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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://archive.org/details/blessedareyethatOOcole 
 
& ILm Sttmortf 
 
 ADDRESSED 
 
 TO THE HIGHER AND MIDDLE CLASSES 
 
 ON THE EXISTING 
 
 DISTRESSES AND DISCONTENTS. 
 
"Blessed are ye that sow beside all Waters!" 
 
 A LAY SERMON, 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE 
 
 HIGHER AND MIDDLE CLASSES, 
 
 ON THE EXISTING 
 
 &i&tve$$t$ aitfc Bignmtent** 
 
 Br S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq, 
 
 Eay flil eX^rt^T/re, aviXiricov ovk IvpfiaerE, ave'i,ep£vvr)TOv bv /ecu airopov. 
 Heraclitus apud Theodoret, Vol. iv. p. 716. 
 
 If ye do not hope, ye will not find : for in despairing ye block up the 
 mine at its mouth ! ye extinguish the torch, even when ye are already 
 in the shaft. 
 
 i . - 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR GALE AND FENNER, PATERNOSTER ROW % 
 
 5. M. RICHARDSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE ; AND 
 
 J. HATCHARD, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1817. 
 
GOD AND THE WORLD WE WORSHIP STILL TOGETHER, 
 
 DRAW NOT OUR LAWS TO HIM, BUT HIS TO OURS ; 
 
 UNTRUE TO BOTH, SO PROSPEROUS IN NEITHER, 
 
 THE IMPERFECT WILL BRINGS FORTH BUT BARREN FLOWERS ! 
 
 UNWISE AS ALL DISTRACTED INTERESTS BE, 
 
 STRANGERS TO GOD, FOOLS IN HUMANITY : 
 
 TOO GOOD FOR GREAT THINGS AND TOO GREAT FOR GOOD, 
 
 WHILE STILL "J DARE NOT" WAITS UPON "I WOU'D!" 
 
 S. Curtis, Printer, 
 Camberwell. 
 

 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Fellow-Countrymen ! You I mean, who 
 fill the higher and middle stations of society ! 
 The comforts^ perchance the splendors, that 
 surround you^ designate your rank, but cannot 
 constitute your moral and personal fitness for 
 it. Be it enough for others to know^ that 
 you are its legal — but by what mark shall 
 you stand accredited to your own consciences, 
 as its worthy— possessors ? Not by common 
 sense or common honesty ; for these are 
 equally demanded of all classes, and therefore 
 mere negative qualifications in your rank of 
 life^ or characteristic only by the aggravated 
 ignominy consequent on their absence. Not 
 by genius or splendid talent: for these, as 
 being gifts of Nature, are objects of moral 
 interest for those alone, to whom they have 
 
IV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 been allotted. Nor yet by eminence in 
 learning ; for this supposes such a devotion of 
 time and thought, as would in many cases 
 be incompatible with the claims of active life. 
 Erudition is, doubtless, an ornament, that 
 especially beseemes a high . station : but it is 
 •professional rank only that renders its at- 
 tainment a duty. 
 
 The mark in question must be so far 
 common, that we may be entitled to look 
 for it in you from the mere circumstance 
 pf your situation, and so far distinctive, that 
 it must be such as cannot be expected 
 generally from the inferior classes. Now 
 either there is no such criterion in existence, 
 or the Desideratum is to be found in an 
 habitual consciousness of the ultimate prinr> 
 ciples, to which your opinions are trace" 
 able. The least, that can be demanded of 
 the least favored among you, is an earnest 
 endeavour to walk in the Light of your own 
 knowledge ; and not, as the mass of mankind, 
 by laying hold on the skirts of Custom. Blind 
 followers of a blind and capricious guide, 
 
INTRODUCTION. V 
 
 forced likewise (though oftener, I fear, by their 
 own improvidence, * than by the lowness of 
 of their estate) to consume Life in the means 
 
 * A truth, that should not however be said, save in the 
 spirit of charity, and with the palliating reflection, that 
 this very improvidence has hitherto been, though not the 
 inevitable, yet the natural result of Poverty and the 
 Poor Laws. With what gratitude I venerate my country 
 and its laws, my humble publications from the " Fears IN 
 Solitude" printed in 1798, to the present discourse bear 
 witness. — Yet the Poor Laws and the Revenue ! — if I 
 permitted myself to dwell on these exclusively, I should 
 be tempted to fancy that the domestic seals were put in 
 commission and entrusted to Argus, Briareus, and Cacus, 
 as lords of the commonalty. Alas ! it is easy to see the 
 evil; but to imagine a remedy is difficult in exact pro- 
 portion to the experience and good sense of the seeker. 
 That excellent man, Mr. Perceval, whom I regard as the 
 best and wisest statesman, this country has possessed 
 since the revolution (I judge only from his measures and. 
 the reports of his speeches in parliament : for I never 
 saw him, that I know of) went into the ministry, with the 
 design as well as the wish of abolishing lotteries. I was 
 present at a table, when this intention was announced by 
 a venerable relative of the departed statesman, who loved 
 and honored the man, but widely dissented from him as 
 a politician. Except myself, all present were partizans, 
 of the opposition ; but all avowed their determination 
 on this score alone, as a great moral precedent, to support 
 the new minister. — What was the result ? Two lotteries 
 in the first year instead of one ! The door of (h cabinet 
 has a quality the most opposite to the Ivory Gate of Virgil. 
 It suffers no dreams to pass through it, Alas! a$. far 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of living, the multitude may make the sad 
 confession 
 
 Tempora mutantur : nos et mutamur in illis 
 
 unabashed. But to English Protestants in 
 the enjoyment of a present competency, 
 much more to such as are defended against 
 the anxious Future, it must needs be a grievous 
 dishonor (and not the less grievous, though 
 perhaps less striking, from its frequency) to 
 change with the times, and thus to debase 
 their motives and maxims, the sacred house- 
 as any wide scheme of benevolence is concerned, the 
 inscription over it might seem to be the Dantean 
 
 Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate ! 
 We judge harshly because we expect irrationally. But on 
 the other hand, this disproportion of the power to the 
 wish will, sooner or later, end in that tame acquiescence 
 in things as they are, which is the sad symptom of a 
 moral necrosis commencing. And commence it will, if 
 its causes are not counteracted by the philosophy of his- 
 tory, that is, by history read in the spirit of prophecy ! 
 if they are not overcome by the faith which, still re- 
 kindling hope, still re-enlivens charity. Without the 
 knowledge of Man, the knowledge of Men is a hazardous 
 acquisition. What insight might not our statesmen ac- 
 quire from the study of the Bible merely as history, if 
 only they had been previously accustomed to study history 
 in the same spirit, as that in which good men read the 
 Bible! - 
 
INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 hold of conscience, into slaves and creatures 
 of fashion. Thou therefore art inexcusable, 
 O man ! (Rom. II. i.) if thou dost not give 
 to thyself a reason for the faith that is in 
 thee : if thou dost not thereby learn the safety 
 and the blessedness of that other apostolic 
 precept, Whatsoever ye do, do it in Faith. 
 Your habits of reflection should at least be 
 equal to your opportunities of leisure : and to 
 that which is itself a species of leisure — your 
 immunity from bodily labour, from the voice 
 and lash of the imperious ever-recurring This 
 Day ! Your attention to the objects, that 
 stretch away below you in the living landscape 
 of good and evil, and your researches into 
 their existing or practicable bearings on each 
 other j should be proportional to the elevation 
 that extends and diversifies your prospect. 
 If you possess more than is necessary for 
 your own wants, more than your own wants 
 ought to be felt by you as your own interests. 
 You are pacing on a smooth terrace, which 
 you owe to the happy institutions of your 
 country , — a terrace on the mountain's breast. 
 
viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 To what purpose, by what moral right, if you 
 continue to gaze only on the sod beneath your 
 feet ? Or if converting means into ends and 
 with all your thoughts and efforts absorbed in 
 selfish schemes of climbing cloudward, you 
 turn your back on the wide landscape, and 
 stoop the lower, the higher you ascend. 
 
 The remedial and prospective advantages, 
 that may be rationally anticipated from the 
 habit of contemplating particulars in their 
 universal laws; its tendency at once to fix 
 and to liberalize the morality of private life, 
 at once to produce and enlighten the spirit of 
 public zeal ; and let me add, its especial 
 utility in recalling the origin and primary 
 purport of the term, Generosity,* to the 
 heart and thoughts of a populace tampered 
 with by sophists and incendiaries of the revo- 
 lutionary school ; these advantages I have felt 
 it my duty and have made it my main object 
 
 * A genere : the qualities either supposed natural and 
 instinctive to men of noble race, or such as their rank is 
 calculated to inspire, as disinterestedness, devotion to the 
 service of their friends, clients, &c. frankness, &c. 
 
INTRODUCTION". IX 
 
 to press on your serious attention during the 
 whole period of my literary labors from 
 earliest manhood to the present hour. * 
 Whatever may have been the specific theme 
 of my communications, and whether they re- 
 lated to criticism, politics, or religion, still 
 principles, their subordination, their con- 
 nection, and their application, in all the 
 divisions of our tastes, duties, rules of conduct 
 
 * In testimony" of the fact and no less of the small 
 change, my own public and political principles have 
 undergone, I might appeal to the Conciones ad Populum, 
 delivered at Bristol in the year 1794; but that, though a 
 few copies were printed, they can scarcely be said to 
 have been published. The first of these " Lay-sermons," 
 (which was likewise the firstling of my authorship) I 
 intend to include in the republication or rather the rin- 
 faciamento of the Friend. I prefer the latter word, 
 because every part will be omitted which could not be 
 brought to conclusion and completion within the extent 
 allotted to the work (three volumes of the size of the 
 British Essayists;) their place supplied by new articles; 
 and the whole arranged anew.) The Friend likewise 
 has never been published in the ordinary sense of the 
 term. The numbers printed weekly on stamped paper 
 were sent by the post to a scanty number of sub- 
 scribers and (a sad but important distinction !) to a still 
 scantier number of subscriplionists. — <f>wvavTa crwiroi&w 
 is <5e to Hav ep[xr)v((t)s vaf/££(» 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and schemes of belief, have constituted my 
 chapter of contents. 
 
 It is an unsafe partition^ that divides opinions 
 without principle from unprincipled opinions. 
 If the latter are not followed by correspondent 
 actions^ we are indebted for the escape^ not 
 to the agent himself, but to his habits of 
 education^ to the sympathies of superior rank, 
 to the necessity of character, often, perhaps, 
 to the absence of temptation from providential 
 circumstances or the accident of a gracious 
 Nature. These, indeed, are truths of all 
 times and places; but I seemed to see 
 especial reason for insisting on them in our 
 own times. A long and attentive observation 
 had convinced me, that formerly Men were 
 
 WORSE THAN THEIR PRINCIPLES^ but that 
 
 at present the Principles are worse than 
 the Men. 
 
 Few are sufficiently aware how much 
 reason most of us have^ even as common moral 
 livers^ to thank God for being Englishmen. 
 It would furnish grounds both for humility 
 towards Providence and for increased attach- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 ment to our country, if eacli individual could 
 but see and feel, how large a part of his 
 innocence he owes to his birth, breeding, and 
 residence in Great Britain. The admini- 
 stration of the laws; the almost continual 
 preaching of moral prudence; the number 
 and respectability of our sects ; the pressure of 
 our ranks on each other, with the consequent 
 reserve and watchfulness of demeanor in the 
 superior ranks, and the emulation in the 
 subordinate ; the vast depth, expansion and 
 systematic movements of our trade ; and the 
 consequent inter-dependence, the arterial or 
 nerve-like net-work of property, which make 
 every deviation from outward integrity a 
 calculable loss to the offending individual 
 himself from its mere effects, as obstruction 
 and irregularity ; and lastly, the naturalness 
 of doing as others do : — these and the like 
 influences, peculiar, some in the kind and all 
 in the degree, to this privileged island, are 
 the buttresses, on which our foundationless 
 well-doing is upheld, even as a house of 
 
 c 
 
xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cards, the architecture of our infancy, in which 
 each is supported by all. 
 
 Well then may we pray, give us peace 
 in our time, O Lord! Well for us, if no 
 revolution, or other general visitation, betray 
 the true state of our national morality! 
 But above all, well will it be for us if 
 even now we dare disclose the secret to our 
 own souls! Well will it be for as many 
 of us as have duly reflected on the Prophet's 
 assurance, that we must take root downwards 
 if we would bear fruit upwards; if we 
 would bear fruit, and continue to bear fruit, 
 when the foodful plants that stand straight, 
 only because they grow in company; or 
 whose slender surface-roots owe their whole 
 stedfastness to their intertanglement ; have 
 been beaten down by the continued rains, or 
 whirled aloft by the sudden hurricane ! Nor 
 have we far to seek for whatever it is most 
 important that we should find. The wisdom 
 from above has not ceased for us! 6i The 
 principles of the oracles of God" (Heb. v. 12.) 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 are still uttered from before the altar ! 
 Oracles, which we may consult without 
 cost ! Before an altar, where no sacrifice is 
 required^, but of the vices which unman us ! 
 no victims demanded, but the unclean and 
 animal passions, which we may have suffered 
 to house within us, forgetful of our baptismal 
 dedication — no victim, but the spiritual sloth, 
 or goat, or fox, or hog, which lay waste the 
 vineyard that the Lord had fenced and planted 
 for himself. 
 
 I have endeavored in a previous discourse 
 to persuade the more highly gifted and 
 educated part of my friends and fellow- 
 christians, that as the New Testament sets 
 forth the means and conditions of spiritual 
 convalescence, with all the laws of conscience 
 relative to our future state and permanent 
 Being ; so does the Bible present to us the 
 elements of public prudence, instructing us in 
 the true causes, the surest preventives, and the 
 only cures, of public evils. The authorities of 
 Raleigh, Clarendon and Milton must at least 
 exempt me from the blame of singularity, if 
 
Xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 undeterred by the contradictory charges of 
 paradoxy from one party and of adherence 
 to vulgar and old-fashioned prejudices from 
 the other, I persist in avowing my conviction, 
 that the inspired poets, historians and sen- 
 tentiaries of the Jews, are the clearest 
 teachers of political economy: in short, that 
 their writings* are the Statesman's best 
 
 * To which I should be tempted with the late Edmund 
 Burke to annex that treasure of prudential wisdom, the 
 Ecclesiasticus. I not only yield, however, to the authority 
 of our Church, but, reverence the judgment of its founders 
 in separating this work from the list of the Canonical 
 Books, and in refusing to apply it to the establishment of 
 any doctrine, while they caused it to be " read for example 
 of life and instruction of manners." Excellent, nay, in- 
 valuable, as this book is in the place assigned to it by our 
 Church, that place is justified on the clearest grounds. For 
 not to say that the compiler himself, candidly cautions us 
 against the imperfections of his translation, and its no 
 small difference from the original Hebrew, as it was 
 written by his grandfather, he so expresses himself in 
 his prologue as to exclude all claims to inspiration or 
 divine authority in any other or higher sense than every 
 writer is entitled to make, who having qualified himself 
 by the careful study of the books of other men had 
 been drawn on to write something himself. But of still 
 greater weight, jjraciically, are the objections derived 
 from certain passages of the Book, which savour too 
 plainly of the fancies and prejudices of a jew of 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 Manual^ not only as containing the first 
 principles and ultimate grounds of state-policy 
 whether in prosperous times or in those of 
 danger and distress^ but as supplying likewise 
 the details of their application, and as being 
 a full and spacious repository of precedents 
 and facts in proof. 
 
 Well therefore (again and again I repeat 
 
 Jerusalem : ex. gr. the 25th and 26th verses of chapter L ; 
 and of greater still the objections drawn from other 
 passages, as from chapter 41st. which by implication 
 and obvious inference are nearly tantamount to a denial 
 of a future state, and bear too great a resemblance to 
 the ethics of the Greek poets and orators in the sub- 
 stitution of posthumous fame for a true resurrection, and 
 a consequent personal endurance ; the substitution in short, 
 of a nominal for a real immortality, and lastly from the 
 prudential spirit of the maxims in general, in which 
 prudence is taught too much on its own grounds instead of 
 being recommended as the organ or vehicle of a spiritual 
 principle in its existing worldly relations. Jn short, 
 prudence ceases to be wisdom when it is not to the 
 filial fear of God, and to the sense of the excellence of 
 the divine laws, what the body is to the soul ! Now, in 
 the work of the son of Sirach, prudence is both body 
 and soul. 
 
 It were perhaps to be wished, that this work, and the 
 wisdom of Solomon had alone received the honor of 
 being accompaniments to the inspired writings, and that 
 these should, with a short precautionary preface and a 
 
Xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to you,) well will it be for us if we have pro- 
 vided ourselves from this armory while " yet 
 the day of trouble and of treading down 
 and of perplexity" appears at far distance 
 and only " in the valley of Vision :" if we 
 have humbled ourselves and have confessed 
 our thin and unsound state, even while u from 
 the uttermost parts of the earth we were 
 hearing songs of praise and glory to the 
 upright nation. (Is. xxii. 5. xxiv. 16.) 
 
 But if indeed the day of treading down is 
 present, it is still in our power to convert it 
 into a time of substantial discipline for ourselves, 
 and of enduring benefit to the present gene- 
 ration and to posterity. The splendor of our 
 exploits, during the late war, is less honorable 
 to us than the magnanimity of our views, 
 and our generous confidence in the victory of 
 the better cause. Accordingly, we have 
 
 few notes have been printed in all our Bibles. The 
 remaining books might without any loss have been left 
 for the learned or for as many as were prompted by 
 curiosity to purchase them, in a separate volume. Even 
 of the Maccabees not above a third part can be said to 
 possess any historic value, as authentic accounts. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xvii 
 
 obtained a good name, so that the nations 
 arround us have displayed a disposition to 
 follow our example and imitate our insti- 
 tutions — too often I fear even in parts where 
 from the difference of our relative circum- 
 stances the imitation had little chance of 
 proving more than mimickry. But it will 
 be far more glorious, and to our neighbours 
 incomparably more instructive, if in dis- 
 tresses to which all countries are liable we 
 bestir ourselves in remedial and preventive 
 arrangements which all nations may more 
 or less adopt; inasmuch as they are grounded 
 on principles intelligible to all rational and 
 obligatory on all moral beings ; inasmuch as, 
 having been taught by God's word, exampled 
 by God's providence, commanded by God's 
 law, and recommended by promises of God's 
 grace, they alone can form the foundations 
 of a christian community. Do we love our 
 country ? These are the principles, by which 
 the true friend of the people is contradis- 
 tinguished from the factious demagogue. They 
 are at once the rock and the quarry. On 
 these alone and with these alone is the solid 
 
XV1U INTRODUCTION. 
 
 welfare of a people to be built. Do we love 
 our own souls? These are the principles, 
 the neglect of which writes hypocrite and 
 suicide on the brow of the professing christian. 
 For these are the keystone of that arch on 
 which alone we can cross the torrent of life and 
 death with safety on the passage ; with peace 
 in the retrospect ; and with hope shining upon 
 us from through ihe cloud, toward which we 
 are travelling. Not, my christian friends! 
 by all the lamps of worldly wisdom clustered 
 in one blaze, can we guide our paths so securely 
 as by fixing our eyes on this inevitable cloud, 
 through which all must pass, which at every 
 step becomes darker and more threatening 
 to the chrildren of this world, but to the 
 children of faith and obedience still thins 
 away as they approach, to melt at length 
 and dissolve into that glorious light, from 
 which as so many gleams and reflections of 
 the same falling on us during our mortal 
 pilgrimage, we derive all principles of true 
 and lively knowledge, alike in science and in 
 morals, alike in communities and in in- 
 dividuals. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 It has been my purpose throughout the 
 following discourse to guard myself and my 
 Readers from extremes of all kinds : I will 
 therefore conclude this Introduction by in- 
 forcing the maxim in its relation to our 
 religious opinions, out of which, with or with- 
 out our consciousness, all our other opinions 
 flow, as from their Spring-head and per- 
 petual Feeder. And that I might neglect no 
 innocent mode of attracting or relieving the 
 Reader's attention, I have moulded my re- 
 flections into the following 
 
 ALLEGORIC VISION. 
 
 A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, 
 is wont to take possession of me alike in 
 Spring and in Autumn. But in Spring it is 
 the melancholy of Hope : in Autumn it is 
 the melancholy of Resignation. As I was 
 journeying on foot through the Appennine, 
 I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the Spring 
 and the Autumn and the Melancholy of both 
 seemed to have combined. In his discourse 
 
 D 
 
XX INTRODUCTION- 
 
 there were the freshness and the color* of 
 April : 
 
 Qual ramicel a ramo, 
 Tal da pensier pensiero 
 In lui germogliava. 
 
 But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I 
 bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both 
 of age and of the late season, in the stately 
 elm ; after the clusters have been plucked 
 from its entwining vines, and the vines are 
 as bands of dried withies around its trunk and 
 branches. Even so there was a memory on 
 his smooth and ample forehead, which blended 
 with the dedication of his steady eyes, that 
 still looked — I know not, whether upward, 
 or far onward, or rather to the line of meeting 
 where the sky rests upon the distance. But 
 how may I express — the breathed tarnish, 
 shall I name it?— on the lustre of the pil- 
 grim's eyes? Yet had it not a sort of strange 
 accordance with their slow and reluctant 
 movement, whenever he turned them to any 
 object on the right hand or on the left ? It 
 seemed, me thought, as if there lay upon 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 the brightness a shadowy presence of dis- 
 appointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. 
 It was at once the melancholy of hope and 
 of resignation. 
 
 We had not long been fellow-travellers, 
 ere a sudden tempest of wind and rain forced 
 us to seek protection in the vaulted door-way 
 of a lone chapelry : and we sate face to face 
 each on the stone bench along-side the low, 
 weather-stained wall, and as close as possible 
 to the massy door. 
 
 After a pause of silence : Even thus, said 
 he, like two strangers that have fled to the 
 same shelter from the same storm, not seldom 
 do Despair and Hope meet for the first time in 
 the porch of Death ! All extremes meet, I 
 answered ; but your's was a strange and vision- 
 ary thought. The better then doth it beseem 
 both the place and me, he replied. From a 
 Visionary wilt thou hear a Vision? Mark 
 that vivid flash through this torrent of rain ! Fire 
 and water. Even here thy adage holds true, and 
 its truth is the moral of my Vision. I entreated 
 him to proceed. Sloping his face toward the 
 
XXU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 arch and yet averting his eye from it, he 
 seemed to seek and prepare his words : till 
 listening to the wind that echoed within the 
 hollow edifice, and to the rain without, 
 
 Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound, 
 The clash hard by and the murmur all round, 
 
 he gradually sunk away, alike from me and 
 from his own purpose, and amid the gloom 
 of the storm and in the duskiness of that place 
 he sate like an emblem on a rich man's 
 sepulchre, or like an aged mourner on the 
 sodded grave of an only one, who is watching 
 the wained moon and sorroweth not. Start- 
 ing at length from his brief ^trance of abstrac- 
 tion, with courtesy and an atoning smile he 
 renewed his discourse, and commenced his 
 parable. 
 
 During one of those short furlows from the 
 service of the Body, which the Soul may some- 
 times obtain even in this, its militant state, I 
 found myself in a vast plain, which I imme- 
 diately knew to be the Valley of Life. It 
 possessed an astonishing diversity of soils : and 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXM1 
 
 here was a sunny spot, and there a dark 
 one, forming just such a mixture of sun* 
 shine and shade, as we may have observed on 
 the mountains' side in an April day, when 
 the thin broken clouds are scattered over 
 heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the 
 valley stood a large and gloomy pile, into 
 which I seemed constrained to enter. Every 
 part of the building was crowded with tawdry 
 ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every 
 window was pourtrayed, in glaring and in- 
 elegant colors, some horrible tale, or pre- 
 ternatural incident, so that not a ray of light 
 could enter, untinged by the medium through 
 which it passed. The body of the building 
 was full of people, some of them dancing, in 
 and out, in unintelligible figures, with strange 
 ceremonies and antic merriment, while others 
 seemed convulsed with horror, or pining in 
 mad melancholy. Intermingled with these, 
 I observed a number of men, clothed in cere- 
 monial, robes, who appeared now to marshal 
 the various groups, and to direct their move- 
 ments; and now with menacing countenances^ 
 
XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to drag some reluctant victim to a vast 
 idol j framed of iron bars intercrossed, which 
 formed at the same time an immense cage, 
 and the form of a human Colossus. 
 
