did
Burns and Nicoll, at the plough, with GOD'S heaven above them, and GOD'S
inspiration in their hearts.

The decline and fall of England has already found chroniclers enough.
Ledru Rollin and the Protectionists are agreed as regards the lamentable
fact. G. F. Young, the chairman of the Society for the Protection of
British Industry and Capital, believed it as firmly as his own existence.
A similar opinion is more than hinted in the tedious History of Dr.
Alison. At a still earlier period the same doleful tale was ever on the
lips and pervaded the writings of Southey, the Laureate and the renegade.
If these gentlemen are right, then the melancholy conviction must be
forced upon us that England has seen her best days; that it will never be
with her what it was in time past, when she bred up an indomitable race,
when her flag of triumph fluttered in every breeze, and floated on every
sea. We must believe that England's sun is about to set; that, with its
brightness and its beauty, it will never more bless and irradiate the
world.

Against such a conclusion we emphatically protest. We look back upon our
national career, and we see that each age has witnessed the people's
growth in political power; that especially since that grand field-day of
Democracy, the French Revolution, that power has gone on increasing with
accelerated force; that it was to the increased ascendancy of that power
that we owed it that we rode in safety whilst the political ocean was
covered with wreck and ruin. If one thing be clearer than another in our
national history, it is that our greatness and the power of the people
have grown together. At a season like the present it is well to remember
this. Prophets often fulfil their own prophecies. The Jeremiads of the
weak, or the interested, or the fearful, may damp the courage of some
hearts; and a people told that they are ruined, that the poor are
becoming poorer every day, that the end of all labour is the workhouse or
the gaol, that their life is but a lingering death, may come to believe
that the handwriting is upon the wall, and that it is hopeless to war
with fate.

The fact is, nations, when they die, die of _felo-de-se_. The national
heart becomes unsound, and the national arm weak. The virtue has gone
out of it. Its rulers have usurped despotic powers, and the people have
been sunk in utter imbecility, or have looked upon life as a May-day
game, and nothing more. In our cold