a-head worth of our manufactures. Property in the colonies would double
in value every five years, from the joint effect of domestic labour,
and the prolific stream of external immigration; and every acre cleared
in these fertile wilds would cause a wheel to revolve, or a spindle to
move, or a family to be blessed, in the parent state.
We can affix no limits in imagination to what the British Empire
might become, or the amount of social and general happiness it might
contain, with the physical advantages which nature has given it, and
the character which race, and consequent institutions, have impressed
upon its inhabitants. In the centre of the Empire stands the parent
state, teeming with energy, overflowing with inhabitants, with coal
and ironstone in its bosom capable of putting in motion manufactories
for the supply of half the globe. In the extremities are colonies
in every quarter of the earth, possessing waste lands of boundless
extent and inexhaustible fertility, producing every luxury which the
heart of man can desire, and one only of which could furnish the whole
staple required for its greatest fabrics.[19] With such providential
wisdom were the various parts of this immense empire fitted for each
other; so marvellously was the surplus, whether in animated beings
or rude produce, of one part adapted to the deficiencies and wants
of another, that nothing but a just and equal system of government,
alive to the wants, and solicitous for the interests, of every part
of its vast dominion, was requisite to render it the most united,
prosperous, growing, and powerful state that ever existed on the
face of the earth. The Roman Empire, while spread around the shores
of the Mediterranean Sea, affords but a faint image of what it might
have been. _The ocean was its inland lake_; the British navy its
internal means of communication; the foreign trade of the whole
earth its home trade. We obtained the empire of the seas precisely
to enable us to carry out this magnificent destiny; the victory of
Trafalgar presented it to our grasp. But a just and equal system of
government was essential to the existence and duration of so immense a
dominion; a sense of fair administration, a consciousness of protected
interests, would alone hold it together for any length of time. The
simple precept of the gospel, "to do to others as we would they should
do unto us," would, if duly carried into practice, have for ever
kept united the mighty fabric, and caused it to embrace in peace and
happiness half the globe. This object was practically attained by the
virtual representation of all classes, interests, and colonies, under
the old constitution; and thence the steady growth, vast extent, and
unvarying loyalty during many a severe contest, of this multifarious
dominion. The new constitution, by vesting the government in the
representatives of our manufacturing towns, and thence introducing the
rule of class interests, is visibly and rapidly destroying it. The only
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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