of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population?
Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and
in our harbours be heard no sound of oars, neither shall gallant ship pass
thereby? Is the vaunted splendour of this country to furnish a melancholy
lesson of the instability of earthly power, and its fate to conclude a
tale more glorious, to point a moral more affecting, than any which Tyre,
or Sidon, or Carthage have furnished, to curb the insolence of prosperity,
and to show the insignificance of man?

"Quamvis Pontica pinus,
Sylvae filia nobilis,
Jactes et genus et nomen inutile."

After dwelling on the supply of information which the present age enjoys,
and which is quite without parallel in any former period, and pointing out
the inconsistencies among us, of which, nevertheless, every day affords
perpetual examples, the writer asks--

"Do these evils proceed from some moral perversity in the people?
Is there some natural barrier in England against the effects of
capital, industry, science, and religion; or is it not that
ignorance of the laws that regulate and harmonize social
existence, and of those that govern the human mind, has hitherto
been extensively prevalent, and is still resisting the remedies
of riper experience?

"But the poor and ignorant cannot educate themselves; it must be
the upper classes who give them the means of improvement. In the
natural laws of society, the use of a class who are independent
of labour for subsistence, is, that a certain part of the
community should have leisure to acquire that general knowledge
which is the parent of wise institutions and pure morals. That
they should have such affluence as to give weight to their
example and authority, is also desirable. Government, as has
already been observed, cannot act effectively against a very
great preponderance of error and prejudice, but must legislate in
the spirit of truths that are generally known, and in the service
of interests that excite general sympathy.

"The object of this work is not to advocate particular measures,
nor even to assume that every thing that is wrong is so through
culpable neglect; but it is to call attention to the grievous
evils, that neither legislation nor zeal and charity can
counteract with effect, till the increased education of all
classes assists th