northern clime--with the remains of
that equality born and bred amidst the beech-forests that bordered the
Baltic--the English people could never stoop to this; and hence our
glorious destiny. No nation under heaven's broad light has been more
sorely tried than our own. We have taken into pay almost every European
power. Our war to restore the BOURBONS, and thus to crush Liberalism at
home, and keep the Tories in office, was carried on at a cost which only
Englishmen could have paid; and yet from our long seasons of
distress--from our commercial panics, the result of fettered trade--from
our formidable continental wars--we have emerged with flying colours, and
indomitable strength. Mr. Porter's statistics showed what we had done in
the face of difficulty and danger, and the progress we have made since
Mr. Porter's time is something prodigious. Not yet has the arm of the
people been weakened or its eye dulled.

These are facts such as the united Croaker tribe can neither refute nor
deny. We understand the meaning of such men when they raise a cry of
alarm. What such men dread does in reality infuse into the constitution
fresh vigour and life. Not national death, but the reverse is the
result. The removal of one abuse, behind which monopoly and class
legislation have skulked, is like stripping from the monarch of the
forest the foul parasite by which his beauty is hidden and his strength
devoured. From such operations the constitution comes out with the
elements of life more copious and active in it than before. It finds a
wider base in the support and attachment of the people; it becomes more
sympathetic with them. It grows with their growth and strengthens with
their strength.

It is not true, then, that for us the future is more fraught with anxiety
than hope. The theory is denied by fact. It is not true commercially,
nor is it true morally. Our progress in morals and manners is, at least,
equal to our progress in trade. The coarse manners--the brutal
intoxication--the want of all faith in spiritual realities, held not
merely by the laity but by the clergy as well of the last century, now no
longer exists. Reverend Deans do not now write to ladies as did the
bitter Dean of St. Patrick's to his Stella. Sure are we that Victoria
cannot speak of her bishops as, according to Lord Hervey, George II. did,
and justly, speak of his. No Prime Minister now would dare to insult the
good feeling of the nation b