are no more. We are compelled
to recruit our armies from those very tribes before whose swords we are
receding!

'Doubtless the ordinary reader will believe this picture to be
overcharged, drawn with manifest exaggeration, and somewhat questionable
taste. _Every single statement which it contains_ may be paralleled by
the circumstances and events of the decadence of the Roman Empire. The
analogous situation was with the subjects of this type of all good
government, _always a possible_, often an actual, state of things. We
think this disposes of the theory of Mr. Congreve. With it may
advantageously be contrasted the opinion of a man of more statesman-like
mind. "The benefits of despotism are short-lived; it poisons the very
springs which it lays open; if it display a merit, it is an exceptional
one; if a virtue, it is created of circumstances; and when once this
better hour has passed away, all the vices of its nature break forth with
redoubled violence, and weigh down society in every direction." So
writes M. Guizot. Is it the language of prophecy as well as of personal
experience?'

Mr. Sheppard should have added, to make the picture complete, that the
Irish have just established popery across St. George's Channel, by the
aid of re-immigrants from America; that Free Kirk and National Kirk are
carrying on a sanguinary civil war in Scotland; that the Devonshire
Wesleyans have just sacked Exeter cathedral, and murdered the Bishop at
the altar, while the Bishop of London, supported by the Jews and the rich
churchmen (who are all mixed up in financial operations with Baron
Rothschild) has just commanded all Dissenters to leave the metropolis
within three days, under pain of death.

I must add yet one more feature to this fearful, but accurate picture,
and say how, a few generations forward, an even uglier thing would be
seen. The English aristocracy would have been absorbed by foreign
adventurers. The grandchildren of these slaves and mercenaries would be
holding the highest offices in the state and the army, naming themselves
after the masters who had freed them, or disguising their barbarian names
by English endings. The De Fung-Chowvilles would be Dukes, the Little-
grizzly-bear-Joe-Smiths Earls, and the Fitz-Stanleysons, descended from a
king of the gipsies who enlisted to avoid transportation, and in due time
became Commander-in-Chief, would rule at Knowsley in place of the Earl of
Derby, having inherit