bnt in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the person who was the Master of nature chose to appear himself in a subordinate situation. He who is called first among them and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made himself the 'servant of all.'" A new phase of civilization was ordained. The way had been prepared, the principle upon which it should be founded, revealed. Its perfect organization and success, in accordance with the laws of its being, would be the work of ages. Its beauty, strength, proportions and durability would depend upon a slow and gradual development. It could not be otherwise, as its very condition was growth. Its base was laid broad and deep in the preparation of four thousand years. This law of growth is all-pervading and universal; it obtains not less in the moral than in the material world. The earth was made not in one day but six-dark and formless at first, but changing and becoming by degrees more full and perfect, it was at length adapted to the last and greatest creation of the Almighty. In the earlier periods of its formation it was capable of sustaining only the coarser kinds of animals, but feeling this law of growth it became fitted for higher and higher life till ready for primeval man. After this manner has been the progress of the race and the growth of civilization. To adopt the fanciful we would say, In the beginning were Adam and Eve, and that was the first day; then came the savage state or the second day in the history of the human race; the patriarchal was the third; the fourth day was the barbarous ; the old civilization founded on force was the fifth; and the crowning work of the last and sixth day, answering to that on which man was created, is our Christian civilization founded on Love.

When the old civilization had done its work, or as the phrase is, performed its mission, the countries in which it had culminated were overrun by the Goths and Vandals of the North. And now we begin to discover the grouping of the elements of the new civilization. The love of liberty, the indomitable will, the strength to labor and to endure had already appeared in numberless manifesta

tions; the world had seen, and, so far as it could, profited by the civilizations of Greece and Rome; the Christian religion had been introduced. A combination of these forces was now to be formed; time's noblest monument, man's crowning work, was to be commenced. Contribu tions were levied on every side. Religion furnished her best-Christianity; the old civilization, its best-literature and the arts; and these, mingling with the Teutonic element, now first introduced into good society, constituted a force in the world's affairs such as had never been felt or imagined before. Shall the fact that a work, in which were found but a part of these elements, was imperfect and not final, be cited to prove that where all meet there can be no different result?

The progress of civilization since the new departure has been slow and checkered-too much of the old spirit remained for it to have been otherwise. In the early days of the association, the Roman and the Teutonic partners were the largest shareholders, and wielded a controlling power; Christianity was a sort of a silent member having a small investment, but she has gradually increased her stock and enlarged her influence in the affairs of the firm. For a long time, however, the old force-principle was predominant. We see its footsteps marked and distinct in the destructive and interminable wars, in the crude and sanguinary laws, in the organizations and institutions ofthe times. But all along we can trace the increasing power of Christianity. We see the one which has saved all, and to which all real improvement, progress and me. lioration are to be attributed. She has never been idle. She has performed her part as occasion and circumstances should allow or require. Baffled sometimes, wronged, perverted often, but always victorious, she is the only power that conquers invariably by giving rather than by taking-not by destroying the will, the love of freedom, literature and art, but by adding thereunto the graces and the power of kindness and charity.

Advancing as the new civilization has from age to age, with greater or less force of movement in proportion to the aid it has accepted from Christianity, its course is plain and distinct to all who would observe it. Tracing it, they have seen war become unpopular, the laws im

proved, and the rights of man better respected; they have noticed progress in science and the arts, improvement in the condition of the poor, a more general diffusion of knowledge, higher standards of morality and juster views of duty.

Such, if we have studied it aright, is modern civilization. And now let us consider, briefly as we may, some of the circumstances of danger and hope attending it; and we may not be surprised if we find it has been so ordered that some of its obstacles look very like aids, and some of its aids bear a strong resemblance to obstacles. The obstructions and dangers come chiefly, if not wholly, from the old spirit of force, the ante-Christian way of overcoming evil by evil. We propose to examine some of the more prominent manifestations of the old spirit, and we need not hesitate to commence with war: War is the most foolish way of overcoming evil ever employed-it is at best but an attempt to throttle evil by the greatest evil, to cast out devils by Beelzebub the prince of devils.