 I stood for a while lost in wonder, what 
 these things might mean ; when lo ! one of 
 the Directors came up to me, and with a 
 stern and reproachful look bade me uncover 
 my head ; for that the place, into which I 
 had entered, was the temple of the only 
 true Religion, in the holier recesses of which 
 the great Goddess personally resided. Himself 
 too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated 
 Minister of her Rites. Awe-struck by the 
 name of Religion, I bowed before the Priest, 
 and humbly and earnestly intreated him to 
 conduct me into her presence. He assented. 
 Offerings he took from me, with mystic 
 sprinklings of water and with salt he purified, 
 and with strange sufflations he exorcized me ; 
 and then led me through many a dark and 
 winding alley, the dew-damps of which 
 chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under 
 my feet, mingled, me thought, with moanings, 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 affrighted me. At length we entered a 
 large hall where not even a single lamp 
 glimmered. It was made half visible by the 
 wan phosphoric rays which proceeded from 
 inscriptions on the walls, in letters of the 
 same pale and sepulchral light. I could read 
 them j methought; but though each one of 
 the words taken separately I seemed to under- 
 stand; yet when I took them in sentences, 
 they were riddles and incomprehensible. 
 As I stood meditating on these hard sayings, 
 my guide thus addressed me — The fallible 
 becomes infallible, and the infallible remains 
 fallible. Read and believe : these are mys- 
 teries ! — In the middle of the vast hall the 
 Goddess was placed. Her features, blended 
 with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, 
 yet vacant. No definite thought, no distinct 
 image was afforded me : all was uneasy and 
 obscure feeling. I prostrated myself before 
 her, and then retired with my guide, ^soul- 
 withered, and wondering, and dissatisfied. 
 
 As I re-entered the body of the temple, I 
 heard a deep buz as of discontent. A few 
 
XXVi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 whose eyes were bright, and either piercing 
 or steady, and whose ample foreheads, with 
 the weighty bar, ridge-like, above the eye- 
 brows, bespoke observation followed by medi- 
 tative thought ; and a much larger number 
 who were enraged by the severity and in- 
 solence of the priests in exacting their of- 
 ferings ; had collected in one tumultuous 
 groupe, and with a confused outcry of u this 
 is the Temple of Superstition ! " after much 
 contumely, and turmoil, and cruel mal- 
 treatment on all sides, rushed out of the pile : 
 and I, methought, joined them. 
 
 We speeded from the Temple with hasty 
 steps, and had now nearly gone round half 
 the valley, when we were addressed by a 
 woman, tall beyond the stature of mortals, 
 and with a something more than human in 
 her countenance and mien, which yet could 
 by mortals be only felt, not conveyed by 
 words or intelligibly distinguished. Deep re- 
 flection, animated by ardent feelings, was 
 displayed in them : and hope, without its 
 uncertainty, and a something more than 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXVii 
 
 all these, which I understood not; but 
 which yet seemed to blend all these into a 
 divine unity of expression. Her garments 
 were white and matronly, and of the simplest 
 texture. We enquired her name. My name> 
 she replied, is Religion. 
 
 The more numerous part of our company, 
 affrighted by the very sound, and sore from 
 recent impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards 
 and examined no farther. A few of us, struck 
 by the manifest opposition of her form and 
 manners to those of the living Idol, whom 
 we had so recently abjured, agreed to follow 
 her, though with cautious circumspection. 
 She led us to an eminence in the midst of 
 the valley, from the top of which we could 
 command the whole plain, and observe the 
 relation of the different parts, of each to 
 the other, and of each to the whole, and 
 of all to each. She then gave us an optic 
 glass which assisted without contradicting 
 our natural vision, and enabled us to see far 
 beyond the limits of the Valley of Life: 
 though our eye even thus assisted permitted- 
 
 E 
 
XXviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 us only to behold a light and a glory, but 
 what we could not descry, save only that 
 it was, and that it was most glorious. 
 
 And now with the rapid transition of a 
 dream, I had overtaken and rejoined the 
 more numerous party, who had abruptly left 
 us, indignant at the very name of religion.- 
 They journied on, goading each other with 
 remembrances of past oppressions, and never 
 looking back, till in the eagerness to recede 
 from the Temple of Superstition they had 
 rounded the whole circle of the valley. And 
 lo! there faced us the mouth of avast cavern, 
 at the base of a lofty and almost perpendicular 
 rock, the interior side of which, unknown 
 to them, and unsuspected, formed the extreme 
 and backward wall of the Temple. An im- 
 patient crowd, we entered the vast and dusky 
 cave, which was the only perforation of 
 the precipice. At the mouth of the cave 
 sate two figures; the first, by her dress and 
 gestures, I knew to be Sensuality ; the 
 second form, from the fierceness of his de- 
 meanour, and the brutal scornfulness of hk 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 loaks, declared himself to be the Monster 
 Blasphemy. He uttered big words, and yet 
 ever and anon I observed that he turned pale 
 jat his 'own courage. We entered. Some 
 remained in the opening of the cave, with the 
 one or the other of its guardians. The rest, 
 and I among them, pressed on, till we reached 
 an ample chamber 9 that seemed the centre of 
 the rock. The climate of the place was un- 
 naturally cold. 
 
 In the furthest distance of the chamber sate 
 an old dim-eyed man, poring with a mi- 
 croscope over the Torso of a statue, which 
 had neither basis, nor feet, nor head ; but on 
 its breast was carved, Nature ! To this he 
 continually applied his glass, and seemed en- 
 raptured with the various inequalities which 
 it rendered visible on the seemingly polished 
 surface of the marble.— Yet evermore was 
 this delight and triumph followed by ex- 
 pressions of hatred, and vehement railing 
 against a Being, who yet, he assured us, 
 had no existence. This mystery suddenly 
 recalled to me what I had read in the Holiest 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Recess of the temple of Superstition. The 
 old man spoke in divers tongues, and con- 
 tinued to utter other and most strange 
 mysteries. Among the rest he talked much 
 and vehemently concerning an infinite series 
 of causes and effects, which he explained 
 to be — a string of blind men, the last of 
 whom caught hold of the skirt of the one 
 before him, he of the next, and so on till 
 they were all out of sight : and that they 
 all walked infallibly straight, without making 
 one false step, though all were alike blind. 
 Methought I borrowed courage from surprize^ 
 and asked him — Who then is at the head to 
 guide them? He looked at me with in- 
 effable contempt, not unmixed with an angry 
 suspicion, and then replied, 6i No one." The 
 string of blind men went on for ever without 
 any beginning : for although one blind man 
 could not move without stumbling, yet infinite 
 blindness supplied the want of sight. I 
 burst into laughter, which instantly turned to 
 terror — for as he started forward in rage, I 
 caught a glance of him from behind ; and lo ! 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 I beheld a monster bi-form and Janus-headed, 
 in the hinder face and shape of which I 
 instantly recognized the dread countenance of 
 Superstition — and in the terror I awoke. 
 
LAY SERMON, &c. 
 
 ISAIAH, xxxii. 20. 
 
 Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, 
 
 ON all occasions the Beginning should look 
 toward the End ; and most of all when we 
 offer counsel concerning Circumstances of great 
 distress, and of still greater alarm. But such 
 is our business at present, and the common 
 duty of all whose competence justifies the 
 attempt. And therefore, my Christian Friends 
 and Fellow Englishmen, have I in a day of 
 trouble and of treading down and of perplexity, 
 taken my Beginning from this animating assur- 
 ance of an inspired Messenger to the Devisers 
 of liberal things, (xxxii. 8.) who confident in 
 hope are fearless in charity. For to enforce 
 the Precept involved in this gladsome annun- 
 
( 2 ) 
 
 ciation of the Evangelical Herald, to awaken 
 the lively Feeling which it breathes, and to 
 justify the line of conduct which it encourages, 
 are the End to which my present efforts are 
 directed — the ultimate object of the present 
 Address, to which all the other points, therein 
 discussed, are but introductory and preparative. 
 6 Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.' 
 It is the assurance of a Prophet, and there- 
 fore Surety itself to all who profess to receive 
 him as such. It is a Command in the form of 
 a Promise, which at once instructs us in our 
 duty and forecloses every possible objection to 
 its performance. It is at once our Guide and 
 our Pioneer !— a Breeze from Heaven, which 
 at one and the same time determines our 
 path, impels us along it, and removes before- 
 hand, each overhanging cloud that might 
 have conspired with our own dimness to 
 bewilder or to dishearten us. Whatever 
 our own Despondence may whisper, or the 
 reputed Masters of Political Economy may 
 have seemed to demonstrate, neither by the 
 fears and scruples of the one, or by the con- 
 fident affirmations of the other, dare we be 
 deterred. They must both be false if the 
 Prophet is true. We will still in the power 
 of that faith which can hope even against 
 
( 1 ) 
 
 hope continue to sow beside all waters.: for 
 there is a Blessing attached to it by God 
 himself, to whose eye all consequences are 
 present, on whose will . all consequences 
 depend. 
 
 But I had also an additional motive for the 
 selection of this verse. Easy to be remem- 
 bered from its briefness, likely to be remem- 
 bered from its beauty, and with not a single 
 word in it which the malignant ingenuity of 
 Faction could pervert to the excitement of 
 any dark or turbulent feeling, I chose it both 
 as the Text and Title of this Discourse, that 
 it might be brought under the eye of many 
 thousands who will know no more of the 
 Discourse itself than what they read in the 
 advertisements of it in our public papers. 
 
 In point of fact it was another passage of 
 Scripture, the words of another Prophet, that 
 originally occasioned this Address, by one of 
 those accidental circumstances, that so often 
 determine the current of our Thoughts. From 
 a company among whom the distresses of 
 the times and the disappointments of the 
 public expectations had been agitated with 
 more warmth than wisdom, I had retired to 
 solitude and silent meditation. A Bible 
 chanced to lie open on the table, my eyes 
 
 F 
 
( 4 ) 
 
 Were cast idly on the page for a few seconds, 
 till gradually as a mist clears away, the fol- 
 lowing words became visible, and at once 
 fixed my attention. ' We looked for peace, 
 but no good came ; for a time of health and 
 behold trouble.'-^-I turned to the beginning 
 of the chapter: it was the eighth of the 
 prophet Jeremiah, and having read it to the 
 end, I repeated aloud the verses which had 
 become connected in my memory by their 
 pertinency to the conversation, to which I 
 had been so lately attending : namely, the 
 11th, 15th, 20th, and 22d. 
 
 They have healed the hurt of the daughter 
 of my people slightly, saying Peace, Peace, 
 when there is no Peace. We looked for 
 Peace, hut no good came: for a time of 
 health, and behold, trouble! The harvest 
 is past, the summer is ended : and we are not 
 saved. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is 
 there no physician? Why then is not Uie 
 health of the daughter of my people recovered? 
 
 These impassioned remonstrances, these 
 heart-«probing interrogatories, of the lamenting 
 Prophet, do indeed anticipate a full, and alas! 
 a too faithful statement of the case, to the 
 public consideration of which we have all of 
 late been so often and so urgently in vited, and 
 
( 5 ) 
 
 the inward thought of which our very coun- 
 tenances betray, as by a communion of alarm. 
 In the bold painting of Scripture language, 
 all faces gather blackness, the Many at the 
 supposed magnitude of the national embarass- 
 ment, the Wise at the more certain and far 
 more alarming evil of its moral accompani- 
 ments. And they not only contain the state 
 of the case, but suggest the most natural 
 scheme and order of treating it. I avail my- 
 self, therefore, of the passage as a part of my 
 text, with the less scruple because it will be 
 found to supply of itself the requisite link of 
 connection. The case itself, the plain fact 
 admitted by men of all parties among us, is, 
 as I have just observed, and as you will your- 
 selves have felt at the first perusal of the 
 words, described by anticipation in the inter- 
 mediate verses ; yet with such historic preci- 
 sion, so plain and so specifically as to render 
 all comment needless, all application super- 
 fluous. Peace has come without the advan- 
 tages expected from Peace, and on the con- 
 trary, with many of the severest inconve- 
 niences usually attributable to War. 6 We 
 looked for peace, but no good came : for a 
 time of health and behold trouble. The 
 harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we 
 
( • ) 
 
 are not. saved.' The inference therefore con* 
 tained in the preceding verse is unavoidable. 
 Where war has produced no repentance, and 
 the cessation of war has brought neither con- 
 cord or tranquility, we may safely cry aloud 
 with the Prophet : ' They have healed the 
 hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, 
 saying peace, peace, when there is no peace.' 
 The whole remaining subject therefore may 
 be comprized in the three questions implied 
 in the last of the verses, recited to you ; in. 
 three questions, and in the answers to the 
 same. First, who are they who have hitherto 
 prescribed for the case, and are still tamper- 
 ing with it ? What are their qualifications ? 
 What has been their conduct? Second, 
 What is the true seat and source of the com-, 
 plaint, — the ultimate causes as well as the 
 immediate occasions ? And lastly, What are 
 the appropriate medicines ? Who and where 
 are the true physicians ? 
 
 And first then of those who have been ever 
 loud and foremost in their pretensions to a 
 knowledge both of the disease and the re- 
 medy. In a preceding part of the same 
 chapter from which I extracted the line 
 prefixed, the Prophet Isaiah enumerates the 
 conditions of a nation's recovery from a state 
 
( I > 
 
 of depression and peril, and among these one 
 condition which he describes in words that 
 may be without any forced or over-refined 
 interpretation unfolded into an answer to the 
 present question. f A vile person/ he tells 
 us, c must no more be called liberal, nor the 
 churl be said to be bountiful. For the vile 
 person shall speak villainy, and his heart will 
 work iniquity to practice hypocrisy and to 
 utter error against the Lord ; to make empty 
 the soul of the needy, and he Will cause the 
 drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments 
 also of the churl are evil : he devise th wicked 
 devices to destroy the poor with lying words, 
 even when the needy speaketh aright. But 
 the Liberal deviseth liberal things, and 
 
 BY LIBERAL THINGS SHALL HE STAND.' (Isaiah, 
 
 xxxii. <5, 6, 1, 8.) 
 
 Such are the political empirics mischievous 
 in proportion to their effrontery, and ignorant 
 in proportion to their presumption, the de- 
 tection and exposure of whose true cha- 
 racters the inspired statesman and patriot 
 represents as indispensable to the re-establish^ 
 ment of the general welfare, while his own 
 portrait of these impostors whom in a former 
 chapter (ix. 15, 16.) he calls, the tail of 
 
( 8 ) 
 the Nation, and in the following verse, De* 
 magogues that cause the people to err> affords 
 to the intelligent believer of all ages and 
 countries the means of detecting them, and of 
 undeceiving all whose own malignant passions 
 have not rendered them blind and deaf and 
 brutish. For these noisy and calumnious 
 zealots, whom (with an especial reference 
 indeed to the factious leaders of the populace 
 who under this name exercised a tumultuary- 
 despotism in Jerulsalem, at once a sign and 
 a cause of its approaching downfall) St. John 
 beheld in the Apocalyptic vision as a compound 
 of Locust and Scorpion, are not of one place 
 or of one season. They are the perennials 
 of history : and though they may disappear 
 for a time, they exist always in the egg and 
 need only a distempered atmosphere and an 
 accidental ferment to start up into life and 
 activity. 
 
 It is worth our while therefore, or rather 
 it is our duty, to examine with a more at- 
 tentive eye this representative portrait drawn 
 for us by an infallible master, and to dis- 
 tinguish its component parts, each by itself, 
 so that we may combine without confusing 
 them in our memory ; till they blend at 
 
( 9 > 
 
 length into one physiognomic expression 
 which whenever the counterpart is obtruded on 
 our notice in the sphere of our own experience, 
 may be at once recognized, and enable us to 
 convince ourselves of the identity by a com- 
 parison of feature with feature. 
 
 The passage commences with a fact, which 
 to the inexperienced might well seem strange 
 and improbable; but which being a truth 
 nevertheless of our own knowledge, is the more 
 striking and charateristic. Worthless persons 
 of little or no estimation for rank, learnings 
 or integrity, not seldom profligates, with whom 
 debauchery has outwrestled repacity, easy 
 because unprincipled and generous because 
 dishonest, are suddenly cried up as men of 
 enlarged views and liberal sentiments, our 
 only genuine patriots and philanthropists : and 
 churls, that is, men of sullen tempers and 
 surly demeanor ; men tyrannical in their 
 families, oppressive and troublesome to their 
 dependents and neighbours, and hard in their 
 private dealings between man and man ; men 
 who clench with one hand what they have 
 grasped with the other ; these are extolled a£ 
 public benefactors, the friends, guardians^ 
 and advocates of the poor h Here and there 
 
 i 
 
( 10 ) 
 
 indeed we may notice an individual of birth 
 and fortune 
 
 (For great estates enlarge not narrow minds) 
 
 who has been duped into the ranks of incen- 
 diaries and mob-sycophants by an insane rest- 
 lessnessj and the wretched ambition of figuring 
 as, the triton of the minows. Or we may find 
 perhaps a professional man of shewy accom- 
 plishments but of a vulgar taste^ and shallow 
 acquirements,, who in part from vanity , and 
 in part as a means of introduction to practice^ 
 will seek notoriety by an eloquence well cal- 
 culated to set the multitude agape^ and excite 
 gratis to overt-acts of sedition or treason 
 which he may afterwards be fee'd to defend ! 
 These however are but exceptions to the 
 general rule. Such as the Prophet has de- 
 scribed^ such is the sort of men; and in 
 point of historic fact it has been from men of 
 this sort; that prqfaneness is gone forth into 
 all the land. (Jeremiah^ xxiii. 1<5.) 
 
 In harmony with the general character of 
 these false prophets^ are the particular qua- 
 lities assigned to them. Firsts a passion for 
 vague and violent invective^ an habitual and 
 inveterate predilection for the language of 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 hate, and rage and contumely , an ungoyerned 
 appetite for abuse and defamation ! The vile 
 
 WILL TALK VILLAINY. 
 
 But the fetid flower will ripen into the 
 poisonous berry, and the fruits of the hand 
 follow the blossoms of the slanderous lips. 
 His heart will work iniquity. That is, 
 he will plan evil, and do his utmost to carry 
 his plans into execution. The guilt exists 
 already ; and there wants nothing but power 
 and opportunity to condense it into crime and 
 overt-act. He that hateth his brother is a 
 murderer! says St. John : and of many and 
 various sorts are the brother-haters, in whom 
 this truth may be exemplified. Most appro- 
 priately for our purpose, Isaiah has selected 
 the fratricide of sedition, and with the eagle 
 eye and practised touch of an intuitive de- 
 monstrator he unfolds the composition of the 
 character, part by part, in the secret history 
 of the agent's wishes, designs and attempts, 
 of his ways, his means, and his ends. The 
 agent himself, the incendiary and his kindling 
 combustibles, had been already sketched by 
 Solomon, with the rapid yet faithful outline 
 of a master in the art : ' The beginning of 
 the words of his mouth is foolishness and the 
 end of his talk mischievous madness.' Eccle- 
 
 G 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 siastes, x. 13. If in the spirit of Prophecy,* 
 the wise Ruler had been present to our own 
 times, and their procedures; if while he 
 sojourned in the valley of vision he had 
 actually heard the very harangues of our 
 reigning demagogues to the convened populace ; 
 
 * Solomon has himself informed us, that beyond 
 wealth and conquest, and as of far greater importance to 
 him, in his arduous office of King and Magistrate, he 
 had sought through knowledge of wisdom to lay hold on 
 folly : that is, by the study of Man y to arrive at a grounded 
 knowledge of Men, and through a previous insight into 
 the nature and conditions of Good to acquire by infer- 
 ence a thorough comprehension of the Evil that arises 
 from its deficiency or perversion. And truly in all 
 points of prudence, public and private, we may accom- 
 modate to the Royal Preacher his own words: (Eccle- 
 siastes, ii. 12.) What can the man say that cometh after 
 the King ? Even that which hath been said already. 
 
 In a preceding page we have interpreted the fifth 
 trumpet in the Apocalypse, of the Zelotae during the 
 siege of Jerusalem : to the Romans therefore, and their 
 Oriental Allies, we must refer the sounding of the sixth 
 Angel, in this sublime and magnificent drama acted in 
 Heaven, before the whole Host of Heaven, the personal 
 Friend of the Incarnate God attending as the Repre- 
 sentative 'of Human Nature, and in her behalf looking 
 and listening with fearful awe to the prophetic symbols 
 of her destiny ! But had I dared imitate the major part 
 of the Commentators, and followed the fatuous fires of 
 Fancy, that " shrewd sprite " ever busiest when in the 
 service of pre-conceived partialities and antipathies, I 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 could he have more faithfully characterized 
 either the speakers or the speeches ? Whether 
 in spoken or in printed Addresses, whether in 
 periodical Journals or in yet cheaper imple- 
 ments of irritation, the ends are the same, the 
 process is the same, and the same is their general 
 
 might have suffered my judgment to be seduced by the 
 wonderful (apparent) aptness of the symbols, (many of 
 them at least) and extended the application of the first 
 eleven verses to the whole chapter, the former as treat- 
 ing of the Demagogues exclusively, the latter as in- 
 cluding their infatuated followers likewise. For what 
 other images, concorporated according to the rules of 
 Hieroglyphic Syntax, could form more appropriate and 
 significant exponents of a seditious and riotous multitude, 
 with the mob-orators, their Heads or Leaders, than the 
 thousands of pack-horses (jumenta sarcinaria) with 
 heads resembling those of a roaring wild beast, with 
 smoke, fire and brimstone (that is, empty, unintelligible, 
 incendiary, calumnious, and offensively foul language) 
 issuing from their mouths ? < For their power is in their 
 Mouths and in their Tails ; and they have Heads, and 
 by means of them they do hurt.' 
 
 The authenticity of this canonical Book rests on the 
 firmest grounds, both of outward testimony and internal 
 evidence. But it has been most strangely abused and 
 perverted from the Millenarians of the primitive Church 
 to the religious Politicians of our own times. My own 
 conception of the Book is, that it narrates in the broad 
 and inclusive form of the ancient Prophets (i. e. in the 
 prophetic power of faith and moral insight irradiated by 
 inspiration) the successive struggles and final triumph of 
 
( 14 ) 
 
 line of conduct. On all occasions, but most of all 
 and with a more bustling malignity, whenever 
 any public distress inclines the lower classes 
 to turbulence, and renders them more apt to 
 be alienated from the government of their 
 country — in all places and at every oppor- 
 tunity pleading to the Poor and Ignorant, no 
 where and at no time are they found actually 
 pleading for them. Nor is this the worst. 
 They even plead against them. Yes! Sy- 
 cophants to the crowd, enemies of the indi- 
 viduals, and well-wishers only to the con- 
 tinuance of their miseries, they plead against 
 the poor and afflicted, under the weak and 
 wicked pretence, that we are to do nothing 
 of what we can, because we cannot do all, 
 that we would wish. Or if this sophistry of 
 
 Christianity over the Paganism and Judaism of the then 
 Roman Empire, typified in the Fall of Rome, the de- 
 struction of the Old and the (symbolical) descent of the 
 New Jerusalem. Nor do I think its interpretation even 
 in detail attended with any insuperable difficulties. 
 
 It was once my intention to have translated the Apo- 
 calypse into verse, as a Poem, holding a mid place 
 between the Epic Narrative and the Choral Drama : and 
 to have annexed a Commentary in Prose. An intention 
 long and fondly cherished, but during many years de- 
 ferred from an unfeigned sense of my deficiency ; and 
 now there remains only the hope and the wish, or rather 
 a feeling between both ! 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 sloth (sophisma pigri) should fail to check 
 the bounty of the rich, there is still the 
 sophistry of slander in reserve to chill the 
 gratitude of the poor. If they cannot dissuade 
 the Liberal from devising liberal things, they 
 will at least blacken the motives of his 
 beneficence. If they cannot close the hand 
 of the giver, they will at least embitter the 
 gift in the mouth of the receivers. Is it not 
 as if they had said within their hearts : the 
 sacrifice of charity has been offered indeed 
 in despite of us ; but with bitter herbs shall it 
 be eaten! (Exod. xii. 8.) Imagined Wrongs 
 shall make it distasteful. We will infuse 
 vindictive and discontented fancies into minds, 
 already irritable and suspicious from distress : 
 till the fever of the heart shall coat the tongue 
 with gall and spread wormwood on the 
 palate ? 
 
