a long and dreary season of anxiety, distress,
and depression; frightful strikes among the workmen, attended with
boundless distress among, and hideous democratic tyranny over them,
invariably succeed in the close of those periods of suffering, as
pestilence stalks in the rear of famine; and popular insurrection has
become so common, that it is a rare thing to see two years pass over
without martial law being of necessity practically enforced in some part
of the empire. Efforts unheard-of have been made to extend the religious
establishments of the state, or augment the means of moral and
intellectual instruction among the people; but hitherto with no
perceptible effect in checking the habits of sensuality, improvidence, and
intemperance, which prevail amongst them; and in an age and a country
abounding, beyond any other that ever existed, with declamations in favour
of the blessings of knowledge, and the elements of happiness and moral
improvement, which free-trade and a general liberation from restraint were
to procure for society, the scandal has been exhibited of serious crime
having, during the last forty years, increased TEN TIMES as fast as the
number of the people.[3]

We are so accustomed in this country to those things, that they have
ceased to make any impression upon us. The great majority of men, actively
engaged in the business of life, pay no attention to them whatever, but go
on labouring to make money, or keep themselves afloat in the world,
without bestowing even a passing thought of whither that world on which
they are so intent is tending. Philosophers and political economists,
confounded at beholding such results flowing from the adoption and
practical application of their favourite principles, quietly pass by on
the other side; and, without denying the facts, content themselves with
disregarding them altogether, and continuing to prophesy unbounded
national prosperity and moral elevation from the ultimate effect of the
further abolition of restraint on thought and action. The religious
portion of the community--and they form a large and highly respectable
body--consider these alarming symptoms as the judgment of Heaven upon us
for our sins, and the natural and well-deserved consequence of our neglect
of the means of salvation, which have been so mercifully put into our
hands. The merchants and manufacturers, who are rapidly making fortunes
under the new system, maintain that it is founded on pure a