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TRANCES E. BENNETT 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE 
 COLERIDGE 
 
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THE 
 
 STATESMAN'S MANUAL; 
 
 THE BIBLE THE BEST GUIDE TO POLITICAL 
 SKILL AND FORESIGHT: 
 
 » 
 
 ADDRESSED TO 
 
 THE HIGHER CLASSES OP SOCIETY. 
 
 By S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq. 
 
 BURLINGTON : 
 
 CHAUNCEY GOODRICH. 
 
 1832. 
 
University Press. 
 C. Goodrich.. ..Printer. 
 

 LAY SERMON. 
 
 PSALM LXXVIII. V. 5, 6, 7. 
 
 5. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law 
 in Israel ; which he commanded our fathers, that they should 
 make them known to their children. 6. ..That the generation 
 to come might know them, even the children which should be 
 born; who should ariss and declare them to their children: 
 7. That they might set their hope in God, and . not forget the 
 works of God. 
 
 If our knowledge and information concerning 
 the Bible had been confined to the one fact of 
 its immediate derivation from God, we should 
 still presume that it contained rules and assis- 
 tances for all conditions of men under all cir- 
 cumstances; and therefore for communities no 
 less than for individuals. The contents of 
 every work must correspond to the character 
 and designs of the work-master ; and .the in- 
 ference in the present case is too obvious to 
 be overlooked, too plain to be resisted. It 
 requires, indeed, all the might of superstition 
 to conceal from a man of common understand- 
 l* 
 
 283825 
 
ing the further truth, that the interment of such 
 a treasure in a dead language must needs be 
 contrary to the intentions of the gracious Donor. 
 Apostacy itself dared not question the premise : 
 and that the practical consequence did not follow, 
 is conceivable only under a complete system of 
 delusion, which from the Cradle to the death- 
 bed ceases not to overawe the will by obscure 
 fears, while it pre-occupies the senses by vivid 
 imagery and ritual pantomime. But to such 
 a scheme all forms of sophistry are native. 
 The very excellence of the Giver has been 
 made a reason for withholding the gift; nay 
 the transcendent value of the gift itself assigned 
 as the motive of its detention. We may be 
 shocked at the presumption, but need not be 
 surprized at the fact, that a jealous priesthood 
 should have ventured to represent the applica- 
 bility of the Bible to all the wants and occasions 
 of men as a wax-like pliability to all their fan- 
 cies and prepossessions. Faithful guardians of 
 Holy Writ ! they are constrained to make it 
 useless in order to guard it from profanation ; 
 and those, whom they have most defrauded, 
 are the readiest to justify the fraud. For im- 
 posture, organized into a comprehensive and 
 
self-consistent whole, forms a world of its own, 
 in which inversion becomes the order of nature. 
 
 Let it not be forgotten, however, (and I re* 
 commend the fact to the especial attention of 
 those among ourselves, who are disposed to 
 rest contented with an implicit faith and passive 
 acquiescence) that the Church of Superstition 
 never ceased to avow the profoundest reverence 
 for the Scriptures themselves, and what it for- 
 bids its vassals to ascertain, it not only permits, 
 but commands them to take for granted. 
 
 Whether, and to what extent, this suspen- 
 sion of the rational functions, this spiritual 
 slumber, will be imputed as a sin to the souls 
 who are still under chains of papal darkness, 
 we are neither enabjed or authorized to deter- 
 mine. It is enough for us to know that the 
 land, in which we abide, has like another 
 Goshen been severed from the plague, and that 
 we have light in our dwellings. The road of 
 salvation for us is a high road, and the wayfar- 
 ers, though 'simple, need not err therein.' 
 The Gospel lies open in the market-place, and 
 on every window seat, so that (virtually at 
 least) the deaf may hear the words of the Book J 
 It is preached at every turning, so that the 
 
 263825 
 
blind may see them. (Isai. xxix. 18.) The 
 circumstances then being so different, if the re- 
 sult should prove similar, we may be quite cer- 
 tain that we shall not be held guiltless. *The 
 ignorance, which may be the excuse of others, 
 will be our crime. Our birth and denizenship 
 in an enlightened and protestant land, will, 
 with all our rights and franchises to boot, be 
 brought in judgment against us, and stand first 
 in the fearful list of blessings abused. The 
 glories of our country will form the blazonry 
 of our own impeachment, and the very name 
 of Englishmen, which we are almost all of us 
 too proud of, and scarcely any of us enough 
 thankful for, will be annexed to that of Chris- 
 tians only to light up our shame, and aggravate 
 our condemnation. 
 
 I repeat, therefore, that the habitual unre- 
 flectingness, which in certain countries may be 
 susceptible of more or less palliation in most 
 instances, can in this country be deemed blame- 
 less in none. The humblest and least educated 
 of our countrymen must have wilfully neglected 
 the inestimable privileges, secured to all alike, 
 if he has not himself found, if he has not from 
 his own personal experience discovered, the 
 
sufficiency of the Scriptures in all knowledge 
 requisite for a right performance of his duty 
 as a man and a christian. Of the laboring 
 classes, who in all countries form the great 
 majority of the inhabitants, more than this is 
 not demanded, more than this is not perhaps 
 generally desirable — "They are not sought 
 for in public counsel, nor need they be found 
 
 where politic sentences are spoken. It is 
 
 enough if every one is wise in the working of 
 his own craft: so best will they maintain the 
 state of the world." 
 
 But you, my friends, to whom the following 
 pages are more particularly addressed, as to 
 men moving in the higher class of society: — 
 You will, I hope, have availed yourselves of 
 the ampler means entrusted to you by God's 
 providence, to a more extensive study and a 
 wider use of his revealed will and word. From 
 you we have a right to expect a sober and 
 meditative accommodation to your own times 
 and country of those important truths declared 
 in the inspired writings ' for a thousand genera- 
 tions,' and of the awful examples, belonging 
 to all ages, by which those truths are at once 
 illustrated and confirmed. Would you feel 
 
10 
 
 conscious that you had shewn yourselves une- 
 qual to your station in society — would you 
 stand degraded in your own eyes; if you be- 
 trayed an utter want of information respecting 
 the acts of human sovereigns and legislators'? 
 And should you not much rather be both 
 ashamed and afraid to know yourselves incon- 
 versant with the acts and constitutions of God 
 whose law executeth itself, and whose Word 
 is the foundation, the power, and the life of the 
 universe? Do you hold it a requisite of your 
 rank to shew yourselves inquisitive concerning 
 the expectations and plans of statesmen and 
 state-counsellors? Do you excuse it as natu- 
 ral curiosity, that you lend a listening ear to 
 the guesses of state-gazers, to the dark hints 
 and open revilings of our self-ihspired state for- 
 tune-tellers, ' the wizards, that peep and mutter* 
 and forcast, alarmists by trade, and malecon- 
 tents for their bread? And should you not 
 feel a deeper interest in predictions which are 
 permanent prophecies, because they are at the 
 same time eternal truths? Predictions which 
 in containing the grounds of fulfilment involve 
 the principles of foresight, and teach the sci- 
 ence of the future in its perpetual elements ? 
 
11 
 
 But I will struggle to believe that of those 
 whom I now suppose myself addressing, there 
 are few who have not so employed their great- 
 er leisure and superior advantages as to render 
 these remarks, if not wholly superfluous, yet 
 personally inapplicable. In commmon with 
 your worldly inferiors, you will indeed have di- 
 rected your main attention to the promises and 
 the information conveyed in the records of the 
 evangelists and apostles : promises, that need 
 only a lively trust in them, on our own part, to 
 be the means as well as the pledges of our 
 eternal welfare ! information that opens out to 
 our knowledge a kingdom that is not of this 
 world, thrones that cannot be shaken, and scep- 
 tres that can neither be broken or transferred! 
 Yet not the less on this account will you have 
 looked back with a proportionate interest on 
 the temporal destinies of men and nations, stor- 
 ed up for our instruction in the archives of the 
 Old Testament : not the less will you delight 
 to retrace the paths by which Providence has 
 led the kingdoms of this world through the 
 valley of mortal life — Paths, engraved with the 
 foot-marks of captains sent forth from the God 
 of Armies! Nations in whose guidance or chas- 
 
12 
 
 tisement the arm of Omnipotence itself was 
 made bare. 
 
 Recent occurrences have given additional 
 strength and fresh force to our sage poet's eu- 
 logy on the Jewish prophets : 
 
 As men divinely taught and better teaching 
 
 The solid rules of civil government 
 
 In their majestic unaffected style, 
 
 Than all the oratory of Greece and R6me. # 
 
 In them is plainest taught and easiest leamt 
 
 What makes a nation happy and keeps it so, 
 
 What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat. 
 
 Paradise Regained, iv. 354 
 
 If there be any antidote to that restless 
 craving for the wonders of the day, which in 
 conjunction with the appetite for publipity is 
 spreading like an efflorescence on the surface 
 of our national character; if there exist means 
 for deriving resignation from general discontent, 
 means of building up with the very materials 
 of political gloom that stedfast frame of hope 
 which affords the only certain shelter from the 
 throng of self-realizing alarms, at the same time 
 that it is the natural home and workshop of all 
 the active virtues ; that antidote and these 
 means must be sought for in the collation of 
 the present with the past, in the habit of thought- 
 
13 
 
 fully assimilating the events of our own age to 
 those of the time before us. If this be a moral 
 advantage derivable from history in general, 
 rendering its study therefore a moral duty for 
 such as possess the opportunities of books, 
 leisure and education, it would be inconsistent 
 even with the name of believers not to recur 
 with pre-eminent interest to events and revo- 
 lutions, the records of which are as much 
 distinguished from all other history by their 
 especial claims to divine authority, as the facts 
 themselves were from all other facts by especial 
 manifestation of divine interference. * Whatso- 
 ever things,' saith Saint Paul (Romans xv. 4.) 
 ' were written aforetime, were written for our 
 learning; that we through patience and comfort 
 of the Scriptures might have hope.' 
 
 In the infancy of the world, signs and won- 
 ders were requisite in order to startle and break 
 down that superstition, idolatrous in itself and 
 the source of all other idolatry, which tempts 
 the natural man to seek the true cause and ori- 
 gin of public calamities in outward circumstan- 
 ces, persons and incidents: in agents therefore 
 that were themselves but surges of the same 
 tide, passive conductors of the one invisible in- 
 
14 
 
 fluence, under which the total host of billows, 
 in the whole line of successive impulse, swell 
 and roll shoreward; there finally, each in its 
 turn, to strike, roar and be dissipated. 
 
 But with each miracle worked there was a 
 truth revealed, which thence forward was to act 
 as its substitute: And if we think the Bible less 
 applicable to us on account of the miracles, we 
 degrade ourselves into mere slaves of sense and 
 fancy, which are indeed the appointed medium 
 between earth and heaven, but for that very 
 cause stand in a desirable relation to spiritual 
 truth then only, when, as a mere and passive 
 medium, they yield a free passage to its light. 
 It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercis- 
 ed in and through the senses, that the senses 
 were miraculously appealed to. Reason and 
 Religion are their own evidence. The natural 
 Sun is in this respect a symbol of the spirit- 
 ual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories 
 are still under veil, he calls up the breeze to 
 chase away the usurping vapours of the night- 
 season, and thus converts the air itself into the 
 minister of its own purification: not surely in 
 proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, 
 but to prevent its interception. 
 
15 
 
 Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances 
 co-exist with the same moral causes, the prin- 
 ciples revealed, and the examples recorded, in 
 the inspired writings render miracles superflu- 
 ous : and if we neglect to apply truths in expect- 
 ation of wonders, or under pretext of the 
 cessation of the latter, we tempt God and merit 
 the same reply which our Lord gave to the 
 Pharisees on a like occasion. * A wicked and 
 an adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, 
 and there shall no sign be given to it, but the 
 sign of the prophet Jonas :' that is, a threatening 
 call to repentance. Equally applicable and 
 prophetic will the following verses be. 'The 
 men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with 
 this generation and shall condemn it, because 
 they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and 
 behold, a greater than Jonas is here. — The 
 queen of the South shall rise up in the judg- 
 ment with this generation, and shall condemn 
 it: for she came from the uttermost parts of 
 the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and 
 behold a greater than Solomon is here.' For 
 have we not divine assurance that Christ is 
 with his church, even to the end of the world ? 
 And what could the queen of the South, or the 
 
16 
 
 men of Nineveh have beheld, that could enter 
 into competition with the events of our own 
 times, in importance, in splendor, or even in 
 strangeness and significancy? 
 
