s spice; on the ribbons of the bride,
on the shroud of the corpse, and the brass nails of the
coffin. The school-boy whips his taxed top; the beardless
youth rides his taxed horse, with a taxed saddle and bridle,
on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his
medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that
has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his
chintz-bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires
in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a
hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.
His whole property is then taxed from two to ten per cent.
Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him
in the chancel. His virtues are then handed down to
posterity on taxed marble, and he is gathered to his
fathers, to be taxed no more!

And we are told, what is doubtless true, that the enormous debt
of Great Britain is the chain that binds its many parts together,
and preserves its nationality. No nation, then, ever maintained a
more precarious existence. Chartism in Scotland, Repeal in
Ireland, Trades Strikes everywhere, East India Wars, Irish
Famines, Fenianism, Reform Leagues, Reform Riots, Bread
Riots--all these attest how volcanic is its under stratum, and
what dangers impend above. In some of the gloomy gorges of the
Alps, there are seasons of the year when no traveler passes but
at the expense of life, on account of the terrible "_thunderbolts
of snow_" that hang suspended on the sides or summits of the
mountains. None can know their hour; but descend they must, by
all the laws of gravitation, with resistless energy, sweeping all
before them. At such times, all who pass creep along with
trembling caution. They move in single file, at a distance from
each other, hurrying fast as possible, with velvet step, avoiding
all noise, even whispers--the guides meanwhile muffling the bells
of the mules, lest the slightest vibration communicated to the
air should untie the tremulous mass overhead and entomb them
forever. Great Britain, with her frightful debt, her terrible
taxation, her dissatisfied, restless, beggared myriads of the
lower working classes, her remorseless aristocracy, her bloated
spirit o