But bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and other ferocious amusements, have now departed.  Even the village stocks have rotted out.  Drunkenness has become disreputable.  The “good old times” have departed, we hope never to return.  The labourer has now other resources beside the public-house.  There are exhibitions and people’s parks, steamboats and railways, reading-rooms and coffee-rooms, museums, gardens, and cheap concerts.  In place of the disgusting old amusements, there has come a healthier, sounder life, greater enlightenment, more general sobriety, and a humaner spirit.  We have in a hundred years outgrown many of our savage tendencies.  We are not less brave as a people, though less brutal.  We are quite as manly, though much less gross.  Manners are more refined, yet as a people we have not lost our pluck, energy, and endurance.  We respect ourselves more, and as a nation we have become more respected.  We now think with shame of the manners of a hundred years ago.

The achievements of which England has most reason to be proud, have been accomplished during the last hundred years.  English slaves have been emancipated, both at home and abroad.  Impressment has been done away with.  Parliamentary representation has been conferred upon all classes of the people.  The Corn Laws have been abolished.  Free trade has been established.  Our ports are now open to the whole world.

And then, see what our inventors have accomplished!  James Watt invented the steam-engine, which in a few years created a large number of new industries, and gave employment to immense numbers of people.  Henry Cort invented the puddling-process, and enabled England to rely upon its own stores of iron, instead of depending upon foreign and perhaps hostile countries.  All the docks and harbours round the English coast have been formed during the present century.  The steamboat, the railway, and the telegraph have only been invented and applied during the last fifty years.

With respect to the charge made against the English workman as to the “sluriness, swiftness, and mendacity” of his work, it is simply impossible that this should be so.  Our ports are free and open to the world; and if Frenchmen, Germans, Belgians, or Americans could execute better work than Englishmen, we should not only cease to export, but also lose our home trade.  The foreigner is now free to undersell us, if he can, in our own markets.

It was in the perfect confidence that Englishmen were the best and most honest workers in the world, that free trade was established.  Should we ever become a shoddy manufacturing people, free trade will probably be abolished; and we shall then impose prohibitory duties upon foreign manufactures.  But is it not the fact that every year sees an increase in the exports of English goods,—­that English workmanship is not considered the worst, but the best, in the general markets of the world,—­and that numerous foreign makers place an English mark upon their productions in order to ensure their sale?