Wisdom and Folly.
We were much struck with the observation of a distinguished gentleman, yesterday, who said that
Pope had struck off the characteristics of the
English Government in that famous line devoted to Lord Bacon, in which he is described as
‘"The wisest, brightest,
meanest of mankind."’
He supported his
dictum somewhat after the following fashion: For a very wise purpose, as it appeared, no doubt, to them, the
British Government determined to allow a kindred race to run the risk of being overrun, slaughtered, and eventually crushed, by the vilest congregation of nationalities that heaven, in its wrath, ever permitted to cumber and curse the earth.
The motive was purely selfish, being nothing less than a desire to monopolize all the cotton of the earth.
With this object in view, they permitted this war to go on, and refused to raise a blockade which had been run by at least five hundred ships, and was therefore totally inefficient within the terms of the treaty of
Paris.
But mark the sequel.
This war brought out a monster ship, which can be worked by landsmen as well as sailors, and which of itself is able to destroy all the boasted wooden walls of Old England.
Britannia, therefore, no longer rules the waves.
Her journals are already impressing upon her rulers, the necessity of laying aside her wooden men-of-war forever.
The Emperor of the
French will in future, should he feel so inclined, have it in his power to invade her whenever he may think proper.
He has nothing to do but to build these
iron ships, and to man them with his conscripts.--The skill and valor of English sailors is no longer of any value in maintaining the dominion of the sea. It is as though the straits of
Dover were dried up.
France can always man twice the number of
iron ships that
England can. From
Toulon she can realize the dream of Louis XIV.
and the first
Napoleon.
She can make the Mediterranean a
French Lake.
From the fact that the
Monitor is a good sea-boat, it may be inferred that any number of invulnerable vessels may be made so. What becomes, then, of
India?
What of the Cape?
What of
Australia?--Upon all of these.
England depends for establishing a monopoly of the cotton production.
Apart from cotton, however, what becomes of
Gibraltar, and
Malta, and last of all, but by far most important, what becomes of
Ireland?
This war will teach
England that selfishnes is a two-edged sword, and that it fully as often wounds the person who expects to benefit by it, as the person against whom it was designed to operate.