 However angrily our demagogues may 
 disclaim all intentions of tbis kind, such has 
 been their procedure, and it is susceptible of 
 no other interpretation. We all know, that 
 the shares must be scanty, where the di- 
 vidend bears no proportion to the number of 
 the claimants. Yet He, who satisfied the 
 multitude in the wilderness with a few loaves 
 and fishes, is still present to his church. Small 
 
( 16 ) 
 
 as the portions are, if they are both given 
 and taken in the spirit of his commands, a 
 Blessing will go with each; and the handful 
 of meal shall not fail, until the day when 
 the Lord hringeth back plenty on the land. 
 But no Blessing can enter where Envy and 
 Hatred are already in possession; and small 
 good will the poor man have of the food pre- 
 pared for him by his more favored Brother, 
 if he have been previously taught to regard 
 it as a mess of pottage given to defraud him 
 of his Birth-right. 
 
 If then to promise medicine and to ad- 
 minister poison ; if to flatter in order to 
 deprave ; if to affect love to all and shew 
 pity to none ; if to exaggerate and misderive 
 the distress of the labouring classes in order 
 to make them turbulent, and to discourage 
 every plan for their relief in order to keep 
 them so ; if to skulk from private infamy in 
 the jnask of public spirit, and make the 
 flaming patriot privilege the gamester, swindler 
 Or adulterer ; if to seek amnesty for a con- 
 tinued violation of the laws of God by an 
 equal pertinacity in outraging the laws of 
 the land ; if these characterize the hypocrite, 
 we need not look far back or far round for 
 faces, wherein to recognize the third striking 
 
( n ) 
 
 feature of this prophetic portrait ! When 
 therefore the verifying facts press upon us in 
 real life ; when we hear persons, the tyranny 
 of whose will is the only law in their families, 
 denouncing all law as tyranny in public — per- 
 sons, whose hatred of power in others is in exact 
 proportion to their love of it for themselves ; 
 when we behold men of sunk and irretrievable 
 characters, to whom no man would entrust 
 his wife, his sister, or his purse, have the 
 effrontory to propose that we should entrust 
 to them our religion and our country ; when 
 we meet with Patriots, who aim at an enlarge- 
 ment of the rights and liberties of the people 
 by inflaming the populace to acts of madness 
 that necessiate fetters — pretended heralds of 
 freedom and actual pioneers of military de- 
 spotism ; we will call to mind the words of the 
 prophet Isaiah, and say to ourselves: this is no 
 new thing under the Sun ! We have heard it 
 with our own ears, and it was declared to our 
 fathers, and in the old time before them, that 
 one of the main characteristics of demagogues 
 in all ages is, to practise hypocrisy. 
 
 Such, I assert, has been the general line 
 of conduct pursued by the political Empirics 
 of the day : and your own recent experience 
 will attest the truth of the assertion. It 
 
( 18 ) 
 
 was affirmed likewise at the same time, that 
 as the conduct - 9 such was the process : and 
 I will seek no other support of this charge, 
 I need no better test both of the men and 
 their works, then the plain question : is there 
 one good feeling, to which they do — is there 
 a single bad passion, to which they do not 
 appeal ? If they are the enemies of liberty 
 in general, inasmuch as they tend to make 
 it appear incompatible with public quiet 
 and personal safety, still more emphatically 
 are they the enemies of the liberty of the 
 press in particular ; and therein of all the 
 truths human and divine which a free press 
 is the most efficient and only commensurate 
 means of protecting, extending and perpetuat- 
 ing. The strongest, indeed the only plausible, 
 arguments against the education of the lower 
 classes, are derived from the writings of these 
 incendiaries ; and if for our neglect of the 
 light that hath been vouchsafed to us beyond 
 measure, the land should be visited with a 
 spiritual dearth, it will have been in no small 
 degree occasioned by the erroneous and wicked 
 principles which it is the trade of these men 
 to propagate. Well therefore has the Pro- 
 phet made it the fourth mark of these mis- 
 leaders of the multitude, not alone to utter 
 
( 19 ) 
 
 error, but to utter error against the 
 Lord, to make empty the soul of the 
 hungry ! Alas ! it is a hard and a mournful 
 thing, that the Press should be constrained to 
 call out for the harsh curb of the law against 
 the Press ! for how shall the Law predistin- 
 guish the ominous screech owl from the 
 sacred notes of Augury, from the auspicious 
 and friendly birds of Warning ? And yet 
 will we avoid this seeming injustice, we 
 throw down all fence and bulwark of public 
 decency and public opinion. Already has 
 political calumny joined hands with private 
 slander, and every principle, every feelings 
 that binds the citizen to his country, the spirit 
 to its Creator, is in danger of being under- 
 mined. — Not by reasoning, for from that 
 there is no danger; but — by the mere habit 
 of hearing them reviled and scoffed at with 
 impunity. Were we to contemplate the evils 
 of a rank and unweeded Press only in its 
 effects on the manners of a people, and on 
 the general tone of thought and conversation, 
 tlie greater love we bore to literature, and to 
 all the means and instruments of human im- 
 provement, the more anxiously should we 
 wish for some Ithuriel spear that might re- 
 move from the ear of the ignorant and half- 
 
 h 
 
( 20 ) 
 
 learned, and expose in their own fiendish 
 shape, those reptiles, which inspiring venom 
 and forging illusions as they list, 
 
 thence raise, 
 
 At least distemper'd discontented thoughts, 
 Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires. 
 
 Paradise Lost, 
 
 I feel, my friends! that even the strong 
 and painful interest which, the peculiar state 
 of the times, and almost the occurrences 
 of the hour create, can scarcely counter- 
 balance the wearisome aversion inspired by 
 the deformity and palpableness of the subject 
 itself. As the plan originates in the malig- 
 nant restlessness of desperate ambition or 
 desperate circumstances, so are its means and 
 engines a drag-net of Fraud and Delusion. 
 The instruments also of the churl are 
 evil, he deviseth wicked devices with 
 lying words. He employs a compound 
 poison, of which the following are the main 
 ingredients, the proportions varying as the case 
 requires or the wit of the poisoner suggests. 
 It will be enough rapidly to name and number 
 the components, as in a catalogue. 1. Bold, 
 warm, and earnest assertions, it matters not 
 whether supported by facts or no, nay, though 
 
( 21 ) 
 
 they should involve absurdities, and demon- 
 strable impossibilities : ex. gr. that the amount 
 of the sinecure places given by the executive 
 power would suffice to remove all distress 
 from the land. He is a bungler in the trade, 
 and has been an indocile scholar of his dark 
 master, the father of lies, who cannot make 
 an assertion pass for a fact with an ignorant 
 multitude. The natural generosity of the 
 human heart which makes it an effort to 
 doubt ; the confidence which apparent courage 
 inspires; and the contagion of animal en- 
 thusiasm ; will ensure the belief. Even in 
 large assemblies of men highly educated it 
 is too often sufficient to place impressive 
 images in juxta-position : and the constitutive 
 forms of the mind itself aided by the power of 
 habit will supply the rest. For we all think 
 by causal connections. 2. Startling particular 
 Facts, which, dissevered from their context, 
 enable a man to convey falsehood while he says 
 truth. 3. Arguments built on passing events 
 and deriving an undue importance from the 
 feelings of the moment. The mere appeal, how- 
 ever, to the auditors whether the arguments are 
 not such that none but an ideot or an hireling 
 could resist, is an effective substitute for any 
 argument at all. For mobs have no memories. 
 
( 22 ) 
 
 Tliey are in nearly the same state as that of 
 an individual when he makes (what is termed) 
 a Mull. The passions, like a fused metal, 
 fill up the wide interstices of thought, and 
 supply the defective links: and thus incom- 
 patible assertions are harmonized by the 
 sensation, without the sense, of connection. 
 4. The display of defects without the ac- 
 companying advantages, or vice versa. 5. 
 Concealment of the general and ultimate 
 result behind the scenery of loc.'J, and par- 
 ticular consequences. 6. Statement of posi- 
 tions that are true only under particular 
 conditions, to men whose ignorance or fury 
 make them forget that these conditions are 
 not present, or lead them to take for granted 
 that they are. 7. Chains of Questions, espe- 
 cially of such questions as the persons best 
 authorized to propose are ever the slowest in 
 proposing ; and objections intelligible of them- 
 selves, the answers to which require the 
 comprehension of a system, &. Vague and 
 common-place Satyr, stale as the wine in 
 which flies were drowned last summer, sea- 
 soned by the sly tale and important anecdote of 
 but yesterday, that came within the speaker's 
 own knowledge ! 9. Transitions from the 
 audacious charge, not seldom of as signal impu- 
 
( .23 ) 
 
 dence f( as anything was ever carted for," to 
 the lie pregnant and interpretative : the former 
 to prove the orator's courage, and that he is 
 neither to be bought or frightened; the latter 
 to flatter the sagacity of the audience. 
 
 'Ev Travovpylq. re Kal Bpatrei Kal KojiakiKevfiacnv. 
 
 10. Jerks of style, from the lunatic trope^ 
 
 pijjiiaO i7nroj5ajiiova 9 7ro\\ag re aXivorfO^ag STroiv, to 
 
 the buffoonery and "red-lattice phrases" of 
 
 the Canaglia, 2/cwp gvgkeSwv /3op/3opov re 7ro\vy 
 
 Kal KaKtag Kal avsco^avTiag • the one in ostentation 
 of superior rank and acquirements (for where 
 envy does not interfere, man loves to look 
 fipy) the other in pledge of heartiness and 
 good fellowship. 11. Lastly, and throughout 
 all, to leave a general impression of some- 
 thing striking, something thai is to come of it, 
 and to rely on the indolence of mens' under- 
 standings and the activity of their passions for 
 their resting in this state, as the brood- warmth 
 fittest to hatch whatever serpents' egg oppor- 
 tunity may enable the Deceiver to place 
 under it. Let but mysterious expressions* be, 
 
 * Vide North's Examen, p. 20 ; and The Knights of 
 Aristophanes. A version of this comedy, abridged and 
 modernized, would be a most seasonable present to the 
 
( 24 ) 
 
 aided by significant looks and tones, and you 
 may cajole an hot and ignorant audience to 
 believe any thing by saying nothing, and 
 finally to act on the lie which they them- 
 selves have been drawn in to make. This is 
 the Pharmacopoea of political empirics, here 
 and everywhere, now and at all times ! 
 These are the drugs administered, and the 
 tricks played off* by the Mountebanks and 
 Zanies of Patriotism ; drugs that will continue 
 to poison as long as Irreligion secures a pre- 
 disposition to their influence ; and artifices, that 
 like stratagems in war, are never the less 
 successful for having succeeded a hundred 
 times before. " They bend their tongues as 
 a bow : they shoot out deceits as arrows : they 
 are prophets of the deceit of their own hearts: 
 they cause the people to err by their dreams 
 and their lightness : they make the people 
 
 Public. The words quoted above from this Play and 
 the Frogs, may be rendered freely in the order in which 
 they occur: thus, 
 
 1. Thence he is illustrious, as a man of all waters, 
 a bold fellow, and one who knows how to tickle the 
 populace. 
 
 2. Phrases on horse-back, curvetting and careering 
 words. 
 
 3. Scattering filth and dirt, malice and sycophantic 
 tales. 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 vain, they feed them with wormwood, they 
 give them the water of gall for drink ; and the 
 people love to have it so. And what is the 
 end thereof? CJerem. passim.) 
 
 The Prophet answers for me in the con- 
 cluding words of the description — To destroy 
 the Poor even when the needy speaketh 
 aright — that is, to impel them to acts that 
 must end in their ruin by inflammatory 
 falsehoods and by working on their passions 
 till they lead them to reject the prior con- 
 victions of their own sober and unsophisticated 
 understandings. As in all the preceding 
 features so in this, with which the prophetic 
 portrait is compleated, our own experience 
 supplies both proof and example. The 
 ultimate causes of the present distress and 
 stagnation are in the Writer's opinion complex 
 and deeply seated ; but the immediate occasion 
 is too obvious to be over-looked but by eyes at 
 once red and dim through the intoxication 
 of factious prejudice, that maddening spirit 
 which pre-eminently deserves the title of 
 vinum dsemonum applied by an ancient Father 
 of the Church to a far more innocent phrenzy. 
 It is demonstrable that taxes, the product of 
 which is circulated in the Country from which 
 they are raised, can never injure a Country 
 
( 26 ) 
 
 directly by the mere amount; but either from 
 the time or circumstances under which they 
 are raised, or from the injudicious mode in 
 which they are levied, or from the improper 
 objects to which they are applied. The Sun 
 may draw up the moisture from the river, the 
 morass, and the ocean, to be given back in 
 genial showers to the garden, the pasture 
 and the cornfield ; but it may likewise force 
 upward the moisture from the fields of 
 industry to drop it on the stagnant pool, the 
 saturated swamp, or the unprofitable sand- 
 waste. The corruptions of a system can be 
 duly appreciated by those only who have 
 contemplated the system in that ideal state 
 of perfection exhibited by the reason : the 
 nearest possible approximation to which under 
 existing circumstances it is the business of 
 the prudential understanding to realize. Those 
 on the other hand, who commence the exa- 
 mination of a system by identifying it with 
 its abuses or imperfections, degrade their 
 understanding into the pander of their pas- 
 sions, and are sure to prescribe remedies more 
 dangerous than the disease. Alas! there are so 
 many real evils, so many just causes of com- 
 plaint in the constitutions and administration 
 of all governments, our own not excepted, 
 
( * ) 
 
 that it becomes the imperious duty of the true 
 patriot to prevent, as much as in him lies, the 
 feelings and efforts of his fellow country-men 
 from losing themselves on a wrong scent. 
 
 If then we are to master the Ideal of a bene- 
 ficent and judicious system of Finance as the 
 preliminary to all profitable insight into the 
 defects of any particular system in actual 
 existence, we could not perhaps find an apter 
 illustration than the gardens of southern 
 Europe would supply. The tanks or re- 
 servoirs would represent the capital of a 
 nation : while the hundred rills hourly varying 
 their channels and directions, under the gar- 
 dener's spade, would give a pleasing image of 
 the dispersion of that capital through the whole 
 population by the joint effect of taxation and 
 trade. For taxation itself is a part of com- 
 merce, and the Government may be fairly 
 considered as a great manufacturing-house, 
 carrying on in different places, by means of 
 its. partners and overseers, the trades of the 
 ship-builder, the clothier, the iron-founder, 
 <fcc. cfec. As long as a balance is preserved 
 between the receipts and the returns of Go- 
 vernment in their amount, quickness, and 
 degree of dispersion ; as long as the due pro- 
 portion obtains in the sums levied to the mass 
 
 i 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 in productive circulation, so long does the 
 wealth and circumstantial prosperity of the 
 nation, (its wealth, I say, not its real wel- 
 fare ; its outward prosperity, but not neces- 
 sarily its happiness) remain unaffected, or 
 rather they will appear to increase in conse- 
 quence of the additional stimulus given to the 
 circulation itself by the reproductive action of 
 all large capitals, and through the check 
 which taxation, in its own nature, gives to 
 the indolence of the wealthy in its continual 
 transfer of property to the industrious and 
 enterprizing. If different periods be taken, 
 and if the comparative weight of the taxes at 
 each be calculated, as it ought to be, not by 
 the sum levied on each individual, but by the 
 sum left in his possession, the settlement of 
 the account will be in favor of the national 
 wealth, to the amount of all the additional 
 productive labor sustained or excited by the 
 taxes during the intervals between their efflux 
 and their re-absorption. 
 
 But on the other hand, in a direct ratio to 
 this increase will be the distress produced by 
 the disturbance of this balance, by the loss of 
 this proportion; and the operation of the 
 distress will be at least equal to the total 
 amount of the difference between the taxes 
 
( 29 ) 
 
 still levied, and the quantum of aid withdrawn 
 from individuals by the abandonment of others, 
 and of that which the taxes, that still remain, 
 have ceased to give by the altered mode of their 
 re-dispersion. But to this we must add the 
 number of persons raised and reared in con- 
 sequence of the demand created by the pre- 
 ceding state of things, and now discharged 
 from their occupations: whether the latter 
 belong exclusively to the Executive Power, 
 as that of soldiers, <fec. or from those in which 
 the labourers for the nation in general are 
 already sufficiently numerous. Both these 
 classes are thrown back on the Public, and 
 sent to a table where every seat is pre-occu- 
 pied. The employment lessens as the number 
 of men to be employed is increased ; and not 
 merely in the same, but from additional causes 
 and from the indirect consequences of those 
 already stated, in a far greater ratio. For it 
 may easily happen, that the very same 
 change, which had produced this depression 
 at home, may from equivalent causes have 
 embarrassed the countries in commercial 
 connection with us. At one and the same 
 time the great customer at home wants 
 less, and our customers abroad are able to 
 buy less. The conjoint action of these cir- 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 eumstances will furnish, for a mind capable 
 of combining them, a sufficient solution of the 
 melancholy fact. They cannot but occasion 
 much distress, much obstruction, and these 
 again in their re-action are sure to be more 
 than doubled by the still greater and universal 
 alarm, and by the consequent check of con- 
 fidence and enterprize, which they never fail 
 to produce. 
 
 Now it is a notorious fact, that these 
 causes did all exist to a very extraordinary 
 degree, and that they all worked with united 
 strength, in the late sudden transition from 
 War to Peace. It was one among the many 
 anomalies of the late War, that it acted, after 
 a few years, as a universal stimulant. We al- 
 most monopolized the commerce of the world. 
 The high wages of our artisans and the high 
 prices of agricultural produce intercirculated. 
 Leases of no unusual length not seldom 
 enabled the provident and thrifty farmer to 
 purchase the estate he had rented. Every 
 where might be seen roads, rail-ways, docks, 
 canals, made, making, and projected ; vil- 
 lages swelling into towns, while the metro- 
 polis surrounded itself, and became (as it 
 were) set with new cities. Finally, in spite 
 of all the waste and havock of a twenty 
 
( 31 ) 
 
 years' war, the population of the empire was 
 increased by more than two millions ! The 
 efforts and war-expenditure of the nation, and 
 the yearly revenue, were augmented in the 
 same proportion : and to all this we must add 
 a fact of the utmost importance in the pre- 
 sent question, that the war did not, as was 
 usually the case in former wars, die away 
 into a long expected peace by gradual ex- 
 haustion and weariness on both sides, but 
 plunged to its conclusion by a concentration, 
 we might almost say, by a spasm of energy, 
 and consequently by an anticipation of our 
 resources. We conquered by compelling re- 
 versionary power into alliance with our exist- 
 ing and natural strength. The first intoxica- 
 tion of triumph having passed over, this our 
 " agony of glory," was succeeded, of course, 
 by a general stiffness and relaxation. The 
 antagonist passions came into play ; financial 
 solicitude was blended with constitutional and 
 political jealousies, and both, alas ! were exa- 
 cerbated by personal imprudences, the chief 
 injury of which consisted in their own ten- 
 dency to disgust and alienate the public feel- 
 ing. And with all this, the financial errors 
 and prejudices even of the more educated 
 classes, in shortj the general want or imper- 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 fection of clear views and a scientific insight 
 into the true effects and influences of Taxa- 
 tion^ and the mode of its operation, became 
 now a real misfortune, and opened an addi- 
 tional source of temporary embarrassment. 
 Retrenchment could no longer proceed by 
 cautious and calculated steps ; but was com- 
 pelled to hurry forward, like one who cross- 
 ing the sands at too late an hour finds himself 
 threatened by the inrush of the tide. Never- 
 theless, it was a truth susceptible of little less 
 than mathematical demonstration, that the 
 more^ and the more suddenly, the Revenue 
 was diminished by the abandonment of the 
 war-taxes, the greater would be the disturb- 
 ance of the Balance*: so that the agricul- 
 turalist^ the manufacturer, or the tradesman, 
 
 * The disturbance of this balance may be illustrated 
 thus :— Suppose a great Capitalist to have founded, in a 
 large market-town, a factory that gradually increasing 
 employed at length from five to six hundred workmen ; 
 and that he had likewise a second factory at a distance 
 from the former (in the Isle of Man, for instance) 
 employing half that number, all of the latter having 
 been drafted from and still belonging to the first Parish. 
 After some years we may further suppose, that a large 
 proportion of the housekeepers and tradespeople might 
 have a running account with the Capitalist, many with 
 him, as being their landlord, and still more for their 
 stock. The workmen would* in like manner be for the 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 (all in short but annuitants and fixed stipen- 
 diaries) who during the war having paid as 
 Five had Fifteen left behind^ would shortly 
 
 greater part on the books of the tradesfolk^. As long 
 as this state of things continued, all would go on well — 
 nay, the town would be more prosperous with every 
 increase of the factory. The balance is preserved. 
 The circulations counterpoise each other, or rather they 
 are neutralized by interfluence. But some sudden event 
 leads or compels the Capitalist to put down both factories 
 at once and with little or no warning ; and to call in 
 all the moneys owing to him, and which by law had the 
 preference to all other debts. — What would be the con- 
 sequence ? The workmen are no longer employed, and 
 cannot at once pay up their arrears to the tradesmen ; and 
 though the Capitalist should furnish the latter with goods 
 at half price, and make the same abatement in their 
 rent, these deductions would afford little present relief : 
 while in the meantime the discharged workmen from the 
 distant factory would fall back on the Parish, and 
 increase the general distress. The balance is dis- 
 turbed. — Put the Country at large for the parishioners, 
 and the Government in all departments of expenditure 
 for the Capitalist and his factories : and nearly such is the 
 situation in which we are placed by the transition from 
 the late War to the present Peace. But the difference is 
 this. The Town may never recover its temporary 
 prosperity, and the Capitalist may spend his remaining 
 fortune in another county ; but a nation, of which the 
 Government is an organic part with perfect inter- 
 dependence of interests, can never remain in a state of 
 depression thus produced, but by its own fault : that is, 
 from moral causes. 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 have less than Ten after having paid but 
 Two and a Half. 
 
 But there is yet another circumstance, 
 which we dare not pass by unnoticed. In 
 the best of times — or what the world calls 
 such — the spirit of commerce will occasion 
 great fluctuations, some falling while others 
 rise, and therefore in all times there will be 
 a large sum of individual distress. Trades 
 likewise have their seasons, and at all times 
 there is a very considerable number of 
 artificers who are not employed on the 
 average more than seven or eight months in 
 the year : and the distress from this cause is 
 great or small in proportion to the greater or 
 less degree of dissipation and improvidence 
 prevailing among them. But besides this, 
 that artificial life and vigor of Trade and 
 Agriculture, which was produced or occa- 
 sioned by the direct or indirect influences of 
 the late War, proved by no means innoxious 
 in its effects. Habit and the familiarity with 
 outward advantages, which takes off their 
 dazzle; sense of character; and above all, the 
 counterpoise of intellectual pursuits and re- 
 sources ; are all necessary preventives and an- 
 tidotes to the dangerous properties of wealth 
 and power with the great majority of mankind. 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 It is a painful subject : and I leave to your own 
 experience and recollection the assemblage of 
 folly, presumption, and extravagance, tbat 
 followed in the procession of our late unprece- 
 dented prosperity ; the blind practices and 
 blending passions of speculation in the com- 
 mercial world, with the shoal of ostentatious 
 fooleries and sensual vices which the sudden 
 influx of wealth let in on our farmers and 
 yeomanry. Now though the whole mass of 
 calamity consequent on these aberrations 
 from prudence should in all fairness be attri- 
 buted to the sufferer's own conduct ; yet when 
 there supervenes some one common cause or 
 occasion of distress which pressing hard on 
 many furnishes a pretext to all, this too will- 
 pass muster among its actual effects, and 
 assume the semblance and dignity of national 
 calamity. Each unfortunate individual shares 
 during the hard times in the immunities of 
 a privileged order, as the most tottering and 
 ruinous houses equally with those in best 
 repair are included in the same brief after 
 an extensive fire. The change of the moon 
 will not produce a change of weather, except 
 in places where the atmosphere has from 
 local and particular causes been predisposed 
 to its influence. But the former is one, placed 
 
 K 
 
( 36 ) 
 
 aloft and conspicuous to all men ; the latter 
 are many and intricate, and known to few. 
 Of course it is the moon that must bear the 
 entire blame of wet summers and scanty crops. 
 All these, however, whether they are dis- 
 tresses common to all times alike, or though 
 occasioned by the general revolution and stag- 
 nation, yet really caused by personal impro- 
 vidence or misconduct, combine with its pe- 
 culiar and inevitable effects in making the 
 cup overflow. The latter class especially, as 
 being in such cases always the most clamor- 
 ous sufferers, increase the evil by swelling the 
 alarm. 
 