 The true origin of human events is so little 
 susceptible of that kind of evidence which can 
 compel our belief; so many are the disturbing 
 forces which in every cycle or ellipse of chan- 
 ges modify the motion given by the first 
 projection; and every age has, or imagines it 
 has, its own circumstances which render past 
 experience no longer applicable to the present 
 case ; that there will never be wanting answers, 
 and explanations, and specious flatteries of 
 hope to persuade a people and its government, 
 that the history of the past ( is inapplicable to 
 their case. And no wonder, if we read history 
 for the facts instead, of reading it for the sake 
 of the general principles, which are to the facts 
 as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves : and 
 no wonder, if history so read should find a 
 dangerous rival in novels, nay, if the latter 
 should be preferred to the former on the score 
 even of probability. I well remember, that 
 when the examples of former Jacobins, as 
 Julius Caesar, Cromwell, and the like, were 
 
17 
 
 adduced in France and England at the com- 
 mencement of the French Consulate, it was 
 ridiculed as pedantry and pedant's ignorance 
 to fear a repetition of usurpation and military 
 despotism at the close of the enlightened 
 eighteenth century ! Even so, in the very 
 dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the 
 revolutions of Corcyra, the prescriptions of the 
 Reformers, Marius, Caesar, &c, and the direful 
 effects of the levelling tenets in the Peasant's 
 War in Germany, (differenced from the tenets 
 of the first French constitution only by the 
 mode of wording them, the figures of speech 
 being borrowed in the one instance from the- 
 ology, and in the other from modern metaphys- 
 ics) were urged on the Convention, and its 
 vindicators ; the magi of the day, the true 
 citizens of the world, the Plusquam-perfecti of 
 patriotism, gave us set proofs that similar results 
 were impossible, and that it was an insult to so 
 philosophical an age, to so enlightened a nation, 
 to dare direct the public eye towards them as 
 to lights of warning. Alas! like lights in the 
 stern of a vessel they illuminated the path only 
 that had beenpassed over! 
 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 The politic Florentine* has observed, that 
 there are brains of three races. The one un- 
 derstands of itself; the other understands as 
 much as is shown it by others ; the third neither 
 understands of itself, nor what is shewn it by 
 others. In our times there are more perhaps 
 who belong to the third class from vanity and 
 acquired frivolity of mind, than from natural 
 incapacity. It is no uncommon foible with 
 those who. are honoured with the acquaintance 
 of the great, to attribute national events to par- 
 ticular persons, particular measures, to the er- 
 rors of one man, to the intrigues of another, 
 to any possible spark of a particular occasion, 
 rather than to the true proximate cause, (and 
 which alone deserves the name of a cause) the 
 predominant state of public opinion. And still 
 less are they inclined to refer the latter to the 
 ascendancy of speculative principles, and the 
 scheme or mode of thinking in vogue. I have 
 known men, who with significant nods and the 
 pitying contempt of smiles, have denied all in- 
 fluence to the corruptions of moral and political 
 
 * Sono di tre generazioni cervelli: l'uno intende per ee ; l'al- 
 tro intende quanto da altri gli e mostro ; il terzo non intends 
 ne per se stesso ne per demostrazione d'altri.— Machiavbmj. 
 
10 
 
 philosophy, and with much solemnity have 
 proceeded to solve the riddle of the French 
 Revolution by Anecdotes ! Yet it would not 
 be difficult, by an unbroken chain of historic 
 facts, to demonstrate that the most important 
 changes in the commercial relations of the 
 world had their origin in the closets or lonely 
 walks of uninterested theorists ; — that the migh- 
 ty epochs of commerce, that have changed 
 the face of empires ; nay, the most important 
 of those discoveries and improvements in the 
 mechanic arts, which have numerically increas- 
 ed our population beyond what the wisest 
 statesmen of Elizabeth's reign deemed possi- 
 ble, and again doubled this population virtually; 
 the most important, I say, of those inventions 
 that in their results 
 
 best uphold 
 
 War by her two main nerves, iron and gold ; 
 
 had their origin not in the cabinets of states- 
 men, or in the practical insight of men of 
 business, but in the closets . of uninterested 
 theorists, in the visions of recluse genius. To 
 the immense majority of men, even in civilized 
 countries, speculative philosophy has ever been 
 
20 
 
 and must ever remain, a terra incognita. Yet 
 it is not the less true, that all the epoch-forming 
 Revolutions of the Christian world, the revolu- 
 tions of religion and with them the civil, social, 
 and domestic habits of the nations concerned, 
 have coincided with the rise and fall of meta- 
 physical systems. So few are the minds that 
 really govern the machine of society, and so 
 incomparably more numerous and more impor- 
 tant are the indirect consequences of things 
 than their foreseen and direct effects. 
 
 It is with nations as with individuals. In 
 tranquil moods and peaceable times we are 
 quite practical. Facts only and cool common 
 sense are then in fashion. But let the winds 
 of passion swell, and straightway men begin to 
 generalize; to connect by remotest analogies ; 
 to express the most universal positions of rea- 
 son in the most glowing figures of fancy ; in 
 short, to feel particular truths and mere facts, 
 as poor, cold, narrow, and incommensurate with 
 their feelings. 
 
 The Apostle of the Gentiles quoted from a 
 Greek comic poet. Let it not then be con- 
 demned as unseasonable or out of place, if I 
 remind you that in the intuitive knowledge of 
 
21 
 
 this truth, and with his wonted fidelity to na- 
 ture, our own great poet has placed the greater 
 number of his profoundest maxims and general 
 truths, both political and moral, not in the 
 mouths of men at ease, but of men under the 
 influence of passion, when the mighty thoughts 
 overmaster and become the tyrants of the mind 
 that has brought them forth. In his Lear, 
 Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, principles of deepest 
 insight and widest interest fly off like sparks 
 from the glowing iron under the loud anvil. It 
 seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and 
 it is a fact that none, but the unread in history, 
 will deny, that in periods of popular tumult 
 and innovation the more abstract a notion is, 
 the more readily has it been found to combine, 
 the closer has appeared its affinity, with the 
 feelings of a people and with all their immediate 
 impulses to action. At the commencement of 
 the French revolution, in the remotest villages 
 every tongue was employed in echoing and 
 enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions 
 of the physiocratic politicians and economists. 
 The public roads were crowded with armed 
 enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sove- 
 reignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws 
 
22 
 
 of the pure reason, and the universal constitu- 
 tion, which, as rising out of the nature and 
 rights of man as man, all nations alike were 
 under the obligation of adopting* Turn over 
 the fugitive writings, that are still extant, of the 
 age of Luther ; peruse the pamphlets and loose 
 sheets that came out in flights during the reign 
 of Charles the First and the Republic > and you 
 will find in these one continued comment on 
 the aphorism of Lord Chancellor Bacon (a man 
 assuredly sufficiently acquainted with the ex- 
 tent of secret and personal influence) that the 
 knowledge of the speculative principles of men 
 in general between the age of twenty and 
 thirty, is the one great source of political pro- 
 phecy. And Sir Philip Sidney regarded the 
 adoption of one set of principles in the Nether- 
 lands, as a proof of the divine agency and the 
 fountain of all the events and successes of that 
 revolution. 
 
 A calm and detailed examination of the facts 
 justifies me to my own mind in hazarding the 
 bold assertion, that the fearful blunders of the 
 late dread revolution, and all the calamitous 
 mistakes of its opponents from its commence- 
 ment even to the sera of loftier principles and 
 
23 
 
 wiser measures (an sera, that began with, and 
 ought to be named from, the war of the Span- 
 ish and Portuguese insurgents) every failure 
 with all its gloomy results may be unanswera- 
 bly deduced from the neglect of some maxim 
 or other that had been established by clear 
 reasoning and plain facts in the writings of 
 Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavel, Bacon, or 
 Harrington. These are red-letter names even 
 in the almanacks of worldly wisdom; and yet 
 I dare challenge all the critical benches of 
 infidelity to point out any one important truth, 
 any one efficient, practical direction or warning, 
 which did not pre-exist, and for the most part 
 in a sounder, more intelligible, and more com- 
 prehensive form in the Bible. 
 
 In addition to this, the Hebrew legislator, 
 and the other inspired poets, prophets, histo- 
 rians and moralists of the Jewish church have 
 two immense advantages in their favour. First, 
 their particular rules and prescripts flow di- 
 rectly and visibly from universal principles, as 
 from a fountain : they flow from principles and 
 ideas that are not so properly said to be con- 
 firmed by reason as to be reason itself! Prin- 
 ciples, in act and procession, disjoined from 
 
24 
 
 which, and from the emotions that inevitably 
 accompany the actual intuition of their truth, 
 the widest maxims of prudence are like arms 
 without hearts, muscles without nerves. Sec- 
 ondly, from the very nature of these principles, 
 as taught in the Bible, they are understood in 
 exact proportion as they are believed and felt. 
 The regulator is never separated from the main 
 spring. For the words of the apostle are liter- 
 ally and philosophically true : We (that is, the 
 human race) live by faith. Whatever we 
 do or know, that in kind is different from the 
 brute creation, has its origin in a determination 
 of the reason to have faith and trust in itself. 
 This, its first act of faith is scarcely less than 
 identical with its own -being. Implicite, it is 
 the Copula— it contains the possibility — of 
 every position, to which there exists any cor- 
 respondence in reality. It is itself, therefore, 
 the realizing principle, the spiritual substratum 
 of the whole complex body of truths. This 
 primal act of faith is enunciated in the word, 
 God : a faith not derived from experience, but 
 its ground and source, and without which the 
 fleeing chaos of facts would no more form 
 experience, than the dust of the grave can of 
 
25 
 
 itself make a living man. The imperative and 
 oracular form of the inspired Scripture is the 
 form of reason itself in all things purely rational 
 and moral. 
 
 If it be the word of Divine Wisdom, we 
 might anticipate that it would in all things be 
 distinguished from other books, as the Supreme 
 Reason, whose knowledge is creative, and an- 
 tecedent to the things known, is distinguished 
 from the understanding, or creaturely mind of 
 the individual, the acts of which are posterior 
 to the things, it records and arranges. Man 
 alone was created in the image of God: a po- 
 sition groundless and inexplicable, if the reason 
 in man do not differ from the understanding. 
 For this the inferior animals, (many at least) 
 possess in degree: and assuredly the divine im- 
 age or idea is not a thing of degrees. 
 
 Hence it follows that what is expressed in 
 the inspired writings, is implied in all absolute 
 science. The latter whispers what the former 
 utter as with the voice of a trumpet. As sure 
 as God liveth, is the pledge and assurance 
 of every positive truth, that is asserted by the 
 reason. The human understanding musing on 
 many things, snatches at truth, but is frustrated 
 
26 
 
 and disheartened by the fluctuating nature of 
 its objects ; * its conclusions therefore are timid 
 and uncertain, and it hath no way of giving 
 permanence to things but by reducing them to 
 abstractions : hardly (saith the author of the 
 Wisdom of Solomon, of whose words the pre- 
 ceding sentence is a paraphrase) hardly do we 
 guess aright at things that are upon earth, and 
 with labour do we find the things that are be- 
 fore us; but all certain knowledge is in the 
 power of God, and a presence from above. So 
 only have the ways of men been reformed, and 
 every doctrine that contains a saving truth, and 
 all acts pleasing to God (in other words, all 
 actions consonant with human nature, in its 
 original intention) are through wisdom: that 
 is, the rational spirit of man. 
 
 This then is the prerogative of the Bible ; 
 this is the privilege of its believing students. 
 
 * Iloxafia ynQ ov'x eqt dig ififirfvcu xa ctvxa xad 3 'Hqax- 
 Xenov, ov'te &vrjxrfg ov^aiag dig d'lfjao&ai xax(t i'^tf 
 'aXXo? o^v'xrjxt xal ra'^ft xrfg fiExaftoXjfg axidvrjai xal 
 na'Xtv ovva'yet, fiu'XXov Se ov'de rca'Xiv ov'ds "vgsgov 
 *<xXX' "afta ovvigaxai xal 'cmoXemei, xal ngo'crsMn xal 
 "aneiar "o&ev ci^vd' eig xo' efvat nsoaivEt xo y yiyvo'fisvor 
 
 avxrfg xti [irjdenoxE X'rjysiv firjd' rfxxaaSai xrfv ysvsaiv. 
 Plutarch, Edit. HvU. cap. xvm. Vol. p. ix. 239. 
 
27 
 
 With them the principle of knowledge is like- 
 wise a spring and principle of action. And 
 as it is the only certain knowledge, so are the 
 actions that flow with it the only ones on 
 which a secure reliance can be placed. The 
 understanding may suggest motives, may avail 
 itself of motives, and make judicious conjec- 
 tures respecting the probable consequences of 
 actions. But the knowledge taught in the 
 Scriptures produces the motives, involves the 
 consequences ; and its highest formula is still : 
 As sure as God liveth, so will it be unto 
 thee ! Strange as this position will appear to 
 such as forget that motives can be causes only 
 in a secondary and improper sense, inasmuch 
 as the man makes the motive, not the motives 
 the man ; and that the same thought shall be 
 a motive to one man and no motive to his 
 neighbour ; (a sufficient proof that the motives 
 themselves are effects, the principle of which, 
 good or evil, lies far deeper) — matter for scorn 
 and insult though this position will furnish to 
 those, who think (or try to think) every man 
 out of his senses who has not lost his reason 
 (or alienated it by wilful sophistry, demanding 
 reasons for reason itself) yet all history bears 
 
28 
 
 evidence to its truth. The sense of expedien- 
 cy, the cautious balancing of comparative ad- 
 vantages, the constant wakefulness to the Cui 
 bono ? — in connection with the Quid mihi ? — 
 all these are in their places in the routine of 
 conduct, by which the individual provides for 
 himself the real or supposed wants of to-day 
 and to-morrow : and in quiet times and pros- 
 perous circumstances a nation presents an 
 aggregate of such individuals, a busy ant-hill in 
 calm and sunshine. By the happy organization 
 of a well-governed society the contradictory 
 interests of ten millions of such individuals may 
 neutralize each other, and be reconciled in the 
 unity of the rational interest. But whence did 
 this happy organization first come? — Was it 
 a tree transplanted from Paradise, with all its 
 branches in full fruitage? — Or was it sowed 
 in sunshine ?-— Was it in vernal breezes and 
 gentle rains that it fixed its roots, and grew 
 and strengthened ? — Let History answer these 
 questions ! — With blood was it planted — it 
 was rocked in tempests — the goat, the ass, 
 and the stag gnawed it — the wild boar has 
 whetted his tusk on its bark. The deep scars 
 are still extant on its trunk, and the path of 
 
