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ENGLi^ND 
 
 HEK 
 
 PRESENT CONDITION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS 
 
 AS ONE OP THE 
 
 irtat lofeers of l|e (Eart^. 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE ATHENEUM, COLUMBUS, 
 MARCH 6, 1856. 
 
 HON. THOMAS EWING, 
 
 Y 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 E. W. CARROLL & CO., PUBLISHERS, 117 W. FOURTH STREET. 
 
 1866. 
 

CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Atheneum Eooms, 
 
 Columbus, 0., March 8, 1856. 
 Hon. Thomas Swing: 
 
 Dear Sir .-—Wishing to gratify a rery general desire on the part of the public, we respect- 
 fully solicit for publication a copy of your able and interesting Lecture on England, delivered 
 before this Association on the 6tb inst. 
 
 Sincerely hoping that you will consent, 
 
 We remain very respectfully, 
 
 J. J. JANNET, 
 WM. E. IDE, 
 H. C. NOBLE, 
 A. B. BUTTLES, 
 JOS. HDTCHESON, 
 
 Directors. 
 
 Cincinnati, March 12, 1856. 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 I have yonr favor of the 8th inst., requesting a copy of the Lecture delivered by me on 
 the evening of tlie 6th, for publication. I send you a copy, which you are at liberty to pub- 
 lish, and am A'ery respectfully yours, 
 
 w T T T T. EWIN6. 
 
 Messrs. John J. .Tannet, 
 
 Wm. E. Ide, 
 
 H. C. Noble, 
 
 A. B. Buttles, 
 
 Joseph Huicheson, 
 
 Directors. 
 
LECTURE 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 We are so much in the habit of speaking and writing 
 about ourselves — of looking back to our recent feeble origin, 
 wondering at our rapid growth and present power, and in- 
 dulging in visions of a mighty future which we have learned 
 to claim as ours by manifest destiny — that we hardly think 
 of the world abroad, (except such parts of it as we intend 
 to annex,) or reason about the condition of other nations. 
 But other nations there are more mighty than we, who now 
 divide the Empire of the Earth among themselves and with 
 us, and who are destined to divide it for ages with our pos- 
 terity. Among these, the nation in which we have the 
 deepest interest — the object most of our emulation and 
 rivalry^ is Great Britain : and I purpose to spend the allot- 
 ted hour this evening in presenting to you some views of 
 her present condition and future prospects as one of the 
 great ruling posvers of the Earth. 
 
 The Island of Great Britain, which is the nucleus of the 
 vast British Empire, and which alone of all that pertains to 
 it has unity, is small in extent — about equal to Pennsylva- 
 nia and Ohio. If we cast off from the estimate the barren 
 and almost uninhabited Highlands of Scotland, the whole 
 remaining territory of the Island is not equal to that of the 
 State of Missouri. But its population is immense — averag- 
 ing more than 300 to the square mile. It is greater, per- 
 haps, than was ever fixed upon an equal extent of territory 
 
6 ENGLAND : HER PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 ■ on the face of the Earth. In the present age it is certainly 
 unequaled. Belgium, a small spot of garden earth, rich 
 mines, and manufacturing cities, has, it is true, a larger 
 population to the sqiaare mile than all of England, including 
 moor and mountain, but this forms no just comparison, 
 liindostan has not more than one hundred and seventy to 
 the square mile, and China proper much less than three 
 hundred. It is obvious, therefore, that the Island of Great 
 Britain, blessed with no extraordinary fertility, can not sup- 
 port its population from its own agricultural products : and 
 we know in fact that it does not. Its people subsist, part- 
 ly on the products of their own soil, which is made to yield 
 its utmost : while the amount which they receive from for- 
 eign countries is very large. In grain and flour alone it 
 was equal to 94,000,000 bushels of wheat in the year end- 
 ing July 1, 1854 ; with other agricultural products in due 
 proportion. 
 
 The wealth which purchases this vast amount of the 
 necessaries of life is derived partly from conquered coun- 
 tries in Asia ; and partly from numerous work-shops at 
 home, where fuel dug from the earth performs, day by day, 
 and year by year, the labor of many millions of men. 
 liindostan, the most fertile, and formerly the richest portion 
 of Asia, is a tributary ; and Great Britain draws from it, 
 through her East India Company, all the products of its 
 soil and labor, except what is necessary in ordinary fruitful 
 years to sustain its population — leaving no means in the land 
 to buy bread in years of famine. The wealth of that coun- 
 try, which had been treasured up for ages by the prudence, 
 the avarice, or the vanity of native princes, was plundered , 
 at the time of the conquest, by Clive and Hastings; and 
 nothing has been since permitted to accumulate there. The 
 whole surplus product of that vast and - fertile region has 
 
AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 
 
 gone to augment the wealth and support the population of 
 Great Britain. A single article of export — opium — first 
 smuggled into China "by the servants of the East India 
 Company, and at last in the name of free trade, forced into 
 her markets at the cannon's mouth, produces an annual 
 revenue of more than thirty-five millions of dollars. 
 
 But it is like Tyre of old, "by the multitude of her 
 wares," that Great Britain makes the world her tributary. 
 It is difficult to find a nation or people, great or small, sav- 
 age or civilized, that does not furnish something of the pro- 
 ducts of the earth in exchange for the product of her en- 
 gines. Bonaparte said she conquered him with her spin- 
 dles : and it was indeed vain for even him to resist them. 
 If he were the Man of Destiny, the Steam Engine was one 
 of its Powers — quite too mighty for the man. But when 
 these spindles conquered the conqueror of Europe, they had 
 acquired not half their present potency. Their increase 
 has since been very great, and more than ever within the 
 last ten years ; and with them have increased the wealth 
 and prosperity of the nation. 
 
 Great Britain, as a power, is essentially maritime. Her 
 navy, in warlike appointment, exceeds that of any other 
 nation on the face of ^he earth — and for nearly two hund- 
 red years, until within the present century, she has not 
 met her match on lake or ocean, gun to gun -and man to 
 man — and certainly not yet among the nations of Europe- 
 She has consequently rested for ages secure from the de- 
 vastations of war. Since the Norman invasion no hostile 
 foreign force has found footing on her shores. The jutting 
 clift* which she presents as her nearest point to Europe, 
 
 " That pale and white-faced shore, 
 Whose foot spurns back the raging ocean's tides." 
 
 is typical of the defensive power of this Island people. But 
 
8 ENGLAND : HER PEESENT CONDITION 
 
 her power, beyond her own rock-bound coast, is on the sea 
 alone : 
 
 " Her marcli is on the mountain wave, 
 Her liome is on the deep ;" 
 
 and though there, on her own proper element, she is all- 
 powerful, yet on land, in the wars of Europe, she has, ex- 
 cept in two memorable instances, acted but a secondary part. 
 Her merchant and coasting ships employ great numbers of 
 sailors, and out of these she supplies abundantly her navy 
 with men whose lives have been on the ocean, and who know 
 no home but the deck. She never lacks sailors. 
 
 But she can not raise land armies. She has not within 
 the last four hundred years raised a considerable English 
 army for the continental wars, and is much less able now 
 than an hundred years ago. Macaulay very truly says, 
 "both the industry and idleness of great towns generate a 
 repugnance to military pursuits." True to the principle, 
 her great towns furnish few soldiers ; her miners and manu- 
 facturers, who Hve and work under shelter, are not fit for 
 service in the open field, and her agricultural laborers have 
 no taste for military adventure, fehakspeare, with his in- 
 stinctive appreciation of character, gives, in the second part 
 of his King Henry IV, a just measure of the military pre- 
 dilection of the English boor. His Mouldy and Bull Calf 
 may be fairly taken, then and at the present time, as repre- 
 sentatives of the class to which they belong. When drafted 
 as suldiers, one begs to be released, for if he go, " hi^ old 
 dame will be undone for some one to do her husbandry and 
 her drudgery ;" and the other " would as hef be hanged as 
 to go." And at no time, down to the present day, has the 
 British peasant panted for the tented field, or been eager to 
 advance to " the imminent deadly breach." He has always 
 preferred, and still prefers, his old dame's '' husbandry and 
 
AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 9 
 
 drudgery," with the home comforts of the English cottage, 
 to the laurels to be won, and the Hmbs to be lost, at Water- 
 loo or Sebastopol. For his " own part he would as lief be 
 hanged as to go." 
 
