ances,
I think ought to content you."

The two admirals now separated, though neither returned to the company
for some little time. The intelligence they had just learned was too
important to be lightly received, and each of these veteran seamen paced
his room, for near a quarter of an hour, reflecting on what might be the
probable consequences to the country and to himself. Sir Gervaise Oakes
expected some event of this nature, and was less taken by surprise than
his friend; still he viewed the crisis as exceedingly serious, and as
one likely to destroy the prosperity of the nation, as well as the peace
of families. There was then in England, as there is to-day, and as there
probably will be throughout all time, two parties; one of which clung to
the past with its hereditary and exclusive privileges, while the other
looked more towards change for anticipated advantages, and created
honours. Religion, in that age, was made the stalking-horse of
politicians; as is liberty on one side, and order on the other, in our
own times; and men just as blindly, as vehemently, and as regardlessly
of principle, submitted to party in the middle of the eighteenth
century, as we know they do in the middle of the nineteenth. The mode of
acting was a little changed, and the watchwords and rallying points were
not exactly the same, it is true; but, in all that relates to ignorant
confidence, ferocious denunciation, and selfishness but half concealed
under the cloak of patriotism, the England of the original whigs and
tories, was the England of conservatism and reform, and the America of
1776, the America of 1841.

Still thousands always act, in political struggles, with the fairest
intentions, though they act in bitter opposition to each other. When
prejudice becomes the stimulant of ignorance, no other result may be
hoped for; and the experience of the world, in the management of human
affairs, has left the upright and intelligent, but one conclusion as the
reward of all the pains and penalties with which political revolutions
have been effected--the conviction that no institutions can be invented,
which a short working does not show will be perverted from their
original intention, by the ingenuity of those entrusted with power. In a
word, the physical constitution of man does not more infallibly tend to
decrepitude and imbecility, imperiously requiring a new being, and a new
existence, to fulfil the objects of his creation, than the mor