29 
 
 the lightning may be traced among its higher 
 branches. And even after its full growth, in 
 the season of its strength, 'when its height 
 reached to the heaven, and the sight thereof 
 to all the earth,' the whirlwind has more than 
 once forced its stately top to touch the ground : 
 it has been bent like a bow, and sprang back 
 like a shaft. Mightier powers were at work 
 than Expediency ever yet called up ! — yea, 
 mightier than the mere Understanding can 
 comprehend ! One confirmation of the latter 
 assertion you may find in the history of our 
 country, written by the same Scotch philoso- 
 pher, who devoted his life to the undermining 
 of the Christian religion ; and expended his 
 last breath in a blasphemous regret that he 
 had not survived it! — by the same heartless 
 sophist who, in this island, was the main pi- 
 oneer of that atheistic philosophy, which in 
 France transvenomed the natural thirst of truth 
 into the hydrophobia of a wild and homeless 
 scepticism; the Elias of that Spirit of Anti- 
 christ, which 
 
 still promising 
 
 Freedom, itself too sensual to be free, 
 
 Poisons life's amities and cheats the soul 
 
 Of faith, and quiet hope and all that lifts 
 
 And ail that soothes the spirit! 
 *3 
 
30 
 
 This inadequacy of the mere understanding 
 to the apprehension of moral greatness we may 
 trace in this historian's cool systematic attempt 
 to steal away every feeling of reverence for 
 every great name by a scheme of motives, in 
 which as often as possible the efforts and en- 
 terprizes of heroic spirits are attributed to this 
 or that paltry view of the most despicable self- 
 ishness. But in the majority of instances this 
 would have been too palpably false and slan- 
 derous ; and therefore the founders and martyrs 
 of our church and constitution, of our civil and 
 religious liberty, are represented as fanatics 
 and bewildered enthusiasts. But histories in- 
 comparably more authentic than Mr. Hume's, 
 (nay, spite of himself even his own history) 
 confirm by irrefragable evidence the aphorism 
 of ancient wisdom, that nothing great was ever 
 achieved without enthusiasm. For what is 
 enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up 
 of self in an object dearer than self, or in an 
 idea more vivid? — How this is produced in 
 the enthusiasm of wickedness, I have explain- 
 ed in the third Comment annexed to this Dis- 
 course. But in the genuine enthusiasm of 
 morals, religion, and patriotism, this enlarge- 
 
31 
 
 ment and elevation of the soul above its mere 
 self attest the presence, and accompany the 
 intuition of ultimate principles alone. These 
 alone can interest the undegraded human spirit 
 deeply and enduringly, because these alone 
 belong to its essence, and will remain with it 
 permanently. 
 
 Notions, the depthless abstractions of fleet- 
 ing phenomena, the shadows of sailing vapors, 
 the colorless repetitions of rain-bows, have 
 effected their utmost when they have added 
 to the distinctness of our knowledge. For 
 this very cause they are of themselves adverse 
 to lofty emotion, and it requires the influence 
 of a light and warmth, not their own, to make 
 them chrystallize into a semblance of growth. 
 But every principle is actualized by an idea ; 
 and every idea is living, productive, partaketh 
 of infinity, and (as Bacon has sublimely observ- 
 ed) containeth an endless power of semination. 
 Hence it is, that science, which consists wholly 
 in ideas and principles, is power. Scientia et 
 potentia (saith the same philosopher) in idem 
 coincident. Hence too it is, that notions, link- 
 ed arguments, reference to particular facts and 
 
32 
 
 calculations of prudence, influence only the 
 comparatively few, the men of leisurely minds 
 who have been trained up to them : and even 
 these few they influence but faintly. But for 
 the reverse, I appeal to the general character 
 of the doctrines which have collected the most 
 numerous sects, and acted upon the moral being 
 of the converts with a force that might well 
 seem supernatural ! The great principles of 
 our religion, the sublime ideas spoken out 
 everywhere in the Old and New Testament, 
 resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the 
 same size to the naked as to the armed eye ; 
 the magnitude of which the telescope may 
 rather seem to diminish than to increase. At 
 the annunciation of principles, of ideas, the 
 soul of man awakes, and starts up, as an exile 
 in a far distant land at the unexpected sounds 
 of his native language, when after long years 
 of absence, and almost of oblivion, he is sud- 
 denly addressed in his own mother-tongue. 
 He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker 
 as his brother. How else can we explain the 
 fact so honourable to Great Britain, that the 
 
33 
 
 poorest* amongst us will contend with as much 
 enthusiasm as the richest for the rights of pro- 
 perty? These rights are the spheres and 
 necessary conditions of free agency. But free 
 agency contains the idea of the free will ; and 
 in this he intuitively knows the sublimity, and 
 the infinite hopes, fears, and capabilities of his 
 own nature. On what other ground but the 
 cognateness of ideas and principles to man as 
 man, does the nameless soldier rush to the 
 combat in defence of the liberties or the honour 
 of his country % — Even men wofully neglectful 
 of the precepts of religion will shed their blood 
 for its truth. 
 
 Alas ! — the main hindrance to the use of the 
 Scriptures, as your Manual, lies in the notion 
 that you are already acquainted with its con- 
 tents. Something new must be presented to 
 you, wholly new and wholly out of yourselves ; 
 for whatever is within us must be as old as 
 the first dawn of human reason. Truths of all 
 
 * The reader will remember the anecdote told with so much 
 humour in Goldsmith's Essay. But this is not the first in- 
 stance where the mind in its hour of meditation finds matter 
 of admiration and elevating thought, in circumstances that in 
 a different mood had excited its mirth. 
 
34 
 
 others the most awful and mysterious and at 
 the same time of universal interest, are consid- 
 ered as so true as to lose all the powers of 
 truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of 
 the soul, side by side, with the most despised 
 and exploded errors. But it should not be so 
 with you ! The pride of education, the sense of 
 consistency should preclude the objection : for 
 would you not be ashamed to apply it to the 
 works of Tacitus, or of Shakespeare 1 Above 
 all, the rank which you hold, the influence you 
 possess, the powers you may be called to 
 wield, give a special unfitness to this frivolous 
 craving for novelty. To find no contradiction 
 in the union of the old and new, to contem- 
 plate the ancient of days, his words and his 
 works, with a feeling as fresh as if they were 
 now first springing forth at his fiat — this char- 
 acterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the 
 world and may help to unravel it ! This, most 
 of all things, will raise you above the mass of 
 mankind, and therefore will best entitle and 
 qualify you to guide and controul them ! You 
 say? you are already familiar with the Scrip- 
 tures. With the words, perhaps, but in any 
 other sense you might as wisely boast of your 
 
35 
 
 familiar acquaintance with the rays of the sun, 
 and under that pretence turn away your eyes 
 from the light of Heaven. 
 
 Or would you wish for authorities? — for 
 great examples ? — You may find them in the 
 writings of Thuanus, of Lord Clarendon, of Sir 
 Thomas More, of Raleigh; and in the life and 
 letters of the heroic Gustavus Adolphus. But 
 these, though eminent statesmen were christ- 
 ians, and might lie under the thraldom of hab- 
 it and prejudice. I will refer you then to 
 authorities of two great men, both pagans ; but 
 removed from each other by many centuries, 
 and not more distant in their ages than in their 
 characters and situations. The first shall be that 
 of Heraclitus, the sad and recluse philosopher. 
 
 IIoXufAaOj*] voov o'v 8i8u<fx£t' 2j'/3uXXa <5s (xaivojxsvp go/xan 
 'ayi'haea. xai a'xaXXwiriga xai 'a^iga (pSsyyo^ivr} ^»Xi'wv s<rww 
 
 ifixvsirai r?j <pwv ( 7 8ia to'v 6e6v* Shall we hesitate to 
 apply to the prophets of God, what could be 
 affirmed of the Sibylls by a philosopher whom 
 
 * Translation. — Multiscience (or a variety and quantity of 
 acquired knowledge) does not teach intelligence. But the 
 Sibyll with wild enthusiastic mouth shrilling forth unmirthful, 
 inornate, and unperfumed truths reaches to a thousand years 
 with her voice through the power of God. 
 
36 
 
 Socrates, the prince of the philosophers, vene- 
 rated for the profundity of his wisdom *? 
 
 For the other, I will refer you to the darling 
 of the polished court of Augustus, to the man 
 whose works have been in all ages deemed the 
 models of good sense, and are still the pocket 
 companions of those who pride themselves on 
 uniting the scholar with the gentleman. This 
 accomplished man of the world has given an 
 account of the subjects of conversation between 
 the illustrious statesmen who governed, and the 
 brightest luminaries who then adorned, the em- 
 pire of the civilized world : 
 
 Sermo oritur non de villis domibusve alienis 
 Nee, male, nee ne lepus saltet. Sed quod magis ad nos 
 Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus : utrumne 
 Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati ? 
 Et quo sit natura boni? summumque quid eius?* 
 
 Horat. Sermon, L. II. Sat. 6. v. 71. 
 
 * Translation. — Conversation arises not concerning the 
 country seats or families of strangers in a neighbourhood, or 
 whether the dancing hare performed well or ill. But we dis- 
 cuss what more nearly concerns us, and which it is an evil 
 not to know : whether men are made happy by wealth or by 
 virtue ? In what consists the nature of good ? And what is 
 the Supreme good and to be our ultimate aim ? 
 
37 
 
 Berkeley indeed asserts, and is supported in 
 his assertion by the great statesmen, Lord 
 Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh, that without 
 an habitual interest in these subjects a man 
 may be a dexterous intriguer, but never can be 
 a statesman. (The Friend No. 5.) 
 
 But do you require some one or more par- 
 ticular passage from the Bible, that may at 
 once illustrate and exemplify its applicability 
 to the changes and fortunes of empires ? Of 
 the numerous chapters that relate to the Jew- 
 ish tribes, their enemies and allies, before and 
 after their division into two kingdoms, it would 
 be more difficult to state a single one, from 
 which some guiding light might not be struck. 
 And in nothing is Scriptural history more strong- 
 ly contrasted with the histories of highest note 
 in the present age, than in its freedom from 
 the hollowness of abstractions. While the lat- 
 ter present a shadow-fight of Things and 
 Quantities, the former gives us the history of 
 Men, and balances the important influence of 
 individual Minds with the previous state of the 
 national morals and manners, in which, as con- 
 stituting a specific susceptibility, it presents to 
 us the true cause both of the Influence itself, 
 
38 
 
 and of the Weal or Woe that were its conse- 
 quents* How should it be otherwise ? The 
 histories and political economy of the present 
 and preceding century partake in the general 
 contagion of its mechanic philosophy, and are 
 the product of an unenlivened generalizing Un- 
 derstanding* In the Scriptures they are the 
 living educts of the Imagination ; of that re- 
 conciling and mediatory power, which incorpo- 
 rating the Reason in Images of the Sense, and 
 organizing (as it were) the flux of the Senses 
 by the permanence and self-circling energies 
 of the Reason, gives birth to a system of sym- 
 bols, harmonious in themselves, and consub- 
 stantial with the truths, of which they are the 
 conductors. These are the Wheels which 
 Ezekiel beheld, when the hand of the Lord 
 was upon him, and he saw visions of God as 
 he sate among the captives by the river of 
 Chebar. Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, 
 the wheels went, and thither was their spirit to 
 go : for the spirit of the living creature teas in 
 the wheels also. The truths and the symbols 
 that represent them move in conjunction and 
 form the living chariot that bears up (for us) 
 the throne of the Divine Humanity. Hence, 
 
39 
 
 by a derivative, indeed, but not a divided, in- 
 fluence, and though in a secondary yet in more 
 than a metaphorical sense, the Sacred Book 
 is worthily intitled the word of god. Hence 
 too, its contents present to us the stream of 
 time continuous as Life and a symbol of Eter- 
 nity, inasmuch as the Past and the Future are 
 virtually contained in the Present. According 
 therefore to our relative position on its banks 
 the Sacred History becomes prophetic, the 
 Sacred Prophecies historical, while the power 
 arid substance of both inhere in its Laws, its 
 Promises, and its Comminations. In the Scrip- 
 tures therefore both Facts and Persons must 
 of necessity have a two -fold significance, a past 
 and a future, a temporary and a perpetual, a 
 particular and a universal application. They 
 must be at once Portraits and Ideals. 
 
