Long the Spanish enjoyed the supremacy in Central America; but it has followed the fate of the idle, proud, combative, and good-for-nothing people who carried it across the Atlantic, and is disappearing like snow before the sun of a genial spring. The sooner it is extinct the better. Already the English is the vernacular from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, wherever civilised settlements are formed. As large a population now speaks this nervous language in America as in Great Britain; and this is only an indication of its progress. By means of a rapidly-increasing population, the English language will in twenty years be spoken by upwards of fifty million Americans; and if to these we add all within the home and colonial dominion, the number speaking it at that period will not be short of a hundred millions. What an amount of letter-writing and printing will this produce! And, after all, how small that amount in comparison with what will be seen a hundred years hence, when many hundred millions of men are on the earth, English in speech and feeling, whatever may be their local and political distinctions! The gratification which one experiences in contemplating facts of this kind, transcends the power of language. To all appearance, our English tongue is the expression of civil and religious freedom—in fact, of common sense; and its spread over the globe surely indicates the progress of civilised habits and institutions.
In referring to the qualities which are usually found in connection with the prevalence of English as a vernacular, we are led to anticipate prodigious strides in the popularising of literature during the next twenty years. What, also, may we not expect to see done for the extension of epistolary correspondence? Intercourse by letter has advanced only one step of its progress, by the system of inland penny-postage. Another step remains to be effected: the system of carrying letters oversea on the same easy terms. That this Ocean Penny-Postage, as it is termed, will be carried out, at least as regards the larger British colonies, within a period much under twenty years, is exceedingly probable. When this grand achievement is accomplished, there will ensue a stream of intercommunication with distant lands, of which we can at present form no proper conception, and which will go far towards binding all parts of the earth in a general bond of brotherhood.
Such are a few of the things which we may be said to be warranted in looking for within a reasonably short period of time. Other things, equally if not more contributive to human melioration, are less distinctly in expectation. The political prospects of the continental nations are for the present under a cloud. With all the glitter of artistic and social refinement that surrounds them, the bulk of them appear to have emerged but little beyond the middle ages; and one really begins to inquire, with a kind of pity, whether they have natural capacities for anything better. The near proximity to England of populations so backward in all ideas of civil polity, and so changeful and impulsive in their character, cannot but be detrimental to our hopes of national advancement among ourselves; so true is it that peace and happiness are not more matter of internal conviction than of external circumstances.
Unfortunately, if there be something to lament in the condition of our neighbours, there is also something to humiliate on turning our attention homeward. In a variety of things which are required to give symmetry and safety to the social fabric, there appears to be an almost systematic and hopeless stoppage.
Nearly the whole of the law and equity administration of England seems to be a contrivance to put justice beyond reach; and whether any substantial remedy will be applied during the present generation may be seriously doubted.
It is universally admitted that, for the sake of the public health, interment in London and other large cities should be legally prohibited; and that various other sanitary arrangements in relation to these populous localities should be enforced. Yet, legislation on this subject seems to be beyond the grasp of statesmen.
The system of poor-laws throughout the United Kingdom is, with the best intentions, a cause of widely-spread demoralisation. These laws, in their operation, are, in fact, a scheme for robbing the industrious to support the idle. But where is the legislator who will attack and remodel this preposterous system?
The prevention of crime is another of our formidable social difficulties. Every one sees how young and petty criminals grow up to be old and great ones. It is admitted that the punishment of crime, after disorderly habits are confirmed, is no sufficient check; and that, if the evil is to be cured, we must go at once to its root. But when or how is this to be done? Again, there is a call for that scarcest of all things—statesmanship.
The bitterness of sectarian contention is another of the things which one feels to be derogatory to an age of general progress. No longer are men permitted to kill each other in vindication of opinion, but how mournful to witness persecution by inuendo, vituperation, and even falsehood. Individuals and classes are seen bombarding each other in vile, abusive, and certainly most unchristian language, all ostensibly in the name of a religion which has for a fundamental principle, an utter repudiation of strife! Whether any amendment is to be looked for in this department of affairs within the next twenty years is exceedingly uncertain.
In the roll of disheartening circumstances in our social condition, it would be unpardonable to omit the enormities of intemperance, which, though groaned over day after day, remain pretty much what they have been for years; and it is to be feared, that so long as reformers confine themselves to attacking mere symptoms, instead of going to the foundation of the evil—a deficiency of self-respect, growing out of a want of instruction in things proper to be known, and for which the education of the country makes no provision—all will be in vain. How far there will prevail a more enlarged view of this painful subject, is not discoverable from the present temper of parties.
The legislative conservation of ignorance in the humbler classes of the community, to which reference has just been made, is surely a blot on our social economy. It is seemingly easier to girdle the globe with a wire, than to make sure that every child in Her Majesty's dominions shall receive the simplest elements of education. Within the sphere of the mechanic or the chemist, flights beyond the bounds of imagination may be pursued without restraint, and indeed with commendation; but anything in social economics, however philanthropic in design and beneficial in tendency, falls into the category of disputation and obstruction; and, worst of all, education, on which so much depends, is, through the debates of contending 'interests,' kept at a point utterly inadequate for the general enlightenment and wellbeing.
Thus, many matters of moment are either at a stand, or advancing by feeble and hesitating steps, and the distance to be ultimately reached remains vague and undefinable. At the same time, it is well to be assured that improvements, moral and social, are really in progress; and that, on the whole, society is on the move not in a retrograde direction. Even with a stone tied to its leg, the world, as we have said, contrives 'to get on some way or other.'
On a certain part of the coast of Brittany, some years back, a gang of wreckers existed, who were the terror of all sailors. Ever on the look-out for the unfortunate vessels, which were continually dashed upon their inhospitable shores, their delight was in the storm and the blast; they revelled in the howling of fierce wind, and the lightning's glare was to them more delightful than the brightest show of fireworks to the dweller in large towns. Then they came out in droves, hung about the cliffs and rocks, hid in caverns and holes, and waited with intense anxiety for the welcome sight of some gallant ship in distress. So dreadful were the passions lit up in these men by the love of lucre, that they even resorted to infamous stratagems to lure vessels on shore. They would light false beacons; and strive in every way to delude the devoted bark to its destruction.
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