text:  Nor is the alarming nature of the prospect diminished by the reflection that this astonishing increase in human depravity has taken place during a period of unexampled prosperity and unprecedented progress during which the produce of the national industry had tripled and the labours of the husbandman kept pace with the vast increase in the population they were to feed--in which the British empire carried its victorious arms into every quarter of the globe and colonies sprang up on all sides with unheard-of rapidity--in which a hundred thousand emigrants came ultimately to migrate every year from the parent state into the new regions conquered by its arms or discovered by its adventure