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pete with the lightning, for the Telegraph flies as rapidly as thought itself. Labour, a mighty magician, walks forth into a region uninhabited and waste; he looks earnestly at the scene, so quiet in its desolation; then waving his wonder-working wand, those dreary valleys smile with golden harvests; those barren mountains' slopes are clothed with foliage; the furnace blazes; the anvil rings; the busy wheel whirls round; the town appears; the mart of commerce, the hall of science, the temple of religion, rear high their lofty fronts; a forest of masts gay with varied pennons, rises from the harbour; representatives of far-off regions make it their resort; Science enlists the elements of earth and heaven in its service; Art, awaking, clothes its strength with beauty; Civilization smiles ; Liberty is glad; Humanity rejoices; Piety exults-for the voice of industry and gladness is heard on every side.

Working men! walk worthy of your vocation! You have a noble escutcheon; disgrace it not! There is nothing really mean and low but sin! Stoop not from your lofty throne to defile yourselves by contamination with intemperance, licentiousness, or any form of evil. Labour allied with virtue, may look up to heaven and not blush, while all worldly dignities, prostituted to vice, will leave their owner without a corner of the universe in which to hide his shame. You will most successfully prove the honour of toil by illustrating in your own persons its alliance with a sober, righteous, and godly life. Be ye sure of this, that the man of toil who works in a spirit of obedient, loving homage to God, does no less than Cherubim and Seraphim in their loftiest flights and holiest songs!

Yes, in the search after true dignity, you may point me to the sceptred prince, ruling over mighty empires; to the lord of broad acres teeming with fertility; or the owner of coffers bursting with gold; you may tell me of them or of learning, of the historian or of the philosopher, the poet or the artist; and while prompt to render such men all the honour which in varying degrees may be their due, I would emphatically declare that neither power nor nobility, nor wealth, nor learning, nor genius, nor benevolence, nor all combined, have a monopoly of dignity. I would take you to the dingy office, where day by day the pen plies its weary task, or to the shop, where from early morning till half the world have sunk to sleep, the necessities and luxuries of life are distributed, with scarce an interval for food, and none for thought I would descend farther I would take you to the ploughman plodding along his furrows; to the mechanic throwing the swift shuttle, or tending the busy wheels; to the miner groping his darksome way in the deep caverns of earth; to the man of the trowel, the hammer, or the forge; and if, while he diligently prosecutes his humble toil, he looks up with a brave heart and loving eye to heaven-if in what he does he recognises his God, and expects his wages from on high -if, while thus labouring on earth, he anticipates the rest of heaven, and can say, as did a poor man once, who, when pitied on account of humble lot, said, taking off his hat, "Sir, I am the son of a King, I am a child of God, and when I die, angels will carry me from this

Oh! when I

Union Workhouse direct to the Court of Heaven." have shown you such a spectacle, I will ask-" Is there not dignity

in labour ?"

Work! and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow-
Work! thou shalt ride over care's coming billow-
Lie not down wearied, 'neath woe's weeping willow,-
But work with a stout heart and resolute will!
Work for some good, be it ever so slowly-
Work for some hope-be it ever so lowly-
Work! for all labour is noble and holy!

BENJAMIN DISRAELI ON THE DEATH OF
WELLINGTON.

THE Chancellor of the Exchequer rose, and while the House lent him its deepest attention, spoke as follows:

