Electronic Enterprises: Looking to the Future

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 edition. Excerpt: ...year with uncertainty and alarm. Amid materials so combustible, amid forces so terrific, ready to explode--with a mass of people, whose most impetuous movements are frequently excited and directed by the most trifling and inconsiderable events, the future of this country--a future rapidly approaching, is assuredly dark and lowering. I have frequently asked the opinion of persons of different ranks, and views, and desires; but, quick and lively as is the imagination of a Frenchman, no one is able even to shape to himself a very definite and decided idea of what is likely to be the solution of the coming question, and through what various forms of experimental being, this unhappy country is destined in the course of the next few years to pass. Men, who acknowledge the hand of a superintending providence, and recognize a supreme Governor of the universe, feel that they can only acquiesce in the wise and gracious dispensations of Him, who can bring order out of confusion, and out of the wild and strong deluge of human passions, can raise a world of peace, and purity, and holiness--a world in which there will be authority without oppression, knowledge without infidelity, liberty without licentiousness, and religion without superstition. If from France we cast our eye across to Switzerland and Italy, and turn round to the various provinces of Germany, we shall find a similar state of uneasiness, though not, with the exception of Rome itself, quite the same amount of pressing emergency and danger. A spirit of giddiness and revolt, has evidently taken hold of the nations, and of infatuation of many of the sovereigns; and the present question appears to be, until men have learnt the just, and reasonable, and safe limits respectively of...