B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Legislative reform, the manful renunciation of entangling alliances with the ghosts of the past, is a sword that has more than once cut a Gordian knot of fatal complications. The suppression of monasteries saved four of our Spanish American sister republics from a brood of vampires that had drained the life-blood of Spain for a series of centuries. In England the timely repeal of the corn-laws averted an explosion that might have rent the coherence of the entire British empire. The abolition of slavery with one blow destroyed a hydra that had menaced the safety of the American Union by an endless series of political disputes. By the abolition of serfdom Czar Alexander elevated the Russian empire to the rank of a progressive nation. The very possibility of national progress depends, indeed, on the hope of legislative reform, for the rigor of unalterable laws prevents social development as the clasp of an iron ring prevents the growth of a tree.