 Ireland has supplied much the larger contingent of sol- 
 diers for the British service. Her sons have been starved 
 into the ranks of the army ; and there is more truth than 
 poetry in the doggerel triplet of Daniel O'Connell : 
 
 "At famous Waterloo, 
 Duke Wellington would have looked blue, 
 If Paddy had not been there too." 
 
 But Irishmen, though fond of war, have no love for the 
 British service. They enter it only from necessity, and 
 since two of her eight millions have perished by the recent 
 famine, and since the natural increase has been kept down 
 by emigration, the ranks of the army can no longer be 
 filled in Ireland. Great Britain, therefore, can not raise an 
 army for continental service, but has been compelled to 
 resort to the employment of foreign troops, and to enlist- 
 ments in foreign countries. Her necessities drove her to 
 try even ours; and with all her boundless wealth, and with 
 the spindles which conquered Bonaparte quadrupled, she is 
 able to bear but an inferior part in the present conflict of 
 mighty nations. In this desperate struggle, wherein she 
 has much at stake, she tries, bat with imperfect success, to 
 keep in the field a contingent of 50,000 men ; while Austria, 
 which barely ranks as a first rate power, had ready for the 
 field, on the first approach of danger, a well-appointed army 
 of 450,000. It is evident, therefore, that Great Britain, 
 powerful as she is on the ocean, is comparatively feeble 
 every-where ofi' her own soil, and out of the range of the 
 guns of her men-of-war. "Her home is on the deep." 
 There, too, was the home of her predecessors, Tyre, and 
 
10 ENGLAND: HER PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 Carthage, and Venice. Like them in the days of their 
 prosperity, she has foreign possessions quite disproportioned 
 to the power of her own people ; and hke them, she must 
 trust to foreign mercenaries to defend those possessions, and 
 to hold them in subjection. 
 
 Besides her inability to raise men, her military arm is 
 paralyzed by a vice inherent in her system. Her armies 
 are not well officered. Commissions, up to a certain grade, 
 are the subject of purchase and sale, not the reward of merit. 
 By this the morale of the army suffers, and that, too, even 
 to the highest in command ; for the General-in-Chief him- 
 self, if he have military experience, must be selected from 
 those who have bought their way, instead of those who 
 have fought their way, to high military rank. Her soldiers 
 are as brave as any on the face of the earth ; but all who 
 have attended to the details of the war in the Crimea, must 
 have felt the great superiority of the French over the Eng- 
 lish organization and command. The French commissariat 
 has from the first been better ; their medical staff better ; 
 their corps of engineers better; and fewer mistakes have 
 been committed by their officers. All this is perceived and 
 felt, and the proud spirit of the British nation is wounded, 
 and revolts at the contrast; and the ministry. is censured 
 for what is inherent in the system, and not under their 
 control. Great Britain had, in times past, a Marlborough 
 and a Wellington, but there was a century between them, 
 and those great commanders are but exceptions : they were 
 great in spite of the vices of the system under which they 
 rose. Her military power is now less than it was fifty 
 years ago, during the wars consequent on the French Rev- 
 olution ; though within that time she has more than 
 doubled her population, and trebled her manufactures and 
 commerce. 
 
AND FUTUEE PROSPECTS. 11 
 
 There are yet two elements which deserve notice in esti- 
 mating the national status of Great Britain — both unknown 
 to ancient times, and both derived from the free States of 
 Italy. Her bank, which she borrowed from Venice, her 
 immediate predecessor as the world's great center of capital 
 and credit : her public debt, which she learned from Flor- 
 ence to fund, and thus convert into a species of currency. 
 The public debt, to which the Bank is but subordinate and 
 ancillary, is of great importance for its present, and also for 
 its probable future influence on the wealth and prosperity of 
 the nation. It has all accumulated in about one hundred 
 and seventy years, and amounts at this time to £800,000,- 
 000 sterling, equal to about four thousand millions of dol- 
 lars — an enormous sum, of which we can hardly have a 
 comprehension. It strikes the mind like numbers which 
 represent sidereal distances — immensity in space. That 
 this enormous debt will never be paid, is certain — indeed[, 
 no one can for a moment suppose that it will ever be con- 
 siderably reduced in amount, unless the Government shall 
 in some extremity expunge it. Subject to this contingency, 
 which can hardly occur, except under extraordinary finan- 
 cial pressure, it will continue as long as Great Britain con- 
 tinues to be a nation; and it will increase as long as she 
 maintains her present eminence in wealth and power; and 
 the interest will be punctually paid as long as she can raise 
 by taxation or borrow money to pay it. Que hundred and 
 thirteen years ago, David Hume considered the public debt 
 in one of his celebrated essays. It then amounted to about 
 £100,000,000 sterhng. He came to the conclusion that it 
 could never be paid, and he discussed the question whether, 
 as a matter of policy merely, the deb., should continue to be 
 acknowledged and the interest paid, or the whole at once 
 expunged. And he decided in favor of what we call repudi- 
 
12 ENGLAND: HER PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 ation, because, as he suggests, a rich rogue will have better 
 credit than an honest bankrupt. The debt, during that 
 century, troubled the British statesmen greatly, as well as 
 the people whose property was incumbered with it. This 
 uneasy feeling, and an efTort to make the American Colonies 
 pay a part of it, gave rise to the war of our Revolution ; 
 which, as one of its smallest consequences, doubled the debt. 
 
 This debt has, in a Httle more than one hundred years, a 
 short period in the life of a nation, arisen to £800,000,. 00 
 sterling ; and it has become in the hands of its holders an 
 enormous capital, more available in all the business opera- 
 tions of life than an equal amount of gold and silver. It 
 is money which brings interest while it passes from hand to 
 hand or lies in the merchant's or manufacturer's chest. 
 Small as is the rate of interest, if punctually paid and con- 
 stantly re-invested, the three per cents, will, in one hundred 
 years, produce sixteen-fold. This quality of accumulation 
 by compound interest in long periods of time, suggested the 
 idea of paying off the public debt by a sinking fund, which 
 failed because the fund was continually borrowed, or money 
 was elsewhere borrowed to supply its place, which more than 
 sunk the fund. Thus the public debt has been suffered to 
 accumulate, and it has been made available in the hands of 
 individuals to build up fortunes great and small, and, upon 
 a general view, seems to add to the wealth of the nation, or 
 rather of the people. This is fallacious. The debt is owned 
 in Great Britain, and it is owed by 'Great Britain. All the 
 people and property of the Island owe to a portion of the 
 people ^1,000.000,000, on which they pay, or seem to pay, 
 an annual interest of |140,000,000. 
 
 These are the leading elements which, with the compara- 
 tive freedom of her Government, the energy and enterprise 
 of her people, and the absolute security of life and property, 
 
AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 13 
 
 (and nowhere are life and property better protected,) make 
 up the present status of Great Britain, and by and subject 
 to which she holds her elevation and power. Great individ- 
 ual wealth has followed as a consequence of her unrivalled 
 national prosperity. Lord Bacon says, "Let States. that 
 aim at greatness take heed how their nobility and gentry 
 multiply too fast." But Great Britain could not take heed, 
 and her great wealth has multiplied her. nobility and gentry 
 until they bear a proportion to the whole population quite 
 unequaled within the range of history; not even excepting 
 Spain, when the precious metals of Mexico and Peru flowed 
 over, and enriched and ruined her. This aristocracy of 
 wealth, disconnected with and independent of the landed 
 aristocracy, is supported by the annual interest upon the 
 public debt ; by the vast sums yearly drawn from subju- 
 gated India ; by the rack rents of Ireland, and the profits 
 on manufactures and commerce; while they, the nobility 
 and gentry, with the multitude of their dependents and 
 those who minister to their wants, add nothing t) the 
 productive industry which sustains them. They are a bur- 
 den, and at this day almost a crushing burden, upon that 
 industry. Such now is Great Britain. 
 
 There seems to be an impression upon the minds of men 
 that there is a necessary period to the lives of nations, and 
 that each, however mighty it may be, must fall at last be- 
 fore the general leveler, Time, and give place to younger 
 and more vigorous creations — as the giant oak, which has 
 towered above the forest and stood the storms of a thousand 
 years, can not yet stand in its majesty and strength forever : 
 Time passes by, it feels his touch, and perishes ; and the 
 young sapling which sprung up at its root rises above and 
 overshadows it. It may indeed be so with nations ; it may 
 be that each and all the elements which give growth, and 
 
14 ENGLAND : HER PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 wealth, and power may contain also in themselves, and 
 necessarily bring with them, the ultimate causes of national 
 decay. But if it be so, when will they reach their full and 
 final development? How many are the years allotted to 
 the lives of nations ? 
 
