The martial-looking migration of a flock of wild ducks appears, to the eye of a beholder, to be directed by a leader that wings the way to the distant lake or marsh, and the stately pace of the gander, at the head of his fellows as they stalk over the common, conveys the idea of aristocratic authority over the hissing flock;-but in this there is a great delusion: for the solemn-looking goose is no more the leader, in the proper sense of the word, than the drum-major, strutting stiff and erect in the front of his band, is the commander of the regiment.

When a cow, or a ewe, drops its calf or its lamb in the field, some favourable circumstance, perhaps, gives to the new-born creature an advantage which the young, born of other mothers at the same time, do not enjoy; this circumstance may be independent of any original better health or superior strength of the parents. Accident may cast the birth in a spot where there is a greater abundance of pasture, or a warmer and more sheltered part of the field may bring quicker to maturity the new-born animal. The advantage thus gained at the birth, will be retained by the animal. as it grows up, and will enable it to keep the lead and secure the first pickings of the herbage as it moves along in the field. Hence the preservation and increase of its vigour, and hence the solution of the secret of leaders, or despots, among the inferior animals. "The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands."

When any race of animals are let alone, and not disturbed in the search of food and pursuit of happiness, they will increase in numbers, and spread to the full extent of the capabilities afforded by nature. The race of sparrows, that now are found in all the countries of Europe,

Proverbs xxx. 27.

must have descended from the few pairs that flew out of the ark; and so on with all other animals.

But, man steps forward, and asserts his sway-the wild beasts flee from his approach, and retire farther into the wilderness, and, in the course of time, perish from the land: a wolf in a state of nature is not now to be found on the British islands. The tameable, or domestic animals, would have shared the same fate with the wild ones, had it not been for their usefulness. The horse is caught by the human biped-is tamed through food-a bridle is put into his mouth-and the proudest of all animals bends his neck to the hand of man.

CHAP. II.

FOOD IS POWER.

ARISTOCRATIC DOMINION AND SACERDOTAL INFLUENCE REST ENTIRELY OR PARTLY, ON THE CONTROL OF THE SUBSISTENCE OF THEIR VASSALS AND VOTARIES.

MAN is endowed with higher powers, for good or evil, than the animals born only to consume the fruits of the earth, and, in his social state, has, through the bad part of his nature, in all his career, striven to acquire, maintain, and extend his power over the fellows of his own Man subdues and rules his fellow-man through the mouth, like the horse. The idiom of language confirms this idea, as we say "to curb a people or a nation," and "to bridle an ambitious man." History is to be blamed, if, in the course of these observations, man should appear too much in the character either of the enslaved or the enslaver.

race.

The soil is the source whence food, and everything that conduces to the enjoyment of life, is derived; and, in the occupation of the earth's surface, there is a striking contrast between the struggles, the violence, and fraud of men, and the quiet migrations and settlements of the irrational animals.

Man knows that food is the immediate and continued necessity of his nature, and by securing to himself the source of an abundant supply, he augments his own enjoyments,

and possesses the means of controlling other men destitute of similar advantages. One man who can withhold, for forty-eight hours, the food of another man, or of a thousand, or a million of men, retains the one man or the million under his subjection. This is the grand secret of society as unfolded in history down through the long period of six thousand years. Man controls his fellow-man by restraining or keeping back his subsistence.* On this principle is founded power of every kind-military despotism, oligarchical dominion, and, to a great degree, sacerdotal influence over the bodies and minds of men. On it, Nimrod established the first great empire on earth, and in the present day it is developed to a fearful extent, in the usurpation of the British aristocratic power over the subsistence and the industry of a great nation. It is not easily detected on reading the florid pages of general or national history. In early ages, poets were generally the historians or annalists of their times; and they were either not aware of the moving springs of action in men, or they followed the

At the outstart it may be proper to meet an objection which appears to rest on the definition and description of Power given here. It may perhaps be said, that the definition will apply to the authority of a parent over his children, or to that of a master over his domestic servants, as well as to the power of a government over its subjects. Unnatural parents and cruel masters may go great lengths to starve their children and dependents, but all these classes are themselves subject to the supreme authority of the government, and the laws regulate the connection between them. The natural relation between parent and child does not supersede the civil law; and the connection between master and servant is a contract, which the latter can compel the former to fulfil. In a country there are many masters and the servant if not pleased with one can remove to another; but within the same boundaries there cannot exist contemporaneously two governments executing one law.

A government will not brook a rival: a country is in a state of revolution or anarchy, when two powers claim the control of the subsistence of its inhabitants.

bent of their own genius in describing the picturesque and romantic incidents of wars and revolutions. Regular historians are commonly the companions or the protegés of the men possessed of power, and their narrations are rather the accounts of the actions of their patrons, than statements of the effects of those actions on the great mass of the people among whom they take place. History is almost exclusively filled with the lives and doings of princes— the changes of dynasties-and the proceedings of warriors; but these are descriptions of the parties who hold in their hands the power over subsistence, or narratives of the struggles among a few men to gain possession of that

power.

In barbarous ages, the lands or the means of subsistence of a people are invaded, and seized with open violence, by the invaders, who again are controlled in the division of the conquered territory by their own leaders. The irruption of the northern barbarians into the south of Europe, and the conquest and seizure of the lands of England by William the Conqueror, may be adduced as instances of unmitigated violence used in the control of subsistence.

In the seizure and occupation of the waste-lands, as practised in the modern system of colonization, we have the principle in full vigour. Throughout America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, we behold a struggle going on among men to seize the soil and to prevent others from encroaching on it. The miserable native inhabitants. are actually crushed, or extirpated, in the scramble of the new race of invaders; but a semblance of decency is preserved, by throwing down to the savages the smallest piece of money as the price of their lands, and when the seizure is completed, the invaders turn round to the fellows of their