The disproportion of the happiness of society with its means, is a subject which calls forth all the eloquence and sagacity of this writer. Nor is this surprising; for it might startle the most sluggish indifference--the most incurious stupidity. How does it come to pass, that with us misery is the fruit of successful labour, that with us experience does not teach caution, that with us the most munificent charity is unable to check the accumulation of evil, moral and physical, with which it vainly endeavours to contend? How is it, that while the wealth of England is a proverb among nations, the distress of her labourers is a byword no less universal; that while her commerce encircles the globe, while her colonies are spread through both hemispheres, while regions hitherto unknown are but the resting-place of her never-ceasing enterprise, the producers of all this wealth, the causes of all this luxury, the instruments of all this civilization, lie down in despair to perish by hundreds, amid the miracles of triumphant industry by which they are surrounded? How happens it, that as our empire extends abroad, security diminishes at home? that as our reputation becomes more splendid, and our attitude more commanding, the fabric of our strength decays, and our social bulwarks rock from their foundations? Who can say that the skill and valour of the general who has added a province to our Indian empire--who, triumphing over obstacles hitherto insurmountable, has caused the tide of victory to flow from East to West, and make the Sepoy invincible--may not erelong be called upon to fulfil the thankless task of suppressing insurrection, and to control the kindling fury of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population? Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and in our harbours be heard no sound of oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby? Is the vaunted splendour of this country to furnish a melancholy lesson of the instability of earthly power, and its fate to conclude a tale more glorious, to point a moral more affecting, than any which Tyre, or Sidon, or Carthage have furnished, to curb the insolence of prosperity, and to show the insignificance of man? "Quamvis Pontica pinus, Sylvae filia nobilis, Jactes et genus et nomen inutile." After dwelling on the supply of information which the present age enjoys, and which is quite without parallel in any former period, and pointing out the inconsistencies among us, of which, nevertheless, every day affords perpetual examples, the writer asks--