the actual circumstances of this country, in reference both to our internal interests and our foreign relations. This is a task I cannot now undertake, but I may remind the reader that the principles were then beginning to propagate themselves with the greatest success which not long after exhibited their true nature and ruinous effects in the French Revolution. Such a spirit of patriotism would have been kindled, such a generous confidence in the King's government would have been diffused throughout all classes, that the very idea of the danger of our being infected with the principles of French licentiousness, which might have produced among our people a general taint of disloyalty, would have been an apprehension not to be admitted into the bosom of the most timid politician; while the various reforms which would have taken place, and the manifest independence of Parliament would have generated and ensured in the minds of all reasonable men a continually increasing gratitude and affection for the constitution and laws of our country. On the other hand, the French, infatuated as they were, and wicked as were the men who then possessed the chief influence in the counsels of that country, could never have been so blind to their own manifest interest, as to have engaged their people in a war with Great Britain from any idea of our confederating with the Crowned Heads of Europe to crush the rising spirit of liberty in France. Hence we should have escaped that long and bloody war, which, however, in its ultimate issue justly deserving the epithet of glorious, is nevertheless the cause of all our present dangers and sufferings, from the insupportable burdens with which it has loaded us. Nor is it only _Financial_ evils of which our long protracted warfare has been the cause; to this source also we must probably trace much of that _Moral_ evil, which in so many different forms has been of late beginning to manifest itself, especially among the lower orders of our people. The gracious Providence of God has indeed abundantly answered the prayers of many among us, who I trust have all along been looking up to the Giver of all Good for their country's safety and prosperity; and while those causes were in operation which were hereafter to manifest themselves in various forms of social and domestic evil, it pleased God to diffuse a spirit of an opposite kind, which began to display its love of God and love of man by the formation of societies of a religious and moral nature, which have already contributed in no small degree to bless almost all nations, while they have invested our own country with a moral glory never before enjoyed by any nation upon earth. The diffusion of the Sacred Scriptures, the establishment of societies for spreading throughout the world the blessings of religious light and of moral improvement, the growing attention to the education of our people, with societies and institutions for relieving every species