 Eheu ! paupertina philosophia in paupertinam 
 religionemducit: — A hunger-bitten and idea- 
 less philosophy naturally produces a starveling 
 and comfortless religion. It is among the mise- 
 ries of the present age that it recognizes no 
 medium between Literal and Metaphorical. 
 Faith is either to be buried in the dead letter, 
 or its name and honours usurped by a counter- 
 
V 40 
 
 feit product of the mechanical understanding, 
 which in the blindness of self-complacency 
 confounds symbols with allegories. Now 
 an Allegory is but a translation of abstract no- 
 tions into a picture-language which is itself 
 nothing but an abstraction from objects of the 
 senses; the principal being more worthless 
 even than its phantom proxy, both alike un- 
 substantial, and the former shapeless to boot. 
 On the other hand a Symbol (5 few «si rauT^opwov) 
 is characterized by a translucence of the Special 
 in the Individual or of the General in the 
 Especial or of the Universal in the General. 
 Above all by the translucence of the Eternal 
 through and in the Temporal. It always par- 
 takes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; 
 and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself 
 as a living part in that Unity, of which it is the 
 representative. The other are but empty echoes 
 which the fancy arbitrarily associates with ap- 
 paritions of matter, less beautiful but not less 
 shadowy than the sloping orchard or hill-side 
 pasture-field seen in the transparent lake be- 
 low. Alas ! for the flocks that are to be led 
 forth to such pastures ! * It shall even be as when 
 the hungry dreameth, and behold / he eateth ; but 
 
41 
 
 he waketh and his soul is empty : or as when the t 
 thirsty dreameth, and behold he drinketh ; but he 
 awaketh and is faint!" (Isaiah xxix. 8.) O! that 
 we would seek for the bread which was given 
 from heaven, that we should eat thereof and be 
 strengthened ! O that we would draw at the well 
 at which the flocks of our fore-fathers had living 
 water drawn for them, even that water which, 
 instead of mocking the thirst of him to whom 
 it is given, becomes a well within himself 
 springing up to life everlasting ! 
 
 When we reflect how large a part of our 
 present knowledge and civilization is owing, 
 directly or indirectly, to the Bible ; when we 
 are compelled to admit, as a fact of history, 
 that the Bible has been the main Lever by 
 which the moral and intellectual character of 
 Europe has been raised to its present compara* 
 tive height ; we should be struck, me thinks, by 
 the marked and prominent difference of this 
 Book from the works which it is now the fash- 
 ion to quote as guides and authorities in morals, 
 politics and history . I will point out a few of 
 the excellencies by which the one is distin- 
 guished, and shall leave it to your own judgment 
 and recollection to perceive and apply the con- 
 
42 
 
 trast to the productions of highest name in 
 these latter days. In the Bible every agent 
 appears and acts as a self- subsisting individual : 
 each has a life of its own, and yet all are one 
 life. The elements of necessity and free-will 
 are reconciled in the higher power of an om- 
 nipresent Providence, that predestinates the 
 whole in the moral freedom of the integral parts. 
 Of this the Bible never suffers us to lose sight 
 The root is never detached from the ground. 
 It is God eveiywhere : and all creatures con- 
 form to his decrees, the righteous by perform- 
 ance of the law, the disobedient by the 
 sufferance of the penalty. 
 
 Suffer me to inform or remind you, that 
 there is a threefold Necessity. There is a 
 logical, and there is a mathematical, necessity ; 
 but the latter is always hypothetical, and both 
 subsist formally only, not in any real object 
 Only by the intuition and immediate spiritual 
 consciousness of the idea of God, as the One 
 and Absolute, at once the Ground and the 
 Cause, who alone containeth in himself the 
 ground of his own nature, and therein of all 
 natures, do we arrive at the third, which alone 
 .is a real objective, necessity. Here the imme- 
 
43 
 
 diate consciousness decides: the idea is its 
 own evidence, and is insusceptible of all other. 
 It is necessarily groundless and indemonstra- 
 ble; because it is itself the ground of all 
 possible demonstration. The Reason hath faith 
 in itself, in its own revelation, o Aoros e*h. 
 Ipse dixit ! So it is : for it is so ! All the 
 necessity of causal relations (which the mere 
 understanding reduces, and must reduce to 
 co-existence and regular succession* in the 
 objects of which they are predicated, and to 
 habit and association in the mind predicating) 
 depends on, or rather inheres in, the idea of 
 the Omnipresent and Absolute : for this it is, 
 in which the Possible is one and the same with 
 the Real and the Necessary. Herein the Bi- 
 ble differs from all the books of Greek philoso- 
 phy, and in a two -fold manner. It doth not 
 affirm a Divine Nature only, but a God : and 
 not a God only, but the living God. Hence 
 in the Scriptures alone is the Jus divinum, or 
 direct Relation of the State and its Magistracy 
 to the Supreme Being, taught as a vital and 
 
 * See Hume's Essays. The sophist evades, as Cicero long 
 ago remarked, the better half of the predicament, which is 
 not " prseire" but " efficienter prseire." 
 
44 
 
 indispensable part of all moral and of all polit- 
 ical wisdom, even as the Jewish alone was a' 
 true theocracy. 
 
 But I refer to the demand. Were it my 
 object to touch on the present state of public 
 affairs in this kingdom, or on the prospective 
 measures in agitation respecting our sister-isl- 
 and, I would direct your most serious medi- 
 tations to the latter period of the reign of Solo- 
 mon, and to the revolutions in the reign of 
 Rehoboam, his successor. But I should tread 
 on glowing embers. I will turn to a subject 
 on which all men of reflection are at length 
 in agreement — the causes of the revolution 
 and fearful chastisement of France. We have 
 learned to trace them back to the rising im- 
 portance of the commercial and manufacturing 
 class, and its incompatibility with the old feudal 
 privileges and prescriptions; to the spirit of 
 sensuality and ostentation, which from the 
 court had spread through all the towns and 
 cities of the empire ; to the predominance of a 
 presumptuous and irreligious philosophy ; to 
 the extreme over-rating of the knowledge and 
 power given by the improvements of the arts 
 and sciences,, especially those of astronomy, 
 
45 
 
 mechanics, and a wonder-working chemistry ; 
 to an assumption of prophetic power, and the 
 general conceit that states and governments 
 might be and ought to be constructed as ma- 
 chines, every movement of which might be 
 foreseen and taken into previous calculation ; 
 to the consequent multitude of plans and con- 
 stitutions, of planners and constitution-makers, 
 and the remorseless arrogance with which the 
 authors and proselytes of every new proposal 
 were ready to realize it, be the cost what it 
 might in the established rights, or even in the 
 lives, of men ; in short, to restlessness, pre- 
 sumption, sensual indulgence, and the idola- 
 trous reliance on false philosophy in the whole 
 domestic, social, and political life of the stirring 
 and effective part of the community: these 
 all acting, at once and together, on a mass of 
 materials supplied by the unfeeling extrava- 
 gance and oppressions of the government, 
 which 'shewed no mercy, and very heavily 
 laid its yoke.' 
 
 Turn then to the chapter from which the 
 last words were cited, and read the following 
 seven verses ; and I am deceived if you will 
 not be compelled to admit, that the Prophet 
 
46 
 
 Isaiah revealed the true philosophy of the 
 French revolution more than two thousand 
 years before it became a sad irrevocable truth 
 of history. * And thou saidst, I shall be a lady 
 for ever: so that thou didst not lay these 
 things to thy heart, neither didst remember 
 the latter end of it. Therefore, hear now this, 
 thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest 
 carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and 
 none else besides me! I shall not sit as a 
 widow, neither shall I know the loss of chil- 
 dren. But these two things shall come to thee 
 in a moment, in one day ; the loss of children, 
 and widowhood ; they shall come upon thee in 
 their perfection, for the multitude of thy sorce- 
 ries, and for the abundance of thine enchant- 
 ments. For thou hast trusted in thy wicked- 
 ness ; thou hast said, there is no overseer. 
 Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath per- 
 verted thee ; and thou hast said in thine heart, 
 I am, and none else besides me. Therefore 
 shall evil come upon thee, thou shalt not know* 
 
 * The reader will scarcely fail to find in this verse a re- 
 membrancer of the sudden setting-in of the frost, a fortnight 
 before the usual time (in a country too, where the commence- 
 ment of its two seasons is in general scarcely less regular than 
 
47 
 
 from whence it riseth : and mischief shall fall 
 upon thee, thou shalt not be able to put it off; 
 and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, 
 which thou shalt not know. Stand now with 
 thine enchantments, and with the multitude of 
 thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from 
 thy youth ; if so be thou shalt be able to pro- 
 fit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art 
 wearied in the multitude of thy counsels : let 
 now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly 
 prognosticators stand up, and save thee from 
 these things that shall come upon thee.' 
 
 There is a grace that would enable us to take 
 up vipers, and the evil thing shall not hurt us : 
 a spiritual alchemy which can transmute poi- 
 sons into a panacaea. We are counselled by 
 our Lord himself to make unto ourselves friends 
 of the mammon of Unrighteousness : and in 
 
 that of the wet and dry seasons between the tropics) which 
 caused, and the desolation which accompanied, the flight from 
 Moscow. The Rusians baffled the physical forces of the im- 
 perial Jacobin, because they were inaccessible to his imagina- 
 ry forces. The faith in St. Nicholas kept off at safe distance 
 the more pernicious superstition of the Destinies of Napoleon 
 the Great. The English in the Peninsula overcame the real, 
 because they set at defiance, and had heard only to despise, 
 the imaginary powers of the irresistible Emperor. Thank 
 heaven, the heart of the country was sound at the core. 
 
48 
 
 this age of sharp contrasts and grotesque com- 
 binations it would be a wise method of sympa- 
 thizing, with the tone and spirit of the Times, 
 if we elevated even our daily news-papers and 
 political journals into Comments on the Bi- 
 ble. 
 
 When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought 
 to prepare the inquirers after it for the absence 
 of all the usual softenings suggested by world- 
 ly prudence of all compromise between truth 
 and courtesy. But not even as a Sermon 
 would I have addressed the present Discourse 
 to a promiscuous audience ; and for this reason 
 I likewise announced it in the title-page, as 
 exclusively ad clerum; i. e. (in the old and 
 wide sense of the word) to men of clerkly ac- 
 quirements, of whatever profession. I would 
 that the greater part of our publications could 
 be thus directed, each to its appropriate class of 
 Readers. But this cannot be! For among 
 other odd burs and kecksies, the misgrowth of 
 our luxuriant activity, we have now a Read- 
 ing Public*— as strange a phrase, methinks, 
 
 * Some particle passive in the diminutive form Erttditd- 
 i/ORUM Natio for instance, might seem at first sight a fuller 
 and more exact designation ; but the superior force and hu- 
 
49 
 
 as ever forced a splenetic smile on the staid 
 countenance of Meditation ; and yet no fiction ! 
 For our Readers have, in good truth, multipli- 
 ed exceedingly, and have waxed proud. It 
 would require the intrepid accuracy of a Col- 
 quhoun to venture at the precise number of 
 
 mor of the former become evident whenever the phrase 
 occurs as a step or stair in a climax of irony. By way of 
 example take the following sentences, transcribed from a 
 work demonstrating that the New Testament was intended 
 exclusively for the primitive converts from Judaism, was 
 accommodated to their prejudices, and is of no authority, as a 
 rule of faith, for Christians in general. ' The Reading Public 
 in this Enlightened Age, and Thinking Nation, by its fa- 
 vourable reception of liberal ideas, has long demonstrated 
 the benign influence of that profound Philosophy which 
 has already emancipated us from so many absurd prejudices 
 held in superstitious awe by our deluded forefathers. But the 
 Dark Jlge yielded at length to the dawning light of Reason 
 and Common-Sense at the glorious, though imperfect, Revo- 
 lution. The People can be no longer duped or scared out 
 of their imprescriptible and inalienable Right to judge and de- 
 cide for themselves on all important questions of Government 
 and Religion. The scholastic jargon of jarring articles and 
 metaphysical creeds may continue for a time to deform our 
 Church-establishment; and like the grotesque figures in the 
 nitches of our old gothic cathedrals may serve to remind the 
 nation of its former barbarism ; but the universal suffrage of a 
 
 FREE AND ENLIGHTENED PUBLIC," &C. &C. ! 
 
 Among the Revolutions worthy of notice, the change in the 
 nature of the introductory sentences and prefatory matter in 
 5 
 
50 
 
 that vast company only, whose heads and 
 hearts are dieted at the two public ordinaries 
 of Literature, the circulating libraries and the 
 periodical press. But what is the result? Does 
 the inward man thrive on this regimen 1 Alas ! 
 if the average health of the consumers may be 
 judged of by the articles of largest consumption ; 
 if the secretions may be conjectured from the 
 ingredients of the dishes that are found best 
 suited to their palates; from all that I have 
 seen, either of the banquet or the guests, I 
 
 gerious Books is not the least striking. The same gross flatte- 
 ry which disgusts us in the dedications to individuals in the 
 elder writers, is now transferred to the Nation at large or the 
 Reading Public : while the Jeremiads of our old Moralists, 
 and their angry denunciations concerning the ignorance, im- 
 morality, and irreligion of the People, appear (mutatis mutandis, 
 and with an appeal to the worst passions, envy, discontent, 
 scorn, vindictiveness, &c.) in the shape of bitter libels on Min- 
 isters, Parliament, the. Clergy: in short, on the State and 
 Church, and all persons employed in them. Likewise, I 
 would point out to the Reader's attention the marvellous pre- 
 dominance at present of the words, Idea and Demonstration. 
 Every talker now a days has an Idea ; aye, and he will de- 
 monstrate it too ! A few days ago, I heard one of the 
 Reading Public, a thinking and independent smuggler, eu- 
 phonize the latter word with much significance, in a tirade 
 against the planners of the late African expedition : — " As to 
 Algiers, any man that has half an Idea in his skull, must know, 
 that it has been long ago dey-monstered, I should say, dey-mon- 
 
51 
 
 shall utter my Profaccia with a desponding 
 sigh. From a popular philosophy and a phi- 
 losophic populace, Good Sense deliver us ! 
 
