and her admirable system of circulation by
fourscore and six canals, and seventy lines of
railway. The total revenue of England then
amounts to upwards of twelve billion francs.
Her power amongst the nations is manifest
by the number and greatness of her fleets
and of her domains. In Europe she possesses,
besides her neighbour-islets, Heligoland,
Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Islands; in
Asia, she holds British Hindostan with its
tributaries, Ceylon, and her compulsory allies
of the Punjab and of Scinde—that is to say,
almost a world; in Africa she claims Sierra
Leone with its dependencies, the Isle of
France, Seychelles, Fernandez Po, the Cape of
Good Hope and Saint Helena; in America,
she possesses Upper and Lower Canada, Cape
Breton, the Lesser Antilles, the Bermudas,
Newfoundland, Lucays, Jamaica, Dominica,
Guiana, the Bay of Honduras, and Prince
Edward's Island;  lastly, in Oceania, she has
Van Dieman's Land, Norfolk Island, Nova
Scotia, Southern Australia; and these
hundred nations make up for her more than one
hundred and fifty millions of subjects,
including the twenty-seven to twenty-eight
millions of the three mother kingdoms. As
to her mercantile marine, two details will
suffice to make it known; she has about
thirty thousand sailing-vessels and steamers,
without counting her eight thousand colonial
ships; and in one year she exports six or
seven hundred millions of cotton stuffs, which
makes for a single detail an account beyond
the sum total of all the manufacturing
exportation of France."

But now for the plague spot! All this
territory, and power, and commercial activity
is, you say, our ruin; all this wealth is
precisely our pauperism; all this happiness is
our misery. What Montesquieu says, and
you Mr. Ledru Rollin indorse with your
unerring imprimatur, must be true:—"The
fortune of maritime empires cannot be long,
for they only reign by the oppression of the
nations, and while they extend themselves
abroad, they are undermining themselves
within."

Upon my word, Mr. Rollin, this looks very
likely: and when you see your neighbours
gaily promenading Regent Street; when you
hear of the "Lion of Waterloo" (at whom
you are so obliging as to say in your Preface,
you have no wish "to fire a spent ball")
giving his usual anniversary dinner to the
usual number of guests, and with his usual
activity stepping off afterwards to a ball;
when you are told that a hundred thousand
Londoners can afford to enjoy themselves at
Epsom Races; and that throughout the
country there is just now more enjoyment
and less grumbling than there has been for
years, I can quite understand that your
horror at the innocent disregard thus evinced
at the tremendous " blow up " that is coming,
must be infinitely more real than that of
Serjeant Flamfacer. "Alas!" you exclaim
with that " profound emotion " with which
your countrymen are so often afflicted;
"Government returns inform me that during
the past year English pauperism has
decreased eleven per cent., and that the present
demand for labour in the manufacturing
districts nearly equals the supply? The
culminating point is reached; destruction must
follow!"

Heavens! Mr. Rollin, I tremble with you.
The plethora of prosperity increases, and will
burst the sooner! We, eating, drinking,
contented, trafficking, stupid, revolution-hating,
spiritless, English people, " are undermining
ourselves within." We are gorging ourselves
with National prosperity to bring on a
National dyspepsia, and will soon fall asleep
under the influence of a national nightmare!
Horrible! the more so because

"Alas! unconscious of their fate,
The little victims play."

Now, Sir, I wish to ask you calmly and
candidly, if there is any fire at the bottom of
your volumes of smoke?  or have you read
our records, and seen our country through a
flaming pair of Red Spectacles, that has
converted everything within their range into
Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones?

Indeed I hope it is so; for though I am
very much obliged to you for putting us on
our guard, you have made me very miserable.
This is the worst shock of all. With my
belief in "what is going to happen," I have
led but a dog-life of it, ever since I retired
from that cat-and-dog life, the Law. First,
the Reform Bill was to ruin us out of
hand; then, the farmers threatened us with
what was going to happen in consequence
of Free Trade; and that was bad enough,
for it was starvation—no less. What was
going to happen if the Navigation Laws were
repealed, I dare not recall. Now we are to be
swept off the face of the earth if we allow
letters to be sorted on a Sunday. But these
are comparative trifles to what you, Mr. R.,
assert is going to happen, whatever we do or
don't do. However, I am resolved on one
thing—I won't be in at the death, or rather
with the death. I shall pull up my little
stake in Capel Court, and retire to some quiet
corner of the world, such as the Faubourg
St. Antoine, the foot of Mount Vesuvius,
or Chinese Tartary.

Your's truly,

CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE.

Paradise Row, Tooting.

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