No number of persons sufficiently extensive to deserve the name of a class, have ever advocated the principle of _Retrocession_. Some few enthusiasts have indeed believed in a golden age, and have advocated the pastoral, or even the hunting life. These, however, were not persons capable of collecting, examining, and weighing the evidence on which alone an opinion on the comparative happiness of people existing in a savage or in a civilized state of life can justly be formed. A larger number exist, the admirers of the past, each perhaps the worshipper of his own peculiar age. Had he lived in those times, enjoying only the ordinary capacity he now possesses, but endowed with all the increased knowledge of the present day, he might then have attained a position more commensurate with his wishes, though quite disproportioned to the industry of his exertions or the calibre of his intellect. § In our own country, “the wisdom of our ancestors” is with some the hackneyed theme of unbounded admiration. Our ancestors were generally wise and sagacious men: they applied their energies and their knowledge, as far as it went, to their _existing_ wants and necessities. Those amongst them who deserved that character, would, if questioned, have expressed in language the precept to which their deeds conformed. Availing themselves gratefully of all the knowledge bequeathed to them by their predecessors, they struggled to advance it for their own and their children’s benefit, and thus they might have counselled every generation to their latest posterity:— “You have received from us, tested by many trials, the treasured knowledge, gathered under difficulty and danger, of our country’s experience. “Let the great object of each generation be to purify that body of knowledge from its partial errors, to add to it the greatest amount of new truths. “Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks its own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates it own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.” § A question has not unfrequently been proposed by those who apply their foresight to remote rather than to immediate objects— “What will become of our posterity when our coal-fields are exhausted?” The best answer to this question is, that when that distant day arrives, if our posterity, with the accumulated knowledge of centuries, shall have failed to find any substitute for coal in the many other sources of heat which nature supplies, they will then deserve to be frost-bitten.