Among the many remarkable circumstances which a comparison of former with present times never fails to present to an attentive observer, it is perhaps the most remarkable with how much accuracy the effects of great changes in public policy are predicted by one portion of the community, and with what entire insensibility they are regarded by another. The results of all the chief alterations in the system of government which has taken place in our times--the Contraction of the Currency, Roman Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, Negro Emancipation, Free Trade, the Repeal of the Navigation Laws--were all foretold by their opponents at the time they were under discussion, with such accuracy that their predictions might pass, after the events had taken place, for a concise history of their effects. And yet the whole body of their supporters, embracing at each period the numerical majority at least of the most influential part of the nation, were absolutely deaf to these warnings; they ridiculed the authors of them, disputed their reasonings, impugned their motives, and were only the more confirmed in the headlong course they were pursuing, by the demonstration which daily experience was affording of the enormity of their own error on previous occasions. It is evident, from these examples, that Plato's observation is well founded, and that general ignorance is neither the greatest social evil, nor the one most to be dreaded. Prejudice, passion, a thirst for selfish aggrandisement, are the real evils which affect society; and their sway, unhappily, is only rendered the more powerful with the extension of knowledge and the progress of civilisation. They do worse than conceal the truth: they render men insensible to it. So obstinately do the majority of men, when their interests are supposed to be at stake, or their passions are inflamed, resist the light of truth; so resolutely do they disregard the clearest procession of demonstration; so prone are they to be led away by the arts of ambitious men or the efforts of class interest,--that it may be safely concluded that the greatest national disasters cannot long be averted when affairs are under the immediate direction of a numerical majority; and that their own folly or infatuation become the instruments of the Divine judgments upon mankind.