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three counties, and a population of about two and a half millions. Ireland, which was conquered by the English at an early period, but not united under the same legislative system till 1800, contains thirty-two counties, and a population of nine millions.

The oldest existing colonies of Britain are those of the West Indies, chiefly consisting of a series of islands stretching across the Great Bay which nearly divides North from South America. Jamaica, the largest and most important of these islands, contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, of which only about thirty-seven thousand are white people; the rest being negroes, the most of whom were originally slave laborers. Barbadoes, Trinidad, and the other West India colonies, are less populous; the full amount being, in each case, divided in about the same proportions between blacks and whites.

Half a million of square miles of the peninsula of Hindostan, containing a population of a hundred millions, have, in the course of the last century and the present, fallen under the power of the association of English merchants, called the East India Company, who, by virtue of a charter from the government, administer the affairs of the natives, in whose revenue they enjoy a source of vast wealth. A still larger portion of Hindostan is under the protection, but not the direct government, of the company.

Goods to the value of four millions of pounds are annually exported from Britain to the East Indies; while goods to the value of above six millions of pounds are imported from the East Indies to Britain. A revenue of above twenty

two millions of pounds is annually drawn from that country. A dependency of so much territorial value, so numerous a population, and so large a revenue, was never before possessed by any country. It is, perhaps, a question, whether the prosperity and happiness of the people have been greatly advanced by their British rulers.

Next in importance and antiquity among the British dependencies, are the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and the colonies of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward's Island, Newfoundland and New Brunswick; all of which form portions of North America. These colonies are chiefly occupied by British emigrants and their descendants; the total population being somewhat more than a million, and rapidly increasing.

In New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, and other Australian colonies, Britain possesses a million and a half of square miles, occupied by a white population of about fifty thousand. At the Cape of Good Hope and other possessions in Africa, she has ninety thousand square miles, and a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. In the Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, formerly a slave colony, there is a population of a hundred thousand, mostly negroes. The Ionian Islands, Malta, and Gibraltar, in the Mediterranean, and the small islands of Ascension and St. Helena, in the Atlantic Ocean, complete the sum of the British foreign possessions.

The importance attained by the British in the scale of nations, appears to depend mainly upon two features of the national character-their intellectual and moral advancement, and their extraor

dinary industry and skill in producing articles of necessity and luxury, as well as their dexterity in the commerce by which these are diffused over the world. The genuine British character, taken all in all, is one of probity, intelligence and activity, and is adapted to the attainment of suprém. acy and the establishment of good institutions.

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THE government of this large, and industrious, and wealthy kingdom, is conducted according to the forms and principles which have come into operation in the course of the events already alluded to.

The EXECUTIVE-that is, the powers by which the laws are enforced-is entrusted by the nation to an hereditary monarch.

The LEGISLATURE—that is, the power by which the laws are created-consists of three distinct but combined powers: 1, a House of Commons, composed of six hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen, elected by certain portions of the people; 2, a House of Peers, composed of the hereditary nobles of England, the English archbishops and bishops, a certain number of lords representing the Scottish and Irish peerage, and a certain number of spiritual lords representing the Irish hierarchy; and finally, 3, the King.

The House of Commons and Peers, otherwise styled the lower and upper houses, form a compound deliberative body, called Parliament, which is liable to be called together, and prorogued or dissolved at the king's pleasure.

These law-making and law-executing powers combine, in one system, called the British Constitution, a variety of political principles, which are usually found acting singly. The House of Commons, as a partial representation of the people, may be said to be founded on the principles of democracy; or people sovereignty. The House of Peers, which is independent of direct popular control, presents the principle of aristocracy, or noble sovereignty, while the king contributes the monarchical principle, or sovereignty of one.

It must be allowed, in explanation of a system so extraordinary, that the particular portions of the constitution have not always borne the same relative power, and that principles naturally so inconsistent, could never perhaps have been combined

at all, except by a process extending over many ages, and which has, on the whole, secured the sanction of the people.

In early times, the king possessed the chief influence, while the parliament, in general, was rather an obsequious council of the sovereign, than an independent body. At the revolution of 1688, the strength of the monarchy was diminished by a breach of the hereditary line, and the Parliament became the predominant power. As the nobility and superior gentry had then the chief influence in both houses of Parliament, it might be said that the aristocratic principle had become ascendent.

It continued to be so, till the passing of the reform bill, in 1832, when, the power of electing the majority of the House of Commons being extended to the middle classes of the people, the democratic principle was, for the first time, brought into a considerable degree of force.

The House of Commons is composed of four hundred and seventy-one members for England, of whom three hundred and twenty-four are for boroughs, one hundred and forty-three for counties, and four for universities; twenty-nine members for Wales, of whom fourteen are for boroughs, and fifteen for counties; one hundred and five for Ireland, of whom thirty-nine are for boroughs, sixty-four for counties, and two for the Dublin university; and fifty-three for Scotland, of whom twenty-three are for cities and boroughs, and thirty for counties: six hundred and fifty-eight in all.

The constituency, that is the body of voters by which the members are elected, is about twelve hundred thousand in number, or one twentieth of the whole population. The qualifications of an

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