 An oracle, it is said, warned the Etruscans that their 
 State would be destroyed ten ages after the date of its 
 foundation. That is to say, taking the survivor of all who 
 were living on the day of the foundation of the State, and 
 counting to the day of his death for one age, and then to 
 the day of the death of the survivor of all who were alive 
 at the end of the first age, for the second ; and so on until 
 the ten ages should be completed — which brought them 
 down, as Niebuhr tells us, eleven hundred years, to the time 
 of the actual destruction of their State in the conquest of 
 Veii by Rome. And he gives a like period to Rome, reck- 
 oning from the foundation of the city to the time when the 
 Empire was overrun and partitioned among the barbarous 
 hordes of the north. This is mythical. But youth, and 
 manhood, and age are properly predicated of nations as well 
 as of men. It seems to be felt that there is to them also a 
 necessary period, often hastened by rash imprudence or 
 overwhelming external violence, but often due to the natural 
 development of the causes which give rise to their greatness 
 and power. Lord Bacon, in his Vicissitudes of Things, 
 says : " In the youth of a State arms do flourish ; in the 
 middle age of a State learning, and then both together for 
 some time ; in the dechning age of a State mechanic arts 
 and merchandize." We find now in England a different 
 arrangement of the elements indicating national maturity — 
 learning, mechanic arts, and merchandize now all flourish 
 together there. 
 
 As it falls in with my train of thought, I may be excused 
 
AND FUTUEE PROSPECTS- 15 
 
 for turning aside a moment to notice the recent vigorous 
 manhood of the Turkish Empire, which Montaigne, the 
 pleasant essayist almost of our own times, speaks of as the 
 most powerful and warlike among the nations. The Turkish 
 cities were once indeed the emporia of commerce and the 
 marts of wealth. The Turkey merchant was the merchant, 
 par excellence, of our ancestors. All that was most rich 
 and rare, whether the product of nature or of art, if it came 
 from abroad by sea, was from Turkey. Even the fine bird 
 of our North American forest, when carried into England, 
 was a Turkey — because it came from beyond the sea, and 
 because of its size and excellence. But three hundred 
 years have passed by, and that prond empire has fallen 
 It is sick, though not quite dead. Its riches have taken to 
 themselves wings and flown away. Its arts have perished. 
 It -is the dying man — and his funeral obsequies are even 
 now celebrated in advance by the waving of western flags 
 on both sides of the Bosphorus, and by the roar of cannon 
 on the shores of the Euxine. 
 
 Great Britain, though in at the death, is not, I think, 
 destined to inherit any portion of the estate of the dying 
 man ; indeed, his lands would burden, not enrich her. The 
 control of the Bosphorus and the Euxine could add nothing 
 to her strength and security, unless it would enable her to 
 check the advance of Russia south and east of the Caspian. 
 Indeed, there is nothing left within her reach, anywhere, 
 which Great Britain can safely and profitably conquer. 
 Like Rome in the reign of the Emperor Trajan, it were now 
 her policy to restrict rather than to extend her dominions. 
 
 Her star has reached its culminating point It is not 
 probable that she will attain a higher comparative elevation. 
 On the contrary, changes which are now in apparent progress, 
 must tend to depress rather than exalt her in the scale of 
 
36 ENGLAND: HEE PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 nations. The first and most obvious of these is the vast 
 increase in population and power of two nations, Russia and 
 the United States, which have but lately risen to such rank 
 that she begins to recognize them as rivals. The popula- 
 tion of the United States already exceeds that of the Island 
 of Great Britain, and is increasing in such a ratio that it 
 doubles every twenty-five years, or four times in a century. 
 So that, should the present rate of increase continue for the 
 next fifty years, the population of the United States at the 
 end of that period, quite within the natural life of many 
 who hear me, will exceed one huadred millions ; and in all 
 else that gives power to a nation, she increases in an equal 
 ratio — while Great Britain, if she suffer no decadence, can 
 no more than remain stationary. The two countries are 
 now merely commercial rivals, and it is difficult to anticipate 
 any reasonable erase of hostile collision between them. 
 Trifling controversies have arisen, and may arise, but it is 
 the obvious policy of Great Britain to cultivate friendly 
 relations with the United States; and she has no important 
 interest at all within our power which it is for our interest 
 to disturb. We may desire a share in the commerce of 
 India, but we can not compel her to yield it ; we may over- 
 grow and surpass her, but it does not seem probable that 
 ours is the nation destined to shake her empire. Of us, 
 indeed, she has no such fears — but the case is different as 
 to Russia. Great Britain looks upon her even now with 
 apprehension and alarm ; and she has formed a close alli- 
 ance with her own hereditary enemy, and they have directed 
 their united arms against Russia, and as near as might be, 
 against that part of her dominions whence Great Britain 
 has cause to apprehend immediate danger— danger to her 
 most important and cherished possessions, the empire of her 
 merchant princes in India. 
 
AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 17 
 
 India was conquered by Great Britain, like Mexico and 
 Peru by Spain, with a force quite insignificant when com- 
 pared with the extent and population of the subjugated 
 country. The natives are a feeble and timid race, unfit to 
 oppose Europeans in arms ; and their numbers, when assailed 
 by British troops, availed no more than the number in a 
 herd of bullocks when attacked by tigers. Hence, that 
 fine country was conquered and plundered, and has been 
 held in subjection for about eighty years, by a company of 
 merchants, aided by a very small band of military adven- 
 turers. The political morality of this invasion and conquest 
 no one pretends to justify. Its merits were truly presented 
 on the trial of Warren Hastings. Had the incidents which 
 go to make up its histor}^ occurred on lands washed by 
 Western seas, they would have been written down buccan- 
 eering and piracy. Her claim to India, therefore, has none 
 of the respect among men which is due to peaceful, legiti- 
 mate dominion. It is the title of the robber to his booty, 
 and no one cares how soon it is rent from him. 
 
 The conquest was effected by the usual expedient of con- 
 querors. The invaders allied themselves with one of two 
 contending factions in a State, and by their skill and valor 
 subjugated both. They made soldiers of the conquered 
 natives, and, by giving them British officers, and arms, and 
 discipline, made of them conquering armies. But they are 
 efficient only against the feeble and unwarlike race to which 
 they belong. They would be worthless before a European 
 army, or an army of Afghans or Tartars with European 
 allies, led on by European officers, and fighting with Euro- 
 pean arms. Besides, India is full of discontent, brought on 
 by the most grinding oppression. The means even now 
 resorted to by the servants of the East India Company to 
 compel the payment of their annual assessments and the 
 2 
 
18 EKGLAT^D: HEE PEESENT CONDITIOI^ 
 
 disclosure of hidden treasure, is the same used by the rob- 
 ber Barons of the middle ages to extort money from the 
 Jews — the thumb-screw and the cautery. This is affirmed 
 by the report of a commission under the authority of Par- 
 liament within the past year. And it is to this weak, plun- 
 dered, oppressed, and disaffected people that Great Britain 
 trusts, and must trust, the defense of her Indian empire. If 
 it were positively known that she must lose India, or send 
 an army of j&fty thousand Englishmen to defend it, she 
 could not, with all her resources, raise the men. She could 
 recruit officers, but not men. Her common people, besides 
 their dislike of a soldier's life, have a horror of the bilious, 
 enervating climate of India ; and if an army of English- 
 men were requisite to save her Indian empire, that empire 
 must fall. The history of the world does not furnish an 
 example of such rich and extensive dominion held by such 
 eeble grasp. 
 
