ews was the Spectator and the Tatler. The social order
it covered was that of monarchical England, undisturbed by the fiery
philippics of Byron or Shelley or the radicalism of a manufacturing age.
Its chivalry was an imitation of the antiquated age of lords and ladies,
and tournaments, and buckram courtesies, when men were as touchy to
fight, at the lift of an eyelid or the drop of the glove, as Brian de
Bois-Guilbert, and as ready for a drinking-bout as Christopher North. The
intellectual stir of the North, with its disorganizing radicalism, was
rigorously excluded, and with it all the new life pouring out of its
presses. The South was tied to a republic, but it was not republican,
either in its politics or its social order. It was, in its mental
constitution, in its prejudices, in its tastes, exactly what you would
expect a people to be, excluded from the circulation of free ideas by its
system of slavery, and fed on the English literature of a century ago. I
dare say that a majority of its reading public, at any time, would have
preferred a monarchical system and a hierarchy of rank.

To return to England. I have said that English domination usually carries
the best elements of civilization. Yet it must be owned that England has
pursued her magnificent career in a policy often insolent and brutal, and
generally selfish. Scarcely any considerations have stood in the way of
her trade and profit. I will not dwell upon her opium culture in India,
which is a proximate cause of famine in district after district, nor upon
her forcing the drug upon China--a policy disgraceful to a Christian
queen and people. We have only just got rid of slavery, sustained so long
by Biblical and official sanction, and may not yet set up as critics. But
I will refer to a case with which all are familiar--England's treatment
of her American colonies. In 1760 and onward, when Franklin, the agent of
the colonies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, was cooling his heels in
lords' waiting-rooms in London, America was treated exactly as Ireland
was--that is, discriminated against in every way; not allowed to
manufacture; not permitted to trade with other nations, except under the
most vexatious restrictions; and the effort was continued to make her a
mere agricultural producer and a dependent. All that England cared for us
was that we should be a market for her manufactures. This same
selfishness has been the keynote of her policy down to the present