 At present, however, I am to imagine for 
 myself a very different audience. I appeal 
 exclusively to men, from whose station and 
 opportunities I may dare anticipate a respecta- 
 ble portion of that "sound book leamedness" 
 into which our old public schools still con- 
 tinue to initiate their pupils. I appeal to men 
 in whom I may hope to find, if not philosophy, 
 yet occasional impulses at least to philosophic 
 thought. And here, as far as my own experi- 
 ence extends, I can announce one favourable 
 
 strified, &c." But the phrase, which occasioned this note, 
 brings to my mind the mistake of a lethargic Dutch traveller, 
 who returning highly gratified from a showman's caravan, 
 which he had. been tempted to enter by the words, The 
 Learned Pig, gilt on the pannels, met another caravan of a 
 similar shape, with The Reading Fly on it, in letters of the 
 same size and splendour. " Why, dis is voonders above voon- 
 ders !" exclaims the Dutchman, takes his seat as first comer, 
 and soon fatigued by waiting, and by the very hush and in- 
 tensity of his expectation, gives way to his constitutional som- 
 nulence, from which he is roused by 'the supposed showman 
 at Hounslow, with a " In what name, Sir! was your place taken? 
 Are you booked all the way for Reading ? — Now a Reading Pub- 
 lic is (to my mind) more marvellous still, and in the third tier 
 of " voonders above voonders." 
 
52 
 
 symptom. The notion of our measureless su- 
 periority in good sense to our ancestors, so 
 general at the commencement of the French 
 Revolution, and for some years before it, is out 
 of fashion. We hear, at least, less of the jar- 
 gon of this enlightened age. After fatiguing 
 itself, as performer or spectator in the giddy 
 figure-dance of political changes, Europe has 
 s6en the shallow foundations of its self-com- 
 placent faith give way; and among men of 
 influence and property, we have now more 
 reason to apprehend the stupor of despondence, 
 than the extravagancies of hope, unsustained 
 by experience, or of self-confidence not bot- 
 tomed on principle. 
 
 In this rank of life the danger lies, not in 
 any tendency to innovation, but in the choice 
 of the means for preventing it. And here my 
 apprehensions point to two opposite errors; 
 each of which deserves a separate notice. The 
 first consists in a disposition to think, that as 
 the Peace of Nations has been disturbed by 
 the diffusion of a false light, it may be re-estab- 
 lished by excluding the people from all knowl- 
 edge and all prospect of amelioration. O! 
 never, never ! Reflection and stirrings of mind, 
 
53 
 
 with all their restlessness, and all the errors 
 that result from their imperfection, from the 
 Too much, because Too little, are come into 
 the world. The Powers, that awaken and 
 foster the spirit of curiosity, are to be found 
 in every village:- Books are in every hovel. 
 The infant's cries are hushed with picture- 
 books : and the Cottager's child sheds his first 
 bitter tears over pages, which render it im- 
 possible for the man to be treated or governed 
 as a child. Here as in so many other cases, 
 the inconveniences that have arisen from a 
 things' having become too general, are best 
 removed by making it universal. 
 
 The other and contrary mistake proceeds 
 from the assumption, that a national education 
 will have been realized whenever the People 
 at large have been taught to read and write. 
 Now among the many means to the desired 
 end, this is doubtless one, and not the least , 
 important. But neither is it the most so. 
 Much less can it be held to constitute Educa- 
 tion, which consists in educing the faculties, 
 and forming the habits ; the means varying ac- . 
 cording to the sphere in which the individuals 
 to be educated are likely to act and become 
 
54 
 
 useful. I do not hesitate to declare, that 
 whether I consider the nature of the disci- 
 pline adopted,* or the plan of poisoning the 
 children of the poor with a sort of potential in- 
 fidelity under the " liberal idea" of teaching 
 those points only of religious faith, in which 
 all denominations agree, I cannot but denounce 
 the so called Lancastrian schools as pernicious 
 beyond all power of compensation by the new 
 acquirement of Reading and Writing. — But 
 take even Dr. Bell's original and Unsophisticated 
 plan, which I myself regard as an especial gift 
 of Providence to the human race ; and suppose 
 this incomparable machine, this vast moral 
 steam-engine to have been adopted and in free 
 motion throughout the Empire ; it would yet 
 appear to me a most dangerous delusion to rely 
 on it as if this of itself formed an efficient na- 
 tional education. We cannot, I repeat, honour 
 
 * See Mr. Southey's Tract on the New or Madras sys- 
 tem of Education : especially toward the conclusion, where 
 with exquisite humour as well as with his usual poignancy of 
 wit he has detailed Joseph Lancaster's disciplinarian Inven- 
 tions. But even in the schools, that used to be called Lancas- 
 trian, these are, I believe, discontinued. The true perfection 
 of discipline in a school is — The maximum of watchfulness 
 with the minimum of punishment. 
 
55 
 
 the scheme too highly as a prominent and ne- 
 cessary part of the great process ; but it will 
 neither supersede nor can it be substituted for 
 sundry other measures, that are at least equal- 
 ly important. And these are such measures 
 too, as unfortunately involve the necessity of 
 sacrifices on the side of the rich and powerful 
 more costly, and far more difficult than the 
 yearly subscription of a few pounds ! such 
 measures as demand more self-denial than the 
 expenditure of time in a committee or of elo- 
 quence in a public meeting. 
 
 Nay, let Dr. Bell's philanthropic end have 
 been realized, and the proposed medicum of 
 learning universal: yet convinced of its insuffi- 
 ciency to stem up against the strong currents 
 set in from an opposite point, I dare not assure 
 myself, that it may not be driven backward by 
 them and become confluent with the evils, it 
 was intended to preclude. 
 
 What other measures I had in contemplation, 
 it has been my endeavour to explain elsewhere. 
 But I am greatly deceived, if one preliminary 
 to an efficient education of the labouring class- 
 es be not the recurrence to a more manly 
 discipline of the intellect on the part of the 
 
56 
 
 learned themselves, in short a thorough re- 
 casting of the moulds, in which the minds of 
 our Gentry, the characters of our future Land- 
 owners, Magistrates and Senators, are to re- 
 ceive their shape and fashion. what treasures 
 of practical wisdom would be once more brought 
 into open day by the solution of this problem ! 
 Suffice it for the present to hint the master- 
 thought. The first man, on whom the Light of 
 an Idea dawned, did in that same moment re- 
 ceive the spirit and the credentials of a Law- 
 giver: and as long as man shall exist, so long 
 will the possession of that antecedent knowl- 
 edge (the maker and, master of all profitable 
 Experience) which exists only in the power of 
 an Idea, be the one lawful qualification of all 
 Dominion in the world of the senses. With- 
 out this, Experience itself is but a cyclops 
 walking backwards, under the fascination of 
 the Past : and we are indebted to a lucky co- 
 incidence of outward circumstances and con- 
 tingencies, least of all things to be calculated 
 on in times like the present, if this one-eyed 
 Experience does not seduce its worshipper into 
 practical anachronisms. 
 But alas ! the halls of old philosophy have 
 
57 
 
 been so long deserted, that we circle them at 
 shy distance as the haunt of Phantoms and 
 Chimaeras. The sacred Grove of Academus 
 is held in like regard with the unfoodful trees 
 in the shadowy world of Maro that had a 
 dream attached to every leaf. The very terms 
 of ancient wisdom are worn out, or (far worse 1 !) 
 stamped on baser metal : and whoever should 
 have the hardihood to reproclaim its solemn 
 Truths must commence with a Glossary. 
 
 In reviewing the foregoing pages, I am ap- 
 prehensive that they may be thought to re- 
 semble the overflow of an earnest mind rather 
 than an orderly premeditated composition. Yet 
 this imperfection of form will not be altogether 
 uncompensated, if it should be the means of 
 presenting with greater liveliness the feelings 
 and impressions under which they were writ- 
 ten. Still less shall I regrej this defect if it 
 should induce some future traveller engaged 
 in the like, journey to take the same station 
 and to look through the same medium at the 
 one main object which amid all my discursions 
 I have still held in view. The more, however, 
 doth it behoove me not to conclude this address 
 without attempting to recapitulate in as few 
 
58 
 
 and as plain words as possible the sum and 
 substance of its contents. 
 . There is a state of mind indispensable for 
 all perusal of the Scriptures to edification, 
 which must be learnt by experience, and can 
 be described only by negatives. It is the di- 
 rect opposite of that which (supposing a moral 
 passage of Scripture to have been cited) would 
 prompt a man to reply, Who does not know 
 this ? But if the quotation should have been 
 made in support of some article of faith, this 
 same habit of mind will betray itself, in differ- 
 ent individuals, by apparent contraries, which 
 yet are but the two poles, or Plus and Minus 
 states, of the same influence. The latter, or 
 the negative pole may be suspected, as often 
 as you hear a comment on some high and doc- 
 trinal text introduced with the words, It only 
 means so and so ! For instance, I object to a 
 professed free-thinking christian the following 
 solemn enunciation of " the riches of the glory 
 of the mystery hid from ages and from genera- 
 tions" by the philosophic Apostle of the Gen- 
 tiles. " Who (viz. the Father) hath delivered 
 usjrom the power of darkness and hath transla- 
 ted us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In 
 
59 
 
 whom we have redemption through his blood, 
 even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image 
 of the invisible God, the first born* of every 
 creature : For by him were all things created, 
 that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible 
 and invisible, whether they be thrones, or do- 
 minions, or principalities, or powers : all things 
 were created by him, and for him: And he is 
 before all things, and by him all things -consist. 
 And he is the head of the body, the Church : 
 who is the beginning, the first bornjrom the dead; 
 that in all things he might have the preeminence. 
 For it pleased the Father that in him should all 
 ^fulness dwell : And, having made peace through 
 the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all 
 things unto himself; by him, I say whether*they 
 be things in earth, or things in heaven" What 
 is the reply? — Why, that by these words 
 (very bold and figurative words it must be 
 confessed, yet still) St. Paul only meant that 
 the universal and eternal truths of morality and 
 a future state had been reproclaimed by an 
 
 * A mistaken 1 translation. The words should be : Begotten 
 before all creation ; and even this does not convey the fuU 
 sense of the superlative, nqoixoxoxog. The present version 
 makes the following words absurd. 
 
60 
 
 inspired teacher and confirmed by miracles! 
 The words only mean, Sir, that a state of re- 
 tribution after this life had been proved by the 
 fact of Christ's resurrection — that is all ! — But 
 I shall scarcely obtain an answer to certain 
 difficulties involved in this free and liberal in- 
 terpretation : ex. gr. that with the exception of 
 a handful of rich men considered as little better 
 than infidels, the Jews were as fully persuaded 
 of these truths as Christians in general are at 
 the present day. Moreover that this inspired 
 Teacher had himself declared that if the Jews 
 did not believe on the evidence of Moses and 
 the Prophets, neither would they though a man, 
 should rise from the dead. 
 
 ©f the positive pole, on the other hand, lan- 
 guage to the following purport is the usual 
 Exponent. "It is a mystery: and we are 
 bound to believe the words without presuming 
 to enquire into the meaning of them." That 
 is we believe in St. Paul's veracity ; and that 
 is enough. Yet St. Paul repeatedly presses 
 on his Hearers that thoughtful perusal of the 
 Sacred Writings, and those habits of earnest 
 though humble enquiry which if the heart only 
 have been previously re-generated would lead 
 
61 
 
 them "to a full assurance of Understanding 
 lis swi'/vwciv, (to an entire assent of the mind ; to 
 a spiritual intuition, or positive inward knowl- 
 edge by experience) of the Mystery of God, and 
 of the Father, and of Christ, in which (nempe, 
 fwrnfioj) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge. 
 
 To expose the inconsistency of both thes® 
 extremes, and by inference to recommend that 
 state of mind, which looks forward to " the fel- 
 lowship of the mystery of the faith as a spirit of 
 wisdom and revelation in the Knowledge of 
 God, the eyes oj the Understanding being 
 enlightened — this formed my General pur- 
 pose. Long has it been at my heart ! I con- 
 sider it as the contra- distinguishing principle of 
 Christianity that in it alone «ag *^Stoc; wj£ vXr^ofpo- 
 pi«s s% 2yv/tfsw^ (the Understanding in its utmost 
 power and opulence) culminates in Faith, as in 
 its crown of Glory, at once its light and its re- 
 muneration. On this most- important point I 
 attempted long ago to preclude, if possible, all 
 misconception and misinterpretation of my 
 opinions, though in a work which, from the 
 mode of its publication and other circumstances 
 must be unknown or known but by name to 
 
62 
 
 the great majority of my present Readers. 
 Alas ! in this time of distress and embarrass- 
 ment the sentiments have a more especial in- 
 terest, a more immediate application, than when 
 they were first written. If (I observed) it be 
 a Truth attested alike by common feeling and 
 common sense, that the greater part of human 
 Misery depends directly on human Vices, and 
 the remainder indirectly, by what means can 
 we act on Men, so as to remove or preclude 
 these Vices and purify their principles of mor- 
 al election? The question is not by what 
 means each man is to alter his own character — 
 in order to this, all the means prescribed, and 
 all the aidances given by religion may be ne- 
 cessary for him. Vain ol themselves may be — 
 
 The sayings ofthe Wise 
 
 In ancient and in modern books ehroll'd 
 
 Unless he feel within 
 Some source of consolation from above, 
 Secret refreshings, that repair his strength, 
 And fainting spirits uphold. 
 
 Sampson Agonistes. 
 
