h every other part; the thrill of joy and the moan of
desolation are no longer things of locality; they are shared fully and
immediately by the whole; and the interest of brotherhood, extending to
parts of the country which, under other conditions, must have remained
unknown and uncared for, makes us realise that all men are but members
of one and the same family.

The freedom and independence now enjoyed by the individual, as a result
of the vast influence exercised by society through the rapid exchange of
thought, is certainly a thing of which the people of our own country
may well be proud. Right can now assert itself in a way which was
entirely beyond the reach of our predecessors of a hundred years ago;
and wrong receives summary judgment at the hands of a whole people. Yet
there is a growing danger that this great liberty of the individual may
become, in one direction, a spurious liberty, and that the elements of
physical force, exerting themselves under the aegis of uncurbed freedom,
may enter into conspiracy against intellect, individual effort, and
thrift in such a way as to produce a tyranny worse than that existing in
the most despotic states.

The introduction of the telegraph, and the greater facilities afforded
by the press for the general distribution of news, have greatly changed
the nature of commercial speculation. Formerly, when news came from
abroad at wide intervals, it was of the utmost consequence to obtain
early command of prices and information as to movements in the markets,
and whoever gained the news first had the first place in the race.
Nowadays the telegraph, and the newspapers by the help of the
telegraph, give all an equal start, and the whole world knows at once
what is going on in every capital of the globe. The thirst for the first
possession of news in commercial life is happily described in _Glasgow
Past and Present_, wherein the author gives an account of a practice
prevailing in the Tontine Reading Rooms at the end of last century.
"Immediately on receiving the bag of papers from the post-office," says
the writer, "the waiter locked himself up in the bar, and after he had
sorted the different papers and had made them up in a heap, he unlocked
the door of the bar, and making a sudden rush into the middle of the
room, he then tossed up the whole lot of newspapers as high as the
ceiling of the room. Now came the grand rush and scramble of the
subscribers, every one darting forward t