To perceive what war has to do with civilization, let our attention be confined to a single illustration: What has war done for England? A century ago England was greatly in advance of all the nations, and might at this time have occupied the most happy position ever allotted to a country. But the old spirit spoke and she listened. Limiting our view to a period commencing with our revolutionary war, let us see what war has done for England. The old spirit, the selfish, led her in the blindness itself occasioned, to deprive her subjects in America of the rights of Englishmen. She would enforce her will by the sword, and lost her colonies and £200,000,000. But she was not contented to stop there; to the counsels of Fox, her greatest and wisest statesman, him of the large heart, the generous impulse, the clear head and the unerring instinct, she would give no heed, but under the lead of Pitt she plunged into wars which lasted with short interruptions for twenty-five years. Her debt at the commencement of the French war in 1792 was two hundred and thirty-nine millions sterling. On the first day of February, 1817, when the wars were over, it was eight hundred and forty millions, an increase of six hundred millions occasioned solely and entirely by the wars in which

she had been directly and indirectly engaged in the period embraced by these dates. Had she been wise enough to preserve peace, her debt of £239,000,000 would have been extinguished long ago-nay, the interest money paid between 1792 and 1820 amounted to an aggregate twice as large as the sum she owed at the former period. But she was not thus wise. She must have a part in the game of empires,

"whose stakes are thrones,

Whose table, earth-whose dice are human bones."

She must send forth her own legions, and, when she can send no more, hire foreign mercenaries to fight the battles of European legitimacy. Having fertilized every plain on the continent with the blood and the bones of her children, and swelled her debt to FOUR THOUSAND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS; having strengthened the power of Russia and Austria, rendered easy the dismemberment of Poland, and replaced the Bourbons on the throne of France, she had done enough, and returned to her island home with a crowd of despots and fools in her train. And what did she gain in these wars? What did she profit by her vast expenditures of money and life? Briefly and truly, nothing-absolutely nothing worth the naming. Oh! she gained some famous victories upon the sea and upon the land. She can boast of Trafalgar and Waterloo, and can erect monuments to Nelson and Wellington. But the fitting monument of her folly is the stupendous debt of £840,000,000 sterling, one on which her people can ever gaze, and of which they will not cease to be reminded so long as they are called upon to pay one hundred and fifty millions of dollars annually to keep it in repair. This last sum is the yearly interest paid by Britain on her national debt, a sum three times as large as that required for all the national expenditures of the United States in time of peace! To pay this interest over two hundred and eighty thousand warrants are issued every year; and these figures, large as they are, are insufficient to represent the whole number of persons concerned in this debt, as much of the interest is drawn by banks and other institutions in trust for individual fund-holders. Besides this, the capital of savings banks and other companies in

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which the common people have a stake, is invested in the national funds, so that the number of the direct creditors of England is over three hundred thousand, and the number especially interested in her credit is not less than a million.

This debt, so enormous and in which so many are interested, is the great central power of wrong in England. It is this which embarrasses the reforms so necessary for her down-trodden masses-this that starves and enslaves Ireland-this, the fruit of the old spirit, the wages of war, which renders so difficult the ascendency and easy working of the principles of true reform. This is the centripetal power that holds in their places the Church and her schemes of taxation-the army and navy-the government so artificial, complicated and expensive, with its thousands of fat, pampered officials. To pay the interest on this debt, to support this Church, and army and navy, this cloud of locusts hovering over every green spot in both islands, Britons must be taxed beyond the endurance of any other people; taxed in every conceivable form and shape; by customs and excises, and for every thing, whether they eat, drink, sleep, walk or ride, work or play, live or die; taxed so that two-thirds of all the labor performed in England is for the government, and the wages. thereof received in effect by the government and the institutions connected with it. Every man in England who labors. works for himself but two days in the week, for the state, four. A shoemaker, for example, charges six shillings for his labor on a pair of shoes, the State receives four of it in the form of taxes, excises, duties on what he consumes, tithe and rent. In America this is all reversed-here less than two days in the week, or one third of one's earnings, is sufficient to discharge his just and proper contribution to the State. The shoemaker in this country who sells his labor for six shillings, receives more than four of it for his own use, after all deducting for taxes, duties, rent, church assessments and all.

It is the government then-the institutions-the debtall the growth and result of the "old," that thus depress labor, and cramp the laborer in England and Ireland. This immense debt, this pampered Church, this exhausting army, this extravagant government, with its "cabinet.