travelling but by steam. The one secret for reaching the land of promise is that rulers should leave men to manage their own affairs, and abandon the folly of 'paternal government.' Southey, indeed, talked a great deal of downright nonsense. He admits his ignorance of political economy, which he regards as a conclusive proof that political economy was not worth knowing. He falls into fallacies too absurd for argument. The distress which followed the peace was simply due to the loss of a customer (that is, the Government) to the amount of fifty millions a year; and the remedy was not retrenchment but maintenance of the war expenditure, even (as he suggests) by building enormous 'pyramids' to Nelson and Wellington. He talked, says Macaulay, as if the taxes dropped out of heaven like the 'quails and manna sent to the Israelites.' That such fallacies could be seriously propounded is some excuse for the arrogance of the contemporary economists. They represent simply the illogical way in which Southey clutched at extravagant theories as the readiest mode of contradicting their opposites. If, however, the Colloquies abound in such absurdities, a reader of to-day will be still more struck by the anticipation of modern tendencies.