 The principal part of the preceding expli- 
 cation, the main causes of the present exigen- 
 cies are so obvious, and lay so open to the 
 common sense of mankind, that the labouring 
 classes saw the connection of the change in 
 the times with the suddenness of the peace, 
 as clearly as their superiors, and being less 
 heated with speculation, were in the first 
 instance less surprized at the results. To a 
 public event of universal concern there will 
 often be more attributed than belongs to it ; 
 but never in the natural course of human 
 feelings will there be less. That the depres- 
 sion began with the Peace would have been 
 
( 37 ) 
 
 of itself a sufficient proof with the Many, 
 that it arose from the Peace. But this opi- 
 nion suited ill with the purposes of sedition. 
 The truth, that could not be precluded, must 
 be removed ; and iC when the needy speaketh 
 aright" the more urgent occasion is there for 
 the u wicked device" and the "lying words." 
 Where distress is felt, tales of wrong and 
 oppression are readily believed, to the suf- 
 ferer's own disquiet. Fage and Revenge make 
 the cheek pale and the hand tremble, worse 
 than even want itself: and the cup of sorrow 
 overflows by being held unsteadily. On the 
 other hand nothing calms the mind in the 
 hour of bitterness so efficaciously as the con- 
 viction that it was not within the means of 
 those above us, or around us, to have pre- 
 vented it. An influence, mightier than fasci- 
 nation, dwells in the stern eye of Necessity, 
 when it is fixed steadily on a man : for toge- 
 ther with the power of resistance it takes 
 away its agitations likewise. This is one 
 mercy that always accompanies the visitations 
 of the Almighty when they are received as 
 such. If therefore the sufferings of the lower 
 classes are to supply air and fuel to their 
 passions, and are to be perverted into instru- 
 ments of mischief, they must be attributed to 
 
( 38 ) 
 
 causes that can be represented as removeable ; 
 either to individuals who had been previously 
 rendered unpopular, or to whole classes of 
 men, according as the immediate object of 
 their seducers may require. What, though 
 nothing should be more remote from the true 
 cause? What though the invidious charge 
 should be not only without proof, but in the 
 face of strong proof to the contrary ? What 
 though the pretended remedy should have no 
 possible end but that of exasperating the dis- 
 ease ? All will be of little or no avail, if these 
 truths have not been administered beforehand. 
 When the wrath is gone forth, the plague is 
 already begun: (Numbers, xvi. 46.) Wrath 
 is cruel, and where is there a deafness like 
 that of an outrageous multitude? For as the 
 matter of the fire is, so it burnetii. Let the 
 demagogue but succeed in maddening the 
 crowd, he may bid defiance to demonstration, 
 and direct the madness against whom it 
 pleaseth him. A slanderous tongue has dis- 
 quieted many, and driven them from nation to 
 nation ; strong cities hath it pulled down and 
 overthrown the houses of great men. (Eccle- 
 siasticus, xxviii. 14.) 
 
 We see in every promiscuous public meet- 
 ing the effect produced by the bold assertion 
 
( 39 ) 
 
 that the present hardships of all classes are 
 owing to the number and amount of Pensions 
 and Sine-cures. Yet from the unprecedented 
 zeal and activity in the education* of the 
 
 * With all due humility we contended that the war 
 in question had likewise its golden side. The anomalous 
 occasions and stupendous events of the contest had roused 
 us, like the blast of a trumpet from the clouds ; and as 
 many as were capable of thinking were roused to thought. 
 It had forced on the higher and middle classes — say 
 rather on the people at large, as distinguished from the 
 mere populace — the home truth, that national honesty 
 and individual safety, private morals and public security, 
 mutually grounded each other, that they were twined at 
 the very root, and could not grow or thrive but in inter- 
 twine: and we of Great Britain had acquired this in- 
 struction without the stupifying influences of terror or 
 actual calamity. Yet that it had operated practically, 
 and in a scale proportional to the magnitude of the oc- 
 casion, the late and present condition of manners and 
 intellect among the young men at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, the manly sobriety of demeanor, the submission 
 to the routine of study in almost all, and the zeal in the 
 pursuit of knowledge and academic distinction in a large 
 and increasing number, afford a cheering testimony to 
 such as were familiar with the state of the two Univer- 
 sities forty, or even thirty years ago, with the moral con- 
 trast which they presented, at the close of the last, and 
 during the former half of the present reign ; while a proof 
 of still greater power, and open to the observation of all 
 men, is supplied by the predominent anxiety concerning 
 the education and principles of their children in all the 
 
( 40 ) 
 
 poor, of the thousands that are inflamed by, 
 and therefore give credit to, these statements, 
 there are few without a child at home, who 
 could prove their impossibility by the first 
 and simplest rules of arithmetic ; there is not 
 
 respectable classes of the community, and the unex- 
 ampled sale, in consequence, of the very numerous large 
 and small volumes composed or compiled for the use of 
 parents. Nor here did the salutary influence stop. We 
 had been compelled to know and feel that the times in 
 which we had to act or suffer were the saturnalia of 
 revolution ; and fearful evidence had been given us at 
 the cost of our unfortunate neighbours, that a vicious 
 and ignorant population was a magazine of combustibles 
 left roofless, while madmen and incendiaries were letting 
 off their new invented blue lights and fire-rockets in 
 every direction. The wish sprang up and spread 
 throughout England that every Englishman should be 
 able to read his Bible, and have a Bible of his own to 
 read. The general wish organized itself into act and 
 plan : a discovery, the living educt of one great man's 
 genius and benevolence, rendered the execution practi- 
 : cable and even easy ; and the god-like iflea began and is 
 proceeding to realize itself with a rapidity yet stedfast- 
 ness which nothing could make possible or credible but 
 such a conviction effected by an experience so strange 
 and awful, and acting on that volunteer spirit, that in- 
 stinct of fervid yet orderly co-operation, which most of 
 all our honourable characteristics distinguishes, secures, 
 enriches, strengthens and elevates the people of Great 
 Britain. [From an Essay by the Author, published in 
 the Courier , July, 1816.] 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 one j perhaps, who taken by himself and in a 
 cooler mood, would stand out against the 
 simple question : whether it was not folly to 
 suppose that the lowness of his wages, or his 
 want of employment could be occasioned by 
 the circumstance, that a sum (the whole of 
 which, as far as it is raised by taxation, cannot 
 take a yearly penny from him) was dispersed 
 and returned into the general circulation by An- 
 nuitants of the Treasury instead of Annuitants 
 of the Bank, by John instead of Peter : how- 
 ever blameable the regulation might be in 
 other respects? What then? the hypothesis 
 allows of a continual reference to persons, 
 and to all the uneasy and malignant passions 
 which personalities are of all means the best 
 fitted to awaken. The grief itself, however 
 grinding it may be, is of no avail to this end ; 
 it must first be converted into a grievance* 
 Were the audience composed chiefly of the 
 lower Farmers and the Peasantry, the same 
 circumstance would for the same reason have 
 been attributed wholly to the Clergy and the 
 system of Tythes ; as if the corn would be 
 more plentiful if the Farmers paid their whole 
 rent to one man, instead of paying nine parts 
 to the Landlords and the tenth to the Tythe- 
 owners! But let the meeting be composed of 
 
( 42 ) 
 
 the Manufacturing Poor, and then it is the 
 Machinery of their Employers that is de- 
 voted to destruction : though it would not 
 exceed the truth if I affirmed, that to the use 
 and perfection of this very Machinery the 
 majority of the poor deluded destroyers owe 
 their very existence, owe to it that they ever 
 beheld the light of heaven ! 
 
 Even so it is with the Capitalists and Store- 
 keepers, who by spreading the dearness of 
 provisions over a larger space and time prevent 
 scarcity from becoming real famine, the fright- 
 ful lot at certain and not distant intervals 
 of our less commercial forefathers. These 
 men by the mere instinct of self-interest are 
 not alone birds of warning, that prevent waste ; 
 but as the raven of Elijah, they bring supplies 
 from afar. But let the incendiary spirit have 
 rendered them birds of ill omen : and it is 
 well if the deluded Malcontents can be re- 
 strained from levelling at them missiles more 
 alarming than the curse of the unwise thatr 
 alighteth not. There be three things (says 
 the wise son of Sirach) that mine heart feareth, 
 the slander of a city, the gathering together 
 of an unruly multitude, and a false accusation: 
 all these are worse than death. But all these 
 are the Arena, and the chosen -weapons of 
 
I 43 ) 
 
 demagogues. Wretches! they would without 
 remorse detract the hope that is the subliming 
 and expanding warmth of public Credit, 
 destroy the public credit that is the vital air 
 of national industry, convert obstruction into 
 stagnation, and make grass grow in the 
 exchange and the market-place ; if so they 
 might but goad ignorance into riot, and 
 fanaticism into rebellion ! They would snatch 
 the last morsel from the poor man's lips to 
 make him curse the Government in his heart — 
 alas ! to fall at length, either ignominiously 
 beneath the strength of the outraged Law, or 
 (if God in his anger, and for the punishment 
 of general depravity should require a severer 
 and more extensive retribution) to perish still 
 more lamentably among the victims of its 
 weakness. 
 
 Thus then, I have answered at large to 
 the first of the three questions proposed as 
 the heads and divisions of this Address. I 
 am well aware that our demagogues are not 
 the only empirics who have tampered with 
 the case. But I felt unwilling to put the 
 mistakes of sciolism, or even those of vanity 
 and self-interest, in the same section with 
 crime and guilt. What is omitted here will 
 iind its place elsewhere ; the more readily, 
 
 L 
 
( 44 ) 
 
 that having been tempted by the foulness of 
 the ways to turn for a short space out of my 
 direct path, I have encroached already on the 
 second question; that, namely, which respects 
 the ultimate causes and immediate occasions 
 of the complaint. 
 
 The latter part of this problem I appear to 
 myself to have solved fully and satisfactorily. 
 To those who deem any further or deeper 
 research superfluous, I must content myself 
 with observing, that I have never heard it 
 denied, that there is more than a sufficiency 
 of food in existence. I have, at least, met 
 with no proof, that there is, or has been any 
 scarcity, either in the materials of all neces- 
 sary comforts j or any lack of strength, skill 
 and industry to prepare them. If we saw a 
 man in health pining at a full table because 
 there was not ' the savory meat there which 
 he loved/ and had expected, the wanton 
 delay or negligence of the messenger would 
 be a compleat answer to our enquiries after 
 the occasion of this sullenness or inappetence; 
 but the cause of it we should be tempted to 
 seek in the man's own undisciplined temper, 
 or habits of self-indulgence. So far from 
 agreeing therefore with those who find the 
 causes in the occasions, I think the half of 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 the question already solved of very unequal 
 importance with that which yet remains for 
 solution. 
 
 The immediate occasions of the existing 
 distress may be correctly given with no 
 greater difficulty than would attend any other 
 series of known historic facts; but toward the 
 discovery of its true seat and sources, I can 
 but offer a humble contribution. They ap- 
 pear to me, however, resolvable into the 
 Overbalance* of the Commercial Spirit 
 in consequence of the absence or weak- 
 NESS OF THE COUNTER-WEIGHTS ; this OVer- 
 
 * I entreat attention to the word, over-balance. My 
 opinions would be greatly misinterpreted if I were sup- 
 posed to think hostilely of the spirit of commerce to 
 which I attribute the largest proportion of our actual 
 freedom (i. e. as Englishmen, and not merely as Land- 
 owners} and at least as large a share of our virtues as 
 of our vices. Still more anxiously would I guard against 
 the suspicion of a design to inculpate any number 
 or class of individuals. It is not in the power of a 
 minister or of a cabinet to say to the current of national 
 tendency, stay here ! or flow there ! The excess can 
 oniy be remedied by the slow progress of intellect, the 
 influences of religion, and "irresistible events guided by 
 Providence. In the points even, which I have presumed 
 to blame, by the word Government I intend all the di- 
 rectors of political power, that is, the great estates 
 of the Realm, temporal and spiritual, arid not only the 
 Parliament, but all the elements of Parliament. 
 
 l2 
 
( 46 ) 
 
 balance considered as displaying itself, 1. In 
 the Commercial World itself: 2. In the 
 Agricultural : 3. In the Government : and, 
 4. In the combined Influence of all three on 
 the more numerous and labouring Classes. 
 
 Of the natural counter-forces to the im- 
 petus of trade the first, that presents itself to 
 my mind, is the ancient feeling of rank and 
 ancestry, compared with our present self- 
 complacent triumph over these supposed pre- 
 judices. Not that titles and the rights of pre- 
 cedence are pursued by us with less eagerness 
 than by our Forefathers. The contrary is the 
 case ; and for this very cause, because they in- 
 spire less reverence. In the old times they were 
 valued by the possessors and revered by the 
 people as distinctions of Nature, which the 
 crown itself could only ornament, but not give. 
 Like the stars in Heaven, their influence was 
 wider and more general, because for the mass 
 of mankind there was no hope of reaching^ 
 and therefore no desire to appropriate, them. 
 That many evils as well as advantages ac- 
 companied this state of things I am well 
 aware : and likewise that many of the latter 
 have become incompatible with far more im- 
 portant blessings. It would therefore be 
 sickly affectation to suspend the thankfulness 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 due for our immunity from the one in an idle 
 regret for the loss of the other. But however 
 true this may be, and whether the good or 
 the evil preponderated, still it acted as a 
 counterpoise to the grosser superstition for 
 wealth. Of the efficiency of this counter- 
 influence we can offer negative proof only : 
 and for this we need only look back on the 
 deplorable state of Holland in respect of 
 patriotism and public spirit at and before the 
 commencement of the French revolution. 
 
 The limits and proportions of this address 
 allow little more than a bare reference to 
 this point. The same restraint I must im- 
 pose on myself in the following. For under 
 this head I include the general neglect of 
 all the austerer studies ; the long and ominous 
 eclipse of Philosophy; the usurpation of that 
 venerable name by physical and psychological 
 Empiricism ; and the non-existence of a 
 learned and philosophic Public, which is 
 perhaps the only innoxious form of an im- 
 perium in imperio, but at the same time 
 the only form which is not directly or 
 indirectly encouraged. So great a risk do 
 I incur of malignant interpretation, and the 
 assertion itself is so likely to appear para- 
 doxical even to men of candid minds, that I 
 
( 48 ) 
 
 should have passed over this point, most im- 
 portant as I know it to be ; but that it will- 
 be found stated more at large, with all its 
 proofs, in a work on the point of publication. 
 The fact is simply this. We have — Lovers, 
 shall I entitle them ? Or must I not rather 
 hazard the introduction of their own phrases, 
 and say, Amateurs orDillettanti, as Musicians, 
 Botanists, Florists, Mineralogists, and Anti- 
 quarians. Nor is it denied that these are 
 ingenuous pursuits, and such as become men 
 of rank and fortune. Neither in these or in 
 any other points do I complain of any excess 
 in the pursuits themselves ; but of that which 
 arises from the deficiency of the counterpoise. 
 The effect is the same. Every work, which 
 can be made use of either to immediate 
 profit or immediate pleasure, every work 
 which falls in with the desire of acquiring 
 wealth suddenly, or which can gratify the 
 senses, or pamper the still more degrading 
 appetite for scandal and personal defamation, 
 is sure of an appropriate circulation. But 
 neither Philosophy or Theology in the 
 strictest sense of the words, can be said to 
 have even a public existence among us. I 
 feel assured, that if Plato himself were to 
 return and renew his sublime lucubrations in 
 
( 40 ) 
 
 the metropolis of Great Britain, a handi- 
 craftsman, from a laboratory, who had just 
 succeeded in disoxydating on Earth, would 
 be thought far the more respectable, nay, 
 the more illustrious person of the two. 
 Nor will it be the least drawback from his 
 honors, that he had never even asked himself, 
 what law of universal Being Nature uttered 
 in this phenomenon : while the character of 
 a visionary would be the sole remuneration of 
 the man, who from the insight into that law 
 had previously demonstrated the necessity of 
 the fact. As to that which passes with us 
 under the name of metaphysics, philosophic 
 elements, and the like, I refer every man 
 of reflection to the contrast between the 
 present times and those shortly after the re- 
 storation of ancient literature. In the latter 
 we find the greatest men of the age, Statesmen, 
 Warriors, Monarchs, Architects, in closest 
 intercourse with philosophy. I need only 
 mention the names of Lorenzo the magnificent; 
 Picus, Count Mirandula, Ficinus and Politian ; 
 the abstruse subjects of their discussion, and 
 the importance attached to them, as the 
 requisite qualifications of men placed by Pro- 
 vidence as guides and governors of their fellow- 
 creatures. If this be undeniable, equally no- 
 
( 50 ) 
 
 torious is it that at present the more effective 
 a man's talents are, and the more likely he is to 
 be useful and distinguished in the highest 
 situations of public life, the earlier does he 
 shew his aversion to the metaphysics and the 
 books of metaphysical speculation, which are 
 placed before him^ though they come with 
 the recommendation of being so many triumphs 
 of modern good sense over the schools of 
 ancient philosophy. Dante, Petrarch, Spen- 
 cer, Sir Philip Sidney, Algernon Sidney, 
 Milton and Barrow were Platonists. But all 
 the men of genius, with whom it has been 
 my fortune to converse, either profess to 
 know nothing of the present systems, or to 
 despise them. It would be equally unjust 
 and irrational to seek the solution of this dif- 
 ference in the men; and if not, it can be 
 found only in the philosophic systems them- 
 selves. And so in truth it is. The Living 
 of former ages communed gladly with a life- 
 breathing philosophy. The hiving of the 
 present age wisely leave the dead to take 
 care of the dead. 
 
 But whatever the causes may be, the result 
 is before our eyes. An excess in our attach- 
 ment to temporal and personal objects can 
 be counteracted only by a pre-occupation 
 
( m ) 
 
 of the intellect and the affections with per- 
 manent^ universal, and eternal truths. Let 
 no man enter, said Plato, who has not previ- 
 ously disciplined his mind by Geometry. He 
 considered this science as the first purification 
 of the soul, by abstracting the attention from 
 the accidents of the senses. We too teach 
 Geometry ; but that there may be no danger 
 of the pupil's^ becoming too abstract in his 
 conceptions, it has been not only proposed, 
 but the proposal has been adopted, that it 
 should be taught by wooden diagrams ! It 
 pains me to remember with what applause a 
 work, that placed the inductions of modern 
 Chemistry in the same rank with the demon- 
 strations of Mathematical Science, was receiv- 
 ed even in a mathematical University. I must 
 not permit myself to say more on this subject, 
 desirous as I am of shewing the importance 
 of a philosophic class, and of evincing that it 
 is of vital utility, and even an essential ele- 
 ment in the composition of a civilized com- 
 munity. It must suffice, that it has been 
 explained in what respect the pursuit of Truth 
 for its own sake, and the reverence yielded to 
 its professors, has a tendency to calm or coun- 
 teract the pursuit of wealth ; and that there- 
 
 M 
 
( 52 ) 
 
 fore a counterforce is wanting wherever Phi- 
 losophy is degraded in the estimation of 
 society. What are you (a philosopher was 
 once asked) in consequence of your admira- 
 tion of these abstruse speculations? He an- 
 swered : What I am, it does not become me 
 to say ; but what thousands are, who despise 
 them, and even pride themselves on their 
 ignorance, I see — and tremble ! 
 
 There is a third influence, alternately our 
 spur and our curb, without which all the pur- 
 suits and desires of man must either exceed or 
 fall short of their just measure. Need I add, 
 that I mean the influence of Religion? I 
 speak of that sincere, that entire interest, in 
 the undivided faith of Christ which demands 
 the first-fruits of the whole man, his affections 
 no less than his outward acts, his understand- 
 ing equally with his feelings. For be assured, 
 never yet did there exist a full faith in the 
 divine Word, (by whom not Immortality 
 alone, but Light and Immortality were 
 brought into the world) which did not expand 
 the intellect while it purified the heart; which 
 did not multiply the aims and objects of the 
 mind, while it fixed and simplified those of 
 the desires and passions. If acquiescence with- 
 
( 53 ) 
 
 out insight; if warmth without light ; if an 
 immunity from doubt given and guaranteed by 
 a resolute ignorance ; if the habit of taking for 
 granted the words of a catechism, remembered 
 or forgotten ; if a sensation of positiveness sub- 
 stituted — I will not say, for certainty ; but — 
 for that calm assurance, the very means and 
 conditions of which it supersedes ; if a belief 
 that seeks the darkness, and yet strikes no 
 root, immovable as the limpet from its rock, 
 and- like the limpet fixed there by mere force 
 of adhesion ; if these suffice to make us Chris* 
 tians, in what intelligible sense could our 
 Lord have announced it as the height and 
 consummation of the signs and miracles which 
 attested his Divinity, that the Gospel was 
 preached to the Poor? In what sense could 
 the Apostle affirm, that Believers have re- 
 ceived, not indeed the wisdom of this world 
 that comes to nought, but the wisdom of God_, 
 that we might know and comprehend the 
 things that are freely given to us of God? 
 or that every Christian, in proportion as he 
 is indeed a Christian, has received the Spirit 
 that searcheth all things, yea the deep things 
 of God himself? — on what grounds could the 
 Apostle denounce even the sincerest fervor of 
 spirit as defective, where it does not bring 
 
( *4 ) 
 
 forth fruits in the Understanding? * Or 
 again : if to believe were enough, why are 
 we commanded by another Apostle, that; 
 66 besides this, giving all diligence we should 
 add to our faith manly energy and to manly 
 energy knowledge!" Is it not especially 
 significant, that in the divine oeconomy, as 
 revealed to us in the New Testament, the 
 peculiar office of Redemption is attributed to 
 the Word, that is, to the intelligential wis- 
 dom which from all eternity is with God, 
 and is God ? that in him is life, and the life is 
 the light of men ? , 
 
 In the present day we hear much, and 
 from men of various creeds, of the plain- 
 ness and simplicity of the Christian religion: 
 and a strange abuse has been made of these 
 words, often indeed with no ^11 intention, but 
 still oftener by men who would fain trans- 
 form the necessity of believing in Christ 
 into a recommendation to believe him. The 
 advocates of the latter scheme grew out of 
 a sect that were called Socinians, but having 
 succeeded in disbelieving far beyond the last 
 foot-marks of the Socini, have chosen to de- 
 
 * Brethren! be not children in understanding: how- 
 beit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be 
 men. 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 signate themselves by the name of Unitarians, 
 But this is a word, which in its proper sense, 
 can belong only to their antagonists : for Unity 
 or Unition, and indistinguishable TJnicity or 
 Oneness, are incompatible terms : while, in the 
 exclusive sense in which they mean the name to 
 be understood j it is a presumptuous boast , and 
 an uncharitable calumny. Their true designa- 
 tion, which simply expresses a fact admitted 
 on all sides, would be that of Philanthropists* 
 or assertors of the mere humanity of Christ. 
 It is the interest of these men to speak of the 
 Christian religion as comprized in a few plain 
 doctrines, and containing nothing not intelli- 
 gible, at the first hearing, to men of the 
 narrowest capacities. Well then, (it might 
 be replied) we are disposed to place a full 
 
 * New things justify new terms. Novis in rebus licet 
 nova nobis verba confmgere.— -We never speak of the 
 unity of Attraction, or of the unity of Repulsion ; but 
 of the unity of Attraction and Repulsion in each one 
 corpuscle. The essential diversity of the ideas, unity 
 and sameness, was among the elementary principles of 
 the old Logicians ; and the sophisms grounded on the 
 confusion of these terms have been ably exposed by 
 Leibnitz, in his Critique on Wissowatius, the acutest, 
 perhaps, of all the learned Socinian divines, when 
 Socinian divines were undeniably men of learning. 
 
