years of the contest, the strength of England was paralysed by the miserable parsimony which had starved down its military and naval forces in former years, we may well feel astonishment at the blindness of the democratic principle which had occasioned so lamentable a result. But though this circumstance unquestionably protracted the war for eighteen years after it might have been otherwise terminated, and added at least six hundred millions to the national debt, its effect upon the extension of the British empire into the remote parts of the world was immense. During the course of this long-continued struggle, the colonies of all the European states successively fell into the hands of England; the British navy obtained a decisive supremacy in every sea, and British commerce gradually acquired an extension unparalleled in any former age of the world. The effect of this prodigious expansion, unobserved during the dangers and animation of the conflict, appeared in the most decisive manner on the termination of hostilities. 114. British commerce, the object of jealous rivalry and anxious exclusion to all the Continental states, was forcibly turned into new channels, in spite of all the erroneous policy of government, which aimed, by the reciprocity system, and the delusion of free trade, at the extension of the markets of the Old World. Colonisation, invigorated alike by the riches, the poverty, the virtues, the vices, the ambition and luxury, the enjoyments and sufferings of the mother country, went on with the steps of a giant; the great development of the democratic principle, consequent on a long course of pacific extensions, impelled the British race, in prodigious multitudes,* alike into the western and the southern hemi * In the year 1841, the British emigrants amounted to 118,000.-Lord Stanley's Speech, 9th February 1842, Parl. Deb. In 1847 they reached the enormous number of 258,000, of whom 60,000 settled, almost all in comfortable circumstances, in Canada alone.-Lords' Emi gration Committee's Report, 1842; and ante, Chap. XCVI. § 85, note, where the numbers are given. spheres; and above two hundred thousand emigrants now annually leave the British Islands, to carry into distant lands the power of European art and the blessings of Christian civilisation.+ No such migration of mankind has taken place since the Goths and the Huns overthrew the Roman empire: no such step in the spread of civilisation and the diffusion of the gospel has been made since it first appeared on the shores of Palestine. To such marvellous and unforeseen results has an overruling Providence conducted the convulsions consequent on the scepticism of Voltaire, the changes emanating from the dreams of Rousseau ! 115. But the British navy can reach only maritime shores; British colonisation can people only the desert or the forest, inhabited by the savage or the hunter. Great as its powers, when suffered to develop themselves, undoubtedly become, they have need of peace for their extension. England may call a new world into existence in the woods of America or the isles of Australia; but pacific colonists would speedily perish under the sabre of the Tartar. Her descendants will never effect a settlement in the interior of Asia. But here, too, the efforts of irreligion have, without intending it, developed a power as irresistible at land as the British navy is at sea, and which, perfectly adapted to the element on which it was intended to prevail, has given to the arms of civilisa tion a decisive superiority in Asia over the forces of barbarism. The military strength of Russia, long restrained by the unwieldy extent of its empire, acquired a surprising extension during the wars of the French Revolution; "Not e'en by ocean's tempests some are staid; These rush on steel; those court the fav'rite's aid: All law, all right, the traitor's acts defy, To drink froni gems, on purple couch to lie. One broods in mis'ry o'er his hoarded gold; And some in chains the people's plaudits but it was the invasion of Napoleon, | sion of the desert must yield. In Januthe flames of Moscow, which gave it ary 1812, not one steamboat existed in its full development. When the the world; in January 1813, the first forces of the Revolution had reached one in Europe was launched on the the Kremlin, the last hour at once of Clyde ;* now, on the rivers beyond the European infidelity and Mahometan Alleghany Mountains alone, there are five hundred. Even the death-bestridsupremacy had struck. den gales of the Niger will in the end yield to the force of scientific enterprise, and the fountains of the Nile themselves emerge from the solemn obscurity of six thousand years. The great rivers of the world have now become the highways of improvement and religion. The Russian battalions will securely commit themselves to the waves of the Euphrates, and waft again to the plains of Shinar the blessings of regular government and a bene. ficent faith: ascending the St Lawrence and the Missouri, the British emigrants will carry into the solitudes of the Far West the Bible and the wonders of European civilisation. Such have been the final results of the second revolt of Lucifer the Prince of the Morning. Was a great and durable impression made on human affairs by the infidel race? No! It was overruled by Almighty Power: on either side it found the brazen walls which it could not 116. Rolled back with unheard-of rapidity from the Moskwa to the Seine, revolutionary power perished with the overthrow of its leader: overwhelmed by the might of civilised energy, the squadrons of the Crescent ere long fled before the soldiers of the Cross. Turkey and Persia now drag on a precarious dependent existence, solely at the pleasure of the Muscovite autocrat. Combated with its own weapons, pierced by its own lances, trod down by its own cavalry, the forces of Asia speedily recoil before the ascending might of Russia. Placed on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, this vast empire unites the forces of both hemispheres; for it has the solid infantry, military skill, and enduring valour of Europe, joined to the powerful multitudes, incomparable horse, and enthusiastic daring of Asia. And both of these great powers, which have sprung up from the effects of the French Revolution, are in the clearest manner adapt-pass. In defiance of all its efforts, the ed to the giant task they are called to perform in the advance of mankind; for British democracy and colonisation could have effected nothing against the Asiatic sabres, and Russian despotism and conquest would have turned aside of necessity from the sterile and uninviting fields of Transatlantic and Australian settlement. 117. Contemporary with this great development of civilised energy, this awful heave of the human race, has arisen a new power communicated to man, calculated in an immeasurable manner to aid the extension of civilisation and religion through the desert or barbarous portions of the earth. At the moment when Napoleon's armies were approaching Moscow, when Wellington's legions were combating on the Tormes, STEAM NAVIGATION arose into existence, and a new power was let into human affairs, before which alike the forces of barbarism and the seclu British navy and the Russian army rose invincible above its arms; the champions of Christianity in the East, and the leaders of religious freedom in the West, came forth like giants refreshed with wine from the termination of the fight. The infidel race, which aimed at the dominion of the world, served only by its efforts to aug. ment the strength of its destined rulers; and from amidst the ruins of its power emerged the ark which was to carry the light of religion to the western, and the invincible host which was to spread the glad tidings of the gospel through the eastern world. 118. Taking man, then, as reason equally with revelation tells us he is, variously compounded of great and *The Comet, which began to ply in March 1813, between Glasgow and Greenock. The author early in that year made the voy age by that novel conveyance, then the ob tion. ject of wonder, distrust, and misrepresenta 119. Distrusting all plans of social noble, with base and selfish propensi- and yet an inherent desire, conspicuous ment. of the ambition or folly of man against Finished 24 Aug: 1001 In 1854 |