Calendar: 1873-1874 Page 594

594 THE SCHOOL this description It was much more than the mere transfer- ence of the dominion of the country into the hands of foreigners along with the dominion nearly the whole property of the country was torn from its former possessors and seized by the conquerors handful of aliens not only wielded the powers of government and re-cast at will the whole system of the national institutions but the natives were for the most part stripped of their estates as well as of their political rights and driven forth to destitution and beggary The distinction of this conquest was that it proved almost to an unexampled extent one of confiscation and plunder It was not merely the establishment of foreign prince upon the throne but the surrender of the country to swarm of foreign robbers who divided it among them like so much spoil and settling in all parts of it treated the unhappy natives as their thralls ffiot ILatm SjivamrttrS Thy trees fair Windsor now shall leave their woods And half thy forests rush into my floods Bear Britain's thunder and her cross display To the bright regions of the rising day Tempt icy seas where scarce the waters roll Where clearer flames glow round the frozen pole Or under southern skies exalt their sails Led by new stars and borne by spicy gales For me the balm shall bleed the amber flow The coral redden and the ruby glow The pearly shell its lucid globe infold And Phoebus warm the ripening ore to gold The time shall come when free as seas or wind Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind Whole nations enter with each swelling tide And seas but join the regions they divide