Many of the interpreters of prophecy consider that England is one of “the ten horns” of the beast, or Roman power, referred to by the Apostle John. It is also allowed that, in the highly figurative and varied language of Scripture, the monster of the Apocalypse is the same as the image of Daniel, whose feet were partly strong and partly fragile. In a being that has to stand, walk, fight, and run, very much depends upon the lower members. The physical man of Louis XVIII. was very kingly as far as his hips, but his extremities were feeble, and it was a poor affair when he attempted to walk. Now this is the very spirit of Daniel’s description of the Roman power. It had no good legs and feet to stand upon, for they were part of iron and part of clay, partly strong and partly fragile. As a limb of old Rome, we are at present in this very predicament. Thank God, we have a great deal of “_iron_” among us, both metallic, mental, and moral; but we have an enormous quantity of the old Pagan “_clay_,” and hence our strength and our weakness. Passing over a host of subjects which might illustrate what we have just stated, we now refer only to the _slavery question_. Here we are strong, and we are also feeble. The twenty millions we paid for the emancipation of our slaves in the West Indies was one of the most generous acts of the nation, especially if we consider the burden of taxation under which we were then groaning. Such a sacrifice at the shrine of cupidity, for the noble and glorious object of bursting the yoke of the captive, exhibited no small degree of moral principle and power. But some beheld in this munificent price the “clay” blended with the “iron.” Not a few of the anti-slavery labourers were growing tired of the agitation. The task had been an arduous one—had demanded considerable toil and incurred much odium. The philanthropists were stigmatised as “_the saints_,” as “_canting hypocrites_,” and by other terms equally expressive of the ire and malignity of their opponents; and while there were numbers among us who were willing to suffer any kind of martyrdom in this good cause, there was a still greater multitude who had been galvanised, rather than vitally quickened into activity, and longed, from the inert characters of their hearts and benevolence, to relapse again into their wonted apathy. The money therefore was paid down quite as much to release these worried philanthropists from travail, as to meet any supposed equitable claim of the slave-holder; and no sooner was the contract of emancipation sealed than these soldiers of humanity threw off their armour, and retired from the fray; and hence, though slavery has been abolished in our colonies, it has been allowed to vegetate and grow in the United States and elsewhere.