century even still further surpassed the twentieth, than that busy century of comparative progress had done its predecessor the nineteenth.
Let me here, in passing, allude to an apparently trifling incident, which, arising out of the preceding great change in our military or defence system, led us eventually into a practice which became a characteristic national principle. In view of the saving of other military expense, a system was instituted of small fees, or payments, to the youth while under drill. These fees, ere long, were usually credited to a national insurance fund, by which each contributing youth could fall back upon a certain provision for his after necessities or old age. An anticipatory suggestion of some fund of this kind had already been made in the preceding generation, but the plan had not then been found practicable. On this later occasion there was entire success; and the system proved all the more effective from a habit of generous concession, on the part of those who did not need the fund, in favour of those who did.
The political geographer of the nineteenth century could hardly have failed of a curiously busy mind over apparently impending changes. But actual events in this respect rather exemplified the proverb that the unexpected is what always happens. While