( S6 ) 
 
 reliance on the veracity of the great Founder 
 of the Christian Religion, and likewise — 
 which is more than you yourselves are on all 
 occasions willing to admit — on the accuracy 
 and competence of the Writers, who first re- 
 corded his acts and sayings. We have learned 
 from you, whom, — and we now wish to hear 
 from you — what we are to believe. The an- 
 swer is : — the actual occurrence of an extra- 
 ordinary event, as recorded by the biographers 
 of Jesus, in confirmation of doctrines, without 
 the previous belief of which, no man would, 
 or rather, according to St. Paul's declaration, 
 could become a convert to Christianity ; doc- 
 trines, which it is certain, that Christ's im- 
 mediate disciples believed, not less confidently 
 before they had acknowledged his mission, 
 than they did afterwards. Religion and poli- 
 tics, they tell us, require but the application 
 of a common sense, which every man pos- 
 sesses, to a subject in which every man is 
 concerned. " To be a musician, an orator, 
 a painter, or even a good mechanician, pre- 
 supposes genius ; to be an excellent artizan or 
 mechanic requires more than an average de- 
 gree of talent; but to be a legislator or a 
 theologian, or both at once, demands nothing 
 
( 51 ) 
 
 but common sense."* Now we willingly 
 admit that nothing can be necessary to the 
 salvation of a Christian which is not in his 
 power. For such, therefore, as have neither 
 the opportunity or the capacity of learning 
 more, sufficient, doubtless, will be the belief 
 of those plain truths, and the fulfilment of 
 those commands, which to be incapable of 
 understanding, is to be a man in appearance 
 only. But even to this scanty creed the dis- 
 position of faith must be added : and let it not 
 be forgotten, that though nothing can be 
 easier than to understand a code of belief, 
 four-fifths of which consists in avowals of dis- 
 belief, and the remainder in truths, concerning 
 which (in this country at least) a man must 
 have taken pains to learn to have any doubt; 
 yet it is by no means easy to reconcile this 
 code of negatives with the declarations of the 
 Christian Scripture. On the contrary, it re- 
 quires all the resources of verbal criticism, 
 
 * The Friend, Vol. I. As the original work, of 
 of which but a small number of copies were printed on 
 stamped sheets, and sent to the subscribers by the post, 
 is not to be procured; the reference is made to the 
 edition now printing, in three volumes, of the size of the 
 British Essayists : if indeed a work, a great part of which 
 is new in substance, and the whole in form and arrange- 
 ment, can be described as an edition of the former. 
 
and all the perverse subtlety of special plead- 
 ing, to work out a plausible semblance of 
 correspondency between them. It must, how- 
 ever/ be conceded, that a man may consist- 
 ently spare himself the trouble of the attempt, 
 and leave the New Testament unread, after 
 he lias once thoroughly persuaded himself that 
 it cdn teach him nothing of any real im- 
 portance that he does not already know. St. 
 Paul indeed thought otherwise. For though 
 he tbo teaches us, that in the religion of 
 Christ there is milk for babes ; yet he informs 
 us at the same time, that there is meat for 
 strong men ! and to the like purpose one of 
 the Fathers has observed, that in the New 
 Testament there are shallows where the 
 lamb may ford, and depths where the elephant 
 must sWim. The ApOstle exhorts the fol- 
 lowers of Christ to the continual study of the 
 new religion, on the ground that in the mys- 
 tery of Christ, which in other ages was not 
 made known to the sons of men, and in the 
 riches of Christ which no research could ex- 
 haust, there were contained all the treasures 
 of knowledge and wisdom. Accordingly, in 
 that earnestness of spirit, which his own per- 
 sonal experience of the inspired truth, he prays 
 with a solemn and a ceremonious fervor, that 
 
( 59 ) 
 
 being " strengthened with might in the inner 
 man, they may be able to comprehend with 
 all saints what is the breadth and length and 
 depth and height/' of that living Principle, 
 at once the Giver and the Gift! of that 
 anointing Faith, which in endless evolution 
 "teaches us of all things, and is truth!" 
 For all things are but parts and forms of 
 its progressive manifestation, and every new 
 knowledge but a new organ of sense and 
 insight into this one all-inclusive Verity, 
 which, still filling the vessel of the under- 
 standing, still dilates it to a capacity of 
 yet other and yet greater Truths, and thus 
 makes the soul feel its poverty by the very 
 amplitude of its present, and the immensity 
 of its reversionary, wealth. All truth indeed 
 is simple, and needs no extrinsic ornament. 
 And the more profound the truth is, the more 
 simple : for the whole labour and building-up 
 of knowledge is but one continued process of 
 simplification. But I cannot comprehend, in 
 what ordinary sense of the words the proper- 
 ties of plainness and simplicity can be ap- 
 plied to the Prophets, or to the Writings of 
 St. John, or to the Epistles of St. Paul ; or 
 what can have so marvellously improved 
 the capacity of our laity beyond the same 
 
 N 
 
( 60 ) 
 
 class of persons among the primitive Christians; 
 who, as we are told by a fellow apostle, found 
 in the Writings last-mentioned many passages 
 hard to be understood, which the unlearned, 
 as well as the unstable, were in danger of 
 wresting and misinterpreting. I can well 
 understand, however, what is and has been the 
 practical consequence of this notion. It is this 
 Very consequence, indeed, that occasioned the 
 preceding remarks,, makes them pertinent to 
 my present subject, and gives them a place in 
 the train of argument requisite for its illustra- 
 tion. For what need of any after-recurrence 
 to the sources of information concerning a 
 religion, the whole contents of which can be 
 thoroughly acquired at once, and in a few 
 hours? An occasional remembrancing may, 
 perhaps, be expedient ; but what object of 
 study can a man propose to himself in a 
 matter of which he knows all that can be 
 known, all at least, that it is of use to know? 
 Like the first rules of arithmetic, its few 
 plain and obvious truths may hourly serve the 
 man's purposes, yet never once occupy his 
 thoughts. But it is impossible that the affec- 
 tions should be kept constant to an object 
 which gives &o employment to the under- 
 stating. The energies of the intellect, in- 
 
( H ) 
 
 crease of insight, and enlarging views, are ne- 
 cessary to keep alive the substantial faith in 
 the heart. They are the appointed fuel to 
 the sacred fire. In the state of Perfection 
 all other faculties may, perhaps, be swallowed 
 up in love % but it is on the wings of the 
 Cherubim, which the ancient Hebrew ^Doctors 
 interpreted as meaning the powers and efforts 
 of the Intellect, that we must first be borne 
 up to the "pure Empyrean" : and it must be 
 Seraphs and not the hearts of poor Mortals^ 
 that can burn unfuelled and self-fed. " Give 
 me understanding (exclaimed the royal 
 Psalmist) and I shall observe thy law with 
 my whole heart. Teach me knowledge 
 and good judgment. Thy commandment is 
 exceeding broad: O how I love thy law! it 
 is my meditation all the day. The entrance 
 of thy words giveth light, it giveth under- 
 standing to the simple. I prevented the 
 dawning of the morning : mine eyes prevent 
 the night-watches, that I might meditate 
 upon thy Word." Now where the very con- 
 trary of this is the opinion of many, and the 
 practice of most, what results can be ex- 
 pected but those which are actually presented 
 to us in our daily experience ? 
 
( 62 ) 
 
 There is one class of men* who read the 
 Scriptures, when they do read them, in order 
 to pick and choose their faith ; or (to speak 
 more accurately) for the purpose of plucking 
 
 * Whether it be on the increase, as a Sect, is doubtful. 
 But it is admitted by all — nay, strange as it may seem, 
 made a matter of boast, — that the number of its secret 
 adherents, outwardly of other denominations, is ten- 
 fold greater than that of its avowed and incorporated 
 Followers. And truly, in our cities and great manufac- 
 turing and commercial towns, among Lawyers and such 
 of the Tradesfolk as are the ruling members in Book- 
 clubs, I am inclined to fear that this has not been asserted 
 without good ground. For Socinianism in its present 
 form, consisting almost wholly in attack and imagined de- 
 tection, has a particular charm for what are called shrewdy 
 knowing men. Besides, the vain and half-educated, 
 whose christian and sir names in the title pages of our 
 Magazines, Lady's Diaries, &c. are the successors of 
 the shame-faced Critos, Phileleutheroses, and Philale- 
 theses in the time of our Grandfathers, will be some- 
 thing: and now that Deism has gone out of fashion, 
 Socinianism has swept up its Refuse. As the main suc- 
 cess of this sect is owing to the small proportion which 
 the affirmative articles of their Faith (rari rantes in 
 gurgite vasto) bear to the negative, (that is, their 
 Belief to their Disbelief) it will be an act of kindness 
 to the unwary to bring together the former under one 
 point of view. This is done in the following Catalogue, 
 the greater part if not the whole of which may be au- 
 thenticated from the writings of Mr. Belsham. 
 
( 63 ) 
 
 away live-asunder, as it were, from the divine 
 organism of the Bible, textuary morsels and 
 fragments for the support of doctrines which 
 they had learned beforehand from the higher 
 
 1. They believe in one God, professing to differ from 
 other Christians only in holding the Deity to be uniper- 
 sonal, the Father alone being God, the Son a mere, 
 though an inspired and highly gifted, man, and the Holy 
 Spirit either a Synonime of God, or of the divine 
 agency, or of its effects. 
 
 2. They believe men's actions necessitated, and con- 
 sistently with this affirm that the Christian Religion (i. e. 
 their view of it) precludes all remorse for our sins, they 
 being a present calamity, but not guilt. 
 
 3. They believe the Gospels, though not written by 
 inspiration, to be authentic Histories on the whole: 
 though with some additions and interpolations. And on 
 the authority of these Writings, confirmed by other evi- 
 dence, they believe in the Resurrection of the Man, 
 Jesus Christ,, from the dead. 
 
 4. On the historic credibility of this event they believe 
 in the Resurrection of the Body, which in their opinion 
 is the Whole Man, at the last Day : and differ from 
 other Churches in this only, that while other Christians 
 believe, that all Men will arise In the Body, they hold, 
 that all the Bodies that had been Men, will arise. 
 
 5. A certain indefinite number of Mankind thus re- 
 newed to life and consciousness, it is the common be- 
 lief of them all, will be placed in a state of happiness 
 and immortality. But with respect to those who have 
 died in the calamitous condition of unreformed Sinful- 
 ness, (to what extent it is for the supreme Judge to de- 
 
C 64 ) 
 
 oracle of their own natural Common-Sense. 
 Sanctas Scripturas frustant ut frustrent* 
 Through the gracious dispensations of Provi- 
 dence a complexity of circumstances may 
 
 cide) they are divided among themselves. The one 
 party teach, that such unhappy persons will be raised 
 only to be re-annihilated : the other party contend* 
 that there will be a, final Restoration of all Men, with a 
 purgatory or state of remedial discipline, the severity 
 and duration of which will be proportioned to the kind, 
 degree, and obstinacy of the Disease, and of which 
 therefore every Man is left to his own conjectural Hopes 
 and Fears: with this comfort however to the very worst, 
 (i. e. most unfortunate and erroneous of Mankind) that it 
 will be all well with them at last. In this article they 
 differ from the Papists, in having no Hell, and in placing 
 their Purgatory after, instead of before, the Day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 6. Lastly, as they hold only an intellectual and phy- 
 sical, and not a moral difference in the actions and 
 characters of Men, they not being free* Agents, and 
 therefore not more responsible Beings than the brute 
 Beasts, although their greater powers of memory and 
 comparison render them more susceptible of being acted 
 on by prospective motives — (and in this sense they retain 
 the term, responsibility, after having purified it by the 
 exnnanition of its old, and the transfusion of a new, 
 meaning) — and as they, with, strict consequence, merge 
 all the attributes of Deity in Power, Intelligence, and 
 Benevolence, (Mercy and Justice being modes, or rather 
 perspective views, of the two latter ; the Holiness of God 
 meaning the same or nothing at all ; and his Anger, 
 
< 65 ) 
 
 co-operate as antidotes to a noxious principle^ 
 land realize the paradox of a very good man 
 under a very evil faith. It is not denied^ that 
 a Socinian may be as honesty useful and bene- 
 
 Offence, and Hatred of Moral Evil, being mere metaphors 
 and figures of speech addressed to a rude and barbarous 
 People) they profess to hold a Redemption— not how- 
 ever by the Cross of Christ, except as his death was an 
 evidence of his sincerity, and the necessary preliminary 
 to his Resurrection ; but — by the effects which this fact 
 of his Resurrection, together with his example, and his 
 re-publication of the moral precepts (taught indeed long 
 before, but as they think, not so clearly, by Moses and the 
 Prophets) were calculated to produce on the human mind. 
 So that if it had so happened, that a man had been 
 influenced to an innocent and useful life by the ex- 
 ample, precepts, and martyrdom of Socrates, Socrates 
 and not Christ, would have been his Redeemer. 
 
 These are all the Positives of the modern Socinian 
 Creed, and even these it was not possible to extricate 
 wholly from the points of Disbelief. But if it should 
 he asked, why this resurrection, or re-creation is con- 
 fined to the human animal, the answer must be — that 
 more than this has not been revealed. And so far all Chris- 
 tians will join assent. But some have added, and in my 
 opinion much to their credit, that they hope, it may be 
 the case with the Brutes likewise, as they see no suffi- 
 cient reason to the contrary. And truly, upon their 
 scheme, I agree with them. For if Man be no other or 
 nobler Creature essentially, than he is represented in 
 their system, the meanest reptile, that maps out its path 
 oa the earth by lines of slime, must be of equal worth 
 
( 66 ) 
 
 volent a character as any of his neighbours; 
 and if he thinks more and derives a larger 
 portion of his pleasures from intellectual 
 sources^ he is likely to be more so. But in such 
 
 and respectability, not only in the sight of the Holy One, 
 but by a strange contradiction even before Man's own 
 reason. For remove all the sources of Esteem and the 
 Love founded on esteem, and whatever else pre-sup- 
 poses a Will and, therein, a possible transcendence to 
 the material world : Mankind, as far as my experience 
 has extended, (and I am less than the least of many 
 whom I could cite as having formed the very same 
 Judgment) are on the whole distinguished from the other 
 Beasts incomparably more to their disadvantage, by 
 Lying, Treachery, Ingratitude, Massacre, Thirst of 
 Blood, and by Sensualities which both in sort and degree 
 it would be libelling their Brother-beasts to call bestial, 
 than to their advantage by a greater extent of Intel- 
 lect. And what indeed, abstracted from the Free-will, 
 could this intellect be but a more shewy instinct ? of 
 more various application indeed, but far less secure, 
 useful, or adapted to its purposes, than the instinct 
 of Birds, Insects, and the like. In short, as I have 
 elsewhere observed, compared with the wiles and 
 factories of the Spider, or with the cunning of the Fox, it 
 would be but a more efflorescent, and for that very cause 
 a less efficient, Salt to preserve the Hog from putrifying 
 before its destined hour. 
 
 Well may the words of Isaiah be applied and ad- 
 dressed to the Teachers and Followers of this Sect, or 
 rather, I would say, to their Tenets as. personified — 
 " The word of the Lord was unto them, precept upon 
 
( 61 ) 
 
 instances, and I am most willing to bear wit- 
 ness from my own experience, that they are 
 not infrequent, the fruit is from the grafts not 
 from the tree. The native produce is, or would 
 be, an intriguing, overbearing, scornful and 
 worldly disposition ; and in point of fact, it is 
 the only scheme of Religion that inspires in 
 its adherents a contempt for the understand- 
 ings of all who differ from them. But be 
 this as it may, and whatever be its effects, it 
 is not probable that Christianity will have any 
 direct influence on men who pay it no other 
 compliment than that of calling by its name 
 the previous dictates and decisions of their 
 own mother-wit. 
 
 But the more numerous class is of those 
 who do not trouble themselves at all with 
 religious matters, which they resign to the 
 clergyman of the parish. But while not a 
 
 precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little, 
 that they might go and fall backward, and be broken 
 and spared. Wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye 
 Scornful Men that rule this people! Because ye have 
 said, We have made a covenant with Death, and with 
 Hell are we at agreement ! Your Covenant with Death 
 shall be annulled, and your agreement with Hell shall 
 not stand. For your Bed is shorter than that a man can 
 stretch himself upon it, and the covering narrower than 
 that he can wrap himself in it." — Isaiah xxviii. 
 
 O 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 few among these men consent to pray and 
 hear by proxy j and while others, more at- 
 tentive to the prudential advantages of a 
 decorous character, yield the customary evi- 
 dence of their church-membership ; but, this 
 performed^ are at peace with themselves, and 
 
 % -' f i :'..'.'. j it' 
 
 think their Sunday's task 
 
 As much as God or Man can fairly ask ; 
 
 there exists amongst the most respectable 
 Laity of our cities and great towns, an active, 
 powerful, and enlarging minority, whose in- 
 dustry, while it enriches their families, is at 
 the same time a support to the revenue, and 
 not seldom enlivens their whole neighbour- 
 hood : men whose lives are free from aH 
 disreputable infirmities, and of whose activity 
 in the origination, patronage, and manage- 
 ment both of charitable and of religious 
 associations, who must not have read or 
 heard? and who that has, will dare deny 
 to be most exemplary ? After the custom 
 of our forefathers, and their pure house- 
 hold religion,* these, in so many respects 
 estimable persons, are for the greater part in 
 
 ! * And pure Religion breathing household laws. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
( 69 ) 
 
 the habit of having family-prayer, and a por- 
 tion of Scripture read every morning and 
 evening. In this class, with such changes or 
 substitutions as the peculiar tenets of the sect 
 require, we must include the sensible, orderly 
 and beneficent Society of the Friends, more 
 commonly called Quakers. Here then, if any 
 where, (that is, in any class of men ; for the 
 present argument is not concerned with indi- 
 viduals) we may expect to find Christianity 
 tempering commercial avidity and sprinkling 
 its holy damps on the passion of accumula- 
 tion. This, I say, we might expect to find, 
 if an undoubting belief in the threats and 
 promises of Revelation, and a consequent re- 
 gularity of personal, domestic, and social de- 
 meanor, sufficed to constitute that Christianity, 
 the power and privilege of which is so to 
 renew and irradiate the whole intelligential 
 and moral life of man, as to overcome the 
 spirit of the world. (St. John : Epistle I.) If 
 this, the appointed test, were found wanting, 
 should we not be forced to apprehend, nay, 
 are we not compelled to infer, that the spirit 
 of prudential motive, however ennobled by 
 the magnitude and awfulness of its objects,* 
 
 * And in this alone the late Dr. Paley, by a use of 
 terms altogether arbitrary, places the distinction between 
 
( ™ ) 
 
 and though as the termination of a lower, it 
 may be the commencement (and not seldom 
 the occasion) of an higher state, is not, even 
 in respect of morality itself, that abiding and 
 continuous principle of action, which is either 
 one with the faith spoken of by St. Paul, or its 
 
 Prudence and Virtue, the former being Self-love in its 
 application to the sum of pain and pleasure that is likely 
 to result to us, as the consequence of our actions, in the 
 present life only ; while the latter is the same Self-love, 
 that together with the present consequences of our ac- 
 tions, takes in likewise the more important enjoyments 
 or . sufferings which, according as we obey or disobey 
 His known commands, God has promised to bestow, or 
 threatened to inflict, on us in the Life to come. Accord- 
 ing to this writer, it becomes the duty of a rational free 
 agent (it would be more pertinent to say, of a sentient 
 animal capable of Forecast) to reduce his Will to an 
 habitual coincidence with his Reason, on no other ground, 
 but because he believes that God is able and determined 
 either to gratify or to torment him. Thus, the great prin- 
 ciple of the Gospel, that we are bound to love our 
 neighbours as ourselves and God above all, must, if 
 translated into a consistency with this theory of enlight- 
 ened Self-love, run thus : On the ground of our fear of 
 torment and our expectation of pleasure from an infinitely 
 powerful Being, we are under a prudential obligation of 
 acting towards our neighbours as if we loved them equally 
 with ourselves ; but ultimately and in very truth to love 
 ourselves only. And this is the Work, this the System 
 of moral and political Philosophy cited as highest au- 
 thority in our Senate and Courts of Judicature ! And 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 immediate offspring. It cannot be -that spirit 
 of obedience to the commands of Christ, by 
 which the soul dvvelleth in him, and he in it : 
 (1 John, c. ill. 4.) and which our Saviour 
 himself announces as a being born again. And 
 this indispensable act, or influence, or impreg- 
 nation, of which, as of a divine tradition, the 
 eldest philosophy is not silent ; which flashed 
 through the darkness of the pagan mysteries ; 
 and which it was therefore a reproach to a 
 Master in Israel, that he had not already 
 known ; (John's Gospel, c. iii.) — this is else^ 
 where explained, as a seed which, though of 
 gradual developement, did yet potentially con- 
 tain the essential form not merely of a better, 
 but of an other life : amidst all the frailties and 
 
 (still worse!) this is the Text-Book for the moral Lec- 
 tures at one of our Universities, justly the most celebrated 
 for scientific ardor and manly thinking. 'Tis not with- 
 out a pang of filial sorrow, that the Writer makes this 
 acknowledgement, which nothing could have extorted 
 from him hut the strongest conviction of the mischievous 
 and debasing tendencies of that wide-spread system, in 
 which the Works of Dr. Paley (his Sermons excepted) 
 act not the less pernicious part, because the most deco- 
 rous and plausible. The fallacious sophistry of the 
 grounding principle in this -whole system has been de- 
 tected by Des Cartes, and Bishop Butler : and of late 
 years, with great ability and originality, by Mr. W. 
 Hazlitt. 
 
( « > 
 
 transient eclipses of mortality making, I re- 
 peat, the subjects of this regeneration not so 
 properly better as other men, whom therefore 
 the world could not but hate, as aliens. Its 
 own native growth, however, improved by 
 cultivation (whether thro' the agency of blind 
 sympathies, or of an intelligent self-interest^ 
 the utmost heights to which the worldly life 
 can ascend) the World has always been ready 
 and willing to acknowlege and admire. They 
 are of the world : therefore speak they out of 
 the heart of the world (ek t6v icoa/xov) and the 
 world heareth them. (1 John, ivth.) 
 
 To abstain from acts of wrong and violence, 
 to be moreover industrious, useful, and of 
 seemly bearing, are qualities presupposed in 
 the gospel code, as the preliminary conditions, 
 rather than the proper and peculiar effects, 
 of Christianity. But they are likewise quali- 
 ties so palpably indispensable to the temporal 
 interests of mankind that, if we except the 
 brief frenzies of revolutionary Riot, there 
 never was a time, in which the World did 
 not profess to reverence them : nor can we 
 state any period, in which a more than ordi- 
 nary character for assiduity, regularity, and 
 charitableness did not secure the World's 
 praise and favor, and were not calculated to 
 
advance the individuals own worldly interests : 
 provided only, that his manners and professed 
 tenets were those of some known and allowed 
 body of men. 
 
