The nineteenth has been the most remarkable century in the world’s history. It was the most destructive and wasteful of life and property in the early part of its career, and in the latter half has been the most constructive and uplifting to the human race of any of the past centuries. The population of all Europe at the beginning of the century numbered one hundred and seventy millions, of whom four millions were engaged in the murderous work of war. The demoralization of society and the miseries inflicted on the people by these wars are beyond the power of pen to describe. France had an absolute monarchy. “The King held in his hands the unquestioned right to dispose, at his will, of the lives and property of the people. He was the sole legislator. His own pleasure was his only rule. He levied taxes, asking no consent of those who had to pay. He sent to prison men with no crime laid to their charge, and kept them there, without trial, till they died.” Political corruption was rampant. For sixty years the court of Louis XV. had festered in the most filthy debauchery. Then followed the bloody Revolution, unparalleled in history. The guillotine, worn out with its butchery of more than a million lives stood idle, and peace--rather, the lull of an unfinished storm, for a time rested upon unhappy France. Then the tumultuous hurricane burst out anew in the wars of Napoleon, which terminated only at Waterloo in 1815. “The influence which Napoleon exerted upon the course of human affairs,” says McKenzie, “is without a parallel in history. Never before had any man inflicted upon his fellows miseries so appalling; never before did one man’s hand scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of change so vast and so beneficient. It was he who roused Italy from her sleep of centuries and led her towards that free and united life which she at length enjoys. It was he, who by destroying the innumerable petty states of Germany, inspired the dream of unity which it has required more than half a century to fulfil.” The progress made by these two countries during the century, in liberty, education, and all that conduces to the welfare of the individual and the strength of the nation, has been great beyond precedent.