History of the National progress - Continued. page 5

Such, then, was the condition of the commerce, such the wealth and prosperity of Great Britain and Ireland, thirty years before the close of the nineteenth century. The figures and numbers in which the unexampled progress of the preceding twenty years is expressed, are not the result of mere conjecture. In almost all cases they are the records of the national business as taken down, checked, and revised with all the care which it was in the power of the most powerful of states to bestow upon them. How the wonderful prosperity they demonstrate has been brought about, what are the principal material agents which have helped to accelerate the vast and rapid progress of recent years - these are the questions we have now to consider.