 I ask then, what is the fact ? We are— 
 and, till it's good purposes, which are many, 
 have been all atchieved, and we can become 
 something better, long may we continue such! 
 —a busy j enterprizing, and commercial na- 
 tion. The habits attached to this character 
 must, if there exist no adequate counterpoise, 
 inevitably lead us, under the specious names 
 of utility, practical knowledge, and so forth^ 
 to look at all things thro' the medium of the 
 market, and to estimate the Worth of all 
 pursuits and attainments by their marketable 
 value. In this does the Spirit of Trade consist. 
 Mow would the general experience bear us 
 out in the assertion, that amid the absence or 
 declension of all other antagonist Forces, 
 there is found in the very circle of the trading 
 and opulent themselves, in the increase, 
 namely, of religious professors among them, a 
 spring of resistance to the excess of the com- 
 mercial impetus, from the impressive example 
 of their unworldly feelings evidenced by their 
 moderation in worldly pursuits? I fear, that 
 we may anticipate the answer wherever the 
 
( M ) 
 
 religious zeal of such professors does not like-r 
 wise manifest itself by the glad devotion of 
 as large a portion of their Time and In- 
 dustry^ as the duty of providing a fair com- 
 petence for themselves and their families 
 leaves at their own disposal, to the com- 
 prehension of those inspired writings and the. 
 evolution of those pregnant truths, which are 
 proposed for our earnest, sedulous research, 
 in-order that by occupying our understandings 
 they may more and more assimilate our affec- 
 tions? I fear, that the inquiring traveller* 
 would more often hear of zealous Religionists 
 who have read (and as a duty too and with 
 all due acquiescence) the prophetic, u , Wo to 
 them that join house to house and lay field to 
 field, that they may be alone in the land!" 
 and yet find no object deform the beauty of 
 the prospect from their window or even from 
 their castle turrets so annoy ingly, as a meadow 
 not their own, or a field under ploughing with 
 the beam-end of the plough in the hands of 
 its humble owner ! I fear, that he must too. 
 often make report of men lawful in their deal-; 
 iijgs, scriptural in their language, alms-givers, 
 and patrons of Sunday schools, who are yet 
 resistless and overawing Bidders at all Land 
 Auctions in their neighbourhood, who live in 
 
( « ) 
 
 the center of farms without leases, and tenants 
 without attachments! Or if his way should 
 lie through our? great towns and manufacturing 
 districts, instances would grow cheap with 
 him of wealthy religious practitioners, who 
 never travel for orders without cards of edifi- 
 cation in prose and verse, and small tracts of 
 admonition and instruction, all "plain and 
 easy, and suited to the meanest capacities;" 
 who pray daily, as the first act of the morning 
 and as the last of the evening, Lead us not 
 into temptation ! but deliver us from evil ! and 
 employ alf the interval with an edge of appe- 
 tite keen as the scythe of Death in the pursuit 
 of yet more and yet more of a temptation so 
 perilous, that (as they have full often read, 
 and heard read, without the least questioning, 
 or whisper of doubt) no power short of OmmV 
 potence could make their deliverance from it 
 credible or Conceivable. Of all denominations 
 of Christians, there is not one in existence or 
 on record whose whole scheme of faith and 
 worship was so expressly framed for the one 
 purpose of spiritualizing the mind and of 
 abstracting it from the vanities of the world, 
 as the Society of Friends! riot one^ in which 
 the church members are connected > and their 
 professed principles enforced, by so effective 
 
( 16 ) 
 
 and wonderful a form of discipline. But in 
 the zeal of their Founders and first Proselytes 
 for perfect Spirituality , they excluded from 
 their system all ministers specially trained 
 and educated for the ministry, with all Pro- 
 fessional Theologians: and they omitted to 
 provide for the raising up among themselves 
 any other established class of learned men, as 
 teachers and schoolmasters for instance, in 
 their stead. Even at this day, though the 
 Quakers are in general remarkably shrewd 
 and intelligent in all worldly concerns, yet 
 learning, and more particularly theological 
 learning, is more rare among them in propor- 
 tion to their wealth and rank in life, and held 
 in less value, than among any other known 
 sect of Christians. What has been the 
 result ? If the occasion permitted, I could" 
 dilate with pleasure on their decent manners 
 and decorous morals, as individuals, and their 
 exemplary and truly illustrious philanthropic 
 efforts as a Body. From all the gayer and 
 tinsel vanities of the world their discipline has 
 preserved them, and the English character 
 owes to their example some part of its manly 
 plainness in externals. But my argument is 
 confined to the question, whether Religion in 
 its present state and under the present concep- 
 
( m ) 
 
 tions of its demands and purposes does, even 
 among the most religious, exert any efficient 
 force of controul over the commercial spirit, 
 the excess of which we have attributed not to 
 the extent and magnitude of the commerce 
 itself, but to the absence or imperfection of its 
 appointed checks and counteragents. Now as 
 the system of the Friends in its first intention 
 is of all others most hostile to worldly-mind- 
 edness on the one hand ; and as, on the other, 
 the adherents of this system both in confession 
 and practice confine Christianity to feelings 
 and motives ; they may be selected as repre- 
 sentatives of the strict, but unstudied and unin- 
 quiring, Religionists of every denomination. 
 Their characteristic propensities will supply, 
 therefore, no unfair test for the degree of 
 resistance, which our present Christianity is 
 capable of opposing to the cupidity of a trading 
 people. That species of Christianity I mean, 
 which, as far as knowledge and the faculties of 
 thought are concerned,— which, as far as the 
 growth and grandeur of the intellectual man is 
 in question— is to be learnt ex tempore ! A 
 Christianity poured in on the Catechumen all 
 and all at once, as from a shower-bath: and 
 which, whatever it may be in the heart, yet 
 for the understanding and reason is from boy-< 
 
( « ) 
 
 hood onward a thing past and perfected ! If 
 the almost universal opinion be tolerably cor- 
 rect^ the question is answered. But I by no 
 means appropriate the remark to the wealthy 
 Quakers/ or even apply it to them in any par- 
 ticular or eminent sense, when I say, that 
 often as the motley reflexes of my experience 
 move in long procession of manifold groups 
 before me, the distinguished and world-honored 
 company of Christian Mammonists appear to 
 the eye of my imagination as a drove of camels 
 heavily laden, yet all at full speed, and each 
 in the confident expectation of passing through 
 the eye of the needle/ without stop or halt, 
 both beast and baggage. 
 
 Not without an uneasy reluctance have I 
 ventured to tell the truth on this subject, lest 
 I should be charged with the indulgence of a 
 satirical mood and an uncharitable spleen. 
 But my conscience bears me witness, and I 
 know myself too near the grave to trifle with 
 its name, that I am solely actuated by a sense 
 of the exceeding importance of the subject at 
 the present moment. I feel it an awful duty 
 to exercise the honest liberty of free utterance 
 in so dear a concernment as that of preparing 
 my country for a change in its external rela- 
 tions, which must conife sooner or later ; which 
 
( It ) 
 
 I believe to have already commenced ; and 
 that it will depend on the presence or absence 
 of a corresponding change in the mind of the 
 nation, and above all in the aims and ruling 
 opinions of our gentry and moneyed men 
 whether it is to cast down our strength and 
 prosperity, or to fix them on a firmer and 
 more august basis. " Surely to every good 
 and peaceable man it must in nature needs be 
 a hateful thing to be the displeaser and mo- 
 lester of thousands; but when God commands 
 to take the trumpet and blow a dolorous or a 
 jarring blast, it lies not in man's will what he 
 shall say and what he shall conceal." 
 
 That my complaints, both in this and in 
 my former Lay Sermon, concerning the same 
 errors, are not grounded on any peculiar no- 
 tions of mine, the following remarks of a great 
 and good man, not less illustrious for his piety 
 and fervent zeal as a Christian than for his 
 acuteness and profundity as a Philosopher, 
 may, perhaps, be accepted as proof. 
 
 a Prevailing studies, he observes, are of no 
 small consequence to a state, the religion, 
 manners, and civil government of a country 
 ever taking some bias from its philosophy, 
 which affects not only the minds of its pro- 
 fessors and students, but also the opinions of 
 
( 80 ) 
 
 all the better sort, and the practice of the 
 whole people, remotely and consequentially 
 indeed, though not inconsiderably. Have not 
 the doctrines of Necessity and Materialism, 
 with the consequent denial of men's respon- 
 sibility, of his corrupt and fallen nature, and 
 of the whole scheme of Redemption by the 
 incarnate Word gained ground during the 
 general passion for the Corpuscularian and 
 Experimental Philosophy which hath pre- 
 vailed about a century ? This indeed might 
 usefully enough have employed some share 
 of the leisure and curiosity of inquisitive per- 
 sons. But when it entered the seminaries 
 of Learning, as a necessary accomplishment 
 and as the most important part of know- 
 ledge, by engrossing men's thoughts and 
 fixing their minds so much on corporeal ob- 
 jects, it hath, however undesignedly, not a 
 little indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and 
 intellectual matters. Certainly, had the phi- 
 losophy of Pythagoras and Socrates prevailed 
 in this age ? we should not have seen interest 
 take so general and fast hold on the minds of 
 men. But while the employment of the mind 
 on things purely intellectual is to most men 
 irksome, whereas the sensitive powers by our 
 constant use of them, acquire strength, the 
 
( 81 ) 
 
 objects of sense are too often counted the chief 
 good. For these things men fight, cheat, and 
 scramble. Therefore, in order to tame man- 
 kind and introduce a sense of virtue, the best 
 human means is to exercise their understanding, 
 to give them a glimpse of a world superior to 
 the sensible; and while they take pains to 
 cherish and maintain the animal life, to. teach 
 them not to neglect the. intellectual. 
 
 It might very well be thought serious trifling 
 to tell my readers that the greatest men had 
 ever an^righ esteem for Plato ; whose writings 
 are the touchstone of an hasty and shallow 
 mind ; whose philosophy, the admiration of 
 ages, supplied patriots, magistrates and law- 
 givers to the most flourishing states, as well 
 fathers to the Church, and doctors to the 
 Schools. In these days the depths of that 
 old learning are rarely fathomed : and yet it 
 were happy for these lands, if our young 
 nobility and gentry instead of modern maxims 
 would imbibe the notions of the great men of 
 antiquity. But in these free-thinking times, 
 many an empty head is shook at Aristotle 
 and Plato: and, the writings of these cele- 
 brated ancients are by most men treated on a 
 level with the dry and barbarous lucubrations 
 of the Schoolmen. ' It may, however, be 
 
( 82 ) 
 
 modestly presumed that there are not many 
 among us, even of those that are called the 
 better sort, who have more sense, virtue, and 
 love of their country than Cicero, who in a 
 letter to Atticus could not forbear exclaiming, 
 O Socrates et Socratici Viri ! nunquam vobis 
 gratiam referam. Would to God, many of 
 our countrymen had the same obligations to 
 those &ocratic writers. Certainly, where the 
 people are well educated, the art of piloting 
 a state is best learnt from the writings of 
 Plato. But among a people void of discipline 
 and a gentry devoted to vulgar cares and 
 views, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle them- 
 selves, were they living, could do but little 
 good." 
 
 Thus then, of the three most approved 
 antagonists to the Spirit of Barter, and the 
 accompanying disposition to overvalue Riches 
 with all the Means and Tokens thereof— of 
 the three fittest and most likely checks to this 
 tendency, namely, the feeling of ancient birth 
 and the respect paid to it by the community 
 at large ; a genuine intellectual Philosophy 
 with an accredited, learned, and philosophic 
 Class ; and lastly, Religion ; we have found 
 the first declining, the second not existing, 
 and the third efficient, indeed, in many re- 
 
( 83 ) 
 
 spects and to many excellent purposes, only 
 not in this particular direction : the Religion 
 here spoken of, having long since parted 
 company with that inquisitive and bookish 
 Theology which tends to defraud the student 
 of his worldly wisdom, inasmuch as it diverts 
 his mind from the accumulation of wealth by 
 pre-occupying his thoughts in the acquisition 
 of knowledge. For the Religion of best re- 
 pute among us holds all the truths of Scrip- 
 ture and all the doctrines of Christianity so 
 very transcendent, or so very easy, as to make 
 study and research either vain or needless. It 
 professes j therefore, to hunger and thirst after 
 Righteousness alone, and the rewards of the 
 Righteous ; and thus habitually taking for 
 granted all truths of spiritual import leaves 
 the understanding vacant and at leisure for a 
 thorough insight into present and temporal 
 interests: ...which, doubtless, is the true reason 
 why its followers are in general such shrewd, 
 knowing, wary, well-informed, thrifty and 
 thriving men of business. But this is likewise 
 the reason, why it neither does or can check 
 or circumscribe the Spirit of Barter; and to 
 the consequent monopoly which this commer- 
 cial Spirit possesses, must its over-balance be 
 attributed, not to the extent or magnitude of 
 the Commerce itself. 
 
 Q 
 
( 84 ) 
 
 Before I enter on the result assigned by 
 me as the chief ultimate cause of the present 
 state of the country, and as the main ground 
 on which the immediate occasions of the ge- 
 neral distress have worked, I must entreat my 
 Readers to reflect that the spirit of Trade has 
 been a thing of insensible growth ; that whe- 
 ther it be enough, or more or less than enough, 
 is a matter of relative, rather than of positive 
 determination; that it depends on the degree 
 in which it is aided or resisted by all the other 
 tendencies that co-exist with it; and that in 
 the best of times this spirit may be said to 
 live on a narrow isthmus between a sterile 
 desert and a stormy sea, still threatened and 
 encroached on either by the Too Much or 
 the Too Little* As the argument does not 
 depend on any precise accuracy in the dates, 
 I shall assume it to have commenced, as an 
 influencing part of the national character, 
 with the institution of the Funds in the reign 
 of William the Third, and from the peace 
 of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1148, to have been 
 hurrying onward to its maximum, which it 
 seems to have attained during the late war. 
 The short interruptions may be well repre- 
 sented as a few steps backward, that it might 
 leap forward with an additional momentum. 
 The words, old and modern, now and then, 
 
( 85 ) 
 
 are applied by me, the latter to the whole 
 period since the Revolution, and the former 
 to the interval between this epoch and the 
 Reformation; the one from 1460 to 1680, 
 the other from 1680 to the present time. 
 
 Having premised this explanation, I can 
 now return an intelligible answer to a question, 
 that will have risen in the Reader's mind 
 during his perusal of the last three or four 
 pages. How, it will be objected, does all 
 this apply to the present times in particular ? 
 When was the industrious part of mankind 
 not attached to the pursuits most likely to 
 reward their industry ? Was the wish to 
 make a fortune or, if you prefer an invidious 
 phrase, the lust of lucre, less natural to our 
 forefathers than to their descendants ? If you 
 say, that though a not less frequent, or less 
 powerful passion with them than with us, it 
 yet met with a more frequent and more 
 powerful check, a stronger and more advanced 
 boundary-line, in the Religion of old times, 
 and in the faith, fashion, habits, and autho- 
 rity of the Religious : in what did this differ- 
 ence consist ? and in what way did these 
 points of difference act ? If indeed the anti- 
 dote in question once possessed virtues which 
 it no longer possesses, or not in the same 
 
( 86 ) 
 
 degree, what is the ingredient, either added, 
 omitted, or diminished since that time, which 
 can have rendered it less efficacious now than 
 then ? 
 
 Well! (I might reply) grant all this: 
 and let both the profession and the professors 
 of a spiritual principle, as a counterpoise to 
 the worldly weights at the other end of the 
 Balance, be supposed much the same in the 
 one period as in the other! Assume for a 
 moment, that I can establish neither the fact 
 of its lesser efficiency, nor any points of dif- 
 ference capable of accounting for it ! Yet it 
 might still be a sufficient answer to this objec- 
 tion, that as the commerce of the country, and 
 with it the spirit of commerce, has increased 
 fifty-fold since the commencement of the 
 latter period, it is not enough that the coun- 
 terweight should be as great as it was in the 
 former period : to remain the same in its effect, 
 it ought to have become very much greater. 
 But though this be a consideration not less im- 
 portant than it is obvious, yet I do not pur- 
 pose to rest in it. I affirm, that a difference 
 may be shewn, and of no trifling importance 
 as to that one point, to which my present 
 argument is confined. For let it be re- 
 membered, that it is not to any extraordinary 
 
( 8T ) , 
 
 influences of the religious principle that I am 
 referring, not to voluntary poverty, or se- 
 questration from social and active life, or 
 schemes of mortification. I speak of Reli- 
 gion merely as I should of any worldly ob- 
 ject, which, as far as it employs and interests 
 a man, leaves less room in his mind for other 
 pursuits : except that this must be more es- 
 pecially the case in the instance of Religion, 
 because beyond all other Interests it is calcu- 
 lated to occupy the whole mjnd, and employ 
 successively all the faculties of man ; and 
 because the objects which it presents to the 
 Imagination as well as to the Intellect can- 
 not be actually contemplated, much less can 
 they be the subject of frequent meditation, 
 without dimming the lustre and blunting the 
 rays of all rival attractions. It is well 
 known, and has been observed of old, that 
 Foetry tends to render its devotees * careless 
 of money and outward appearances, while 
 
 * Hie error tarn en et levis hie insania quail tas 
 
 Virtutes habeat, sic collige : vatis avarus 
 
 Non temere est animus ; versus amat, hoc studet unura ; 
 
 JDetrimenta, fugas servorum, incendia ridet ; 
 
 Non fraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullam 
 
 Pupillo ; vivit siliquis et pane secundo : 
 
 Militiae quanquam piger et malus, utilis urbi. 
 
 Horat. Epist. ii, 1. 
 
( 88 ) 
 
 Philosophy inspires a contempt of both as ob- 
 jects of Desire or Admiration. But Religion 
 is the Poetry and Philosophy of all mankind ; 
 unites in itself whatever is most excellent in 
 either, and while it at one and the same 
 time calls into action and supplies with the 
 noblest materials both the imaginative and 
 the intellective faculties, superadds the in- 
 terests of the most substantial and home-felt 
 reality to both, to the poetic vision and the 
 philosophic idea. But in order to produce, a 
 similar effect it must act in a similar way : it 
 must reign in the thoughts of a man and in 
 the powers akin to thought, as well as exercise 
 an admitted influence over his hopes and fears, 
 and through these on his deliberate and indi- 
 vidual acts. 
 
 Now as my first presumptive proof of a 
 difference (I might almost have said, of a 
 contrast) between the religious character of 
 the period since the Revolution, and that 
 of the period from the accession of Edward 
 the Sixth to the abdication of the second 
 James, I refer to the Sermons and to the 
 theological Works generally, of the latter 
 period. It is my full conviction, that in any 
 half dozen Sermons of Dr. Donne, or Jeremy 
 Taylor, there are more thoughts, more facts 
 
( 89 ) 
 
 and images, more excitements to inquiry and 
 intellectual effort, than are presented to the 
 congregations of the present day in as many 
 churches or meetings during twice as many 
 months. Yet both these were the most po- 
 pular preachers of their times, were heard 
 with enthusiasm by crowded and promiscuous 
 Audiences/ and the effect produced by their 
 eloquence was held in reverential and affec- 
 tionate remembrance by many attendants on 
 their ministry, who, like the pious Isaac 
 Walton, were not themselves men of learn- 
 ing or education. In addition to this fact, 
 think likewise on the large and numerous 
 editions of massy, closely printed folios : the 
 impressions so large and the editions so nu- 
 merous, that all the industry of destruction 
 for the last hundred years has but of late suf- 
 ficed to make them rare. From the long 
 list select those works alone, which we 
 know to have been the most current and fa- 
 vorite works of their day : and of these again 
 no more than may well be supposed to have 
 had a place in the scantiest libraries, or per- 
 haps with the Bible and Common Prayer 
 Book to have formed the library of their 
 owner. Yet on the single shelf so filled we 
 should find almost every possible question, that 
 
( 90 ) 
 
 could interest or instruct a reader whose whole 
 heart was in his religion, discussed with a 
 command of intellect that seems to exhaust 
 all the learning and logic, "all the historical 
 and moral relations, of each several subject. 
 The very length of the discourses, with which 
 these Ci rich souls of wit and knowledge" 
 fixed the eyes, ears, and hearts of their 
 crowded congregations, are a source of won- 
 der now-a-days, and (we may add) of self- 
 congratulation ^ to many a sober christian, who 
 forgets with what delight he himself has lis- 
 tened to a two hours' harangue on a Loan or 
 Tax, or at the trial of some rem arkable cause 
 or culprit. The transfer of the interest makes 
 and explains the whole difference. For 
 though much may be fairly charged on the 
 revolution in the mode of preaching as well as 
 in the matter, since the fresh morning and 
 fervent noon of the Reformation, when there 
 was no need to visit the conventicles of fana- 
 ticism in order to 
 i - 8 ' "" 
 
 See God's ambassador in the pulpit stand, 
 
 Where they could take notes from his Look and Hand ; 
 
 And from his speaking action bear away 
 
 More sermon than our preachers use to say ; 
 
 yet this" too must be referred to the same 
 
( 91 ) 
 
 change in the habits of men's minds, a change 
 that involves both the shepherd and the flock : 
 though like many other Effects, it tends to 
 reproduce and strengthen its own cause. 
 
 The last point, to which I shall appeal, is 
 the warmth and frequency of the religious 
 controversies during the former of the two 
 periods; the deep interest excited by them 
 among all but the lowest and most ignorant 
 classes ; the importance attached to them by 
 the very highest ; the number, and in many 
 instances the transcendent merit, of the con^ 
 troversial publications — in short, the rank and 
 value assigned to polemic divinity* The sub* 
 jects of the controversies may or may not 
 have been trifling ; the warmth, with which 
 they were conducted, may have been dispro- 
 portionate and indecorous ; and we may have 
 reason to congratulate ourselves that the age, 
 in which we live, is grown more indulgent 
 and less captious. The fact is introduced not 
 for its own sake, but as a symptom of the ge- 
 neral state of men's feelings, as an evidence of 
 the direction and main channel, in which the 
 thoughts and interests of men were then flow- 
 ing. We all know, that lovers are apt to 
 take offence and wrangle with each other on 
 occasions that perhaps are but trifles, and 
 
 R 
 
( 92 ) 
 
 which assuredly would appear such to those 
 who had never been under the influence of a 
 similar passion. These quarrels may be no 
 proofs of wisdom; but still in the imperfect 
 state of our nature the entire absence of the 
 same, and this too on far more serious provo- 
 cations, would excite a strong suspicion of a 
 comparative indifference in the feelings of the 
 parties towards each other, who can love so 
 coolly where they profess to love so well. I 
 shall believe our present religious tolerancy to 
 proceed from the abundance of our charity 
 and good sense, when I can see proofs that 
 we are equally cool and forbearing, as Liti- 
 gators and political Partizans. And I must 
 again intreat my reader to recollect, that the 
 present argument is exclusively concerned 
 with the requisite correctives of the com- 
 mercial spirit, and with Religion therefore 
 no otherwise, than as a counter-charm to the 
 sorcery of wealth : and my main position is, 
 that neither by reasons drawn from the na- 
 ture of the human mind, or by facts of actual 
 experience, are we justified in expecting this 
 from a religion which does not employ and 
 actuate the understandings of men, and com- 
 bine their affections with it as a system of 
 Truth gradually and progressively manifest- 
 
( w ) 
 
 ing" itself to the intellect ; no less than as a 
 system of motives and moral commands learnt 
 as soon as heard, and containing nothing but 
 what is plain and easy to the lowest capaci- 
 ties. Hence it is, that Objects, the osten- 
 sible principle of which I have felt it my 
 duty to oppose (vide the Statesman's Ma- 
 nual, p. .50.) and objects, the which and the 
 measures for the attainment of which possess 
 my good wishes and have had the humble tri- 
 bute of my public advocation and applause— 
 I am here alluding to the British and Fo- 
 reign Bible Society — may yet converge, as. 
 to the point now in question. They may, both* 
 alike> be symptoms of the same predominant 
 disposition to that Coalition-system in Chris* 
 tianity, for the expression of which Theolo- 
 gians have invented or appropriated the term > 
 Syncretism :■* although the former may be an 
 ominous, the latter an auspicious symptom, 
 
 * Clementia Evangelica (writes a German Theologian 
 of the last Century)' quasi matrona habenda est, purioris 
 doctrinae custos, mitis quidem, at sedula tamen, at vigilans, 
 at seductorum jmpatiens. Iste,vero Syncretismus, quem, 
 Laodiceni apud nos tantopore collaudant, nusquamame 
 nisi meretrix audiet, Fidei vel pigrae vel status sui ignaraa 
 proles, postea autem indolis secularis genetrix, et quacum 
 nee sincera fides, nee genuina Caritas commorari feret. 
 
 Translation. — The true Gospel Spirit of . Tolerations 
 
( 94 ) 
 
 though the one may be worse from Bad, while 
 the other is an instance of Good educed from 
 Evil. Nay, I will dare confess, that I know 
 not how to think otherwise, when I hear a 
 Bishop of an established Church publicly ex- 
 claim (and not viewing it as a lesser inconve- 
 nience to be endured for the attainment of a 
 far greater good, but as a thing desirable and 
 to be preferred for its own sake) No Notes ! 
 No Comment! Distribute the Bible and the 
 Bible onty among the Poor! — a declaration, 
 which from any lower quarter I should have 
 been under the temptation of attributing 
 either to a fanatical notion of immediate illu- 
 mination superseding the necessity of human 
 teaching, or to an ignorance of difficulties 
 which (and what more Worthy?) have suc- 
 eessfully employed all the learning, sagacity, 
 and unwearied labors of great and wise men, 
 
 we should regard as a Matron, a kind and gentle guar- 
 dian indeed of the pure Doctrine, but sedulous, but ■vi- 
 gilant, but impatient of Seducers. This Syncretism on 
 the contrary, which the Loadiceans among us join in ex- 
 tolling so highly, shall no where hear from me other or 
 better name than that of Harlot, the offspring of a Belief 
 either slothful or ignorant of its own condition, and then 
 the parent of Worldly-mindedness, and with whom there- 
 fore neither sincere Faith nor genuine Charity will endure 
 to associate 
 
( 95 ) 
 
 and eminent servants of Christ, during all the 
 ages of Christianity, and will doubtless con- 
 tinue to yield new fruits of Knowledge and 
 Insight to a long series of Followers.* 
 
 Though an overbalance of the commercial 
 ■ 
 
 * I am weli aware, that by these open avowals, 
 that with much to honor and praise in many, there 
 is something to correct in all, parties, I shall provoke 
 many enemies and make never a friend. If I dared, 
 abstain, how gladly should I have so done ! Would 
 that the candid part of my Judges would peruse or 
 re-peruse the affecting and most eloquent introductory 
 pages of Milton's Second Book of his " Reason of Church 
 Government urged, &c. :" and give me the credit, which 
 (my conscience bears me witness) I am entitled to claim, 
 for all the moral feelings expressed in that exquisite 
 passage. The following paragraph I extract from a vo- 
 lume of my own, which has been long printed, for the 
 greater part, and which will, I trust, now be soon pub- 
 lished. 
 