 This is not the question. Virtue would not 
 be Virtue could it be given by one fellow crea- 
 
63 
 
 ture to another. To make use of all the means 
 and appliances in our power to the actual at- 
 tainment of Rectitude, is the abstract of the 
 Duty which we owe to ourselves : To supply 
 those means as far as we can, comprizes our 
 Duty to others. The question then is, what 
 are these means 1 Can they be any other than 
 the communication of Knowledge and the re- 
 moval of those Evils and Impediments which 
 prevent it's reception 1 It may not be in our 
 power to combine both, but it is in the power 
 of every man to contribute to the former, who 
 is sufficiently informed to feel that it is his Du- 
 ty. If it be said, that we should endeavour 
 not so much to remove Ignorance, as to make 
 the Ignorant religious : Religion herself, through 
 her sacred oracles, answers for me, that all ef- 
 fective Faith pre-supposes Knowledge and 
 individual Conviction. If the mere acquies- 
 cence in Truth, uncomprehended and unfath- 
 omed, were sufficient, few indeed would be 
 the vicious and the miserable, in this country 
 at least where speculative Infidelity is, Heaven 
 be praised, confined to a small number. Like 
 bodily deformity, there is one instance here and 
 another there ; but three in one place are al- 
 
64 
 
 ready an undue proportion. It is highly worthy 
 of observation, that the inspired Writings re- 
 ceived by Christians are distinguishable from 
 all other books pretending to Inspiration, from 
 the scriptures of the Bramins, and even from 
 the Koran, in their strong and frequent recom- 
 mendations of Truth. I do not here mean 
 Veracity, which cannot but be enforced in 
 every Code which appeals to the religious 
 principle of Man ; but Knowledge. This is 
 not only extolled as the Crown and Honor of 
 a Man, but to seek after it is again and again 
 commanded us as one of our most sacred Du- 
 ties. Yea, the very perfection and final bliss 
 of the glorified spirit is represented by the 
 Apostle as a plain aspect, or intuitive beholding 
 of truth in it's eternal and immutable source. 
 Not that Knowledge can of itself do all ! The 
 light of religion is not that of the moon, light 
 without heat ; but neither is it's warmth that of 
 the stove, warmth without light. Religion is 
 the sun whose warmth indeed swells, and stirs, 
 and actuates the life of nature, but who at 
 the same time beholds all the growth of life 
 with a master- eye, makes all objects glorious 
 on which he looks, and by that glory visible 
 
65 
 
 to others. For this cause I bow my knees 
 unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
 he would grant you according to the riches of his 
 glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spir- 
 it in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell in 
 your hearts by faith ; that ye being rooted and 
 grounded in love, may be able to comprehend 
 with all saints what is the breadth, and length, 
 and depth and heighth ; and to know the love 
 of Christ which passeth all knowledge, that ye 
 might be filled with the fulness of God. For 
 to know God is (by a vital and spiritual act in 
 which to know and to possess are one and 
 indivisible) to acknowledge him as the Infinite 
 Clearness in the Incomprehensible Fulness, 
 and Fulness Incomprehensible with Infinite 
 Clearness. 
 
 This then comprizes my first purpose, which 
 is in a two fold sense general: for in the sub- 
 stance, if not in the form, it belongs to all my 
 countrymen and fellow-christians without dis- 
 tinction of Class, while for its object it embraces 
 the whole of the inspired Scriptures from the 
 recorded first day of Heaven and Earth, ere 
 the light was yet gathered into celestial lamps 
 or reflected from their revolving mirrors, to the 
 
% 
 
 66 
 
 predicted Sabbath of the New Creation, when 
 Heaven and Earth shall have become one city 
 with neither "sun nor moon to shine in it: 
 for the glo$y of God shall lighten it and the 
 Lamb be the light thereof." My second pur- 
 pose is after the same manner in a two fold 
 sense specific : for as this Disquisition is nom- 
 inally addressed to, so was it for the greater 
 part exclusively intended for, the perusal of 
 the Learned : and its object likewise is to 
 urge men so qualified to apply their powers 
 and attainments to an especial study of the 
 Old Testament as teaching the Elements of 
 Political Science. 
 
 Is it asked, in what sense I use these words 1 
 I answer : in the same sense as the terms are 
 employed when we refer to Euclid for the 
 Elements of the Science of Geometry, only 
 with one difference arising from the diversity 
 of the subject. With one difference only ; but 
 that one how momentous ! All other sciences 
 are confined to abstractions, unless when the 
 term Science is used in an improper and flat- 
 tering sense — Thus we may speak without 
 boasting of Natural History ; but we have 
 not yet attained to a Science of Nature. The 
 
67 
 
 Bible alone contains a Science of Realities: 
 and therefore each Gf it's Elements*" is at the 
 same time a living Germ, in which the Pre- 
 sent involves the Future, and in the Finite 
 the Infinite exists potentially. That hidden 
 mystery in every, the minutest, form of exist- 
 ence, which contemplated under the relations 
 of time presents itself to the understanding 
 retrospectively, as an infinite ascent of Causes, 
 and prospectively as an interminable progres- 
 sion of Effects — that which contemplated in 
 Space is beheld intuitively as a law of action 
 and re-action, continuous and extending beyond 
 all bound — this same mystery freed from the 
 phenomena of Time and Space, and seen in 
 the depth of real Being, reveals itself to the 
 pure Reason as the actual immanence of All 
 in Each. Are we struck with admiration at 
 beholding tlfe Cope of Heaven imaged in a 
 Dew-drop ? The least of the animalcula to 
 which that drop would be an Ocean contains 
 in itself an infinite problem of which God 
 Omni-present is the only solution. The slave 
 of custom is roused by the Rare and the Ac- 
 cidental alone ; but the axioms of the Unthink- 
 ing are to the philosopher the deepest problems 
 
68 
 
 as being the nearest to the mysterious Root 
 and partaking at once of its darkness and its 
 pregnancy. 
 
 O what a mine of undiscovered treasures, 
 what a new world of Power and Truth would 
 the Bible promise to our future meditation, if 
 in some gracious moment one solitary text of 
 all its inspired contents should but dawn upon 
 us in the pure untroubled brightness of an 
 Idea, that most glorious birth of the God-like 
 within us, which even as the Light, its material 
 symbol, reflects itself from a thousand surfaces, 
 and flies homeward to its Parent Mind enriched 
 with a thousand forms, itself above form and 
 still remaining in its own simplicity and identi- 
 ty ! O for a flash of that same Light, in which 
 the first position of geometric science that 
 ever loosed itself from the generalizations of a 
 groping and insecure experience, did for the 
 first time reveal itself to a human intellect in 
 all its evidence and all its fruitfulness, Trans- 
 parence without Vacuum, and Plenitude without 
 Opacity ! O that a single gleam of our own 
 inward experience would make comprehensible 
 to us the rapturous Eureka, and the grateful 
 Hecatomb, of the philosopher of Samos! or, 
 
69 
 
 that Vision which from the contemplation of 
 an arithmetical harmony rose to the eye of 
 Kepler, presenting the planetary world, and 
 all their orbits in the Divine order of their 
 ranks and distances : or which, in the falling 
 of an Apple, revealed to the etherial intuition 
 of our own Newton the constructive principle 
 of the material Universe. The promises which 
 I have ventured to hold forth concerning the 
 hidden treasures of the Law and the Prophets 
 will neither be condemned as a paradox or as 
 exaggeration, by the mind that has learnt to 
 understand the possibility, that the reduction 
 of the sands of the Sea to number should be 
 found a less stupendous problem by Archi- 
 medes than the simple conception of the Par- 
 menidean Ojve. What however is achievable 
 by the human understanding without this light 
 may be comprised in the epithet, xwootafloi : and 
 a melancholy comment on that phrase would 
 the history of human cabinets and Legislatures 
 for the last thirty years furnish ! The excellent 
 Barrow, the last of the disciples of Plato and 
 Archimedes among our modern mathematicians, 
 shall give the description and state the value: 
 and in his words I shall conclude. 
 
70 
 
 Aliud agere, to be impertinently busy, doing 
 that which conduceth to no good purpose is in 
 some respect worse than to do nothing. Of 
 such industry we may understand that of the 
 Preacher, "The labor of the foolish wearieth 
 every one of them." 
 
 NOTE. — The Appendix to the Statesman's Manual may be 
 found in Chauncey Goodrich's edition of Coleridge's Aids 
 to Reflection, published in one volume, octavo, in 1829, and 
 edited by Doctor Marsh. 
 
LAY SERMON, 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE 
 
 HIGHER AND MIDDLE CLASSES, 
 
 ON THE EXISTING 
 
 stresses antj 5itsco«tent» 
 
 Bi S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq. 
 
 BURLINGTON : 
 
 CHAUNGEY GOODRICH 
 
 1832. 
 
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 tal-ent : for these, as being gifts of Nature, 
 are objects of moral interest for those alone, to 
 whom they have been allotted. Nor yet by emin- 
 ence in learning ; for this supposes such a devo- 
 tion of time and thought, as would in many cases 
 be incompatible with the claims of active life. 
 Erudition is, doubtless, an ornament, that especial- 
 ly becomes a high station : but it is professional 
 rank only that renders its attainment a duty. 
 
74 
 
 The mark in question must be so far common, 
 that we may be entitled to look for it in you from 
 the mere circumstance of 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 con- 
 sciousness of the ultimate principles, to which your 
 opinions are traceable. The least, that can be 
 demanded of the least favored among you, is an 
 earnest endeavor 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 fol- 
 lowers of a blind and capricious guide, forced 
 likewise (though oftener, I fear, by their own im- 
 providence,* than by the lowness of their estate) 
 
 * 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 inevita- 
 ble, 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 proportion to the experience and good sense 
 of the seeker. That excellent man, Mr. Perceval, whom I 
 
75 
 
 to consume Life in the means of living, the multi- 
 tude may make the sad confession 
 
 Terapora mutantur: nos et mutamur in illis 
 
 unabashed. But to English Protestants in the en- 
 joyment 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 
 
 regard as the best and wisest statesman, this country has pos- 
 sessed 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. 1 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. Ex- 
 cept 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 the cabinet has a quality the most opposite to 
 the Ivory Gate of Virgil. It suffers no dreams to pass through 
 it. Alas ! as far as auy wide scheme of benevolence is con- 
 cerned, 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 
 
76 
 
 to debase their motives and maxims, the sacred 
 house-hold of conscience, into slaves and creatures 
 of fashion. Thou therefore art inexcusable, man ! 
 (Rom. II. i.) if thou dost not give to thyself a rea- 
 son 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 y 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 labor, 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 practi- 
 cable bearings on each other, should be proportion- 
 al to the elevation that extends and diversifies 
 your prospect. If you possess more than is neces- 
 sary for your own wants, more than your own 
 wants ought to be felt by you as your own inter- 
 ests. You are pacing on a smooth terrace, which 
 
 commencing. And commence it will, if its causes are not 
 counteracted by the philosophy of history, 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 states- 
 men acquire 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 ! 
 
77 
 
 you owe to the happy institutions of your coun- 
 try, — ;a terrace on the mountain's breast. 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 cloud ward, 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 en- 
 lighten 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 revolutionary 
 school ; these advantages I have felt it my duty 
 and have made it my main object to press on your 
 serious attention during the whole period of my 
 literary labors from earliest manhood to the present 
 
 * A genera: the qualities either supposed natural and in- 
 stinctive to men of noble race, or such as their rank is calcu- 
 lated to inspire, as disinterestedness, devotion to the service 
 of their friends, clients, &c. frankness, &c. 
 
78 
 
 hour. * Whatever may have been the specific 
 theme of my communications, and whether they 
 related to criticism, politics, or religion, still Prin- 
 ciples, their subordination, their connection, and 
 their application, in all the divisions of our tastes, 
 duties, rules of conduct 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 ac- 
 tions, 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 
 
 *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 republi- 
 cation or rather the rinfaciammto 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 subscribers and (a sad but important dis- 
 tinction!) to a still scantier number of subscriptionists. — gow- 
 vavxa ovvs'xoujw eg de xo y IIoTv igfujvBoig gaii^ei. 
 
79 
 
 character, often, perhaps, to the absence of tempt- 
 ation from providential circumstances or the acci- 
 dent 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 con- 
 vinced me, that formerly Men were worse than 
 their Principles, but that at present the Prin- 
 ciples 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 fur- 
 nish grounds both for humility towards Providence 
 and for increased attachment to our country, if 
 each individual could but see and feel, how large 
 a part of his innocence he owes to his birth, breed- 
 ing, and residence in Great Britain. The admin- 
 istration 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 watchful- 
 ness of demeanor in the superior ranks, and the 
 emulation in the subordinate ; the vast depth, ex- 
 pansion 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 calcula- 
 ble loss to the offending individual himself from its 
 mere effects, as obstruction and irregularity ; and 
 
80 
 
 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 cards, the 
 architecture of our infancy, in which each is sup- 
 ported by all. 
 
 Well then may we pray, give us peace in our 
 time, 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 assur- 
 ance, 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 g»ow in com- 
 pany ; or whose slender surface-roots owe their 
 whole steadfastness to their intertanglement ; have 
 been beaten down by the continued rains, or whirl- 
 ed 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 ! " The principles of the oracles of 
 God" (Heb. v. 12.) are still uttered from before 
 the altar ! Oracles, Which we may consult with- 
 out cost ! Before an altar, where no sacrifice is 
 required, but of the vices which unman us ! no 
 
81 
 
 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 con- 
 science relative to our future state and permanent 
 Being , so does the Bible present to us the ele- 
 ments of public prudence, instructing us in the 
 true causes, the surest preventatives, and the only 
 cure, of public evils. The authorities of Ra- 
 leigh, Clarendon and Milton must at least ex- 
 empt me from the blame of singularity, if undeter- 
 red by the contradictory charges of paradoxy from 
 one party and of adherence to vulgar and old- 
 fashioned prejudices from the other, 1 persist in 
 avowing my conviction, that the inspired poets, 
 historians and sententiaries of the Jews, are the 
 clearest teachers of political economy : in short, 
 that their writings* are the Statesman's best 
 Manual, not only as containing the first principles 
 
 * To which I should be tempted with the late Edmund 
 Burke to annex that treasure of prudential wisdom, the Ec- 
 clesiasticus. I not only yield, however, to the authority of 
 our Church, but, reverence the judgment of its founders in 
 
82 
 
 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 appli- 
 cation^ and as being a full and spacious repository 
 of precedents and facts in proof. 
 