"The House of Commons is called upon to-night to fulfil a sorrowful, but a noble duty. It has to recognise, in the face of the country, and of the civilized world, the loss of the most illustrious of our citizens, and to offer to the ashes of the great departed the solemn anguish of a bereaved nation. The princely personag who has left us was born in an age more fertile of great events than any period of recorded time. Of these vast incidents the most conspicuous were his own deeds, and these were performed with the smallest means, and in defiance of the greatest obstacles. He was therefore, not only a great man, but the greatest man of a great age. Amid the chaos and conflagration which attended the end of the last century there rose one of those beings who seem born to master mankind. It is not too much to say that Napoleon combined the imperial ardour of Alexander with the strategy of Hannibal. The kings of the earth fell before his fiery and subtile genius, and at the head of all the power of Europe, he denounced destruction to the only land that dared to be free. The Providential superintendence of this world seems seldom more manifest than in the dispensation which ordained that the French Emperor and Wellesley should be born in the same year: that in the same year they should have embraced the same profession; and that natives of distant islands, they should both have sought their military education in that illustrious land which each in his turn was destined to subjugate. During the long struggle for our freedom, our glory, I may say our existence, Wellesley fought and won fifteen pitched battles, all of the highest class-concluding with one of those crowning victories which give a colour and aspect to history. During this period that can be said of him which can be said of no other captain-that he captured three thousand cannon from the enemy, and never lost a single gun. The greatness of his exploits was only equalled by the difficulties he overcame. He had to encounter at the same time a feeble Government, a factious Opposition, and a distrustful people, scandalous allies, and the most powerful enemy in

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the world. He gained victories with starving troops, and carried on sieges without tools; and, as if to complete the fatality which in this sense always awaited him, when he had succeeded in creating an army worthy of Roman legions, and of himself, this invincible host was broken up on the eve of the greatest conjuncture of his life, and he entered the field of Waterloo with raw levies and discomfited allies.

"But the star of Wellesley never paled. He has been called fortunate, for fortune is a divinity that ever favours those who are alike sagacious and intrepid, inventive and patient. It was his character that created his career. This alike achieved his exploits and guarded him from vicissitudes. It was his sublime self-control that regulated his lofty fate. It has been the fashion of late years to disparage the military character. Forty years of peace have hardly qualified us to be aware how considerable and how complex are the qualities which are necessary for the formation of a great general. It is not enough to say that he must be an engineer, a geographer, learned in human nature, adroit in managing mankind; that he must be able to perform the highest duties of a minister of state, and sink to the humblest offices of a commissary and a clerk; but he has to display all this knowledge and he must do all these things at the same time, and under extraordinary circumstances. At the same moment he must think of the eve and the morrow-of his flanks and of his reserves; he must carry with him ammunition, provisions, hospitals; he must calculate at the same time the state of the weather and the moral qualities of man; and all these elements, which are perpetually changing, he must combine amid overwhelming cold or overpowering heat: sometimes amid famine, often amid the thunder of artillery. Behind all this, too, is the ever-present image of his country, and the dreadful alternative whether that country is to receive him with cypress or laurel. But all these conflicting ideas must be driven from the mind of the military leader, for he must think-and not only think-he must think with the rapidity of lightning, for on a moment more or less, depends the fate of the finest combination, and on a moment more or less, depends glory or shame. Doubtless, all this may be done in an ordinary manner by an ordinary man; as we see every day of our lives ordinary men making successful Ministers of State successful speakers, successful authors. But to do all this with genius is sublime. Doubtless, to think deeply and clearly in the recess of a Cabinet is a fine intellectual demonstration, but to think with equal depth and equal clearness amid bullets is the most complete exercise of the human faculties. Although the military career of the Duke of Wellington fills so large a space in history, it was only a comparatively small section of his prolonged and illustrious life. Only eight years elapsed from Vimiera to Waterloo, and from the date of his first commission to the last cannon-shot on the field of battle scarcely twenty years can be counted. After all his triumphs he was destined for another career, and, if not in the prime, certainly in the perfection of manhood, he commenced a civil career

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scarcely less eminent than those military achievements which will live for ever in history. Thrice was he the Ambassador of his Sovereign to those great historic congresses that settled the affairs of Europe; twice was he Secretary of State; twice was he Commander-in-Chief; and once he was Prime Minister of England. His labours for his country lasted to the end. A few months ago he favoured the present advisers of the Crown with his thoughts on the Burmese War, expressed in a state paper characterized by all his sagacity and experience; and he died the active chieftain of that famous army to which he has left the tradition of his glory.