 Such is the condition of British India as a defensive 
 power. It remains for me to show something of the dan- 
 gers which threaten it ; and I beg you wiU not for a moment 
 think this an unimportant branch of my subject. British 
 India has an extent equal to six Idngdoms like France, or 
 thirteen islands like Great Britain. It extends from the 
 snow-clad liimmalaya to the sun-parched Deccan, embrac- 
 ing climates which, though fatal to Europeans, are yet genial 
 to the natives : and of the 200,000,000 souls which the 
 British empire numbers, more than 150,000,000, full three- 
 fourths of the whole, are East Indians. They are an abste- 
 mious, industrious people, well skilled in the arts, and for 
 the last three thousand years their commerce has. enriched 
 the nations and cities which have enjoyed it. The loss of 
 its monopoly would at once sink Great Britain to a second 
 rank as a maritime power. It would crush, at a single 
 
AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 19 
 
 blow, half her commerce and half her navy. You will not 
 wonder, then, that she is guarding it with jealous care, nor 
 that a rival nation should anxiously wait the favorable mo- 
 ment to wrest it from her grasp. Permit me to show, in 
 some detail, the dangers with which it is threatened, and the 
 precautions which she is taking for its defense. 
 
 India has been often conquered. Five times within the 
 period of authentic history it has been overrun, in whole or 
 in part, by armies descending through the mountain passes 
 of the northwest ; by Herat and Caubul, through the Pesha- 
 war pass to the Indus, near Attock ; or by Herat and Can- 
 dahar, through the Bolon pass, to a point upon the same 
 river about six hundred miles nearer the sea — the invading 
 armies always in league, by treaty or conquest, with the 
 mountain tribes through which they passed. In 1801 an 
 attack by France was feared from the same quarter, through 
 an alliance with Persia. To avert the danger the Persian 
 Shah was subsidized by the East India Company, and a 
 decree obtained by which he excluded all Frenchmen from 
 his dominions under pain of death. In the mean time Rus- 
 sia was pushing her conquests eastward of the Black Sea, 
 and southward along the Persian coasts of the Caspian. 
 In 1805 two royal Persian armies were defeated by the 
 Russians in two successive battles. Persia was prostrate. 
 She applied to the East India Company for' aid, but they 
 could lend her none. She applied to Bonaparte, then in 
 the zenith of his power, who eagerly espoused her cause — 
 despatched an embassy to the Persian Court at Teheran — 
 and a numerous staff, with military engineers and artificers 
 to discipline troops, to cast cannon, and to strengthen the 
 defenses of the Persian cities. A treaty was negotiated, 
 ostensibly for the defense of Persia against Russia ; but a 
 secret article, it was believed, provided for the invasion of 
 
20 .EIS-GLAND: HEE PEESEXT CONDITION 
 
 India by a French and Persian army. Early in 1807, be- 
 fore any demonstration upon India was made, Napoleon and 
 the Emperor Alexander met in person upon a raft on the 
 Meman near Tilsit, embraced as brothers, and pledged to 
 each other mutual friendship and support. But fears of the 
 projected invasion were only thereby increased. The rumor 
 was rife that Alexander had agreed to unite in it, and that 
 the armies of the three powers, France, Russia, and Persia, 
 were to meet in the Persian province of Khorassan, and 
 march thence " against the possessions of the company of 
 the Indies." But the love of the royal brothers soon waxed 
 cold : the pacification of Tilsifc was in effect but a hollow 
 truce. India was forgotten, and the attention of the world 
 for the eight succeeding years was fixed on the battlefields of 
 Europe. After this, much time elapsed without the renewal 
 of alarm; but in 1836 Persia sent an army against Herat, 
 a fortress on the western borders of Afghanistan, which 
 commands the line of march to India ; and the Indian Gov- 
 ernment saw in it, or thought they saw, the hand of Russia. 
 There was, at this time, a disputed succession to the throne 
 of Afghanistan, and one of the aspirants-— the Shah Soojah 
 — was expelled, and took refuge in India. The East Indian 
 Government sent an agent to the Afghan Court at Caubul 
 to make the most of the occasion, but he was met and 
 baffled by a Russian diplomatist. Full of alarm, the Gov- 
 ernor-General of India determined to send an army against 
 Afghanistan, place the expelled pretender on the throne, and 
 hold him, as a kind of Mosquito king, dependent on the 
 Company. The expedition was at first successful. Dost 
 Mahomet, the reigning Khan, was seized, and sent prisoner 
 to India ; and Soojah, the British puppet, was placed on the 
 throne. But this was soon followed by a general rising of the 
 Afghans, who, led on by Akbar Khan, eldest son of the 
 
A^D FUTUEE PEOSPECTS. 21 
 
 captive monarch, cut off the main body of the Anglo-Indian 
 army, and held its scattered detachments cooped up in theii 
 frontier fortresses. Another army was raised and sent to 
 their relief in the ensuing year (1842), which gained several 
 advantages over the Afghans before they had time to collect 
 their forces, and succeeded in withdrawing the small remnant 
 of the first army and retmng itself in safety to India. But 
 the young Afghan chief, Akbar, immediately took possession 
 of the abandoned posts ; and Dost Mahomet, his father, re- 
 leased at last from his captivity, reascended his throne. 
 
 Though time is precious, I can not forbear to mention 
 some incidents of this invasion, which show, in unusual con- 
 trast, semi-barbarous and civilized warfare. 
 
 When the Anglo-Indian army was compelled to retreat 
 from Caubul, and attempted to make their way through the 
 Peshawar pass to Attock, the young Afghan chief undertook 
 to protect them from attack, but found it impossible to do 
 so. The Government of Afghanistan had been disorganized 
 by the dethronement and captivity of his father, and the 
 wild tribes that hovered about the mountain passes refused 
 to obey him. He made this known to the retreating army, 
 warned them of the danger that awaited them, and proposed, 
 as the only means to save the lives of the women and chil- 
 dren, that they should be surrendered to him as prisoners 
 of war- It was done accordingly : not only the women with 
 their children, but their husbands also, and he removed them 
 aU to a place of safety, and treated them with kindness and 
 respect. For this we have the testimony of Lady Sale, one of 
 the prisoners, in her narrative published soon after the event. 
 The retreat was beyond all example terrible in its result. 
 Of the 16,500 Anglo-Indians who fled from Caubul, but one 
 solitary man, an army surgeon, reached Jellalabad, the 
 nearest British fortress. The rest all perished, except one 
 
22 ENGLAND: HEE PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 wounded officer, whom the young chief saved from the gen- 
 eral massacre by put<"ing a turban en his head and mounting 
 him upon his own horse. Next year the tide of victory 
 turned. The recruited Anglo-Indian army gamed a battle 
 near a fortified village, in which some of the defeated Af- 
 ghans took refuge. The historian of the war says : " Our 
 troops moved forward, carried the village by storm, and 
 slaughtered every man, woman and child within its walls ;" 
 and he says it without a word of censure. I have neither 
 time nor taste for comment : but leave the young barbarian 
 who saved and protected the women and children of the 
 invading army, and the British officer who commanded at the 
 slaughter of the Afghan women and children in their homes 
 and upon their hearths, to your moral appreciation. This 
 thing was done in a corner, but it is right that the world 
 should know and remember it : for incidents like this con- 
 tribute their mite to make up the sum of national character 
 And when it is recollected that this attack was wholly un- 
 provoked, that it was in its conduct cruel, in its result a 
 failure, it may well be coDJectured that it left no strong im- 
 pression of either love or fear upon the Afghans or their 
 rulers — upon prince or people. 
 
 The policy of the invasion, however, is well understood. 
 Danger to India was apprehended from the same quarter 
 whence, for two thousand years past, the armies of the 
 north and west had so frequently poured down upon and 
 wasted it ; and its merchant princes sought to control Af- 
 ghanistan, that they might command the passes through 
 which alone India is open to invasion by land. They failed, 
 and the way is still open, inviting the march of the in- 
 vader. 
 
 Great Britain, therefore, now desires to weaken the power 
 of Russia on the Black Sea and the Caspian j for it is in 
 
AND FTJTUEE PEOSPECTS. 23 
 
 that region that she must operate by her own force and 
 through intermediate warhke tribes and nations, if she 
 would effect the overthrow of the British power in India ; 
 and Russia has been strengthening herself greatly in that 
 quarter. She maintains a considerable fleet on the Caspian. 
 Persia is her dependent. Her railroad from St. Petersburg 
 to Moscow is projected to Astracan ; and even now, in the 
 beat and fury of the conflict at Sebastopol, she is defeating 
 armies and capturing cities on the northeastern border of 
 the Turkish Empire. 
 
