too warmly for its own peace and quiet.

Austria, thus deserted by the presiding genius of her hitherto Italian
policy, Metternich, will perhaps hesitate to enforce its threatened
opposition to the changes which she might have sold at the cost of many
lives, but would not have averted, though she overran Italy from end to
end with war and desolation.

This retreat of the great political powers of darkness before the
advance of freedom in Italy seems to me like a personal happiness to
myself. I rejoice unspeakably in it. It is quite another matter in
France. It will be another matter here, whenever our turn to be turned
upside down or inside out comes.

In Italy the people are rising against foreign tyranny, to get rid of
foreign dominion, and to get rightful possession of the government of
their own country. In France the revolution against power is past, but
that against property is yet to come. As for us, our revolt against
iniquitous power ended with the final expulsion of the Stuarts; but we
have sundry details of that wholesale business yet to finish, and there
will be here some sort of _property_ revolution, in some mode or other,
yet.

The crying sin of modern Christian civilization, the monstrous
inequalities in the means of existence, will yet be dealt with by us
English, among whom it is more flagrant than anywhere else on earth.

It is the one revolution of which our social system seems to me to stand
in need, the last that can be directly affected, if not effected, by
legislative action upon the tenure of land, the whole system of
proprietorship of the soil, the spread of education, and the extension
of the franchise: and, as we are the richest and the poorest people in
the world, as the extremes of rampant luxury and crawling poverty are
wider asunder here than anywhere else on earth, the force must be
great--I pray God it may be gradual--that draws those opposite ends of
the social scale into more humane nearness.

I cannot believe that any violent convulsions will attend inevitable
necessary change here; for, in spite of the selfish passions of both
rich and poor, our people do fear God, more, I think, than any other
European nation, and recognize a law of duty; and there is good sense
and good principle enough in all classes, I believe, to meet even
radical change with firmness and temperance.

The noble body politic of England is surely yet so sound and healthy and
vigorous as to go through any