The foregoing description of semi-barbarous life may seem to portray it in some attractive colours, so that indolent and licentious persons might ask:  Is it not preferable to our sophisticated state of society?  We are not judges of other people’s taste, but we can see in it nothing desirable.  Its evils are numerous and very great.  It is a dearth or death of the soul, and of all that which truly constitutes man an intelligent being, aiming at mental progress.  Again, it is intimately connected with a state of slavery, with the degradation of females, and with polygamy—­three great moral evils, the sources of endless rapine, injustice, and misery.  Famine also frequently prevails, and is a dreadful scourge, even compelling mothers to sell some of their children that they may save the rest.  For in such an uncertain state of society, no one cares to lay up for the future, as his hordes would only incur the greater risk of being pillaged and destroyed.

THE COMMERCIAL PORTS OF ENGLAND.

A return has just been made, by order of parliament, which shews that Liverpool is now the greatest port in the British Empire in the value of its exports and the extent of its foreign commerce.  Being the first port in the British Empire, it is the first port in the world.  New York is the only place out of Great Britain which can at all compare with the extent of its commerce.  New York is the Liverpool of America, as Liverpool is the New York of Europe.  The trade of those two ports is reciprocal.  The raw produce of America, shipped in New York, forms the mass of the imports of Liverpool; the manufactures of England, shipped at Liverpool, form the mass of the imports of New York.  The two ports are, together, the gates or doors of entry between the Old World and the New.  On examining the return just made, it appears that the value of the exports of Liverpool in the year 1850 amounted to nearly L.35,000,000 sterling (L.34,891,847), or considerably more than one-half of the total value of the exports of the three kingdoms for that year.  This wonderful export-trade of Liverpool is partly the result of the great mineral riches of Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire; partly of the matchless ingenuity and untiring industry of the population of those counties; partly of a multitude of canals and railways, spreading from Liverpool to all parts of England and the richest parts of Wales; partly to Liverpool being the commercial centre of the three kingdoms; and partly to the fact that very nearly L.12,000,000 have been expended in Liverpool, and more than L.12,000,000 in the river Mersey, in converting a stormy estuary and an unsafe anchorage into the most perfect port ever formed by the skill of man.  On comparing the respective amounts of the tonnage of Liverpool and London, it appears at first impossible to account for the fact that the shipping of Liverpool