 A late overland mail from India brings intelligence that 
 the Persians have captured Herat, and there is a well- 
 founded belief that these persistent movements of Persia 
 are instigated by Russia, with a view to an attack on India. 
 What has transpired of the pending negotiation for peace 
 between England, France, and Russia is, in this point of 
 view, of much significance. Louis Napoleon has ministered 
 successfully to the strongest passion of the French nation — 
 their love of glory. He is a parvenu ; bat" the old legiti- 
 mate sovereigns of Europe now not only acknowledge him, 
 but pay him deference. He is the head of the Alliance ; 
 and Russia, the common enemy, flatters and courts him. 
 Having gained all he can hope to gain by the war, he is for 
 peace. Great Britain is dissatisfied. She has gathered no 
 laurels, and has gained no advantage unless she can restrain 
 Russia by treaty from further conquest south and eastward 
 of the Caucasus and the Caspian. 
 
 If left without such restraint, it would seem to be in the 
 power of Russia to destroy the supremacy of Great Britain 
 in India, though not to possess herself permanently of the 
 country. Whether it will be her policy to attempt it as a 
 diversion in the present war, if the war continue, or to bide 
 her time and seize a more favorable moment, remains to be 
 
24 ENGLAND : HEE PEESEFT CONDITION 
 
 seen. Russia is now strong in her trans-Caucasian provinces. 
 Persia is under her control. The Peshawar and the Bolon 
 passes are open hy the conquest of Herat ; and the nations 
 and tribes through which an invading army roust march, 
 and with which its ranks must be filled, have, besides their 
 love of plunder, good reason to be hostile to British India. 
 An army of fifty thousand Russians and Persians, with the 
 Afghans as allies, aided by " the restless Musselmen " of 
 the North, would meet little resistance in India. Great 
 Britain could not oppose to such a force an army of her 
 own ; for the plunder which enticed adventurers to her ranks 
 under Clive and Hastings has been already seized; and 
 EDglishmen do not arm and go to battle for glory merely, 
 even on European fields. 
 
 This, in my opinion, is the first great danger that threatens 
 the power of Britain. She is not strong in India. Strong she 
 can not be without European troops ; without the good wiU of 
 the people or their native princes ; and relying almost solely 
 on native troops to fight her battles in maintenance of their 
 own subjugation and servitude : and, above all, she has in 
 Russia a powerful, jealous, and aggressive neighbor, who- 
 borders on the warlike and restless peoples that hold the 
 keys to the Indian Empire, and who knows well, what i 5 
 indeed obvious to all, that the loss of India would be fatal 
 to the maritime and naval supremacy of Great Britain.* 
 
 The commerce of Great Britain, on which her naval 
 supremacy depends, is also greatly supported by her supeii- 
 ority as a manufacturing nation. She occupies the markets 
 of the world '* by reason of the multitude of her wares.'* 
 The commerce of India, and that consequent upon her 
 manufactures, give her her naval superiority. Without 
 them she could not be a great maritime power : for sh@ 
 
 * Note A. 
 
AXD FUTUEE PEOSPECTS. 25 
 
 does not, any more than her numerous rivals, occupy a com- 
 manding position on any great highway of commerce ; she 
 does not navigate her ships better or more cheaply than 
 they ; and her island affords no large excess of native pro- 
 ducts for exportation. 
 
 And whence is her manufacturing supremacy ? She 
 does not excel in machinery. In this the United States and 
 France rival her ; and they equal, if they do not excel her, 
 in invention and improvement. Her mechanics and artisans 
 are at least equaled by those of France and Belgium ; she 
 does not excel in the perfection of her manufactures ; but in 
 cheapness and abundance. In the production of these, the 
 first great element has been absolute securit}^ When the 
 armies of the French Revolution and of Napoleon were 
 devastating kingdoms and unsettling the social and indus- 
 trial condition of the contiDent, the British capitalist was 
 quietly and securely investing his certificates of public debt, 
 and his irredeemable bills of the Bank of England, in manu- 
 facturing-buildings and machinery. Great Britain com- 
 manded the ocean as now, and traded everywhere except 
 with the continent of Europe. Bonaparte began by putting 
 down all competition to her spindles, with his continental 
 wars and continental system, so they had at last nothing to 
 do but to conquer him : and when peace came, Ureat Britain 
 had conti'ol of the markets of the world, which she still to a 
 great extent retains. She retains them by reason of the 
 tendency of trade to flow in its accustomed channels ; and 
 she is eDabled to supply them by reason of the vast amount 
 of her fixed investments in manufactures, and the abundance 
 and cheapness of the fuel with which her machinery is kept 
 in motion. 
 
 But in fiiel she has no decisive advantage over her neigh- 
 bors of France, Belgium, and Germany, except that she was 
 
26 E^s^GLAND : HER PRESENT CONDITION 
 
 foremost in bringing her mineral coal into extensive use as 
 a manufacturing power. Her engineers and miners were 
 busily engaged, following the coal-seams in the depths of the 
 earth, while the surface of continental Europe was overrun 
 and desolated by hostile armies. But the center and the 
 north of France, the southern part of Belgium, and various 
 parts of Germany have their coal-fields of large extent, 
 though perhaps of inferior quality, which will yield abund- 
 antly for manufacturing purposes long after the richest and 
 most accessible mines of England shall have been exhausted- 
 
 The coal fields of the Tyne and the Wear, which supply 
 London, were surveyed some thirty years ago ; and the en- 
 gineer, Mr. Bayley, expressed the opinion that the coal in 
 that part of the Kingdom on which her best manufactttres 
 depend, would, at its then present rate of consumption, be 
 exhausted in a little more than two hundred years. About 
 thirty of those years have passed away, and the annual 
 consumption of coal has more than doubled within that 
 time. 
 
 Mr. Bakewell, in his introduction to Geology, after speak- 
 ing of this survey, and considering the principal deposits of 
 coal on the Island, except the south of Wales, says : " If 
 we look to Whitehaven, Lancashire, or to any of the minor 
 coal fields in the West of England, we can derive little hope 
 of their being able to supply London and the southern 
 counties, after the import of coal fails from Northumberland 
 and Durham. We may thus anticipate a period not very 
 remote, when all the English mines of coal and ironstone 
 will be exhausted; and were we disposed to indulge in 
 gloomy forebodings, we might draw a melancholy picture of 
 our starving and declining population, and describe some 
 manufacturing patriarch, traveling to see the last expiring 
 English furnace, before he emigrated to distant regions." 
 
AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 27 
 
 He finds, however, the supply of coal of an inferior quality 
 large in South Wales ; and it is not at all probable that the 
 Island will, within the next two thousand years, actually want 
 fuel for the ordinary purposes of life. But the excellent and 
 abundant and convenient supply, on which her manufacturing 
 supremacy depends, will fail within the short period named 
 by Mr. Bayley. The great coal field on the Tyne and Wear, 
 which supplies the eastern coast of England, including the 
 city of London, has an area of about seven hundred square 
 miles, of which more than one-third has been exhausted. 
 We may form some conception of this by a comparison at 
 home. The coal field southeast of this city, the western out- 
 crop of which supplies your market, extends over an area 
 of 80,000 square miles — quite one hundred times the extent 
 of that in the north of England, of which it is a kindred 
 formation. Hence, if that coal field will supply the eastern 
 part of England, including London, one hundred, this will 
 supply a like consumption for ten thousand years. We 
 therefore may venture to use the products of our mines 
 boldly, nor fear that in so doing we waste the resources 
 which belong to our posterity. 
 
 Such, however, is not the case in Great Britain. Economy 
 in the use of fuel is due to the future necessities of that 
 people. The supply of coal in the least plentiful mining 
 districts must, by and by, even within the age of men now 
 living, begin to fail and become deficient ; and the fires de- 
 pendent upon it must be one by one extinguished — and far 
 within the two hundred years named by Mr. Bayley, the 
 sound of the trip-hammer and the rolling-mill, and the burr- 
 ing of spindles, will cease in the north and west of England, 
 and that populous region will again become a rural instead 
 of a manufacturing district. In this changed condition of 
 things, the great cities will receive their supply of fuel from 
 
28 ElS^GLAND: HER PRESENT CONDITIOI^ 
 
 the south of Wales, and the most profitable manufactures 
 will be transferred there : but rivals in France, in Belg:ium, 
 and especially in the United States, where the supply of 
 excellent fuel is abundant and easy of access, will have 
 already conquered the ascendancy of Great Britain as the 
 manufacturers for the world. 
 