 Well therefore (again and again I repeat to you,) 
 well will it be for us if we have provided our-' 
 selves 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 
 
 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, invaluable, 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 imperfec- 
 tions 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 great- 
 er weight, practically, are the objections derived from certain 
 passages of the Book, which savour top plainly of the fancies 
 and prejudices of a jew of Jerusalem: ex. gr. the. j 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 ta 
 the ethics of the Greek poets and orators in the substitution 
 of posthumous fame for a true resurrection, and a consequent 
 
83 
 
 Vision :" if we have humbled ourselves and have 
 confessed our thin and unsound state, even while 
 " 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 generation 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 
 
 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. 
 In 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 wis- 
 dom 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 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. 
 
84 
 
 of the better cause. Accordingly, we have ob- 
 tained a good name, so that the nations around us 
 have displayed a disposition to follow our example 
 and imitate our institutions — too often I fear even 
 in parts where from the difference of our relative 
 circumstances the imitation had little chance of 
 proving more fhan mimickry. But it will be far 
 more glorious, and to our neighbors incomparably 
 more instructive, if in distresses to which all coun- 
 tries are liable we bestir ourselves in remedial and 
 preventive arrangements which all nations may 
 more or less adbpt ; inasmuch as they are grounded 
 on principles intelligible to all rational and obli- 
 gatory on all moral beings ; inasmuch as, having 
 been taught by God's word, exampled by God's 
 providence, commanded by God's law, and recom- 
 mended 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 contra- 
 distinguished from the factious demagogue. They 
 are at once the rock and the quarry. On these 
 alone and with these, alone is the solid 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 tor- 
 rent of life and death with safety on the passage ; 
 
85 
 
 with peace in the retrospect; and with hope 
 shining upon us from through the 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 children of this 
 world, but to the children of faith and obedience 
 still thins away as they approach, to melt at length 
 and dissolve into the 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 
 individuals. 
 
 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 inforcing the maxim in its re- 
 lation to our religious opinions, out of which, with 
 or without our consciousness, all our other opinions 
 flow, as from their Spring-head and perpetual 
 Feeder. And that I might neglect no innocent 
 mode of attracting or relieving the Reader's atten- 
 tion, I have moulded my reflections into the fol- 
 lowing 
 
86 
 ALLEGORIC VISION. 
 
 A felling 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 Resig- 
 nation. 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 
 bolh seemed to have combined. In his discourse 
 there were the freshness and the colors of April : 
 
 Qual ramicel a ramo, 
 Tal da pensier petisiero 
 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 withes 
 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 up- 
 ward, or far onward, or rather to the line of meet- 
 ing where the sky rests upon the distance. But 
 how may I express — the breathed tarnish, shall I 
 
87 
 
 name it ? — on the lustre of the pilgrim'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, methought, as if there lay 
 upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disap- 
 pointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It 
 was at once the melancholy of hope and of resig- 
 nation. 
 
 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 chap- 
 elry : and we sate face to face each on the stone 
 bench along-side the low, wether-stained wall, and 
 as close as possible to the mossy door. 
 
 After a pause of silence : Even thus, said he, 
 like two strangers that have fled to the same shel- 
 ter 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 visionary 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 tor- 
 rent 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 arch and yet averting his eye from 
 it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words : till 
 
88 
 
 listening to the wind that echoed within the hol- 
 low 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. 
 Starting at length from his brief trance of abstrac- 
 tion, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renew- 
 ed 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 immediately knew 
 to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an as- 
 tonishing diversity of soils : and here was a sunny 
 spot, and there a dark one, forming just such a 
 mixture of sunshine and shade, as we may have 
 observed on the mountains' side in an April day, 
 #vhen the thin broken clouds are scattered over 
 heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the val- 
 ley 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 pour- 
 
89 
 
 trayed, in glaring and inelegant colors, some hor- 
 rible tale, or preternatural 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 ceremo- 
 nies and antic merriment, while others seemed 
 convulsed with horror, or pining in mad melan- 
 choly. Intermingled with these, I observed a num- 
 ber of men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who 
 appeared now to marshal the various groups, and 
 to direct their movements ; and now with menacing 
 countenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a 
 vast idol, 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 
 
90 
 
 with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations 
 he exorcised 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 methought, with moanings, 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 pro- 
 ceeded from inscriptions on the walls, in letters of 
 the same pale and sepulchral light. I could read 
 them, methought ; but though each one of the 
 words taken separately I seemed to understand, 
 yet Avhen I took them in sentences, they were rid- 
 dles and incomprehensible. As I stood meditating 
 on these hard sayings, my guide thus addressed 
 me — The fallible becomes infallible, and the in- 
 fallible remains fallible. Read and believe : these 
 are mysteries ! — 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 feel- 
 ing. I prostrated myself before her, and then 
 retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wonder- 
 ing, and dissatisfied. 
 
 As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard 
 a deep buz as of discontent. A few whose eyes 
 were bright, and either piercing or steady, and 
 whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, 
 
91 
 
 ridge-like, above the eye-brows, bespoke observa- 
 tion following by meditative thought ; and a much 
 larger number who were enraged by the severity 
 and insolence of the priests in exacting their of- 
 ferings ; had collected in one tumultuous groupe, 
 and with a confused outcry of " this is the Temple 
 of Superstition !" after much contumely, and 
 turmoil, and cruel maltreatment on all sides, rush- 
 ed 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 reflec- 
 tion, animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in 
 them : and hope, without its uncertainty, and a 
 something more than 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, af- 
 frighted by the very sound, and sore from recent 
 impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards and ex- 
 amined no farther. A few of us, struck by the 
 manifest opposition of her form and manners to 
 
92 
 
 those of the living Idol, whom we had so recently 
 abjured, agreed to follow her, though with cau- 
 tious 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 ena- 
 bled us to see far beyond the limits of the Valley 
 of life : though our eye even thus assisted permit- 
 ted 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, goad- 
 ing each other with remembrances of past oppres- 
 sions, 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 a vast 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 impatient crowd, we 
 entered the vast and dusky cave, which was the 
 only perforation of the precipice At the mouth 
 
93 
 
 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- 
 meanor, and the brutal scornfulness of his looks, 
 declared himself to be the Monster Blasphemy. 
 He uttered big words, and yet ever and anon I 
 observed that he turned pale at his own courage. 
 We entered. Some remained in the opening of 
 the cave, with the one or the other of its guardi- 
 ans. The rest, and I among them, pressed on, till 
 we reached an ample chamber, that seemed the 
 centre of the rock. The climate of the place was 
 unnaturally cold. 
 
 In the furthest distance of the chamber sate an 
 old dim-eyed man, poring with a microscope 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 enraptured with the various inequali- 
 ties which it rendered visible on the seemingly 
 polished surface of the marble. — Yet evermore 
 was this delight and triumph followed by expres- 
 sions 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 Recess of the temple of Su- 
 perstition. The old man spoke in diverse tongues, 
 and continued to utter other and most strange 
 mysteries. Among the rest he talked much and 
 
94 
 
 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 ineffable contempt, not un- 
 mixed with an angry suspicion, and then replied, 
 " 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 ter- 
 ror — for as he started forward in rage, I caught a 
 glance of him from behind ; and lo ! 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- 
 isaiah, xxxii. 20. 
 
 Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters. 
 
 Ojv 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 at- 
 tempt. 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- 
 ciation of the Evangelical Herald, to awaken 
 the lively Feeling which it breathes, and to 
 justify the line of conduct which it encourages, 
 
96 
 
 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 prepara- 
 tive. 
 
 ' Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.' 
 It is the assurance of a Prophet, and therefore 
 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 dis- 
 hearten 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 confident 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 hope continue to sow beside all waters : 
 
97 
 
 for there is a Blessing attached to it by God 
 himself, to whose eye all consequences are 
 present, on whose will all consequences de- 
 pend. 
 
 But I had also an additional motive for the 
 selection of this verse. Easy to be remember- 
 ed from its briefness, likely to be remembered 
 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 
 9 
 
98 
 
 open on the table, my eyes were cast idly on 
 the page for a few seconds, till gradually as a 
 mist clears away, the following 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 the 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 
 
99 
 
 public consideration of which we have all of 
 late been so often and so urgently invited, and 
 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 embarrss- 
 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 precision, 
 so plain and so specifically as to render all 
 comment needless, all application superfluous. 
 Peace has come without the advantages ex- 
 pected from Peace, and on the contrary, with 
 many of the severest inconveniences usually 
 
100 
 
 attributable to War. * We looked for peace, 
 but no good came : for a time of health, and 
 behold trouble. The harvest is past, the sum- 
 mer is ended, and we are not saved.' The 
 inference therefore contained in the preceding 
 verse is unavoidable. Where war has pro- 
 duced no repentance, and the cessation of war 
 has brought neither concord or tranquillity, 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 sub- 
 ject 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 tampering with it ? W^hat are their 
 qualifications ? What has been their conduct? 
 Second, What is the true seat and source of 
 the complaint, — 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 
 
101 
 
 knowledge both of the disease and the remedy. 
 In a preceding part of the same chapter from 
 which I extracted the line prefixed, the Pro- 
 phet Isaiah enumerates the conditions of a 
 nation's recovery from a state of depression 
 and peril, and among these one condition which 
 he describes in words that may be without any 
 forced or over-refined interpretations unfolded 
 into an answer to the present question. ' A 
 vile person,' he tells us, 'must no more be 
 called liberal, nor the churl be said to be boun- 
 tiful. 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 de- 
 viseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with 
 lying words, even when the needy speaketh 
 aright. But the Liberal deviseth liber- 
 al THINGS, AND BY LIBERAL THINGS SHALL 
 
 he stand.' (Isaiah, xxxii. 5, 6, 7, 8.) 
 
 Such are the political empirics mischievous 
 in proportion to their effrontery, and ignorant 
 in proportion to their presumption, the detec- 
 tion and exposure of whose true characters 
 9* 
 
102 
 
 the inspired statesman and patriot represents 
 as indispensable to the re-establishment of the 
 general welfare, while his own portrait of these 
 impostors whom in a former chapter (ix. 15. 
 16.) he calls the tail of the Nation, and in the 
 following verse, Demagogues that cause the 
 people to err, affords to the intelligent believer 
 of all ages and countries the means of detect- 
 ing 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 espe- 
 cial reference indeed to the factious leaders of 
 the populace who under this name exercised 
 a tumultuary despotism in Jerusalem, 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 attentive 
 
103 
 
 eye this representative portrait drawn for us 
 by an infallible master, and to distinguish its 
 component parts, each by itself, so that we 
 may combine without confusing them in our 
 memory ; till they blend at 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 our- 
 selves of the identity by a comparison 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 nev- 
 ertheless of our own knowledge, is the more 
 striking and characteristic. Worthless persons 
 of little or no estimation for rank, learning, or 
 integrity, not seldom profligates, with whom 
 debauchery has outwrestled rapacity, easy be- 
 cause unprincipled and generous because dis- 
 honest, 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 
 
104 
 
 and neighbors, and hard in their private deal- 
 ings between man and man ; men who clench 
 with one hand what they have grasped with 
 the other ; these are extolled as public bene- 
 factors, the friends, guardians, and advocates 
 of the poor ! Here and there 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 incendia- 
 ries and mob -sycophants by an insane restless- 
 ness, 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 described, such is the 
 sort of men ; and in point of historic fact it has 
 been from men of this sort, that profaneness 
 
 - 
 
105 
 
 is gone forth into all the land. (Jeremiah, 
 xxxiii. 15.) 
 
 In harmony with the general character of 
 these false prophets, are the particular qualities 
 assigned to them. First, a passion for vauge 
 and violent invective, an habitual and inveter- 
 ate predilection for the language of hate, and 
 rage and contumely, an ungoverned appetite 
 for abuse and defamation ! The vile will 
 
 TALK VILLAINY. 
 
 But the fetid flower will ripen into the poi- 
 sonous 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 oppor- 
 tunity 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 appropriately for our pur- 
 pose, Isaiah has selected the fratricide of sedi- 
 tion, and with the eagle eye and practised 
 touch of an intuitive demonstrator he unfolds 
 the composition of the character, part by part, 
 
106 
 
 in the secret history of the agent's wishes, de- 
 signs 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 faith- 
 ful outline of a master in the art : ' The begin- 
 ning of the words of his mouth is foolishness 
 and the end of his talk mischievous madness,' 
 Ecclesiastes, x. 13. If in the spirit of Prophe- 
 cy,* the wise Ruler had been present to our 
 own times, and their procedures ; if while he 
 
 * Solomon has himself informed us, that beyond wealth and 
 conquest, and as of far greater importance to him, in his ar- 
 duous office of King and Magistrate, he had sought through 
 knowledge of wisdom to lay hold on folly : that is, by the study 
 of Man, to arrive at a grounded knowledge of Men, and 
 through a previous insight into the nature and conditions of 
 Good to acquire by inference 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 (Ecclesiastes, 
 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 Zelota? during the .siege of Jerusa- 
 lem ; 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 Representative of Human Nature, and in her 
 
107 
 
 sojourned in the valley of vision he had actual- 
 ly heard the very harangues of our reigning 
 demagogues to the convened populace ; 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 gen- 
 eral line of conduct. On all occasions, but 
 most of all and with a more blustering malig- 
 
 behalf looking and listening with fearful awe to the prophetic 
 symbols of her destiny! But had I dared imitate the major 
 part of the Commencators, and followed the fatuous fires of 
 Fancy, that " shrewd sprite" ever busiest when in the service 
 of pi-e-conceived partialities and antipathies, I might have suf- 
 fered 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 treating of the Demagogues exclusively, the lat- 
 ter as including their infatuated followers likewise. For what 
 other image?, concorporated according to the rules of Hiero- 
 glyphic 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.' 
 