 " All my experience from my first entrance into life to 
 the present hour is in favor of the warning maxim, that 
 the man who opposes in toto the political or religious 
 zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy than he 
 who differs from them in any one or two points or perhaps 
 only in degree. By that transfer of the feelings of pri- 
 vate life into the discussions of public questions 1 , which 
 is the queen bee in the hive of party fanaticism, the par- 
 tizan has more sympathy with an intemperate . opposite 
 than with a moderate Friend. We now enjoy an inter- 
 mission and long may it continue ! In addition to far 
 higher and more important merits, our present bible 
 
( 96 ) 
 
 spirit is involved in the deficiency of its coun- 
 terweights ; yet the facts, that exemplify the 
 mode and extent of its operation, will afford a 
 more direct and satisfactory kind of proof. 
 And first I am to speak of this overbalance 
 as displayed in the commercial world itself. 
 But as this is the first, so is it for my present 
 purpose the least important point of view. A 
 portion of the facts belonging to this division 
 of the subject I -have already noticed, p. 34, 
 35 ; and for the remainder let the following 
 suffice as the substitute or representative. 
 The moral of the tale I leave to the Roader's 
 
 societies, and other numerous associations for national or 
 charitable objects., may serve perhaps to carry off the su- 
 perfluous activity and fervor of stirring minds in inno- 
 cent hyperboles and the bustle of management. But the 
 poison-tree is not dead, though the sap may for a season 
 have subsided to its roots. At least, let us not be lulled 
 into such a notion of our entire security, as not to keep 
 watch and ward, even on our best feelings. I have seen 
 gross intolerance shewn in support of toleration ; secta- 
 rian antipathy most obtrusively displayed in the pro- 
 motion of an undistinguishing comprehension of sects ; 
 and acts of cruelty (I had almost said) of treachery, 
 committed in furtherance of an object vitally important 
 to the cause of humanity ; and all this by men too of 
 naturally kind dispositions and exemplary conduct. " — 
 Biographic/, Literaria, or Sketches of my Literary Life, 
 and Opinions, p. 19Q,. 
 
( 9T ) 
 
 own reflections. Within the last sixty years 
 or perhaps a somewhat larger period, (for I 
 do not pretend to any nicety of dates, and the 
 documents are of easy access) there have oc- 
 curred at intervals of about 12 or 13 years 
 each; certain periodical Revolutions of Cre- 
 dit. Yet Revolution is not the precise word. 
 To state the thing as it is, I ought to have 
 said, certain gradual expansions of credit end- 
 ing in sudden contractions, or, with equal 
 propriety, ascensions to a certain utmost pos- 
 sible height, which has been different in each 
 successive instance ; but in every instance the 
 attainment of this, its ne plus ultra, has been 
 instantly announced by a rapid series of ex- 
 plosions (in mercantile language, a Crash) 
 and a consequent precipitation of the general 
 system. For a short time this Icarian* 
 
 * " Icarus, Son of Daedalus, who flying with his father 
 from Crete flew too high, whereby the Sun melting his 
 waxen wings he fell into the Sea, from him named the 
 Icarian Sea." — Ainsworth. By turning back to the 
 word, Daedalus, the Reader will find such a striking and 
 ingenious allegory of the Manufacturing System, its con- 
 nections with a forced or contraband Trade, and its suc- 
 cessful evasions of what has been lately called the con- 
 tinental system, as may induce him to forgive the trite- 
 ness and school-boy character which all allusions of this 
 sort have at first sight for a sensible mind. 
 
( 98 ) 
 
 Credit, op rather this illegitimate offspring 
 of Confidence, to which it stands in the 
 same relation as Phaethon to his parent god 
 in the old fable, seems to lie stunned by the 
 fall ; but soon recovering, again it strives up- 
 ward, and having once more regained its mid 
 region, 
 
 thence many a league, 
 
 As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 
 Audacious ! 
 
 Paradise Lostv 
 
 till at the destined zenith of its vaporous ex- 
 altation, iC all unawares, fluttering its pennons 
 vain, plumb down it drops /'< Or that I may 
 descend myself to the u cool element of prose," 
 Alarm and suspicion gradually diminish into a 
 judicious circumspectness ; but by little and 
 little, circumspection gives way to the desire 
 and emulous ambition of doing business ; till 
 Impatience and Incaution on one side, tempt- 
 ing and encouraging headlong Adventure^ 
 Want of principle, and Confederacies of false 
 credit on the other, the movements of Trade 
 become yearly gayer and giddier, and end at 
 length in a vortex of hopes and hazards, of 
 blinding passions and blind practices, which 
 should have been left where alone they ought 
 
( 99 ) 
 
 ever to have been founds among the wicked 
 lunacies of the Gaming Table. 
 
 I am not ignorant that the power and cir- 
 cumstantial prosperity of the Nation has been 
 increasing during the same period, with an 
 accelerated force unprecedented in any coun- 
 try > the population of which bore the same 
 proportion to its productive soil : and partly, 
 perhaps, even in consequence of this system. 
 By facilitating the means of enterprize it must 
 have called into activity a multitude of en- 
 terprizing Individuals and a variety of Talent 
 that would otherwise have lain dormant : 
 while by the same ready supply of excitements 
 to Labor, together with its materials and in- 
 struments, even an unsound credit has been 
 able within a short time to* substantiate itself* 
 
 * If by the display of forged Bank Notes a Speculator 
 should establish the belief of his being a Man of large* 
 fortune, and gain a temporary confidence in his own 
 paper-money ; and if by large wages so paid he should 
 stimulate a number of indolent Highlanders to bring a 
 track of waste land into profitable cultivation, the promis- 
 sary Notes of the Owner, which derived their first value 
 from a delusion, would end in representing a real pro- 
 perty, and this their own product. A most improbable 
 case! In its accidental features, I reply, rather than in its 
 essentials. How many thousand acres have been re- 
 claimed from utter unproductiveness, how many doubled- 
 
 S 
 
( ioo ) 
 
 We shall perhaps be told too, that the very 
 Evils of this System, even the periodical crash 
 itself, are to be regarded but as so much su- 
 perfluous steam ejected by the Escape Pipes 
 and Safety Valves of a self-regulating Machine : 
 and lastly, that in a free and trading country 
 all things find their level. 
 
 I have as little dispostion as motive to re- 
 cant the principles, which in many forms and 
 through various channels I have labored to 
 propagate; but there is surely no inconsistency 
 in yielding all due honor to the spirit of Trade, 
 and yet charging sundry evils, that weaken 
 or reverse its blessings, on the over-balance of 
 that spirit, taken as the paramount principle 
 of action in the Nation at large. Much I 
 still concede to the arguments for the present 
 
 in value, by the agency of notes issued beyond the bond 
 fide Capital of the Bank or Firm that circulated them, or 
 at best on Capital afloat and insecure. 
 
 In this section of the present address, I consider myself 
 as having redeemed a promise, made by me (November 
 1809) in the Essay " On vulgar errors concerning Tax- 
 ation." Having demonstrated the favourable influences 
 of the system " on our political strength and circum- 
 stantial prosperity," THE friend added the following 
 pledge: " What have been its injurious effects on our 
 Literature, Morals, and Religious Principles, I shall 
 hereafter develope with the same boldness." 
 
( ioi ) 
 
 scheme of Things, as adduced in the preced- 
 ing paragraph : but I likewise see, and always 
 have seen, much that needs winnowing. Thus 
 instead of the position, that all things find, it 
 would be less equivocal and far more descrip- 
 tive of the fact to say, that Things are always 
 finding, their level : which might be taken as 
 the paraphrase or ironical definition of a 
 storm, but would be still more appropriate to 
 the Mosaic Chaos, ere its brute tendencies 
 had been enlightened by the Word (i. e. the 
 communicative Intelligence) and before the 
 Spirit of Wisdom * moved on the level- 
 finding Waters. But Persons are not Things 
 —but Man does not find his level. Neither 
 in body nor in soul does the Man find his 
 level! After a hard and calamitous season, 
 during which the thousand Wheels of some 
 vast manufactory had remained silent as a 
 frozen water-fall, be it that plenty has 
 returned and that Trade has once more be- 
 come brisk and stirring : go, ask the over- 
 seer, and question the parish doctor, whether 
 the workman's health and temperance with 
 
 * 1op(j)ia, Wisdom, (that is, Reason in Act or Energy) 
 was the name by which the Christians and Christian 
 Writers of the three first Centuries most commonly ad- 
 dressed and distinguished the Holy Ghost. 
 
( 102 ) 
 
 the staid and respectful Manners best taught 
 by the inward dignity of conscious self-sup- 
 port^ have found their level again! Alas! 
 I have more than once seen a group of 
 children in Dorsetshire, during the heat of 
 the dog-days, each with its little shoulders 
 up to its ears, and its chest pinched inward, 
 the very habit and fixtures, as it were, that 
 had been impressed on their frames by the 
 former ill-fed, ill-clothed, and unfuelled win- 
 ters.. But as with the Body, so or still worse 
 with the Mind. Nor is the effect confined to 
 the laboring classes, whom by an ominous but 
 too appropriate a. change in our phraseology 
 we are now accustomed to call the Laboring 
 Poor. I cannot persuade myself, that the 
 frequency of Failures with all the disgraceful 
 secrets of Fraud and Folly, of unprincipled 
 Vanity in expending and desperate Specula- 
 tion in retrieving, can be familiarized to the 
 thoughts and experience of Men, as matters 
 of daily occurrence, without serious injury to 
 the Moral Sense : more especially in times 
 when Bankruptcies spread, like a fever, at 
 once contagious and epidemic; swift too as the 
 travel of an Earthquake, that with one and the 
 same chain of Shocks opens the ruinous chasm 
 in cities that have an ocean between them! — 
 
( 103 ) 
 
 in times, when the Fate flies swifter than the 
 Fear, and yet the report, that follows the flash, 
 has a ruin of its own and arrives but to mul- 
 tiply the Blow !- — when princely capitals are 
 often but the Telegraphs of distant calamity : 
 and still worse, when no man's treasure is safe 
 who has adopted the ordinary means of safety, 
 neither the high or the humble; when the 
 Lord's rents and the Farmer's store, entrusted 
 perhaps but as yesterday, are asked after at 
 closed doors! — but worst of all, in its moral 
 influences as well as in the cruelty of suffering, 
 when the old Laborers' Savings, the precious 
 robberies of self-denial from every day's com- 
 fort; when the Orphan's Funds; the Widow's 
 Livelihood ; the fond confiding Sister's humble 
 Fortune; are found among the victims to the 
 remorseless mania of dishonest Speculation, or 
 to the desperate cowardice of Embarrassment, 
 and the drunken stupor of a usurious Selfish- 
 ness that for a few months respite dares incur 
 a debt of guilt and infamy ^ for which the 
 grave itself can plead no statute of limitation. 
 .Name to me any Revolution recorded in His- 
 tory, that was not followed by a depravation 
 of the national Morals. The Roman cha- 
 racter during the Triumvirate, and under 
 Tiberius; the reign of Charles the Second; 
 
( 104 ) 
 
 and Paris at the present moment ; are obvious 
 instances. What is the main cause ? The 
 sense of Insecurity. On what ground then 
 dare we hope, that with the same accompani- 
 ment Commercial Revolutions should not pro- 
 duce the same effect, in proportion to the 
 extent of their sphere ? 
 
 But these Blessings — with all the specific 
 terms, into which this most comprehensive 
 Phrase is to be resolved? Dare we unpack the 
 bales and cases so marked, and look at the 
 articles, one by one ? Increase of human Life 
 and increase of the means of Life are, it is 
 true, reciprocally cause and effect: and the 
 Genius of Commerce and Manufactory has 
 been the cause of both to a degree that may 
 well excite our wonder. But do the last results 
 justify our exultation likewise ? Human Life, 
 alas! is but the malleable Metal, out of which 
 the thievish Picklock, the Slave's Collar, and 
 the Assassin's Stiletto are formed as well as 
 the clearing Axe, the feeding Plough-share, 
 the defensive Sword, and the mechanic Tool. 
 But the subject is a painful one : and for- 
 tunately the labors of others, with the com- 
 munications of medical men concerning the 
 state of the manufacturing Poor, have rendered 
 it unnecessary. I will rather (though in strict 
 
( ws ) 
 
 method it should, perhaps, be reserved for the 
 following Head) relate a speech made to me 
 near Fort Augustus, as I was travelling on 
 foot through the Highlands of Scotland. 
 The Speaker was an elderly and respectable 
 widow, who expressed herself with that 
 simple eloquence, which strong feeling seldom 
 fails to call forth in humble life, but especially 
 in women. She spoke English, as indeed 
 most Highlanders do who speak it at all, 
 with a propriety of phrase and a discrimina- 
 tion of tone and emphasis that more than 
 compensated for the scantiness of her vocabu- 
 lary. After an affecting account of her own 
 wrongs and ejectment, (which however, she 
 said, bore with comparative lightness on Her, 
 who had had saved up for her a wherewithal 
 to live, and was blessed with a son well to do 
 in the world), she made a movement with her 
 hand in a circle, directing my eye meanwhile to 
 various objects as marking its outline : and then 
 observed, with a deep sigh and a suppressed 
 and slow voice which she suddenly raised 
 and quickened after the first drop or cadence— 
 Within this space — how short a time back ! 
 there lived a hundred and seventy-three per- 
 sons : and now there is only a shepherd, and 
 an underling or two. Yes, Sir! One hun- 
 
( 106 ) 
 
 dred and seventy-three Christian souls, man, 
 woman, boy, girl, and babe ; and in almost 
 every home an old man by the fireside, who 
 would tell you of the troubles, before our 
 roads were made ; and many a brave youth 
 among them who loved the birth-place of his 
 forefathers, yet would swing about his broad- 
 sword and want but a word to march off to 
 the battles over sea; aye Sir, and many 
 a good lass, who had a respect. for herself! 
 Well ! but they are gone, and with them 
 the bristled bear,* and the pink haver yf and 
 the potatoe plot that looked as gay as any 
 flower garden with its blossoms! I some? 
 times fancy, that the very birds are gone, all 
 but the crows and the gleads ! Well, and 
 what then ? Instead of us all, there is one 
 shepherd man, and it may be a pair of small 
 lads- — and a. many, many sheep ! And do you 
 think, Sir ! that God allows of such pro^ 
 ceedings ? 
 
 Some days before this conversation, and 
 while I was on the shores of the Loch Ka-> 
 thern,$ I had heard of a sad counterpart to the 
 
 * A species of Barley. t A species of Oats. 
 
 J The Lake so widely celebrated since then by a Poet, 
 to whose writings a larger number of persons have owed a 
 larger portion of innocent, refined, and heart-bettering 
 
( 10T ) 
 
 widow's tale, and told with a far fiercer indig- 
 nation, of a u Laird who had raised a company 
 from the country round about, for the love 
 that was borne to his name, and who gained 
 high preferment in consequence : and that it 
 was but a small part of those that he took 
 away whom he brought back again. And 
 what were the thanks which the folks had 
 both for those that came back with him, some 
 blind and more in danger of blindness ; and 
 for those that had perished in the hospitals, and 
 for those that fell in battle, fighting before or 
 beside him ? Why, that their fathers were all 
 turned out of their farms before the year was 
 over, and sent to wander like so many gipsies, 
 unless they would consent to shed their gray 
 hairs, at ten-pence a day, over the new 
 canals. Had there been a price set upon hia 
 head, and his enemies had been coming upon 
 him, he needed but have whistled, and a hun- 
 dred brave lads would have made a wall of 
 flame round about him with the flash of their 
 broad-swords! Now if the should 
 
 amusement, than perhaps to any favorite of the Muses 
 recorded in English literature : while the most learned of 
 his readers must feel grateful for the mass of interesting 
 and highly instructive information scattered throughout 
 his works, in which respect Southey is his only rival- 
 
( 108 ) 
 
 come* among us, as (it is said) they will, let 
 him whistle to his sheep and see if they will 
 fight for him !" The frequency with which 
 I heard; during my solitary walk from the 
 end of Loch-Lomond to Inverness, confident 
 expectations of the kind expressed in his con- 
 cluding words — nay, far too often eager hopes 
 mingled with vindictive resolves— I spoke 
 of with complaint and regret to an elderly 
 man, whom by his dress and way of speaking, 
 I took to be a schoolmaster. Long shall I 
 recollect his reply : u O, Sir, it kills a man's 
 love for his country, the hardships of life 
 coming by change and with injustice!" I was 
 sometime afterwards told by a very sensible 
 person who had studied the mysteries of polt- 
 tical oeconomy, and was therefore entitled to 
 be listened to, that more food was produced 
 in consequence of this revolution, that the 
 mutton must be eat somewhere, and what 
 difference where ? If three were fed at Man^ 
 Chester instead of two at Glenco or the 
 Trossaes, the balance of human enjoyment 
 was in favor of the former. I have passed 
 through many a manufacturing town since 
 then, and have watched many a group of old 
 and young, male and female, going to, or 
 returning from, many a factory, but I could 
 
( 109 ) 
 
 never yet persuade myself to be of his opinion. 
 Men j I still think, ought to be weighed not 
 counted. Their worth ought to be the final 
 estimate of their value. 
 
 Among the occasions and minor causes of 
 this change in the views and measures of our 
 Land-owners, and as being itself a consequent 
 on that system of credit, the outline of which 
 was given in a preceding page, the universal 
 practice of enhancing the sale price of every 
 article on the presumption of Bad Debts, is 
 not the least noticeable. Nor, if we reflect 
 that this additional per centage is repeated at 
 each intermediate stage of its elaboration and 
 distribution from the Grower or Importer to 
 the last Retailer inclusively, will it appear 
 the least operative. Necessary, and therefore 
 justifiable, as this plan of reprisal by anticipa- 
 tion may be in the case of each individual 
 dealer, yet taken collectively and without 
 reference to persons, the plan itself would, I 
 suspect, startle an unfamiliarized conscience, 
 as a sort of non-descript Piracy, not promis- 
 cuous in its exactions only because by a curious 
 anomaly it grants a free pass to the offending 
 party. Or if the Law maxim^ volentibus 
 nulla fit injuria, is applicable in this case, it 
 may perhaps be described more courteously as 
 
( no ) 
 
 a Benefit Society of all the careful and honest 
 men in the kingdom to pay the debts of the 
 dishonest or improvident. It is mentioned 
 here, however, as one of the appendages to 
 the twin paramount causes, the Paper Cur- 
 rency and the National Debt, and for the 
 sake of the conjoint results. Would we learn 
 what these results are? What they have 
 been in the higher, and what in the most 
 numerous, class of society ? Alas! that some 
 of the intermediate rounds in the social ladder 
 have been broken and not replaced, is itself 
 one Of these results. Retrace the progress of 
 things from 1192 to 1813, when the tide was 
 at its height, and then, as far as its rapidity 
 will permit, the ebb from its first turn to the 
 dead low-water mark of the last quarter. Then 
 see whether the remainder may not be gene- 
 ralized under the following heads. Fluctua- 
 tion in the wages of labor, alternate privation 
 and excess (not in all at the same time, but 
 successively in each) consequent improvidence, 
 and over all discontent and a system of facti- 
 ous confederacy-^- these form the history of 
 the mechanics and lower ranks of our cities 
 find' towns. In the country, a peasantry 
 sinking into pauperism, step for step with the 
 rjse of the farmer's profits and indulgeccies, 
 
( 111 ) 
 
 On the side of the landlord and his compeers, 
 we shall find the presence of the same causes 
 attested by answerable effects. Great as 
 ^ their almost magical effects"* on the in- 
 crease of prices were in the necessaries of life, 
 they were still greater, disproportionally 
 greater, in all articles of shew and luxury. 
 With few exceptions, it soon became difficult, 
 and at length impracticable, for the gentry 
 of the land, for the possessors of fixed pro- 
 perty to retain the rank of their ancestors, or 
 -their own former establishments, without 
 joining in the general competition under the 
 
 * During the composition of this sheet I have had, 
 and availed myself of the opportunity . of perusing 
 the Report of the Board of Agriculture for the year 
 1816. The numerous reflections, which this most extra- 
 ordinary volume excited in my mind, I cannot even 
 touch on, in this closing sheet of an Address that has 
 already extended far beyond my original purpose. But 
 had I perused it at the commencement, I should still 
 have felt it my duty to direct the main force of my 
 animadversions against the Demagogue class of State- 
 empirics. I was not indeed, ignorant of the aid, which 
 they derived from other quarters : — nor am I now ashamed 
 of not having anticipated its extent. There is, however, 
 one communication (p. 208 to 227) from Mr. Mosely, 
 from which, with the abatement only of the passage 
 on tythes, I cannot withhold my entire admiration. Jf 
 almost redeems the remainder of the Report. 
 
( 112 ) 
 
 influence of the same trading spirit. Their 
 dependants were of course either selected 
 from , or driven into, the same eddy ; while 
 the temptation of obtaining more than the 
 legal interest for their principal became more 
 and more strong with all persons who, neither 
 trading nor farming, had lived on the interest 
 of their fortunes. It was in this latter class 
 that the rash, and too frequently, the unprin- 
 cipled projector found his readiest dupes. 
 Had we but the secret history of the building 
 speculations only in the vicinity of the metro- 
 polis, too many of its pages would supply an 
 afflicting but instructive comment. That 
 both here, and in all other departments, this 
 increased momentum in the spirit of trade 
 has been followed by results of the most de- 
 sirable nature, I have myself*, exerted my 
 best powers to evince, at a period when to 
 
 * In a variety of articles published at different periods 
 in the Morning Post and Courier ; but with most success 
 in the Essay, before cited, on Vulgar Errors on Taxation* 
 which had the advantage of being transferred almost 
 entire to the columns of a daily paper, of the largest 
 circulation, and from thence, in larger or smaller extracts, 
 to several of our Provincial Journals. It was likewise 
 reprinted in two of the American Federalist Papers : and 
 a translation appeared, I have been told, in the Ham- 
 burgh Correspondenten. 
 
( 113 ) 
 
 present the fairest and most animating fea^ 
 tures of the system, and to prove their vast 
 and charm-like influence on the power and 
 resources of the nation appeared a duty of 
 patriotism. Nothing, however, was advanced 
 incompatible with the position, which even 
 then I did not conceal, and which from the 
 same sense of duty I am now attempting to 
 display; namely, that the extension of the 
 commercial spirit into our agricultural sys- 
 tem, added to the over-balance cf the same 
 spirit, even within its own sphere; aggravated 
 by the operation of our Revenue Laws ; and 
 finally reflected in the habits, and tendencies 
 of the Laboring Classes ; is the ground-work 
 of our calamity, and the main predisposing 
 cause, without which the late occasions would 
 (some of them not have existed, and the 
 remainder) not have produced the present 
 distresses. 
 
