The fact is, nations, when they die, die of _felo-de-se_. The national heart becomes unsound, and the national arm weak. The virtue has gone out of it. Its rulers have usurped despotic powers, and the people have been sunk in utter imbecility, or have looked upon life as a May-day game, and nothing more. In our cold northern clime—with the remains of that equality born and bred amidst the beech-forests that bordered the Baltic—the English people could never stoop to this; and hence our glorious destiny. No nation under heaven’s broad light has been more sorely tried than our own. We have taken into pay almost every European power. Our war to restore the BOURBONS, and thus to crush Liberalism at home, and keep the Tories in office, was carried on at a cost which only Englishmen could have paid; and yet from our long seasons of distress—from our commercial panics, the result of fettered trade—from our formidable continental wars—we have emerged with flying colours, and indomitable strength. Mr. Porter’s statistics showed what we had done in the face of difficulty and danger, and the progress we have made since Mr. Porter’s time is something prodigious. Not yet has the arm of the people been weakened or its eye dulled. These are facts such as the united Croaker tribe can neither refute nor deny. We understand the meaning of such men when they raise a cry of alarm. What such men dread does in reality infuse into the constitution fresh vigour and life. Not national death, but the reverse is the result. The removal of one abuse, behind which monopoly and class legislation have skulked, is like stripping from the monarch of the forest the foul parasite by which his beauty is hidden and his strength devoured. From such operations the constitution comes out with the elements of life more copious and active in it than before. It finds a wider base in the support and attachment of the people; it becomes more sympathetic with them. It grows with their growth and strengthens with their strength.