The home territory of Great Britain is quite inadequate to support even her present population. This circumstance places that country in a position of comparative dependence. While she _must_ draw from other countries a very considerable proportion of her breadstuffs and other provisions, we supply not only ourselves, but others largely also. The money which England pays to other nations for bread alone would equal in thirty years the entire amount of her national debt. We need but a resolute and united purpose to sustain with comparative ease our national burdens, whatever may be their extent. Those who doubt this under-estimate not only the magnitude of our national resources, but the powerful aid which modern improvements lend to their development. FOOTNOTES: [H] Some estimate of the influence of railways alone may be formed by reference to the following statement, which occurs in an address of Robert Stephenson before the Institution of Civil Engineers, in 1856:-- "The result, then, is, that, upon the existing traffic of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, railways are affecting a direct saving to the people of not less than forty million pounds per annum; and that sum exceeds by about fifty per cent the entire interest of our national debt. It may be said, therefore, that the railway system neutralizes to the people the bad effects of the debt with which the state is incumbered. It places us in as good position as if the debt did not exist." THE CHIMNEY-CORNER. VI. LITTLE FOXES.--PART V. INTOLERANCE. "And what are you going to preach about this month, Mr. Crowfield?" "I am going to give a sermon on _Intolerance_, Mrs. Crowfield." "Religious intolerance?" "No,--domestic and family and educational intolerance,--one of the seven deadly sins on which I am preaching,--one of 'the foxes.'" * * * * * People are apt to talk as if all the intolerance in life were got up and expended in the religious world; whereas religious intolerance is only a small branch of the radical, strong, all-pervading intolerance of human nature. Physicians are quite as intolerant as theologians. They never have had the power of burning at the stake for medical opinions, but they certainly have shown the will. Politicians are intolerant. Philosophers are intolerant, especially those who pique themselves on liberal opinions. Painters and sculptors are intolerant. And housekeepers are intolerant, virulently denunciatory concerning any departures from their particular domestic creed. Mrs. Alexander Exact, seated at her domestic altar, gives homilies on the degeneracy of modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations of Dr. Holdfast as to the falling off from the good old faith. "Don't tell me about pillow-cases made without felling," says Mrs. Alexander; "it's slovenly and shiftless. I wouldn't have such a pillow-case in my house any more than I'd have vermin."