The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-11 00:00:00

Mani% *nit.

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1845.

The present crisis in our social, as well as our political
history, is one of a kind and degree of interest rarely attach-
ing to the affairs of an empire in the thirtieth year of pro-
found peace. The importance of the elements which have
created this crisis is equal to the rarity of their combination,
and welldeserves—let us say, rather, imperatively demands—
the profound consideration of every man anxious to uphold
the grandeur and prosperity of this country. Abroad we
possess dominion in point of extent, variety of surface and
geographical relations, natural riches, population, com-
merce, intelligence, and power absolutely unrivalled in the
case of any other European monarchy. On the shores of
Africa we have trading settlements and forts, and immense
territorial possessions, with active and resolute colonists, and
all the materiel of permanent and rapidly expanding establish-
ments. On its western coasts we lavishly expend our blood and
treasure, the health and lives of our devoted sailors and their
enterprising commanders, in the generous effort to extin-
guish the Negro slave•trade, and to elevate the moral cha-
racter as well as the domestic condition of the African peo-
ple. Oa the south and east of the same enormous continent
we are peopling the primeval solitudes of a fertile wilderness
with a race of English-descended settlers, who live in the
enjoyment and exercise of the arts and comforts, the man-
ners, language, and religion of their mother country, and
who draw from their forests and their rivers, their vineyards,
their flocks, their corn-fields, whatever can contribute to the
support, the health, the vigour, and the physical progress of
the human race. The protection affisrded by the mother
country our African colonists repay by the abundant sup-
plies and equipments they contribute to our fleets, the said-
tory resources they offer to our invalided soldiers,
exhausted by service in our more Oriental possessions,
and the staples of wool, &c., which they supply to
our general markets. I❑ Asia, we possess the supreme
dominion of that magnificent peninsula, which proves, with
the single exception of China, the noblest region of the finest
quarter of the globe. In that Indian Empire of ours, all the
msjestic and all the useful bounties of nature are distributed
with a stupendous profusion. The noblest rivers, after pur-
suing their long-protracted course through some of the
wealthiest and most beautiful countries to be found upon the
globe. roll their collected waters into the ocean at points
on the coasts of the peninsula which their alluvial deposits
have enriched, for ages, with all the principles of in-
exhaustible fertility in incalculable accumulation. The
richest and most abundant products, in sums quarters,
spontaneously develop themselves ; in others, (reward
the slightest labour devoted to the cultivation of the
soil. The mineral kingdoms vie with the teeming
kingdoms of animated nature in their profuse yield of
the riches they contain. The finest grain, pulse, and drugs,
the most delicious fruits and flowers, are found in the same
country which produces the purest diamonds and the finest
metals. The mountain forests furnish the largest and finest
timber trees for ship-building; the plains contribute their
precious products of raw silk and cotton; the cities manufac-
tare the fabrics most prized throughout the world fur the
purposes of luxury or ornament. From a subject population
of ninety millions sf souls (independently of almost as many
more, ever whom we nominally exercise no more than the
influence of the paramount State over its tributaries,) we draw
those fine bodies of native soldiery, who, under the
simple condition of being commanded by British
officers, compose the bravest and steadiest troops which
As►a has ever produced, and who form, at this mo-
ment, the great bulk of our Anglo-Indian Army—
an army which for its morale, its discipline, its high-toned
courage, its experience, its varied service, its miraculous
successes, its inflexible perseverance, and its indomitable
spirit, is, perhaps, without a rival even among the military
powers of Europe. In America, we have extended the do-
minion of our flag—and consolidated that dominion by the
most populous, intelligent, and powerful colonial establish-
ments to be found in the world—over territories of all but
boundless extent, and also eminent for the value of their

native products—their sugars, coffees, spices, their timber
and corn, their rivers and lakes, their fisheries and their
trade. In China, we have established a paramount influence
and authority over all other strangers—with the single ex-

ception, perhaps, of the Japanese—whom the jealoin policy
of that: imperial government has hitherto admitted into

c ,n)wereial anti even municipal rela'ions with its subjects.
And with all these means and manifestations of power,
strength, and dignity, abroa 1, we possess and we exhibit at
home a degree of opulence, a height of refinement, an ex-

tent of civi!isation, an organisation of resources fur the en-

largement and maintenance of our authority abroad, and

our domestic prosperity, in every way proportioned to these

indications of external grandeur.

The history of human

swieties does not produce a parallel to the rapidity, or the
amount, in which capital has been multiplied among us

.within the last ten years,

No Oriental fabulist ever ima-

gined, in all the unbridled license of his invention, a fund of

wealth, accumulated in one country, adequate to that which
must have formed the basis of railway speculations that have
been brought forward, in the latter half of that period, to a
nominal or hypotheticated amount of capital exceeding
640000,0001. ; and this, too, among a people whose means
are annually charged with the actual payment of 50,000,0001.
of taxes, of which nearly two-thirds are devoted to
defray the current charge of interest on the debt of the nation.