 Connected with this, and partly dependent upon it, another 
 evil menaces the prosperity of Great Britain. The interest 
 on the public debt, if paid, must press constantly on pro- 
 ductive industry, lessening always the returns of capital, 
 however invested ; and, as it increases in amount, it must 
 continue to bear more and more heavily upon production, 
 until manufacturing capital will cease to yield a Return equal 
 to the amount of taxation. This condition of things will 
 disclose itself first in the least profitable manufactures, those 
 which meet the most brisk competition in the markets of 
 the world, and will gradually extend to all those branches 
 in which Great Britain has no local advantage over her 
 neighboring competitors. • It is a burden most difficult to 
 remove ; and it thus threatens in some season of adversity 
 to crush that industry which in better times it tended to exalt. 
 
 But perhaps it may assume another form. Perhaps 
 some political necessity, some great reverse, lessening for 
 a series of years the productive results of industry or of 
 commerce, may compel repudiation in whole or in part of 
 this pubMc debt. The Government, with its navy and army, 
 must first be suppoited, for it is essential to national exist- 
 ence. The interest upon the pubhc debt follows next in the 
 order of exigency and obligation. Now, if we reckon back 
 in periods of fifty years to the close of the seventeenth 
 century, we will find no one of those periods in which the 
 Government has been supported, and the interest on the 
 public debt paid, without resort to loans. The revenues 
 
AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 29 
 
 have been insufficient, and they must be so always. The 
 debt is too far in advance of them — they can never over- 
 take it. 
 
 Now, for the better understanding of the character and 
 value of this public debt, let us embody the creditors and 
 give them unity. We comprehend the debtor as one: let 
 us, in imagination, consider the creditor as one also. Then 
 all these great transactions of borrowing and lending, and 
 paying and receiving interest, will pass between two persons, 
 and we can understand them. This pubHc creditor has 
 four thousand millions of dollars of the public securities in 
 his vaults, on which accrues every year one hundred and 
 forty millions of dollars of interest. But the revenues will 
 not pay this interest, except in seasons of peace and of com- 
 mercial prosperity. How, then, is it paid, for paid it is 
 most punctually ? By this cheap and simple process. The 
 creditor lends to the Government on each adverse year one 
 hundred and forty millions of dollars, which is handed back 
 to him in payment of his interest, and with it a hke amount 
 of new certificates. So it has been, with some exceptions, 
 for one hundred and sixty years past ; and, during much 
 of all that time, if the creditor had failed to lend money to 
 pay himself, he could not have been paid. Now how peril- 
 ous is the property in these securities. The multitudes 
 who hold them, and who, by investments in them, make 
 the loans which go to pay the interest, do not see the whole 
 operation. It is not before them as it would be before a single 
 individual ; and they have been in the habit of seeing the 
 interest paid, and hearing their fathers and grandfathers 
 say that it was always paid, and they habitually think it 
 always will be — without knowing or remembering that the 
 pubHc creditors, as a body, (those who are creditors and 
 those who become such,) pay themselves the interest which 
 
30 ENGLAIN"© : HEE PEESENT CONDITION" 
 
 tliey receive. But wlien any one of those calamities which 
 visit nations, and which threaten her, shall come upon Great 
 Britain when she shall lose Hindostan, which sooner or later 
 is inevitable, and with it the annual wealth which she draws 
 from its soil, its industry and its commerce — when her 
 manufacturing supremacy shall be shaken by domestic 
 revolution, or sink, by the gradual operation of causes already 
 indicated, prominent among which is the debt itself, even 
 now pressing, an almost crushing burden upon manufacturing 
 labor, she will be no longer able to draw from her industry 
 an annual fund to pay the interest upon her debt — her 
 credit will be destroyed so that she can no longer be a bor- 
 rower — she will be at once a bankrupt — her public securities 
 utterly worthless' — and her creditors, those Avhose subsistence 
 is the public debt, reduced to want, and the nation whose 
 strength is her riches will be rendered comparatively 
 feeble.* 
 
 I have thus hastily summed up the causes which, in my 
 opinion, threaten to subvert the proud rank of Great Britain 
 among the nations of the earth. Their effects are not yet 
 —they wait the coming on of time ; but men now living 
 will probably witness the visible operation of some of them — 
 the beginning of the end. And what is to be that end ? 
 I answer, a large reduction ia the population, and especially 
 in the wealth of the Island — the loss of her possessions 
 abroad, her colonies, her dependencies — the loss also of 
 much of her manufactures, and much more of her com- 
 merce, bhe will cease to be the mart of wealth, and her naval 
 power will sink to a condition little above that of her present 
 power on land; and younger nations will grow up and 
 overshadow her. 
 
 The history of Spain from the beginning of the sixteenth 
 
 * See Note B. 
 
AT^D FUTUEE PEOSPECTS. 31 
 
 century down to the present time does, I think, in many 
 particulars, prefigure the probable history of Great Britain 
 for a like period to come. I'hey differ, however, in this : 
 Great Britain has a naval superiority which Spain never as 
 fully possessed ; and she has not, and therefore can not lose, 
 the high military rank which Spain had and has lost. Like 
 Spain, she is separated from the rest of the world by strong 
 natural barriers ; and therefore not in position to hold per- 
 manent dominion over other nations, or to be successfully 
 assailed on her own soil. And the high spirit and valor of 
 both nations alike forbid that they should be permanently 
 ruled by others. Thus far do I think Great Britain liable 
 to fall. But the form of her Government, her civilization, 
 her learning, her arts, are not likely to be destroyed or 
 greatly impaired by the loss of a portion of her external 
 power. When she ceases to be mistress of the ocean, her 
 soil, like that of other nations, may be subject to invasion ; 
 but hers is not a people that will suffer it to be overrun and 
 conquered. 
 
 I am aware that when dwelling in thought on the des- 
 tinies of nations, and the vicissitudes to which they are 
 subject in long periods of time, we turn instinctively to the 
 empires, and the cities which were the seats of empires, in 
 remote antiquity, known to us through Bible history— as 
 Assyria, Babylon, Nineveh, all which have perished utterly 
 ■ — and thus, mingling memories of the past with our antici- 
 pations of the future, we fancy that the fate of western 
 nations and cities must be one day like theirs. In this 
 mood of mind a favorite author, Macauley, in one of his 
 essays, imagines a time in the distant future " when some 
 traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast soli- 
 tude, take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge, to 
 sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 
 
32 ENGLAND: HEE PEESENT CONDITION 
 
 There is poetry in the thought, but not philosophic prob- 
 ability, no matter how deep in the distant future the vision 
 be cast. Analogy fails. Those mighty empires which have 
 passed away and Irft behind them but a name ; their great 
 cities, now mounds of earth, whose buried treasures and 
 more deeply buried letters a Botta and a Layard are begin- 
 ning to disentomb, and a Rawhnson and Hincks to interpret, 
 stood upon the borders of wide-spread deserts held by wan 
 dering Ishmaelites — pirates of the earth, the sons of plunder 
 and rapine. We find them there in almost the earliest mo- 
 ments of recorded time, and stiU they are there. Three 
 thousand years ago they wasted the land of Israel as far as 
 Gaza, when Gideon threshed his father's wheat at the wine- 
 press to hide it from them ; and at this day they carry ojBf 
 the harvests from the fields even under the walls of Damas- 
 cus. An empire on their borders, whUe it was vigorous and 
 powerful, held them in check, but could not tame or con- 
 quer them. But when adversity came upon it — when its 
 power was broken and it tottered to its fall — they poured 
 their locust swarms over it and destroyed it utterly. The 
 disheartened husbandman who had fled from his fields would 
 not return to sow them ; for, even if suffered to reap, his 
 harvest was borne off in sheaves on camels' backs to the 
 desert, and he could not garner it. So the land became a 
 wilderness, and the cities became heaps of ruins. 
 
 But such has never been the fate of Western nations, 
 and, judging by the past, can not be, unless the economy of 
 Providence in the government of the world shall change to 
 suffer it. Nations, it is true, rise and fall; countries are 
 overrun and for a time laid waste ; but war is waged for 
 conquest and dominion, not plunder merely, and the con- 
 queror is careful not to destroy that which he intends to 
 possess. The season of violence, therefore, passes by. The 
 
AND FUTURE PEOSPECTS. 33 
 
 huslbandman returns to his fields and sows and reaps, and 
 finds, under whatsoever power he may fall, at least that im- 
 perfect protection which secures him a subsistence out of 
 the products of his labor and of the soil. Hence Western 
 countries, when once peopled, have never been utterly de- 
 serted ; civilization never, even for a time, entirely obhter- 
 ated ; and amid the revolutions which overturn states and 
 empires, "the abomination of desolation" has never passed, 
 and does not seem destined to pass, over Western lands. 
 
