It is full time that the nation should be roused to an acute sense of the perilous position in which it has been placed, by a hitherto unparalleled union of quackery, conceit, and imbecility. The system of legislation which we have been pursuing for many years, under the guidance of rival statesmen, each attempting to outdo the other in subserviency to popular prejudice, is a manifest and admitted departure, on almost every point, from the principles of that older system through which we attained the culminating point of our greatness. We do not complain of such changes as are inevitable from altered circumstances, and in some degree from the altered spirit of the times—but we protest against social changes, forced on, as if in mere wantonness, against warning and against experience, either for the sake of exhibiting the dexterity of the operator, or for the poorer and meaner object of attaining the temporary possession of power. We look in vain, both in the past and present Cabinet, for that firm purpose, prescience, and honesty which were considered, in old times, the leading characteristics of the British statesman. We can see, in the drama of late events, nothing but the miserable spectacle of party degenerating into coterie, and coterie prostituting itself to agitation and corrupt influence, for the sake of the retention of office. It may be that such is the inevitable result of the triumph of the so-called liberal principles; and, indeed, the example of America would go far to prove that such principles cannot coexist along with a high state of political morality and honour; but that, at all events, is no excuse for the conduct of the men who, reared under better training, have led us insensibly to the path down which we are now proceeding with such recklessness and with such precipitation.