 That Agriculture requires principles essen- 
 tially different from those of Trade,^that a 
 gentleman ought not to regard his estate as a 
 merchant his cargo, or a shopkeeper his 
 stock, — -admits of an easy proof from the 
 different tenure of Landed Property,* and 
 
 * The very idea of individual or private property, 
 in our present acceptation of the term, and according 
 
( 114 ) 
 
 from the purposes of Agriculture itself, which 
 ultimately are the same as those of the State 
 of which it is the offspring. (For we do not 
 include in the name of Agriculture the culti- 
 vation of a feW vegetables by the women of 
 
 to the current notion of the right to it, was originally 
 confined to moveable things : and the more moveable, 
 the more susceptible of the nature of property. Pro- 
 ceeding from the more to the less perfect right ; we may 
 bring all the objects of an independent ownership under 
 five heads: — ^viz. 1. Precious stones, and other jewels 
 of as easy transfer ; 2. The precious metals, and foreign 
 coin taken as weight of metal ; 3. Merchandize, by 
 virtue of the contract between the importer and the 
 sovereign in whose person the unity and integrity of 
 the common wealth were represented ; i. e. after the 
 settled price had been paid by the former for the per- 
 mission to import, and received by the latter under the 
 further obligation of protecting the same ; 4. The coin of 
 the Country in the possession of the natural subject ; 
 and last of all, and in certain cases, the live stock, 
 the peculium a pecus. Hence, the minds of men were 
 most familiar with the idea in the case of Jews and 
 Aliens : till gradually, the privileges attached to the 
 vicinity of the Bishops and mitred Abbots prepared 
 an asylum for the fugitive Vassal and the oppressed 
 Frankling, and thus laid the first foundations of a 
 fourth class of freeman, that of Citizens and Burghers. 
 To the Feudal system we owe the forms, to the Church 
 the substance of our liberty. As comment take,, first, the 
 origin of towns and cities ; next^ the holy war waged 
 against slavery and villenage, and with such success that 
 the law had barely to sanction an opus jam consum- 
 
( 115 ) 
 
 the less savage Hunter Tribes.) If the con- 
 tinuance and independence of the State be its 
 object, the final causes of the State must be 
 its final causes. We suppose the negative 
 ends of a State already attained, viz. its own 
 safety by means of its own strength, and the 
 protection of person and property for all its 
 members, there will then remain its positive 
 ends: — L To make the means of subsistence 
 more easy to each individual. 2. To secure to 
 each of its members the hope * of better- 
 ing his own condition or that of his children, 
 3. The developement of those faculties which 
 are essential to his Humanity, i. e. to his 
 rational and moral Being. Under the last 
 head we do not mean those degrees of intel- 
 lectual cultivation which distinguish man from 
 
 * The civilized man gives up those stimulants of Hope 
 and Fear, the mixture or alternation of which constitutes 
 the chief charm of the savage life : and yet his Maker 
 has distinguished him from the Brute that perishes, by 
 making Hope an instinct of his nature and an indispensa- 
 ble condition of his moral and intellectual progression. 
 But a natural instinct constitutes a natural right, as far 
 as its gratification is compatible with the equal rights of 
 others. Hence our ancestors classed those who were 
 incapable of altering their condition from that of their 
 parents, as Bondsmen or Villains, however advantage- 
 ously they might otherwise be situated. 
 
 U 
 
( 11* 1 
 
 man in the same civilized society, but those 
 only that raise the civilized man above the 
 Barbarian, the Savage, and the Animal. We 
 require j however, on the part of the State, in 
 behalf of all its members, not only the outward 
 means of knowing their essential duties and 
 dignities as men and free men, but likewise, 
 and more especially, the discouragement of all 
 such Tenures and Relations as must in the 
 very nature of things render this knowledge 
 inert, and cause the good seed to perish as it 
 falls. Such at least is the appointed Aim of a 
 State : and at whatever distance from the ideal 
 Mark the existing circumstances of a nation 
 may unhappily place the actual statesman, still 
 every movement ought to be in this direction. 
 But the negative merit of not forwarding — 
 but the exemption from the crime of necessi- 
 tating — the debasement and virtual disfran- 
 chisement of any class of the community, may 
 be demanded of every State under all circum- 
 stances: and the Government, that pleads 
 difficulties in repulse or demur of this claim, 
 impeaches its own wisdom and fortitude. But 
 as the specific ends of Agriculture are the 
 maintenance, strength, and security of the 
 State, so (we repeat) must its ultimate ends be 
 the same as those of the State : even as the 
 
( m > 
 
 ultimate end of the spring and wheels of a 
 watch must be the same as that of the watch. 
 Yet least of all things dare we overlook or 
 conceal^ that morally and with respect to the 
 character and conscience of the Individuals, 
 the Blame of unfaithful Stewardship is aggra* 
 vated, in proportion as the Difficulties are less, 
 and the consequences, lying within a narrower 
 field of vision, are more evident and affecting. 
 An injurious system, the connivance at which 
 we scarcely dare more than regret in the Ca- 
 binet or Senate of an Empire, may justify 
 an earnest reprobation in the management of 
 private Estates: provided always, that the 
 System only be denounced, and the pleadings 
 confined to the Court of Conscience. For 
 from this court only can the redress be 
 awarded. All Reform or Innovation, not 
 won from the free Agent by the presentation 
 of juster Views and nobler Interests, and that 
 does not leave the merit of having effected it 
 sacred to the individual proprietor, it were 
 folly to propose, and worse than folly to at- 
 tempt. Madmen only would dream of dig- 
 ging or blowing up the foundation of a House 
 in order to employ the materials in repairing 
 the walls. Nothing more dare be asked of the 
 State, no other duty is imposed on it, than to 
 
( 118 ) 
 
 withhold or retract all extrinsic and artificial 
 aids to an injurious system ; or at the utmost 
 to invalidate in extreme cases such claims as 
 have arisen indirectly from the letter or 
 unforeseen operations of particular Statutes: 
 claims that instead of being contained in the 
 Rights of its proprietary Trustees are in- 
 croaehments on its own Rights, and a destruc- 
 tive Trespass on a part of its own inalienable 
 and untransferable Property — I mean the 
 healthy strength/ honesty , and filial love of 
 its children. 
 
 4 1 It would border on an affront to the under- 
 standings of our Landed Interest, were I to 
 ^explain in detail what the plan and conduct 
 would be of a gentleman;* if, as the result of 
 his own free conviction the marketable pro- 
 duce of his Estates were made a subordinate 
 
 * Or, (to put the question more justly as well as more 
 candidly) of the Land-owners collectively — for who is 
 not aware of the facilities that accompany a conformity 
 with the general practice, or of the numerous hindrances 
 that retard, and the final imperfection that commonly 
 
 ^aiti* *a d^tMlojl froifl ft ? On the distinction men- 
 p. 120, between Things and Persons, all law human 
 and divine is grounded. It consists in this: that the 
 former may be used, as mere means : but the latter dare 
 not be employed as the means to an end without directly 
 or indirectly sharing in that end. See Friend, Vol. II. 
 
( 119 ) 
 
 consideration to the living and moral growth 
 that is to remain on the land. I mean a 
 healthful, callous-handed but high-and-warm- 
 hearted Tenantry, twice the number of the 
 present landless, parish-paid Laborers, and 
 ready to march off at the first call of their 
 country with a Son of the House at their 
 head, because under no apprehension of 
 being (forgive the lowness of the expression) 
 marched off at the whisper of a Land-taster ! 
 If the admitted rule, the paramount : Self- 
 commandment, were comprized in the fixed 
 resolve — I will improve my Estate to the 
 utmost ; and my rent-roll I will raise as much 
 as, but no more than, is compatible with the 
 three great ends (before enumerated) which 
 being those of my country must be mine in- 
 clusively ! This, I repeat, it would be more 
 than superfluous to particularize. It is a 
 problem, the solution of which may be safely 
 entrusted to the common sense of every one 
 who has the hardihood to ask himself the 
 question. But how encouraging even the 
 approximations to such a system, of what 
 fair promise the few fragmentary samples 
 are, may be seen in the Report of the Board 
 of Agriculture for 1816, p. 11, from the 
 Earl of Winchelsea's communication, in 
 
( 120 ) 
 
 every paragraph of which Wisdom seems 
 to address us in behalf of Goodness. 
 
 But the plan of my argument requires the 
 reverse of this picture. I am to ask what the 
 results would be, on the supposition, that 
 Agriculture is carried on in the spirit of Trade; 
 ana 1 if the necessary answer coincide with the 
 known general practice, to shew the connec- 
 tion of the consequences with the present state 
 of distress and uneasiness. In Trade, from its 
 most innocent form to the abomination of the 
 African commerce nominally abolished after 
 a hard^-fought battle of twenty years, no dis^ 
 tinction is or can be acknowledged between 
 Things and Persons. If the latter are part 
 of the concern, they come under the denomi- 
 nation of the former. Two objects only can 
 be proposed in the management of an Estate, 
 considered as a Stock in Trade — first, that 
 the Returns should be the largest, quickest, 
 and securest possible ; and secondly, with the 
 least out-goings in the providing, over-looking, 
 and collecting the same^ — whether it be ex- 
 penditure of money paid for other mens' time 
 and attention, or of the tradesman's own, 
 which are to him money's worthy makes no 
 difference in the argument. Am I disposing 
 of a bale of goods ? The man whom I most 
 
( 121 ) 
 
 love and esteem must yield to the -stranger 
 that outbids him ; or if it be sold on credit, 
 the highest price, with equal security, must 
 have the preference. I may fill up the defi- 
 ciency of my friend's offer by a private gift, 
 or loan ; but as a tradesman, I am bound to 
 regard honesty and established character them- 
 selves, as things, as securities, for which the 
 known unprincipled dealer may offer an un- 
 exceptionable substitute. Add to this, that 
 the security being equal, I shall prefer, even 
 at a considerable abatement of price, the man 
 who will take a thousand chests or bales at 
 once, to twenty who can pledge themselves 
 only for fifty each. For I do not seek trouble 
 for its own sake ; but among other advantages 
 I seek wealth for the sake of freeing myself 
 more and more from the necessity of taking 
 trouble in order to attain it. The personal 
 worth of those, whom I benefit in the course 
 of the Process, or whether the persons are 
 really benefited or no, is no concern of mine. 
 The Market and the Shop are open to all. To 
 introduce any other principle in Trade, but 
 that of obtaining the highest price with ade- 
 quate security for Articles fairly described, 
 would be tantamount to the position, that 
 Trade ought not to exist. If this be admitted, 
 
( 122 ) 
 
 then what as a Tradesman I cannot do> if 
 cannot be my Duty, as a Tradesman, to at- 
 tempt : and the only remaining question in 
 reason or morality is— what are the proper 
 objects of Trade. If my Estate be such, my 
 plan must be to make the most of it, as I 
 would of any other mode of Capital. As my 
 Rents will ultimately depend on the quantity 
 and value of the Produce raised and brought 
 into the best market from my Land, I will 
 entrust the latter to those who bidding the 
 most have the largest Capital to employ on 
 it: and this I cannot effect but by dividing it 
 into the fewest Tenures, as none but extensive 
 Farms will be an object to men of extensive 
 capital and enterprizing minds. I must pre- 
 fer this system likewise for my own ease and 
 security. The Farmer is of course actuated 
 by the same motives, as the Landlord : and^ 
 provided they are both faithful to their engage- 
 ments, the objects of both will be: 1. the 
 utmost Produce that can be raised without 
 injuring the estate ; 2. with the least possible 
 consumption of the Produce on the Estate 
 itself; 3. at the lowest wages ; and 4. with 
 the substitution of machinery for human labor 
 where ever the former will cost less and do 
 the same work. What are the modest reme- 
 
( 123 ) 
 
 dies proposed by the majority of correspond 
 dents in the last Report of the Board of Agri- 
 culture ? Let measures be taken, that rents, 
 taxes, and wages be lowered, and the Markets 
 raised ! A great calamity has befallen us, 
 from importation, the lessened purchases of 
 {government, and u the evil of a superabundant 
 Harvest" — of which we deem ourselves the 
 more entitled to complain, because ( \ we had 
 been long making 112 shillings per quarter of 
 our Corn" and of all other articles in proportion. 
 As the best remedies for this calamity, we pro- 
 pose that we should pay less to our Landlords, 
 less to our Laborers, nothing to our Clergy- 
 man, and either nothing or very little to the 
 maintenance of the Government and of the 
 Poor ; but that we should sell at our former 
 prices to the Consumer! — In almost every page 
 we find deprecations of the Poor Laws: and I 
 hold it impossible to exaggerate their per- 
 nicious tendency and consequences. But let 
 it not be forgotten, that in agricultural dis- 
 tricts three-fourths of the Poors' Rates are 
 paid to healthy, robust, and (O sorrow and 
 shame !) industrious, hard-working Paupers 
 in lieu of Wages — (for men cannot at once 
 work and starve :) and therefore if there are 
 twenty House-keepers in tfce Parish^ who are 
 
 x 
 
( 124 ) 
 
 not holders of Land, their contributions are so 
 much Bounty Money to the latter. But the 
 Poor Laws form a subject, which I should not 
 undertake without trembling, had I the space 
 of a whole volume to allot to it. Suffice, that 
 this enormous mischief is undeniably the off- 
 spring of the Commercial System. In the only 
 plausible Work, that I have seen, in favor of 
 our Poor Laws on the present plan, the De- 
 fence is grounded : first, on the expediency of 
 having Labor cheap, and Estates let out in 
 the fewest possible portions — in other words, 
 of large Farms and low Wages — each as in- 
 dispensable to the other, and both conjointly 
 as the only means of drawing Capital to the 
 Land, by which alone the largest Surplus is 
 attainable for the State : that is, for the 
 Market, or in order that the smallest possible 
 proportion of the largest possible Produce may 
 be consumed by the Raisers and their families ! 
 Secondly, on the impossibility of supplying^ 
 as we have supplied, all the countries of the 
 civilized World (India perhaps and China 
 excepted) and of underselling them even in 
 their own markets, if our working Manufac- 
 turers were not secured by the State against 
 the worst consequences of those failures, stag- 
 nations, and transfers, to which the different 
 
( 125 ) 
 
 branches of Trade are exposed, in a greater Or 
 less degree, beyond all human prevention; or if 
 the Master Manufacturers were compelled to 
 give previous security for the maintenance of 
 those whom they had, by the known Law of 
 human Increase, virtually called into ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I do not 
 myself admit this impossibility. I have al- 
 ready denied, and I now repeat the denial, 
 that these are necessary consequences of our 
 extended Commerce. On the contrary, I feel 
 assured that the Spirit of Commerce is itself 
 capable of being at once counteracted and en- 
 lightened by the Spirit of the State, to the 
 advantage of both. But I do assert, that they 
 are necessary consequences of the Commercial 
 Spirit «m-counteracted and ww-enlightened, 
 wherever Trade has been carried to so vast 
 an extent as it has in England. I assert too, 
 historically and as matter of fact, that they 
 have been the consequence of our commercial 
 system. The laws of Lycurgus, like those of 
 the inspired Hebrew Legislator, were anti- 
 commercial : those of Solon and Numa were at 
 least uncommercial. Now I ask myself, what 
 the impression would have been on the Senate 
 of the Roman or of the Athenian Republic, 
 
( 126 ) 
 
 if the following proposal had been made to 
 them and introduced by the following pre- 
 amble. " Conscript Fathers, (or Senators of 
 Athens !) it is well known to you, that cir- 
 cumstances being the same and the time al- 
 lowed proportional, the human animal may 
 be made to multiply as easily, and at as small 
 an expence, as your sheep or swine : which is 
 meant, perhaps, in the fiction of our Philoso- 
 phers, that Souls are out of all proportion 
 more numerous than the Bodies, in which 
 they can subsist and be manifested. It is 
 likewise known to you, Fathers ! that though 
 in various States various checks have been or- 
 dained to prevent this increase of births from 
 becoming such as should frustrate or greatly 
 endanger the ends for which freemen are 
 born; yet the most efficient limit must be 
 sought for in the moral and intellectual pre- 
 rogatives of men, in their foresight, in their 
 habituation to the comforts and decencies of 
 society, in the pride of independence ; but 
 above all in the hope that enables men to 
 withstand the tyranny of the present impulse, 
 and in their expectation of honor or discredit 
 from the rank, character, and condition of 
 their children. Now there are proposed to 
 us the speedy means of at once increasing the 
 
( 121 ) 
 
 number of the rich, the wealth of those that 
 are already such, and the revenues of the 
 State : and the latter, Fathers ! to so vast an 
 amount, that we shall be able to pay not only 
 our own soldiers but those of the monarchs 
 whom we may thus induce to become our 
 Allies. But for this it will be requisite and 
 indispensable that all men of enterprize and 
 sufficiency among us should be permitted, with- 
 out restraint, to encourage, and virtually to 
 occasion, the birth of many myriads of free 
 citizens, who from their childhood are to be 
 amassed in clusters and employed as parts of 
 a mighty system of machinery. While all 
 things prove answerable to the schemes and 
 wishes of these enterprisers, the Citizens thus 
 raised and thus employed by them will find 
 an ample maintenance, except in such in- 
 stances where the individual may have ren- 
 dered himself useless by the effects of his own 
 vices. It dare not, however, be disguised 
 from you, that the nature of the employments 
 and the circumstances to which these citizens 
 will be exposed, will often greatly tend to 
 render them intemperate, diseased, and rest- 
 less. Nor has it been yet made a part of the 
 proposal, that the employers should be under 
 any bond to counteract such injurious circum- 
 
( 128 ) 
 
 stances by education, discipline, or other 
 efficient regulations. Still less may it be with- 
 held from your knowledge, O Fathers of the 
 State, that should events hereafter prove 
 hostile to all or to any branch of these specu- 
 lations, to many or to any one of the number 
 that shall have devoted their wealth to the 
 realization of the same — and the light, in 
 which alone they can thrive, is confessedly 
 subject to partial and even to total eclipses, 
 which there are no means of precisely fore- 
 telling ! the guardian planets, to whose con- 
 junction their success is fatally linked, will at 
 uncertain periods, for a longer or shorter 
 time, act in malignant oppositions! — Then, 
 Fathers, the Principals are to shift for them- 
 selves, and leave the disposal of the calamitous, 
 and therefore too probably turbulent, multi- 
 tude, now unemployed and useless, to the 
 mercy of the community, and the solicitude of 
 the State : or else to famine, violence, and 
 the vengeance of the Laws !" 
 
 If, on the maxims of ancient prudence, on 
 the one hand not enlightened, on the other 
 not dazzled by the principles of Trade, the 
 immediate answer would have been : — " We 
 should deem it danger and detriment, were 
 we to permit so indefinite and improvident 
 
( 129 ) 
 
 increase even of our Slaves and Helots : in the 
 case of free Citizens, our countrymen, who are 
 to swear to the same laws, and worship at 
 the same altars, it were profanation! May 
 the Gods avert the Omen !"— If this, I say^ 
 would have been their rescript, it may be 
 safely concluded, that the connivance at the 
 same scheme, much more that the direct 
 encouragement of it, must be attributed to 
 that spirit which the ancients did not recog- 
 nize, namely, the Spirit of Commerce. 
 
 But we have shewn, that the same system 
 has gradually taken possession of our agricul- 
 ture. What have been the results? For 
 him who is either unable or unwilling to 
 deduce the whole truth from the portion of it 
 revealed in the following extract from Lord 
 Winchelsea's Report, whatever I could have 
 added would have been equally in vain. His 
 Lordship speaking of the causes which 
 oppose all attempts to better the Laborers 
 condition, mentions, as one great cause, the 
 dislike the generality of Farmers have to 
 seeing the Laborers rent any land. Perhaps, 
 (he continues) i( one of the reasons for their 
 disliking this is, that the land, if not occupied 
 by the laborers, would fall to their own 
 share ; and another I am afraid is^ that they 
 
( 130 ) 
 
 rather wish to have the laborers more de- 
 pendent upon them ; for which reasons they 
 are always desirous of hiring the house and 
 land occupied by a laborer, under pretence, 
 that by that means the landlord will be secure 
 of his rent, and that they will keep the house 
 in repair. This the agents of estates are too 
 apt to give into, as they find it much less 
 trouble to meet six than sixty tenants at a 
 rent-day, and by this means avoid the being 
 sometimes obliged to hear the wants and com- 
 plaints of the poor. All parties therefore join 
 in persuading the landlord, who it is natural 
 to suppose (unless he has time and inclination 
 to investigate the matter very closely) will 
 agree to this their plan, from the manner in 
 which it comes recommended to him : and it 
 is in this manner that the laborers have been 
 dispossessed of their cow-pastures in various 
 parts of the midland counties. The moment 
 the farmer obtains his wish, he takes every 
 particle of the land to himself, and re-lets 
 the house to the laborer, who by this means 
 is rendered miserable ; the Poor Rate in* 
 creased; the value of the Estate to the Land- 
 owner diminished; and the house suffered to 
 go to decay ; which once fallen the tenant 
 will never rebuild, but the landlord must, at 
 
( 131 ) 
 
 a considerable expence. Whoever travels 
 through the midland counties, and will take 
 the trouble of enquiring, will generally receive 
 for answer, that formerly there were a great 
 many cottagers who kept cows, but that the 
 land is now thrown to the farmers; and if he 
 enquires still farther, he will find that in those 
 parishes the poors' rates have increased in an 
 amazing degree, more than according to the 
 average rise throughout England." — In con-? 
 firmation of his Lordship's statement I find in 
 the Agricultural Reports, that the county, in 
 which I read of nothing but farms of 1000, 
 1500, 2000, and 2500 acres, is likewise that 
 in which the poor rates are most numerous, 
 the distresses of the poor most grievous, and 
 the prevalence of revolutionary principles the 
 most alarming. But if we consider the subject 
 on the largest scale and nationally, the con- 
 sequences are, that the most important rounds 
 in the social ladder are broken, and the Hope^ 
 which above all other things distinguishes 
 the free man from the slave, is extinguished. 
 The peasantry therefore are eager to have 
 their children add as early as possible to their 
 wretched pittances, by letting them out to 
 manufactories ; while the youths take every 
 opportunity of escaping to towns and cities. 
 
 Y 
 
( 132 ) 
 
 And if I were questioned, as to my opinion, re- 
 specting the ultimate cause of our liability io 
 distresses like the present, the cause of what 
 has been called a vicious (i. e. excessive) po- 
 pulation with all the furies that follow in its 
 train — in shorty of a state of things so remote 
 from the simplicity of nature, that we have 
 almost deprived Heaven itself of the power 
 of blessing us; a state in which, without 
 absurdity, a superabundant Harvest can be 
 Complained of as an evil, and the recurrence 
 of the same a ruinous calamity- — I should not 
 hesitate to answer— the vast and dispropor- 
 tionate number of men who are to be fed from 
 the produce of the fields, on which they do not 
 labor. 
 
 What then is the remedy? Who the 
 physicians ? The reply may be anticipated. 
 An evil, which has come on gradually, and 
 in the growth of which all men have more or 
 less conspired, cannot be removed otherwise 
 than gradually, and by the joint efforts of all. 
 If we are a christian nation, we must learn 
 to act nationally as well as individually, as 
 Christians. We must remove half-truths, the 
 most dangerous of errors (as those of the poor 
 visionaries called Spenceans) by the whole 
 Truth. The Government is employed already 
 in retrenchments; but he who expects imme- 
 
( 133 ) 
 
 diate relief from these, or who does not even 
 know that if they do any thing at all,' they 
 must for the time tend to aggravate the dis- 
 tress, cannot have studied the operation of 
 public expenditure. 
 
 I am persuaded that more good would be 
 done, not only ultimate and permanent, but 
 immediate, good, by the abolition of the Lot- 
 teries accompanied with a public and parlia- 
 mentary declaration of the moral and religious 
 grounds that had determined the Legislature 
 to this act ; of their humble confidence in the 
 blessing of God on the measure ; and of their 
 hopes that this sacrifice to principle, as being 
 more exemplary from the present pressure on 
 the Revenue of the State , would be the more 
 effective in restoring confidence between man 
 and man— I am deeply convinced, that more 
 sterling and visible benefits would be derived 
 from this one solemn proof and pledge of 
 moral fortitude and national faith, than from 
 retrenchments to a tenfold greater amount. 
 Still more, if our Legislators should pledge 
 themselves at the same time, that they would 
 hereafter take council for the gradual removal 
 or counteraction of all similar encourage- 
 ments and temptations to Vice and Folly, that 
 had alas! been tolerated hitherto, as the easiest 
 way of supplying the exchequer. And truly 5 
 
( 134 ) 
 
 the financial motives would be strong indeed^ if 
 the Revenue Laws in question were hut half 
 as productive of money to the State as they 
 are of guilt and wretchedness to the people* 
 Our manufacturers must consent to regula- 
 tions; our gentry must concern themselves in 
 the education as well as in the instruction of 
 their natural clients and dependents, must 
 regard their estates as secured indeed from all 
 human interference by every principle of law, 
 and policy, but yet as offices of trust, with 
 duties to be performed, in the sight of God 
 and their Country. Let us become a better 
 people, and the reform of all the public (real 
 or supposed) grievances, which we use as pegs 
 whereon to hang our own errors and defects, 
 will follow of itself. In short, let every man 
 measure his efforts by his power and his 
 sphere of action, and do all he can do ! Let 
 him contribute money where he cannot act 
 personally; but let him act 'personally and in 
 detail wherever it is practicable. Let us pal- 
 liate where we cannot cure, comfort where we 
 cannot relieve ; and for the rest rely upon the 
 promise of the King of Kings by the mouth 
 of his Prophet, " blessed are ye that sow 
 
 BESIDE ALL WATERS." 
 
 FINIS. 
 

• 
 
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