XXXVI. 1838. digious outcry at this unexpected impediment to their CHAP. designs; but the country did not respond to it, and no important organic change has been effected, or even seriously attempted, since the Reform Bill. The Municipal Bill was a social, not a political change. this. 81. The reason is, that the Anglo-Saxon character, however liable to sudden fits of violence, bordering for the Cause of time on national insanity, is in general, and when it gets time to cool, essentially of a practical character. The fervid temperament of the Scotch and Irish is different: like the French, it is frequently disposed to run all the hazards of speculation and fundamental change. But the natural disposition of the majority of the English, and of nearly the whole rural population, is abhorrence of theoretical innovation, but passion for practical improvement. The reform fervour in England now took this direction the national mind, having cooled down, flowed back into its old and time-worn channel. Thence an entire change in the measures forced upon the parliamentary leaders; and this is what Sir Robert Peel, with his wonted sagacity as to present objects, distinctly perceived, and which affords the key to his whole subsequent conduct. The majority of the nation supported him during the long duel between the two houses, the prize at issue in which was further organic change; but they did so only because they were averse to such changes, and longed for the real fruits of that already made. They saw that he was the real man for these practical reforms, and not the elegant inexperienced nobleman who had headed them during the reform struggle. The great political victory which changed the Government in 1841, and the free-trade measures which immediately followed it, were both the natural consequence of the change in the national mind which was now going forward. CHAPTER XXXVII. CHAP. XXXVII. 1. and seem rity of the British em pire. ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA IN RESPLENDENT with glory, teeming with inhabitants, overflowing with riches, boundless in extent, the British 1837. empire, at the accession of QUEEN VICTORIA, seemed the Vast extent fairest and most powerful dominion upon earth. It had ing prospe- come victorious through the most terrible strife which ever divided mankind, and more than once, in the course of it, singly confronted Europe in arms. It had struck down the greatest conqueror of modern times. It still retained the largest part of the continent of North America, and a new continent in Australia had been recently added, without opposition, to its mighty domains. All the navies of the world had sought, in vain to wrest from the hands of its sovereign the sceptre of the ocean; all the industry of man, to rival in competition the produce of its manufactures or the wealth of its merchants. In science and literature it still kept the lead of all the nations of the earth. It had given birth to steam navigation, which had bridged the Atlantic, and railways, which had more than halved distance; it had revealed the electric telegraph, destined ere long to render instantaneous the transmission of thought. It had subdued realms which the Macedonian phalanx could not reach, and attained a dominion beyond what the Roman legions XXXVII. 1837. had conquered. An hundred and twenty millions of men, CHAP. at the period of its highest prosperity, obeyed the sceptre of Alexander; as many in after-times were blessed by the rule of the Antonines; but an hundred and fifty millions peopled the realms of Queen Victoria; and the sun never set on her dominions, for before "his declining rays had ceased to illuminate the ramparts of Quebec, his ascending beams flamed on the minarets of Calcutta." 2. sources of Veiled under so splendid an exterior, this vast empire contained many principles of weakness, and already ex- Its many hibited the symptoms of mortality. Its extent had weakness. become too great, not for its real strength, but for that portion of its strength, unhappily extremely small, which the public temper would permit to be directed to the public service. It was brought in contact with the greatest empires upon earth, and was involved in questions likely to lead to differences with them; for in the East, both in the Euxine and Central Asia, it almost adjoined the territories which acknowledged the influence of Russia; in Europe it was frequently on the verge of war with France; while in the West it was perpetually exposed to danger from the encroaching spirit of America. Yet with all these dangers, and this vast and widely scattered dominion, the naval and military forces which its popular representatives would permit to be kept on foot were wretchedly small, and totally disproportioned either to the strength of the empire, the security of its distant possessions, or even the maintenance of its own independence. The Anglo-Saxon disposition, strangely compounded of pacific and warlike qualities, the love of gain and the thirst for glory, satiated with the latter from the splendid successes of the war, had turned, with unexampled and alarming avidity, into the former, which had now come wholly to absorb the national mind. The idea was general, almost universal, in the commercial towns, that the era of wars had passed, that mercantile interests would henceforth rule the world, XXXVII. 1837. CHAP. and that it was worse than useless to be at any expense at keeping up naval or military armaments which never could again be required. A thirst for gain had seized all classes; each was at once ambitious and discontented; and in their passion for advancement they had come to inflict serious wounds on each other. 3. Realised wealth had established a system of currency Continued. which, for its own advantage, landed the nation every four or five years in a long course of suffering, as necessarily as night succeeds day; and suffering poverty sought protection from its consequences as regard its only property— labour-in strikes, which diffused universal suffering, and permanently alienated the different classes of society from each other. Great prosperity had recently been enjoyed, but it had passed away; the tide had turned, and suffering, general and long continued, was in prospect, likely only the more severely to be felt from the contrast it would exhibit to the prosperity which had preceded it. A sore feeling had come to pervade all ranks of society: the labouring, at least in towns, regarded their employers as their natural enemies, who were unjustly enriched with the fruits of their toil; the more wealthy looked on the working classes as spoliators ready to seize upon their property, on the first opportunity, either by open violence or legislative enactment. A great political revolution, happily without bloodshed, had recently taken place, but it had effected no practical alterations in society, or amelioration in the condition of the people, except substituting the monied aristocracy in towns for the landed aristocracy in the country as the rulers of the State. The democratic leaders had taken advantage of the general disappointment, which the blasting of the hopes excited by this change had occasioned, to excite the feelings of the working classes in the manufacturing districts against the whole institutions of the country: Chartism was rife in Great Britain; organised agitation perpetu XXXVII. 1837. ated misery in Ireland; Canada was on the verge of CHAP. open insurrection; and the recent emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, without materially benefiting them, had implanted the seeds of ruin in the planters. So many causes of danger could not fail ere long to produce a convulsion in some part of the empire, but, strange to say, it was first induced by external, not internal, influences. It arose from democratic ambition in the United States of America, and the severity of nature in the British Islands. 4. what was Possessed of a territory ten times the area of France, and capable of maintaining in ease and comfort three America: hundred and fifty millions of inhabitants, with a soil gene- its great rally rich and fertile, and intersected by a network of want? innumerable rivers, the natural canals of the country, the United States wanted only two things to become ere long the richest and most populous empire upon earth. These two things were men and money; but they were indispensable to the development of their resources. The forests with which the country was covered had overspread the earth with a rich soil, and mingled vegetable and animal remains of several feet in thickness, which promised a long course of fine harvests from its virgin riches ; but it was still overshadowed by their massy boughs, and the axe of the backwoodsman was required for a course of years to cut down its primeval stems, and tear out its gigantic roots. Emigrants were coming in considerable numbers from Europe-those from the British Islands had already reached 60,000 annually; but they were lost in this immensity of space, and presented only a thin line of labourers, the pioneers of civilisation, along a frontier 1700 miles long where it was working into the forest. Capital was required for every new undertaking, but great as was the energy, unbounded the activity of the inhabitants of the United States, it could not be found in suf |