-made men;--let such a
one, we say, go on to the Continent, and consider the relatively slow
advance which things are there making; and the still slower advance
they would make but for English enterprise.

Let him go to Holland, and see that tho the Dutch early showed
themselves good mechanics, and have had abundant practise in
hydraulics, Amsterdam has been without any due supply of water until
now that works are being established by an English company. Let him go
to Berlin, and there be told that, to give that city a water supply
such as London has had for generations, the project of an English firm
is about to be executed by English capital, under English
superintendence. Let him go to Paris, where he will if find a similar
lack, and a like remedy now under consideration. Let him go to
Vienna, and learn that it, in common with other continental cities, is
lighted by an English gas company. Let him go on the Rhone, on the
Loire, on the Danube, and discover that Englishmen established steam
navigation on those rivers. Let him inquire concerning the railways in
Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, how many of them are English
projects, how many have been largely helped by English capital, how
many have been executed by English contractors, how many have had
English engineers. Let him discover, too, as he will, that where
railways have been government made, as in Russia, the energy, the
perseverance, and the practical talent developed in England and the
United States have been called in to aid.

And then if these illustrations of the progressiveness of a
self-dependent race, and the torpidity of paternally governed ones, do
not suffice him, he may read Mr. Laing's[47] successive volumes of
European travel, and there study the contrast in detail. What, now, is
the cause of this contrast? In the order of nature, a capacity for
self-help must in every case have been brought into existence by the
practise of self-help; and, other things equal, a lack of this
capacity must in every case have arisen from the lack of demand for
it. Do not these two antecedents and their two consequents agree with
the facts as presented in England and Europe? Were not the inhabitants
of the two, some centuries ago, much upon a par in point of
enterprise? Were not the English even behind, in their manufactures,
in their colonization, and in their commerce? Has not the immense
relative change the English have undergone in this respect been
co