Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/188

 for their rapidly expanding greatness—exhibited every luxury that the planet on which they dwelt could produce. All that the world possessed of rich and rare, of gorgeous and beautiful, to tempt the appetite and delight the eye, to gratify the senses and feast the imagination, was theirs. All the inventions of science, all the resources of art contributed to their enjoyment. The most industrious and ingenious people the world had ever seen, was toiling jfrom morning to night and from night to morning to procure them new pleasures, to produce for them new discoveries in the arts of luxury. And all this rested on a foundation of military and naval force, so great that without much of a metaphor it may be said, their armies covered the earth, their navies swept the ocean.