We went over the whole of Mill's articles in the Encyclopedia, over the more popular works of Bentham, and thence we plunged into the recesses of political economy. I know not why this study has been termed uninteresting. No sooner had I entered about its consideration, than I could scarcely tear myself from it. Never from that moment to this have I ceased to pay it the most constant attention … [A chief aim of its study is to demonstrate] how inseparably allied is the great science of public policy with that of private morality.

This yearning after the distant and the unseen is a common propensity of our nature; and how much is the force of that ‘secret impulse’ cherished and strengthened in the minds of us Englishmen, by all the associations in the midst of which we are educated! Masters of every sea, and colonists of every shore, there is scarcely a nook which our industry has not rendered accessible, scarcely a region to which the eye can wander in the map, in which we have not some object of national interest—some factory for our trade, some settlement of our citizens. It is a sort of instinctive feeling to us all, that the destiny of our name and nation is not here, in the narrow island which we occupy; that the spirit of England is volatile, not fixed; that it lives in our language, our commerce, our industry, in all those channels of inter-communication by which we embrace and connect the vast multitude of states, both civilised and uncivilised, throughout the world.