traffic being thus diverted from it,
which once formed the great source of its prosperity, it became completely
deserted; Shaftesbury, Sturminster, and Sherborne, shared in her ruin; and
Swindon became one of the most flourishing places in the kingdom." We
cannot think so meanly of our countrymen, as to suppose that they will
yield like white-livered cravens, and die without a struggle; and in thus
raising the voice of Maga to warn them of their danger, and instruct them
how to avoid it, we consider that we are doing the state some service, and
pointing out new means profitable employment for the capital of the rich,
and the labour of the poor.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL POLICY--SHIPS, COLONIES, AND COMMERCE.

Who, standing on the shore, has not seen, as the gale freshened into storm
and swelled into the hurricane, the waves of the clear green sea gradually
lose their brightness, until raking up from the lowest depths, convulsed
with the mighty strife of the elements, the very obscene dregs and refuse
of all matter terreous, or instinct of life, the mounting billows become
one thick and unsightly mass of turbid waters, chafing with all the foam
and froth of the unclean scourings of the deep, rioting in the ascendant?
As in the world physical, so is it with the order of nature in the world
moral and political. As the social horizon becomes troubled, as reform
careers on to revolution, the empire of mind is overwhelmed--the brute
matter and fiercer spirits of the masses ascend, and ride the tempest
political more triumphantly as incipient confusion thickens into confirmed
chaos.

The bad eminence popularly of men so devoid of all principle and
integrity, so strangely uncouth and assorted, as the Daniel O'Connells,
the John M'Hales, and the Feargus O'Connors; of men so unlearned in all
principle, political and economical--so wanting, moreover, in the presence
of the higher order of moral sentiments, as the Cobdens, the Brights, the
Rory O'Mores, the Aucklands, and Sydney (he of the League) Smiths, is
among the worst symptoms of the diseased times upon which the country has
fallen. It recalls forcibly to mind, it reproduces the opening scenes and
the progress, the men and the machinery, of the first French Revolution,
the precursor of so many more, upon the last act of the last fashioned
melodrama of which the curtain has not yet probably descended. How then
the meaner spirits succeed