst elements of disorder and decay. These are her internal foes. But, more than this, a deep-seated indignation against her is manifesting itself throughout the world. Ambition and injustice have made up the history of her policy for centuries past; and her navy has been the grand executor of her will. By it she has acquired her foreign power; and through it, for nearly three centuries, she has possessed facilities for visiting every country to which wind and wave bear her; and of these facilities she has most actively availed herself. She has become familiar with every point of great commercial advantage, and has appropriated to herself all the solitary and unclaimed islands, and many of the claimed ones, too, which she has found straggling at a convenient distance from the mainland. By discovery, conquest, and usurpation, she has reared an empire upon which the sun never goes down; and this she has accomplished by being able to traverse the ocean without fear or molestation. Distance had in former ages fixed a limit to conquest; and Alexander himself would have been a harmless assailant against an island standing off a few leagues at sea. But a few months have sufficed to transport the armies of Britain to the most distant countries; and that, too, frequently in an unexpected hour for her enemies. The naval supremacy of England once established, her political supremacy followed as a matter of course. By various devices she has extended her acquisitions alike in peace and in war; and whatever she has acquired she has steadily retained. Thus, by discovery, or conquest, her claims have continued to grow; we see her asserting some new pretensions almost every day. She seems to be now hesitating whether to appropriate the Celestial Empire to herself; the whole coast of Africa is under her special protection; she owns no inconsiderable part of the State of Maine; and, forsooth, has complacently planted herself upon the other extre |