ugh the state of commerce, as really as if the hand of the
foreigner directly took her only handful of meal out of the barrel, or
extinguished the cruise of oil, leaving her in poverty and darkness to
watch over her dying child.

Now all this system of dependence, as we have said, is beyond our
will. We do not choose it, but are compelled to accept of it. It is a
fact or power, like birth or death, with which we have to do in spite
of us. No questions are asked by the great King as to whether we will
have it so or not; yet of what infinite importance to us for good or
evil is this great law of God's government. We are thus made to feel
that a will higher than ours reigns, and that by that supreme will we
are so united to one another, that no man can live for himself or die
for himself alone; that we _are_ our brothers keeper, and he ours;
that we cannot be indifferent to his social well-being without
suffering in our own; that our selfishness, which would injure him,
must return in some form to punish ourselves; and that such is the
ordained constitution of humanity, that though love and a consistent
selfishness start from different points, they necessarily lead to the
same point, and make it our interest, as it is our duty, to love our
neighbour as ourselves.

But here we may just notice, that some of those evils which afflict
one portion of the human family are nevertheless the occasion of good,
when they remind us of our common humanity. Such painful events, for
example, as the famine in the Highlands of Scotland, which called
forth the sympathies of kindreds and tongues, unknown by name, to
the sufferers, and was relieved by the inhabitants of China, and
Hindostan; or the like famine in Ireland, which the Mohammedan sultan
was among the first to help to alleviate; or the Syrian massacres, or
Indian famine, that united Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic,
in the bonds of pity;--these wounds of humanity are surely not without
their good; when they afford an opportunity to the Samaritan of
shewing mercy to the Jew, and cause the things which separate and the
differences that alienate man from man, to be for a time forgotten in
the presence of their common brotherhood. And thus, too, the shutting
of the Southern ports of America, which entails temporary distress
upon many in our manufacturing districts, reminds us how the
sufferings of others must be shared by ourselves, calls forth the
benevolent sympathies of t