Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/269

 ever, government went on much as before, there being no grounds for any disturbance of a revolutionary character. If certain changes had become inevitable in the nature of things, yet the people everywhere were busy, well-provided for, and contented. What had actually been done was only the formal acknowledgment of facts—the abandoning of nominal international distinctions, after the realities had practically ceased.

Our said premier, on first acceding to his high office, had cast a portentous glance ahead upon this main question of the day. Possibly he had not contemplated the final change as being so near at hand as events were presently to show; and still less perhaps that the final triumph to his party should be dealt out by his own instrumentality. But, none the less, it was altogether a most interesting occasion, when he essayed to shadow forth the imminent expectations of all the larger-minded of his countrymen; and, after a sarcastic allusion to the Conservative gloom over that prospect, passed on to the usual survey of the world's condition, progress, and prosperity, a survey which had long been one of the prominent features of premiers' addresses.

In following our England's last premier in this direction, we shall omit his allusions to the grand aspects presented by the scientific progress of his time, because we have in view to take, in our next chapter, one connected glance at this vast subject.