MODERN BARBARIANS VERSUS EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION.
(To TEE EDITOR or EDE " Sreenrort."1
Sra,—On November 2nd, 1852, Macaulay thanked his constituents in Edinburgh for re-electing him a member of the Hones of Commons. The troubles of Europe in 1898 and 1849 were still in everybody's memory. The following extract from his speech should be interesting at the present moment
" You may remember how, with the haired of discontented subjects to their Governments, was mingled the hatred of race to race, and class to class. For myself I stood aghast; and though naturally of a sanguine disposition, I did for one moment doubt whether the progress of society was not about to be arrested—nay, to be soddenly and violently turned back; whether we were not destined to pass in one generation from the civilization of the nineteenth century to the barbarism of the fifth. I remember that Adam Smith and Gibbon had told us that the dark egos were past, never more to return; that modern Europe was in no danger of the fate which had befallen the Roman Empire. The flood, they said, would no more return to corer the earth; and they seemed to reason justly, for they compared the Immense strength of the enlightened part of the world with the weakness of the part which remained savage; and they asked, Whence were to come the Huns and the Vandals who should again destroy civilization? It had not occurred to them that civilization itself might engender the barbarians who should destroy it. It had not occurred to them that in the very heart of great capitals, in the neighbourhood of splendid palaces, and churches, and theatres, and libraries, and museums, vice and ignorance might produce a race of Hone fiercer than those who marched under Altila and of Vandals more bent on destruction than those who followed Genseric."
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