citizens and the patrician order, and on closing these sketches of the exciting and instructive passages from the history of that remarkable people, it will not be without use to allude cursorily to the fierce commercial and maritime wars, which, with some intervals of peace, were carried on for upwards of a hundred years, between the Romans and Carthaginians, ending in the total destruction of the latter.

There is only the Roman account extant of those wars, and of the condition of the Carthaginian nation. We have therefore in the present day a partial history only.

The resources and power of Carthage were very great, and enabled her to retain the command of the navigation of the Mediterranean for about six hundred years, and to plant colonies along the shores of that sea. The resources appeared to have been entirely derived from manufactures and commerce, for the territory occupied by the Carthaginian republic, was only about forty miles round, and at first a ground-rent was paid for it to the native inhabitants of the country. The possession of the gold and silver mines of Spain, must have put into the power of the Carthaginians immense sums of the precious metals; and the manufacturing ingenuity and enterprise of that people enabled them to acquire the productions of every tribe and nation at that period, within reach of their maritime and terrestrial traffic.

To give an idea of the naval and military strength of Carthage at the height of her power, it will be sufficient to mention the fact, that one of her foreign expeditions consisted of 300,000 men, conveyed in 2,000 ships of war, and 3,000 transports, and taking the vessels at 100 tons each, there would be about half a million of tonnage employed. Neither England nor France, in the present day, could send out to sea such an immense armament.

Whatever were the nature and component parts of the government of Carthage, the system established appeared to have suited the genius of the people, and allowed full development to their physical and mental powers. The extraordinary talents displayed by all the generals and commanders of their foreign enterprises, proved that men were chosen for their abilities and fitness for their respective offices, and not appointed to gratify the ambition or caprice of influential individuals.

As enemies, the Carthaginians and Romans were worthy of each other, and the struggle for the empire of the Mediterranean, and through it, of the world, could terminate only in the destruction of one of the parties. Carthage was finally subjugated, and razed to the ground by the Roman power, in the 147th year before the Christian era, after having stood for more than seven hundred years.

In modern times nothing similar to the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage has taken place, but some of the fiercest wars, within the last two hundred years, between European nations, have been commercial wars. The sanguinary battles between the English and the Dutch, towards the end of the seventeenth century, were for the mastery of the narrow seas, and after many vicissitudes the English triumphed. The wars between Great Britain and Spain, in the eighteenth century, were for commercial and colonial objects.

At the present moment, events have occurred in the East, and in the West, which are concentrating the attention and exciting the rivalry of the three great maritime nations of the globe. The great commercial routes, which were opened and frequented by the Tyrians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, are again becoming the highways to eastern and southern Asia; and European nations are now frequenting

roads to those regions, which have been closed ever since the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope. The cycle of two thousand years is coming round to the middle of the nineteenth century!

Let Great Britain, France, and America, and every nation, impress these facts on their minds,-that the globe is wide enough for them all, and affords full scope for every useful enterprise, and that it would be folly to waste their energies on mutual destruction.

CHAP. IV.

PASSAGES FROM THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION.

ARISTOCRATIC POWER CRUSHED THE PEOPLE-CURTAILED THEIR SUBSIST

ENCE

AND DROVE THEM INTO FURY-INFATUATION IS APT TO SEIZE
BODIES-ANALOGIES BETWEEN THE OLD FRENCH

UPON ARISTOCRATIC

AND THE PRESENT BRITISH ARISTOCRACIES.

Ir is affirmed that the control of the subsistence of a people, constitutes power, in the hands of a governing party, whether a monarch or an aristocracy. As there is an analogy between the ancient Roman character and history, and the British of modern ages, a good deal of detail has been given, in illustration of the circumstances of the two nations. Coming down within the memory of the present generation, we have the example of the French nation for the use and instruction of the British people. But from the freshness of the dates and the evidence of the incidents, it will not be necessary to do more than allude to a few striking parallels.

It is a matter of historical notoriety, that excessive taxation, the unequal pressure of the load, the insolence of the privileged classes of society, the consequent derangement of the finances, and the vacillation and irresolution of the government, led to those excesses and outbreaks of the French population, that ended in one of the most terrible revolutions, involving every nation of Europe in its vortex,

which ever convulsed the world. In tracing the origin of that great convulsion, much has been attributed to the writings and intrigues of Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and the other authors of the Encyclopedie. But it is impossible to conceive that any men, however able, and however persevering in the exercise of the most powerful talents over the minds of other men, could have produced such results as those witnessed in France at the end of the 18th century, unless there had been existent in society, cruelty and injustice in the governing power, distress and discontentment among the masses of the people, and, above all, worldly pride, immorality, and hypocrisy in the ministers of the public religion. A venal church with its host of monks, friars, and debauched priests, was held up to the ridicule and contempt of mankind; and Christianity itself was assailed, and for a time publicly abolished, in consequence of the abuse of it by a proud and corrupt hierarchy.

As long as the people of a country have the Bible in their own hands, there need be no apprehension of the fall of this church, or the rise of that one, because every man is supposed to be able to exercise his own judgment, under God, on the course to be followed in the establishment of a public form of religion. In this respect there is no similarity in the present case of Great Britain and of France, previous to the revolution of 1789. But, in the state of the fiscal affairs of the two countries at that period and at present, there is enough to excite an anxious interest in the government and people of Great Britain.

Necker, in his celebrated exposé on the administration of the finances of France, published several years before the Revolution, had, for his great object, the lightening of the burdens of taxation on the lower classes of the people,