1864. An earthenware vase filled with brass coins of the "lower empire," was found in Hooley Wood, near Heywood, on the estate of James Fenton, Esq., in 1856.

The identity of the route of the tenth Iter of Antonine is a subject of too much importance to be discussed at the close of a paper like the present. I therefore reserve it for a future communication. It is sufficient for my present purpose to state that the recent excavations at Bury have thrown no additional light upon the subject, excepting in so far as the negative evidence obtained is, as far as it goes, confirmatory of the view propounded by Dr. Robson, myself, and others, that the route of the tenth Iter passed through Warrington, Wigan, and Preston to Lancaster, and not through Manchester, Bury, and Ribchester to Overborough, as conjectured by the elder antiquaries.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NATIONAL GROWTH:

A CHAPTER IN CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.

By David Buxton, F.R.S.L., Hon. Secretary.

(READ 5TH MARCH, 1868.)

IT is always an interesting subject of consideration to think how largely our English character, constitution, and language, are the products of the combination of so many and various elements. Physiologically, the living generation of men embody and represent the qualities and properties of all past generations. Psychologically, the individual mind retains and contains the effect of all the influences which have ever been brought to bear upon its developement, growth and action. The healthy frame-the corpus sanus-of the mature man, represents the training, the sustenance, and the exercise of a life. The perfect picture of the master-hand, is the final result of the life-long study, practice, and skill of the artist. A man may dispose of his books, without loss to himself, when he has so read them as to have informed his own mind and formed his own character by them :-when he has so received and digested their contents as to have absorbed them, and they have become assimilated with, and form part of, his own mental constitution. Our native tongue represents the union of almost every language which has ever been written or spoken. On the basement of aboriginal speech, has been built up, layer upon layer, the languages of Western Europe, the classical tongues of ancient Europe, Hebrew and Sanscrit from a remoter source; and even the barbarous nomenclature of the Western Indians is not wanting. Now, all the analogies which I have thus pointed out apply with perfect truth,

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and great force, to the constitution of the country in which we live. All the multifarious influences, from without and within; the infusion and transfusion of various races; the action, re-action, and counteraction of various social, ecclesiastical, and political forces; the utilization of material products, and the application of scientific discovery; all these, with innumerable other agencies, are embodied and expressed-solidified, I might almost say-in the social and political institutions of the present hour. It will be very interesting, I think, to try to trace some of these influences. to their source, and to observe generally the phenomena which have attended the growth of that wonderful but not altogether unsatisfactory conglomerate, which is known as the British Constitution. And if ever such a theme was interesting, it is surely especially so now. Whether we look East or West-at home or abroad-we see the same signs and tokens everywhere. Accomplished or impending change, -political and social revolutions of the most rapid and sweeping character,-subject races and subordinate classes raised politically to the level of those who have hitherto been above them, the governed becoming the governors—nominally equal, as the sharers in a common franchise, but practically supreme by reason of the excess of numbers: all this (as true, though not avowed, in America as in England) conceded by parties who had to be educated up to the point of concession to a populace who are not educated to the proper use of it. These are the circumstances which give great interest to the consideration of such topics as those I am about to bring before you though it is rather to suggest than to discuss them, that I enter upon my task.

To compare the institutions of the Present and the Past, absolutely, and without reference to date, position and circumstances, is, of course, absurd. To try former institutions by present exigencies, and then to condemn them because they

would be miserably inadequate, and grossly unsuitable now, is neither philosophical nor reasonable.

That which is proper to a state of pupilage must of necessity be cast aside when the man becomes a man, unless he is " content to dwell in [childishness] for ever." And the life of a Nation has its childhood, youth, and maturity as truly as that of the individual man. If therefore we can find that in the days of our Forefathers, institutions were founded and flourished, which had their purpose and served it well; which helped on the progress and the growth of the noble English mind and the great English people: if we discover that when their function was fulfilled they made way for other agencies suitable to the more advanced stage, which had been reached by their means, and that these again were superseded in turn by legitimate and adequate successors, we find all that we have any right to expect: and we have neither right nor reason to grudge the admission of their relative, and even of their independent, absolute value.

I hope I have outgrown the romanticism which would dwell complacently upon all those aspects of the Past which both the Poet and the Novelist have so often and so admirably invested in unreal charms. I am no indiscriminating Laudator Temporis acti. I remember well the text, if not much of a sermon I once heard from the lips of one of the greatest of English Preachers-Mr. Melvill. "Say not thou-What is "the cause that the former days were better than these? for "thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this." (Eccl. vii. 10.)

The comparison of the Present with the Past is always interesting but it will assuredly be both disappointing and very unprofitable if, as is sometimes done, even unconsciously, we carry with us as the test of merit, and standard of value, the present status and condition of society. It may be argued, and argued truly, that present institutions are a vast improvement upon those of our forefathers. It is so and we enjoy

the benefit of it. Yet to them, our improved and highlydeveloped institutions would have been no benefit:-quite the reverse. The greatest advantage which political institutions of any age, or date, or country, can possess, is fitness and of this fitness one of the chief elements is that they be exactly opportune. If those of our predecessors were so, that is enough. Their measure was proper to their height: our's is to our's. It may be a homely illustration, but it is no inapt one-the man's clothes would be both a disfigurement and an incumbrance to the growing stripling: as the boy's would be ridiculous on the man. Each, therefore, to his own: -Suum cuique. Compare each need with that which was meant to satisfy it. The boy's clothes will well befit the boy, as the man's the man :-but any attempt to make an interchange would, I fear, too aptly symbolize the confusion which would follow from putting political privileges into hands unable, because untrained, to wield them. Man is not made in sections, and put together like a piece of machinery: he grows, and his growth is not by leaps, per saltem, but proceeds insensibly. So all healthy political growth must come from the expansion of the native energy within and not to be tacked on, or forced on from without.

Our home is not Arcadia, or Utopia, but England. Our constitution is a frightful and unsightly conglomerate; an indefensible anomaly, on paper, but it works admirably well in practice. When we find ourselves in the realms of the constitution-mongers, as Touchstone did in the Forest of Arden, we may well exclaim, with him :-" Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I when I was at home I was in a better place."

I submit, therefore, that the proper test to be applied to all political institutions is suitability. Tried by this test-the only fair one-the institutions of old England were by no means so defective as a superficial observer might be led to suppose. They had a purpose to fulfil, and they fulfilled it