NOTES TO EDITION OF 1866. 
 
 Note A, to page 24. 
 The predicted troubles in Hindostan have first appeared in the form of a do- 
 mestic revolt, which was sudden and premature, unsupported by any Euro- 
 pean power; and it was put down, after a desperate struggle, by the aid ofthe 
 Sikhs and the mountain tribes of Nepaul and Rootan, who were lured to the 
 service by the love of plunder and by British gold. But the end is not yet* 
 this is but an incident, an episode in the great onward course of human 
 events. It has, however, taught these warlike tribes how easy it were to 
 conquer and plunder Hindostan for themselves, especially with the aid of a 
 European ally skilled in the arts of war. 
 
 Note B, to page 30. 
 We consider the condition of foreign nations with less bias, and therefore 
 predict their future with more precision, than our own. The above lecture 
 was delivered a little more than ten years ago. I did not then foi-esee the 
 terrible civil war through which our country has since passed, and the im- 
 mense debt with which it has burdened us, while I distinctly saw and fore- 
 told some of the calamities which impend over Great Britain, and which 
 have now become a subject of recognition in Parliament. I give below 
 large extracts from a speech delivered by the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Gladstone, 
 on the 2d day of May last, in which their failure in the supply of coal, the 
 consequent failure of their manufactures, and the crushing weight with 
 which the public debt must consequently fall on the real estate and the fixed 
 capital of the country, are fully recognized and forcibly stated. Having 
 presented the budget for the curi-ent year, and spoken of the strong ten- 
 dency of nations within the past few years to contract debts in time of peace, 
 he speaks of the debt of the United States, estimated it pretty nearly, and 
 the very large interest we are paying on it, and goes on to say : 
 
 "Now, looking at these figures, a man would be struck with something 
 like despair; but if we look at (he position of the country which has to bear the 
 burden, I must con/ess that I think the future of America, as far as finance is con- 
 
 35 
 
36 NOTES. 
 
 cerned — political problems are not now in question — will not be attended with any 
 embarrassment. I do not believe thai that debt luill constitute any difficulty for the 
 American people. (Cheers.) I am confident that if they show, with respect 
 to finance, any portion of that extraordinary resolution which, on both sides 
 alike, they manifested during the war, and of that equally remarkable reso- 
 lution with which, on the return of peace, they have brought their monstrous 
 and gigantic establishments within moderate bounds-(hear ! hear 1)-I won't 
 say that this debt, according to an expression which was once fashionable 
 in this country, will be a flea-bite — (a laugh) — but that, in a moderate time, 
 it will be brought within very small limits, and may, even within the life- 
 time of persons now living, be eifaced altogether." 
 
 And having estimated the debts of the several nations of Europe — France 
 at £4U0, 000,000; Austria at £316,000,000; Eussia, £279,000,000; Italy, £152,- 
 000,000; Spain, £145,000,000; Holland, £85,000,000; Turkey, £54,000,000; 
 Prussia;, £43,000,000; and Portugal £38,000,000, he goes on to say of the 
 British debt: 
 
 "On the 81st of March, 1857, the national debt had risen to £831,722,000 
 on the 31st of March, 1859, it was £823,934,000; and on the 31st of March, 18G6, 
 it was £798,900,000. (Cheers.) That is nominally apointsomewhat lower than 
 it had stood at before ; but it must be remembered that we have cancelled two 
 minor sinking, fund stocks which formerly formed part of the nominal capital, 
 so that, in fact, we may say, with substantial accuracy, for it is not necessary 
 to be particular to a million or a million and a half, it has jupt now reached 
 the point at which we have effaced the results of the Crimean loar, and the debt 
 thus stands at the very place which it occupied at the commencement of the year 
 1854. It is not necessary to observe that there are several sums not very 
 material in themselves. We are indebted to the savings banks in the sum 
 of about £3,000,000, and, on the other hand, we have moneys len ton perfectly 
 good security on bonds to Drainage Commissioners and other bodies that 
 amount to about £10,000,000 ; but that is not an amount that we need take 
 into view in dealing with this enormous accumulation of the national obli- 
 gations. £799,000,000 then, is, in round numbers, the present capital debt. 
 (Hear.) Now let us observe the rates at which we have operated upon the 
 debt. From 1815 to 1854, there were nearly forty years of the most pro- 
 found peace ever known, and that, therefore, was the very period in which 
 it was most desirable for us to deal efficiently with this debt, if we were to 
 place ourselves in a position to look at war, as a necessity, in the face again. 
 Well, sir, I have stated what was then done. The rate of decrease per an- 
 num at that period was £2,609,000 — undoubtedly a very trivial sum when 
 we consider the enormous amount of what has to be achieved. In the three 
 years and a quarter from the 5th of January, 1854, to the 81st of March, 
 1857, the rate of increase was nearly £10,000,000 per annum ; in exact fig- 
 ures, £9,602,000. From 1857 to 1866 the total rate of decrease has been some, 
 what better, but still far below what it ought to have been, viz.: £3,646,000, 
 
NOTES. 37 
 
 (Hear, hear.) Now, I wish to call the attention of the committee to this :^ 
 that what we must expect is, that whereas two or three millions a year have 
 represented the average of our operations in time of peace — I do not believe, 
 if we take the whole years of peace since 1815, that the average operation 
 would reach three millions — if ever you become involved in any great and pro- 
 tracted war, you must expect, not immediately, but after a year or two of 
 war, to see the debt grow at about ten times the rate at which you reduce it 
 in time of peace. (Hear.) Now, sir, the next question I come to consider 
 is whether that is a satisfactory state of things for the country. 
 
 "1 must ask you to bear with me while I endeavor to point out what I take 
 to be the true state of our own case. I address myself to the whole com-? 
 mittee, and especially to gentlemen opposite, and those who say, and say 
 truly, that they are deeply interested in the landed and fixed property in the 
 country; because I apprehended that if there be any special interest con- 
 cerned in the subject I am about to consider, it is the interest of the landed 
 property. In the first place, then, let it be remembered that ive are living in 
 a coimnercial era, the prospects of which it is almost impossible to appreciate, from 
 their magnitude. Every five years the rate of increase is continually shifting, 
 and always shifting upwards. The liberation of industry, the progress of inven- 
 tion, the steady investigation of science, the improvement of social habits, are all com- 
 bining together to induce the conclusion that in the days of our childhood, when we 
 thought the commerce of England was a wonderful thing, and that the commerce 
 of the world was wonderful; and when we had an idea that a centur_y's de- 
 velopment had brought about almost a mountain of transformation, the result 
 was, in point of fact, nothing but an infant in the cradle. But it was an 
 infant Hercules, that has ever since been bursting its bonds; and, depend 
 upon it, great as is the extension to which it has now reached, in all likeli- 
 hood it will go on extending still more in the future. We are not prophets 
 here, but it is our duty, although we must refrain from dogmatizing, to esti- 
 mate probabilities as well as we can, and, like wise men, permit ourselves 
 to be guided by the balance of probability. During the next twenty or 
 thirty years, then, or perhaps more, for I can not pretend to name a time, we 
 are to look for a still further development and extension of the commerce of 
 this country, which is now in the aggi'egate, I apprehend, at least three-fold 
 what it was five and twenty years ago. Well, the population has been in- 
 creasing at a less rate than five and twenty per cent., while our commerce 
 has been multiplied three times; and this, we must fairly presume, will go 
 on. Now, the great agents of production are three : first, we have land and. 
 fixed capiital; secondly, we have movable or transferable capital; and thirdly, we 
 have labor. Let us consider, for it is most important, the relative position of 
 these three agents. A race is going on between nations in industry and 
 enterprise, and no doubt can exist as to what nation is at this moment fore- 
 most in the race. The people of the United Kingdom are by far the fore- 
 most. Their external commerce is, I apprehend, as great as that of the two 
 countries which come next in order to it; the United Kingdom, with its thirty 
 millions of people, is as great in commerce as France and America, with their seventy 
 
