Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will permit me, how I have been led into such extravagant imaginings. I have already remarked, that nations seldom gave evidence of noble bursts of feeling; still more rarely, I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow for past misconduct—any penitence for by-gone evil.
This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people's greatness; this, the brightest evidence of national purity. Happy am I to say such an instance is before us; proud am I to be the man to direct public attention to the feet. The following paragraph I copy verbatim from the Times.
“On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the top of the monument erected on the field where the battle was fought.”
A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of sorrow and regret, waves over the field of Waterloo! Not placed there by vanquished France, whose legions fought with all their chivalry; not hoisted by the proud Gaul, on the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in penitence of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the Belgians who ran—by the people who fled—by the soldiers who broke their ranks and escaped in terror.
What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully touching such an instance of a people's sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to commemorate the glorious day when they so nobly sustained their country's honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a great people in all the majesty of their power, in all their might of intellect, strength, and riches, be an object of solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of one whose virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life, whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets? Mr. O'Connell may declaim, and pronounce his eight millions the finest peasantry in the world—he may extol their virtues from Cork to Carrickfergus—he may ring the changes over their loyalty, their bravery, and their patriotism; but when eulogising the men who assure him “they are ready to die for their country,” let him blush to think of the people who can “cry” for theirs.
A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.
The bane and antidote of England is her immense manufacturing power—the faculty that enables her to inundate, the whole habitable globe with the products of her industry, is at once the source of her prosperity and poverty—her millionaire mill-owners and her impoverished thousands. Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the same wonderful—never the results of mechanical invention so astoundingly developed. Men, are but the presiding genii over the wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine. Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in every branch of mechanism—human ingenuity is racked, chemical analysis investigated, mathematical research explored—and all, that Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins—while Mr. Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in this, and straightway his income is quadrupled—his eldest son is member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life Guards—his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds, is married to the heir of a marquisate—and his wife, soaring above the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western London, and advertises her soirees in the Morning Post. The pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great feature of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic—to this end the clattering locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour—for this, the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the factory are at work—and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeballs and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.