"There was one passage in the life of the Duke of Wellington which should hardly be passed unnoticed on such an occasion, and in such a scene as this. It is our pride that he was one of ourselves; it is our pride that Sir Arthur Wellesley sat upon these benches. Tested by the ambition and the success of ordinary men, his career here, though brief, was distinguished. He entered Royal Councils and held a high ministerial post. But his House of Commons success must not be measured by his seat at the Privy Council and his Irish Secretaryship. He achieved a success here which the greatest ministers and the most brilliant orators can never hope to rival. That was a parliamentary success unequalled when he rose in his seat to receive the thanks of Mr. Speaker for a glorious victory; or, later still, when he appeared at the bar of this House, and received, Sir, from one of your predecessors, in memorable language, the thanks of a grateful country for accumulated triumphs. There is one consolation which all Englishmen must feel under this bereavement. It is, that they were so well and so completely acquainted with this great man. Never did a person of such mark live so long, and so much in the public eye.

"To complete all, that we might have a perfect idea of this sovereign master of duty in all his manifold offices, he himself gave us a collection of administrative and military literature which no age and no country can rival; and, fortunate in all things, Wellesley found in his lifetime an historian whose immortal page already ranks with the classics of that land which Wellesley saved. The Duke of Wellington left to his countrymen a great legacy greater even than his glory. He left them the contemplation of his character. I will not say his conduct revived the sense of duty in England. I would not say that of our country. But that his conduct inspired public life with a purer and more masculine tone I cannot doubt. His career rebukes restless vanity, and reprimands the irregular ebullitions of a morbid egotism. I doubt not that, among all orders of Englishmen, from those with the highest responsibilities of our society to those who perform the humblest duties, I dare say there is not a man who in his toil and his perplexity has not sometimes thought of the duke and found in his example support and solace. Though he lived so much in the hearts and minds of his countrymen-though he occupied such eminent posts and fulfilled such august duties-it was not till he died that we felt what a space he filled in the feelings and thoughts of the people of England.

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Never was the influence of real greatness more completely asserted than on his decease. In an age whose boast of intellectual equality flatters all our self-complacencies, the world suddenly acknowledged that it had lost the greatest of men; in an age of utility the most industrious and common-sense people in the world could find no vent for their woe and no representative for their sorrow but the solemnity of a pageant; and we-we who have met here for such different purposes-to investigate the sources of the wealth of nations, to enter into statistical research, and to encounter each other in fiscal controversy-we present to the world the most sublime and touching spectacle that human circumstances can well produce -the spectacle of a Senate mourning a Hero!"

LORD BROUGHAM'S SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.

We stand in a truly critical position. If we reject the bill through fear of being thought to be intimidated, we may lead the life of retirement and quiet, but the hearts of the millions of our fellowcitizens are gone for ever; their affections are estranged; we, and our order and its privileges, are the objects of the people's hatred, as the only obstacles which stand between them and the gratification of their most passionate desire. The whole body of the aristocracy must expect to share this fate, and be exposed to feelings such as these. For I hear it constantly said that the bill is rejected by all the aristocracy. Favour, and a good number of supporters, our adversaries allow it has among the people; the ministers, too, are for it; but the aristocracy, say they, is strenuously opposed to it. I broadly deny this assertion. What! my lords, the aristocracy set themselves in a mass against the people; they who sprang from the people are inseparably connected with the people-are supported by the people are the natural chiefs of the people? They set themselves against the people, for whom peers are ennobled, bishops consecrated, kings anointed, the people, to serve whom Parliament itself has an existence, and the monarchy and all its institutions are constituted, and without whom none of them could exist for an hour? This assertion of unreflecting men is too monstrous to be endured. As a member of this House, I deny it with indignation -I repel it with scorn, as a calumny upon us all. And yet there are those who, even within these walls, speak of the bill augmenting so much the strength of the democracy as to endanger the other orders of the state; and so they charge its authors with promoting anarchy and rapine. Why, my lords, have its authors nothing to fear from democratic spoliation? The fact is, that there are members of the present cabinet who possess, one or two of them alone, far more property than any two administrations within my recollection; and all of them have ample wealth. I need hardly say, include not myself, who have little or none. But even of myself

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