38 NOTES. 
 
 millions of people. That is an extraordinary fact. We liave^ undouUedly got 
 the start in the race; and it behooves us to inquire what has given it to us. Doubt- 
 less we have great advantages; our geographical position is a great advant- 
 age ; so also is the character of the people. But both our geographical posi- 
 tion and the character of onr people are the same as they vs^ere a century 
 ago; and England then did not lead the trade of Europe. What, then, has 
 given us the lead? Of course there is an increasing cause in our accumu- 
 lative capital; but the chief cause is the possession of our mineral treasures. 
 (Hear, hear.) The fact, not merely of the possession of coal, but the i)os- 
 session of vast stores of coal under such circumstances that we can raise 
 it to the surface at a lower price than any other country in the world. It 
 is not the quantity of coal, but its production at a low price, which has given us 
 the start, and has caused the enormously rapid progress of the country, 
 which from many other points of view might have been expected to make 
 less rapid progress than it has; because, after all, the very great treasure 
 of nations — namely, their unoccupied lands — is a treasure which we possess, 
 in our three kingdoms, in a much smaller degree than almost every other 
 European countr3^ It is, then, our possession of coal near what depends upon coal 
 that has given us this extraordinary pre-eminence in commerce and industry. W.ell, 
 it has often been a subject of very interesting discussion as to whether we 
 may look upon our stores of coal as being practically inexhaustible; and in 
 the condition in which our commerce was twenty or thirty years ago, it 
 would have been perfectly reasonable to answer that question in the aflSrma- 
 tive and assume that our coal was inexhaustible. But circumstances have 
 greatly changed the rate of increase in our production and consumption of 
 coal; indeed, the consumption has become such that the minds of the great- 
 est among our scientific authorities have been turned to the question, and 
 the inquiry has been raised as to what will be the influence upon our supply 
 if our consumption continue to increase ; and I venture to express the opin- 
 ion that it probably will continue. But for the present argument I ask you 
 to consider this: Assuming, for the moment, that we shall not be able to con- 
 tinue for many generations to produce coal at prices cheaper than other 
 countries, what will happen ? It is not enough to say that the expenses in- 
 curred in maintaining ventilation, keeping down the temperature, and such 
 matters, will be economized by new inventions and contrivances. Those 
 new inventions and contrivances there may be; but they won't give us a 
 pre-eminence over other countries, because other countries will be able to 
 make use of them as well as ourselves. (Hear, hear.) In the same way 
 there is no use in saying that a substitute will be found for coal. No doubt 
 there are men of high authority who ihink that such a substitute will be 
 found, though the matter is one on which there is a difference of opinion. 
 But supposing that a substitute will be found, it will not be peculiar to Eng- 
 land. 1 think it is clear that at whatever time-whether fifty, or one hundred, 
 or any other number of years lience — we may cease to be able to raise coal at a 
 lower price than other countries, our relative position towards other nations 
 must be lost; but of the question of coal against coal, there can be no doubt 
 
NOTES. 39 
 
 as to how the case stands. There is another country, not only as rich in mineral 
 wealth as ourselves, but with a coal surface thirty-seven times greater than the coal 
 surface of this country — I allude to the United States of America; and though most 
 of the coal there contains so large an amount of anthracite that it is not fit 
 for steam or for smelting purposes, to domestic purposes it is capable of 
 being adapted* Suppose, then, that pre-eminence in the cheap production 
 of coal should be carried from us away across the Atlantic, what will hap- 
 pen? There will be a decline of rents, a decline of profits, a decline ofuages. There 
 will be precisely the reverse of what we have all seen taking place within 
 our time— an increase of rents, an increase of profits, an increase of wages. 
 And when rents, profits, and wages decline, what will the owners do ? Those 
 who receive wages, finding that wages are lower here than across the Atlantic, will 
 migrate; and the holders of movable property, finding that there is a wider and more 
 profitable field for their capital elsewhere, luill send their capital abroad. What will 
 the owners of rents do? It appears to me that they cannot migrate. Per- 
 sonally they may do so, but that from which they derive their income can 
 not migrate. The upshot will be that the charge of the national debt, which 
 is now borne in full on property, profits and rents, will remain as a perma- 
 nent mortgage on the lands, houses, and works of the country. I wish I 
 could convey to the House the impression which the consideration of this 
 subject makes on my own mind, and I trust I take no unworthy view of it. 
 I go upon the results arrived at by able and skillful statisticians who, under 
 the authority of the Government, have made inquiries into the matter. Mr- 
 Hulme estimates the quantity of coal in the United Kingdom within 4,000 
 feet of the surface at 83,000 million tons. He states that in 1854 the con- 
 sumption was 64 millions ; in 1861 it was 86 millions. Based on these num- 
 bers, the computed annual rate of growth in the consumption is 3.7 per cent. 
 Now, not taking it at so much as 3-7, but taking it at 3-5 per cent., this 
 would give the annual consumption in 1961 as 2,607 millions of tons; and 
 by 1970, 104 years from this time, the consumption will have reached 130,- 
 000 million tons, or a greater quantity than all the coal now known to be 
 available in Great Britain within 4,000 feet of the surface. I believe that 
 long before we reach that consumption the causes will be found in operation 
 from which an increase in price will follow. Mr. Jevons, whose statistics 
 my honoi-able friend the member for Westminster has quoted, has gone very 
 fully and carefully into the facts, and he holds a similar opinion in respect 
 of our coal supply to that which I have just stated. Honorable members 
 remember the statement made two years a,go by Sir William Armstrong. Sir 
 John Herschel agreed with Mr. Jevons, as I believe does Dr. Percy also. I 
 myself have had an opportunity of communicating with my distinguished 
 friend Sir Roderick Murchison on the subject. He, for years, has believed 
 the matter to be one of the very gravest order, and one demanding our most 
 earnest consideration. (Hear, hear.) In vain would it be to think of stop- 
 ping the consumption of coal in this country : in vain would it be to think 
 of diminishing that consumption by the imposition of tax, and it would be 
 
 *NorE.— In this the ChaDcellor is mistaken— a very small proportion of the Coal in the TJ. 
 S. is anthracite, and a very large proportion of it is well adapted to the production of steam. 
 
40 NOTES. 
 
 more Tain still to think of prohibiting its exportation. [An honorable 
 member expressed dissent.] I am only giving my own opinion ; I shall not 
 enter into that matter now — (hear, hear) — I merely wish to remark that, 
 even could we limit the consumption of coal, I think it is perfectly obvious 
 that we cannot continue to supply coal in unlimited quantities at the present 
 low prices for an unlimited time — or say, for one or two centuries. In the 
 face of such*a state of things in the future, we ought to make preparations 
 for it, and the way to do that is by using moderate and reasonable efforts to 
 rid ourselves of our encumbrances. (Hear, hear.) As those who are to come 
 after us may have to encounter difficulties of which we have no practical 
 knowledge, we ought not to hand down to them, in their worst form, difficul- 
 ties which it is in our power to alleviate. * *' * I hope that I have not 
 been unwittingly led to prophesy, or to do any thing more than to give such 
 sketches of the future as will appear probable, and present a fair and rea- 
 sonable claim upon the attention of prudent men. Regarding the statements 
 I have made I would not say more than this : The facts which I have laid 
 before the House are grave facts, urgent, indeed, within certain limits. Al- 
 though, perhaps, the proper business on these occasions is to announce the 
 financial proposals for the year, it did seem right to us, actuated as we be- 
 lieved by grave and reasonable causes, to cast our glances into futurity and 
 endeavor in some degree to meet those demands which might justly be made 
 upon us, so that when we cease to apply ourselves to our arduous tasks — and 
 when I say 'we,' I do not mean the Government, but honorable members who 
 now constitute this House — when we have passed away from active life, those 
 ■who come after us may have reason to confess that in the provisions made 
 for our own sons we have taken some thought of them, and that our conduct 
 has not been such as to excite their regret or condemnation. (Cheers.)" 
 
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 ENGLAND 
 
 HER 
 
 PRESENT CONDITION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS 
 
 AS ONE OF THE 
 
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 A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE ATHENEUM, COLUMBUS, 0., 
 MARCH 6, 18£6, 
 
 HON. THOMAS EWING. 
 
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 R. W. CARROLL ^ CO, PRINTERS, 117 W. FOURTH STREET. 
 
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