though embodied in the articles and liturgy of our church, had been for a long time almost overlooked and unheard, were sounded more and more from many pulpits; and by the very opposition which they excited, and the charge of novelty with which they were assailed, attracted public notice, interested the public mind, and found from many a favourable reception. Religious publications were greatly multiplied, and eagerly perused. An anxiety was felt on subjects which before had been unnoticed or forgotten. Societies were formed for various benevolent and religious objects, which strongly marked the altered tone of public feeling: while the zeal and liberality with which they were supported no less clearly evinced the new and lively interest which these objects had excited. Institutions for the universal dissemination of the Scriptures, and for their translation into all languages; for conveying the blessings of Christianity into heathen lands; for the conversion of the Jews; for the education of the rising generation; for the diffusion in almost every practicable way of religious instruction; and for advancing, by all probable means, the moral condition and consequent happiness of mankind, sprang up on every side, commencing and prosecuting, with vigour, their work and labour of love while many ancient establishments for the

same or similar purposes, provoked to jealousy by these new allies, cast off the torpor of age, and, with renewed exertions, widely extended their means and spheres of usefulness. It was during this period, that the nation, roused to a proper feeling of its responsibility and guilt, in respect to the wrongs inflicted on injured Africa, put an end to the abominations of the slavetrade, so far at least as these abominations had been promoted by British subjects and British capital; and renounced, for the future, its participation in this iniquitous traffic. It was dur ing this period, that the country felt the vast amount of its debt to British India, and with one voice, conveyed by countless petitions to Parliament, expressed its unanimous desire of imparting to Indostan, and to our other dependencies in the East, the benefit of missionary zeal, and the blessings of an Established Church.

These were some of the proofs, which England displayed during the progress of the revolutionary war, of her advance in moral and religious feeling; and which, when contrasted with the contemporaneous state of the Papal kingdoms in these respects, must surely be considered as exhibiting another striking instance of dissimilarity betwixt her and them.

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CHAP. XI.

RETROSPECTIVE AND COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE STATE OF ENGLAND, FROM THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO THE PRESENT PERIOD.

By the successful issue of the battle of Waterloo, and the consequent flight and captivity of Napoleon, a termination was at length put to the calamities of that protracted warfare, which, for more than twenty years, had desolated the Papal kingdoms, and in its consequences had not only involved the other nations of Europe, but had affected, in a greater or a less degree, the most distant parts of the earth. Peace was suddenly and unexpectedly granted to the exhausted world. The tempest was hushed; and a season of returning quiet and repose excited an universal expectation of the return of those blessings, which such a season is calculated to produce and diffuse. But these expectations, as the event proved, were not generally realised. Cessation from war did not, in this instance, bring with it its usual concomitants. The storm, indeed, subsided; but the swell which followed, though not attended with equal and immediate danger, yet proved no less an enemy to permanent tranquillity and rest.

The Papal kingdoms especially experienced, and to this day continue to experience, directly or indirectly, the agitated results of those revolutionary principles which they had so readily and generally imbibed. Freed from the desolating effects of revolutionary war, they became distracted by intestine and political commotions, which have equally precluded them from the enjoyment of the real blessings of peace. One consequence of the termination of the war was the restoration of the ancient governments. The connection between the rulers and their subjects, which had been violently rent asunder by the arms of Napoleon, was as suddenly renewed by his defeat and deposition; and thus a pledge might seem to have been given of returning tranquillity and repose. But the result was otherwise. The rulers and their subjects were not now in a situation to coalesce on the same terms, and in the same manner, as they had done before>> their temporary disunion. The people, under their new masters, had become too enlightened not to see something of the iniquity and oppressions of their ancient governments, and too strongly attached to the novel idea of liberty, which they had learned to admire, patiently to acquiesce in the re-establishment and continuance of former abuses: while the rulers had so little profited by the salutary lessons

which they had received, and were made so little wiser by the chastisements which they had undergone, as not to perceive that it was only by some concessions to the newly-acquired views of their subjects, that they could reasonably hope to resume their sceptres with benefit to them, or with comfort and security to themselves. Such concessions, however, ill accorded with the principles and prejudices of those, who had no conception of any law but their own will, nor of any government but such as is arbitrary and despotic. Hence has arisen a continued system of mutual mistrust and dissatisfaction; of suspicion and jealousy; of aggression on the one side, and of resistance on the other; which, amidst the semblance of peace, has generated and maintained a spirit of secret hostility: and, in some instances, as in the cases of Naples and Spain, has actually produced a state of undisguised and open warfare. In the last of these two countries, it is notorious, that nothing but the overawing presence of the French troops has restrained it from bursting forth into the most unbridled anarchy and confusion; while in nearly all the other kingdoms of the Beast, the struggle for political power, where it is not actually suppressed by the immediate operation of military force, is venting itself in unceasing contentions, divisions, and intrigues. Such is