554 Taxes on Civilization. 
answet for. Who can doubt that the enormously in- 
creased amourit of nervous disorder is, in the case 
of frequent travellers, in a great degree owing to rail- 
road speed. If steam has improved our manufactures 
by the machinery it works, must we not allow that 
whilst it has saved muscular power it has thrown 
out of employ numbers of skilled operatives, and although 
these things in the march of time right themselves, has 
nevertheless, pro tem, inflicted extreme hardship, and may 
it not be that the rapid rate at which we are now transported 
may have tended to encourage that general fastness in all 
matters which is distinctive of the times? Civilization has 
provided a cheap press which too often panders to the 
worst appetites of the lower orders, and retails poison. We 
have to credit the march of civilization with our ironclads, 
with rifled guns, and various other scientific appliances 
of modern warfare, yet the vastly increased means of 
destruction at our disposal, together with the rapidity with 
which a deadly blow can now be struck (witness the cam- 
paign between Prussia and Austria) keeps Europe on the 
gut vive, and causes nations to support immense military 
establishments. If half the ingenuity which has been de- 
voted to the study of the art of killing and to perfect 
its practice had been given to the cultivation of mutual 
good will between nations, we should hear nothing of Lux- 
embourg difficulties, and disarmament would be gradually 
effected ; as it is, civilization has gone the wrong road, and 
in the most cultivated age of the human race Europe is 
bristling with armed men. 
To civilization we owe telegraphy, arid it is a blessing 
that now when continents are connected and brought within 
a few minutes of each other mutual explanations can be 
made and misunderstandings prevented from smouldering, 
and war thus be averted. Still the good is not unmixed, 
as was evidenced during the monetary panic of last year, 
when the wires of the telegraph were abused, and by means 
of lying messages, sent by unscrupulous scoundrels, the 
Agra Bank was pulled down and the peace of mind and 
comfort of hundreds buried in its ruins. It is impossible 
in a short article to touch upon a tithe of the drawbacks 
traceable to civilization, which meet us at every turn, injure 
our health, and mar our happiness. But in spite of their 
number it is satisfactory to feel that Providence has placed 
some barrier.to stem the torrent that would otherwise 
sweep all before it, and we recognise the antidote provided 
