nd every
accident even, from carelessness or want of skill,--each and all these
have their exact parallels, generally within the same year of time in
Great Britain and in our own country. The crimes and the catastrophes,
in each locality, have seemed almost repetitions of the same things on
either continent. Munificent endowments of charitable institutions, zeal
in reformatory enterprises and in the correction of abuses, have shown
that the people of both regions stand upon the same plane of humanity
and practical Christian culture. The same great frauds have indicated
in each the same amount of rottenness in men occupying places of trust.
Both regions have had the same sort of unprincipled "railway kings" and
bankers, similar railroad disasters, similar cases of the tumbling
down of insecure walls, and of wife-poisoning. A Chartist insurrection
enlists a volunteer police in London, and an apprehended riot among
foreigners is met by a similar precaution in one of our cities. An
intermittent controversy goes on in England about the interference of
religion with common education, and Boston or New York is agitated at
the same time with the question about the use of the Bible in the public
schools. Boston rowdies mob an English intermeddler with the ticklish
matters of our national policy, and English rowdies mob an Austrian
Haynau. England goes into ecstasies over the visit of a Continental
Prince, and our Northern States repeat the demonstration over the visit
of a British Prince. The Duke of Wellington alarms his fellow-subjects
by suggesting that their national defences would all prove insufficient
against the assaults of a certain terrible Frenchman, and an American
cabinet official echoes the suggestion that England may, perhaps, try
her strength in turn against us. There are evidently a great many
bubbles in this world, and, for all that we know to the contrary, they
are all equally liable to burst. Some famous ones, bright in royal
hues, have burst within the century. Some more of the same may, not
impossibly, suffer a collapse before the century has closed. So that,
for this matter, "the bubble of Democracy" must take its chance with the
rest.

We have one more specification to make under our general statement
of reasons why the North feels aggrieved with the prevailing tone of
sentiment and comment in the English journals in reference to our great
calamity. We protest against the verdict which finds expression in