502 PROVISIONAL EXPEDIENTS. 



sustained by enterprise and industry, and war comes 

 seldom, and charity abounds, there are yet dark places 

 where the sunlight never enters, and where hope has 

 never been : where day follows day in never changing 

 toil, and where life leads only to the prison, or the work- 

 house, or the grave. Yet a day will come when the 

 whole earth will be as civilised as Europe : a day will 

 come when these dark spots will pass away. 



If we compare the present with the past, if we 

 trace events at all epochs to their causes, if we examine 

 the elements of human growth, we find that Nature 

 has raised us to what we are, not by fixed laws, but by 

 provisional expedients, and that the principle which 

 in one age effected the advancement of a nation, in the 

 next age retarded the mental movement, or even 

 destroyed it altogether. War, despotism, slavery, 

 and superstition, are now injurious to the progress of 

 Europe, but they were once the agents by which 

 progress was produced. By means of War the animated 

 life was slowly raised upward in the scale, and quadru- 

 peds passed into man. By means of War the human 

 intelligence was brightened, and the affections were 

 made intense; weapons and tools were invented; 

 foreign wives were captured, and the marriages of 

 blood relations were forbidden ; prisoners were tamed, 

 and the women set free ; prisoners were exchanged, 

 accompanied with presents ; thus commerce was estab- 

 lished, and thus, by means of War, men were first 

 brought into amicable relations with one another. By 

 War the tribes were dispersed all over the world, and 

 adopted various pursuits according to the conditions 

 by which they were surrounded. By War the tribes 

 were compressed into the nation. It was War which 

 founded the Chinese Empire. It was War which un- 



