s parks, steamboats and railways,
reading-rooms and coffee-rooms, museums, gardens, and cheap concerts. In
place of the disgusting old amusements, there has come a healthier,
sounder life, greater enlightenment, more general sobriety, and a
humaner spirit. We have in a hundred years outgrown many of our savage
tendencies. We are not less brave as a people, though less brutal. We
are quite as manly, though much less gross. Manners are more refined,
yet as a people we have not lost our pluck, energy, and endurance. We
respect ourselves more, and as a nation we have become more respected.
We now think with shame of the manners of a hundred years ago.

The achievements of which England has most reason to be proud, have been
accomplished during the last hundred years. English slaves have been
emancipated, both at home and abroad. Impressment has been done away
with. Parliamentary representation has been conferred upon all classes
of the people. The Corn Laws have been abolished. Free trade has been
established. Our ports are now open to the whole world.

And then, see what our inventors have accomplished! James Watt invented
the steam-engine, which in a few years created a large number of new
industries, and gave employment to immense numbers of people. Henry Cort
invented the puddling-process, and enabled England to rely upon its own
stores of iron, instead of depending upon foreign and perhaps hostile
countries. All the docks and harbours round the English coast have been
formed during the present century. The steamboat, the railway, and the
telegraph have only been invented and applied during the last fifty
years.

With respect to the charge made against the English workman as to the
"sluriness, swiftness, and mendacity" of his work, it is simply
impossible that this should be so. Our ports are free and open to the
world; and if Frenchmen, Germans, Belgians, or Americans could execute
better work than Englishmen, we should not only cease to export, but
also lose our home trade. The foreigner is now free to undersell us, if
he can, in our own markets.

It was in the perfect confidence that Englishmen were the best and most
honest workers in the world, that free trade was established. Should we
ever become a shoddy manufacturing people, free trade will probably be
abolished; and we shall then impose prohibitory duties upon foreign
manufactures. But is it not the fact that every year sees an increase in
the exports of En