But let us substitute distance of space for distance of time; and, instead of comparing situations of the same country at different periods, compare different countries at the same period, and we shall find a still more striking discrepancy.  The inhabitant of South America enjoys a soil and a climate, not superior merely to our own, but combining all the advantages of every climate and soil possessed by the remainder of the world.  His valleys have all the exuberance of the tropics, and his mountain-plains unite the temperature of Europe to a fertility of which Europe offers no example.  Nature collects for him, within the space of a morning’s walk, the fruits and vegetables which she has elsewhere separated by thousands of miles.  She has given him inexhaustible forests, has covered his plains with wild cattle and horses, filled his mountains with mineral treasures, and intersected all the eastern face of his country with rivers, to which our Rhine and Danube are merely brooks.  But the possessor of these riches is poor and miserable.  With all the materials of clothing offered to him almost spontaneously, he is ill-clad; with the most productive of soils, he is ill-fed:  though we are told that the labour of a week will there procure subsistence for a year, famines are of frequent occurrence; the hut of the Indian, and the residence of the landed proprietor, are alike destitute of furniture and convenience; and South America, helpless and indigent with all her natural advantages, seems to rely for support and improvement on a very small portion of the surplus wealth of England.

It is impossible to consider these phenomena without feeling anxious to account for them; to discover whether they are occasioned by circumstances unsusceptible of investigation or regulation, or by causes which can be ascertained, and may be within human control.  To us, as Englishmen, it is of still deeper interest to inquire whether the causes of our superiority are still in operation, and whether their force is capable of being increased or diminished; whether England has run her full career of wealth and improvement, but stands safe where she is; or, whether to remain stationary is impossible, and it depends on her institutions and her habits, on her government, and on her people, whether she shall recede or continue to advance.

The answer to all these questions must be sought in the science which teaches in what wealth consists, by what agents it is produced, and according to what laws it is distributed, and what are the institutions and customs by which production may be facilitated, and distribution regulated, so as to give the largest possible amount of wealth to each individual.  And this science is Political Economy.—­Senior’s Lecture on Political Economy.

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PROLONGING LIFE.