British pockets. Manufacturers, workmen, tradesmen, carriers, middlemen, are poorer by that stupendous total, enough to ruin a third rate nation, to impoverish sensibly and severely try us.
The census declines to remain stationary in deference to this blow, so cruelly reinforcing the other blows that farmers and landlords have received. Half a million souls per annum of increased population, with such inflictions and prospects, do not lighten the load upon the land.
As to pauperism in England and Wales, since 1849 the number of in-door paupers has increased more than one-half. There are certainly fewer individuals now receiving out-door relief, but the total sum annually raised under poor-rates and expended in actual relief of the poor has increased by about two millions of pounds sterling per annum—enough to pay the interest upon an emigration loan of seventy millions sterling.
Against all this gloomy pessimism may possibly be marshalled the innumerable army of writers and orators who never tire of trumpeting far and wide the glory, grandeur, and ceaseless progress, the fabulously growing wealth of the wonderful cosmopolitan Empire, whose latest symbol[1] is a woman seated upon, and as it were ruling, like one imperially arrayed in purple, the waters that serve obediently to carry her flag and her unrivalled fleet[2] into many a harbour under every sky; to the sagacious enterprise of whose traders they proudly boast it is due that, not her children only, but all nations, the merchants of the earth are waxed rich beyond intelligent conception.
Unfortunately, these public instructors tread in a well beaten track; they were, most or all of them, trained in the same school; the subject scarcely invites independent research, nor is it very easily mastered. Then how easy to follow a safe lead, to echo a popular and pleasing cry. Still, some flagrant examples have been given that first rate authorities can differ gravely and
- ↑ It is the official Imperial symbol peculiar to the nineteenth century, having been first impressed upon the British coinage bearing date 1797 A.D. And throughout the nineteenth century British supremacy, either in arms, finance, commerce, applied science, or arts, has overshadowed the globe, giving a marked tone to the spirit of the age. In all these departments of the material domain a restless pushing people has reigned, and in some still reigns over the kings of the earth, the centre whence proceeds such singular predominance being that great city concerning which Lord Beaconsfield told the House of Peers in his last speech—"the key of India is London."
- ↑ The total of British shipping tonnage is considerably more than that of all the other nations of the world added together, being eight and a half million tons against eight and a quarter million tons (See the speech of Sir John Lubbock at the annual meeting of the British Association in 1881).
