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CONDITION AND FATE

OF

ENGLAND.

BOOK FIRST.

POWER AND MAGNIFICENCE OF ENGLAND.

In England or out of England, one is everywhere met with evidences of her greatness. Whether he stand in the centre of London and feel the pulsations of that mighty heart which sends its life blood to the farthest extremities of the British Empire, or enter her palaces and manufactories, or walk along her docks, or travel the world, the exclamation is still," Great and Mighty England!”

Her power seems omnipresent, her ships circle the pole, and "put a girdle round the earth." Her cannon look into every harbour, and her commerce flows into every nation. She has her word to say in every part of the habitable world. Scarcely a nation projects an outward scheme without first looking up to behold the aspect which England will assume toward it. Nineteen hundred years ago the Roman standard first floated

on the shores of Britain. Then a race of barbarians, clothed in the skins of wild beasts, roamed over the uncultivated island. The tread of the legions was then heard on the plains of Africa and Asia, and the name of Rome was written on the front of the world. Nearly two thousand years have rolled by, and Julius Cæsar and all the Cæsars, the Senate, the people, and the Empire of Rome have passed away like a dream. Her population now only a little exceeds that of NewYork state, while that island of barbarians has emulated Rome in her conquests, and not only planted and unfurled her standard in the three quarters of the globe that owned the Roman sway, but laid her all-grasping hand on a new continent. Possessing the energy and valour of her Saxon and Norman ancestors, she has remained unconquered, unbroken, amid the changes that have ended the history of other nations. Like her own island that sits firm and tranquil in the ocean that rolls round it, she has stood amid the ages of man and the overthrow of empires.

A nation thus steadily advancing over every obstacle that checks the progress or breaks the strength of other governments; making every world-tumult wheel in to swell its triumphal march, must possess not only great resources, but great skill to manage them. Looking out from her sea-home she has made her fleets and her arms her voice. Strength and energy of charac- ter, skill, daring, and an indomitable valour ex

erted through these engines of power, have raised her to her present proud elevation.

Her navy embraces six hundred vessels. Besides these she has fleets and steamships and packets so constructed as to be easily converted into war ships. In the short space of two months she could send 150 more steam frigates well equipped to sea, making in all 750 war vessels; so that she could stretch a line of battle ships from Liverpool to New-York, each separated only four miles from the other. Twenty-seven millions of people in the three kingdoms sit down in the shadow of her throne. In the East 150,000,000 more come under her sway, beside the vast number, civilized and uncivilized, that inhabit her provinces in every quarter of the globe. The Liverpool Times, in announcing the birth of the Prince of Wales, thus sums up the vast extent of the empire:"Salutes in honour of his birth will be fired in America, on the shores of Hudson Bay, along the whole line of the Canadian Lakes, in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, in the Bermudas, at a hundred points in the West Indies, in the forests of Guinea, and in the distant Falkland Islands, near Cape Horn.-In Europe, in the British Islands, from the Rock of Gibraltar, from the impregnable fortifications of Malta, and in the Ionian Islands.-In Africa, on the Guinea Coast, and St. Helena and Ascension from the Cape to the Orange River, and at the Mauritius.In Asia, from the fortress of Aden in Arabia, at

Karrack, in the Persian Gulf, by the British arms in Affghanistan, along the Himalaya Mountains, the banks of the Indus and the Ganges, to the Southern point of India, in the Island of Ceylon, beyond the Ganges in Assam and Arracaan, at Prince of Wales' Island, and Singapore, on the shores of China, at Hong Kong and Chusan, and in Australia, at the settlements formed on every side of the Australian continent and Islands, and in the Strait which separates these Islands of the New Zealanders. No Prince has ever been born in this or any other country, in ancient or modern times, whose birth would be hailed with rejoicings at so many different and distant points in every quarter of the world."*

* While the Queen of England was giving birth in the palace to her princely boy, some hundreds of English mothers, "made of as good stuff" as she, were undergoing the pains of accouchement in damp, cold cellars-without attendants or physicians, many of them, and some without food enough to keep them and their new-born children alive. Merciful Heaven! 'These mothers (fifteen hundred and sixty) sent a petition to the Queen for help, praying that while she was passing through the pains of child-birth she would remember the thousands of her humble sisters who would during the cold winter approaching be called to the same trial-thousands too who through the cruel oppressions of the government are reduced to starving poverty. The Queen, it is believed, is kind-hearted: but what can she do? She is only an Imperial Pauper herself, although pretty well provided for. Her Ministers told these poor mothers to go home, for they could not help them. God help them! If the Queen's baby has $150,000 a year, the operative's baby must starve, for money is not plentiful enough to provide for babies at this rate.

After glancing o'er this catalogue of countries he might well inquire, where is there a spot where English cannon do not speak English power? Of her rejoicings at home we have nothing to say. Let her hail the birth of a monarch, who may be, with acclaims, bell-ringings, and the firing of cannon, till "the fast anchored isle" rock to the Jubilate the world may listen or not, as it pleases. But the echo of her guns north of Boston and New-York-beyond the Rocky Mountains-south of Florida-and east of Charleston, has something startling and ominous in it. Along the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario, Erie, and Michigan, one long booming shot rolls down over these free States, saying, "England is here and her cannon too." The wandering tribes of the western prairies and Guianian forests hear it and cower back to their fastnesses, for England is there. It sends terror through millions of hearts as it thunders from the harbors and fortresses of the East Indies. The vessels entering the Mediterranean turn an anxious eye to the rocks of Gibraltar, as the smoke slowly curls up their sides; and the report of a thousand cannon say in most significant language, that England is there. To the reflecting man there is meaning in that shot which goes round the earth. England sends her messengers abroad to every nation, and the insignia of her power are scattered among all the tribes of the great family of man; while she sits amid the sea, as if her power was the centre of tides, whose pulsations are felt

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