108 
 
 nity, 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 
 opportunity pleading to the Poor and Ignorant, 
 no where and at no time are they found actu- 
 ally pleading for them. Nor is this the worst. 
 They even plead against them. Yes ! Syco- 
 phants to the crowd, enemies of the individuals, 
 and well-wishers only to the continuance of 
 
 The authenticity of this canonical Book rests on the firm- 
 est 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 Politi- 
 cians 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 in- 
 sight irradiated by inspiration) the successive struggles and 
 final triumph of Christianity over the Paganism and Judaism 
 of the then Roman Empire, typified in the Fall of Rome, the 
 destruction 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 Apocalypse, 
 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 cherish- 
 ed, but during many years deferred from an unfeigned sense 
 of my deficiency ; and now there remains only the hope and 
 the wish, or rather a feeling between both ! 
 
109 
 
 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, be- 
 cause we cannot do all, that we would wish. 
 Or if this sophistry of 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 can- 
 not 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 1 
 
 However angrily our demagogues may dis- 
 claim all intentions of this kind, such has been 
 their procedure, and it is susceptible of no 
 
 other interpretation. We all know, that the 
 10 
 
110 
 
 shares must be scanty, where the dividend 
 bears no proportion to the number of the claim- 
 ants. Yet He, who satisfied the multitude in 
 the wilderness with a few loaves and fishes, is 
 still present to his church. Small as the por- 
 tions 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 bringeth back 
 plenty on the land. But no Blessing can enter 
 where Envy and Hatred are already in posses- 
 sion ; and small good will the poor man have 
 of the food prepared for him by his more favor- 
 ed 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 adminis- 
 ter poison ; if to flatter in order to deprave ; 
 if to affect love to all and show pity to none ; 
 if to exaggerate and misderive the distress of 
 the laboring classes in order to make them tur- 
 bulent, and to discourage every plan for their 
 relief in order to keep them so ; if to skulk from 
 private infamy in the mask of public spirit, and 
 make the flaming patriot privilege the game- 
 ster, swindler or adulterer ; if to seek* amnesty for 
 
Ill 
 
 a continued 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 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 — persons, 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 effrontery to propose that we 
 should entrust to them our religion and our 
 country ; when we meet with Patriots, who aim 
 at an enlargement of the rights and liberties of 
 the people by inflaming the populace to acts of 
 madness that necessitate fetters — pretended 
 heralds of freedom and actual pioneers of mili- 
 tary despotism ; we will call to mind the 
 words of the prophet Isaiah, and say to our- 
 selves ; 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 
 
112 
 
 before them, that one of the main characteris- 
 tics of demagogues in all ages is, to practice 
 
 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 was affirm- 
 ed likewise at the same time, that as the con- 
 duct, such was the process : and I will seek 
 no other support of this charge, I need no bet- 
 ter test both of the men and their works, than 
 the plain question : is there one good feeling, 
 to which they do — is there a single bad pas- 
 sion, 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 lib- 
 erty of the press in particular; and therein of 
 all the truths human and divine which a free 
 press is the most efficient and only commensu- 
 rate means of protecting, extending and per- 
 petuating. 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 ouf neglect of 
 
113 
 
 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 wick- 
 ed principles which it is the trade of these men 
 to propagate. Well therefore has the Prophet 
 made it the fourth mark of these misleaders 
 of the multitude, not alone to utter error, but 
 
 TO UTTER ERROR AGAINST THE LORD, TO 
 MAKE EMPTY THE SOUL OF THE HUNGRY ! 
 
 Alas ! it is a hard and 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 predistinguish the ominous 
 screech owl from the sacred notes of Augury, 
 from the auspicious and friendly birds of Warn- 
 ing 1 And yet will we avoid this seeming in- 
 justice, 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 feeling, 
 that binds the citizen to his country, the spirit 
 to its Creator, is in danger of being undermi- 
 ned. — Not by reasoning, for from that there is 
 no danger; but — by the mere habit of hearing 
 them reviled and scoffed at, with impunity^ 
 
 10 
 
 * 
 
114 
 
 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, the greater love 
 we bore to literature, and to all the means and 
 instruments of human improvement, the more 
 anxiously should we wish for some Ithuriel 
 spear that might remove from the ear of the 
 ignorant and half-learned, and expose in their 
 own fiendish shape, those reptiles, inspir- 
 ing 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 counterbalance the 
 wearisome aversion inspired by the deformity 
 and palpableness of the subject itself. As the 
 plan originates in the malignant restlessness of 
 desperate ambition or desperate circumstances, 
 so are its means and engines a drag-net of 
 Fraud and delusion. The instruments al- 
 
115 
 
 SO OF THE CHURL ARE EVIL, HE DEVISETH 
 WICKED DEVICES WITH LYING WORDS. He 
 
 employs a compound poison, of which the fol- 
 lowing 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 asser- 
 tions, it matters not whether supported by 
 facts or no, nay, though they should involve 
 absurdities, and demonstrable 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 gen- 
 erosity of the human heart which makes it an 
 effort to doubt ; the confidence which apparent 
 courage inspires ; and the contagion of animal 
 enthusiasm ; 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 
 
116 
 
 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. 
 E. Arguments built on passing events and de- 
 riving an undue importance from the feelings 
 of the moment. The mere appeal, however, 
 to the auditors whether the arguments are not 
 such that none but an idiot or an hireling could 
 resist, is an effective substitute for any argu- 
 ment at all. For mobs have no memories. 
 They are in nearly the same state as that of 
 an individual when he makes (what is termed) 
 a Bull. The passions, like a fused metal, fill 
 up the wide interstices of thought, and supply 
 the defective links : and thus incompatible as- 
 sertions are harmonized by the sensation^ with- 
 out the sense, of connection. 4. The display 
 of the defects without the accompanying ad- 
 vantages, or vice versa. 5. Concealment of 
 the general and ultimate result behind the 
 scenery of local, and particular consequences. 
 6. Statement of positions that are true only 
 under particular conditions, to men whose ig- 
 norance or fury make them forget that these 
 conditions are not present, or lead them to 
 
117 
 
 take for granted that they are. 7. Chains of 
 Questions, especially of such questions as the 
 persons best authorized to propose are ever 
 the slowest in proposing ; and objections intel- 
 ligible of themselves, the answers to which 
 require the comprehension of a system. 8. 
 Vague and common-place Satire, stale as the 
 wine in which flies were drowned last summer, 
 seasoned by the sly tale and important anec- 
 dote of but yesterday, that came within the 
 speaker's own knowledge! 9. Transitions 
 from the audacious charge, not seldom of as 
 signal impudence " as any thing was ever cart- 
 ed 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. 
 
 SrfKoe eViv a'woSsv 
 
 'Ev iravoupyi^ <rs xai Spatfsj xai Jco/3aX»xs'ufjia(7'iv. 
 
 10, Jerks of style, from the lunatic trope, 
 
 'p^fjiad' iWo/3a(Jwva, <ffoAXa£ ts akivSrj&pag Iirwv, tO the 
 
 buffoonery and "red-lattice phrases" of the 
 
 Canaglia, 2xup (fvtfxsSuv /3o'p/3opov ts tfoXuv xai xaxias xcu 
 
 tfuxopavrias ; the one in ostentation of superior 
 rank and acquirements (for where envy does 
 
118 
 
 not interfere, man loves to look up ;) the other 
 in pledge of heartiness and good fellowship. 
 11. Lastly, and throughout all, to leave a gene- 
 ral impression of something striking, something 
 that is to come of it, and to rely on the indo- 
 lence of mens' understandings and the activity 
 of their passions for their resting in this state, 
 as the brood-warmth fittest to hatch whatever 
 serpents' egg opportunity may enable the De- 
 ceiver to place under it. Let but mysterious 
 expressions* be 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 
 Pharmacopoeia of political empirics, here and 
 everywhere, now and at all times ! These are 
 the drugs administered, and the tricks played 
 
 *Vide North's Examen, p. 20 ; and The Knights of Aristo- 
 phanes. A version of this comedy, abridged and modernized, 
 would be a most seasonable present to the Public. The 
 words quoted above from this Play and the frogs, may be ren- 
 dered 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. 
 
119 
 
 off by the Mountebanks and Zanies of Patriot- 
 ism ; drugs that will continue to poison as long 
 as irreligion secures a predisposition 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 de- 
 ceits 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 malm 
 the people 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? (Jerem. passim.) 
 
 The Prophet answers for me in the conclu- 
 ding words of the description — To destroy 
 the Poor even when the needy speak- 
 eth 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 convictions 
 of their own sober and unsophisticated under- 
 standings. As in all the preceding features so 
 in this, with which the prophetic portrait is 
 completed, our own experience supplies both 
 proof and example. The ultimate causes of 
 
120 
 
 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 preju- 
 dice, that maddening spirit which pre-eminently 
 deserves the title of vinum daemonum 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 directly by the mere 
 amount ; but either from the time or circum- 
 stances 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 moist- 
 ure from the river, the morass, and the ocean, 
 to be given back in genial showers to the gar- 
 den, 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 
 sandwaste. The corruptions of a system can 
 be duly appreciated by those only who have 
 contemplated the system in that ideal state of 
 
121 
 
 perfection exhibited by the reason: the nearest 
 possible approximation to which under existing 
 circumstances it is the business of the pruden- 
 tial understanding to realize. Those on the 
 other hand, who commence the examination of 
 a system by identifying it with its abuses or 
 imperfections, degrade their understanding into 
 the pander of their passions, and are sure to 
 prescribe remedies more dangerous than the 
 disease. Alas ! there are so many real evils, 
 so many just causes of complaint in the consti- 
 tutions 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 them- 
 selves 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 exist- 
 ence, we could not perhaps find an apter 
 illustration than the gardens of southern Europe 
 would supply. The tanks or reservoirs would 
 represent the capital of a nation : while the 
 hundred rills hourly varying their channels 
 11 
 
122 
 
 and directions, under the gardener'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 commerce, and the 
 Government may be fairly considered as a 
 great manufacturing -house, carrying on in dif- 
 ferent places, by means of its partners and 
 overseers, the trades of the ship-builder, the 
 clothier, the iron-founder, &,c. &c. As long 
 as a balance is preserved between the receipts 
 and the returns of Government in their amount, 
 quickness, and degree of dispersion ; as long 
 as the due proportion obtains in the sums le- 
 vied to the mass in productive circulation, so 
 long does the wealth and circumstantial pros- 
 perity of the nation, (its wealth, I say not its 
 real welfare ; its outward prosperity, but not 
 necessarily 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 productive action of all 
 large capitals, and through the check which 
 taxation, in its own nature, gives to the indo- 
 lence of the wealthy in its continual transfer of 
 property to the industrious and enterprizing. 
 
123 
 
 If different periods be taken, and if the com- 
 parative weight of the taxes at each be calcu- 
 lated, 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 dis- 
 tress will be at least equal to the total amount 
 of the difference between the taxes still levied, 
 and the quantum of aid withdrawn from indi- 
 viduals 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 conse- 
 quence of the demand created by the prece- 
 ding state of things, and now discharged from 
 their occupations: whether the latter belong 
 exclusively to the Executive Power, as that of 
 soldiers, &c. or from those in which the labor- 
 
124 
 
 ers for the nation in general are already suffi- 
 ciently numerous. Both these classes are 
 thrown back on the Public, and sent to a table 
 where every seat is pre-occupied. The em- 
 ployment 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 hap- 
 pen, that the very same change, which had 
 produced this depression at home, may from 
 equivalent causes have embarrassed the coun- 
 tries 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 
 circumstances 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 confi- 
 dence and enterprize, which they never fail to 
 produce. 
 
 Now it is a notorious fact, that these causes 
 
125 
 
 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 anoma- 
 lies of the late War, that it acted, After a few 
 years, as a universal stimulant. We almost 
 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 ; villages swelling into 
 towns, while the metropolis surrounded itself, 
 and became (as it were) set with new cities. 
 Finally, in spite of all the waste and havoc of 
 a twenty years' war, the population of the em- 
 pire 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 
 present question, that the war did not, as was 
 usually the case in former wars, die away into 
 
 a long expected peace by gradual exhaustion 
 11* 
 
126 
 
 and weariness on both sides, but plunged to 
 its conclusion by a concentration, we might al- 
 most say, by a spasm of energy, and conse- 
 quently by an anticipation of our resources. 
 We conquered by compelling reversionary pow- 
 er into alliance with our existing and natural 
 strength. The first intoxication 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 exacerbated by personal impru- 
 dences, the chief injury of which consisted in 
 their own tendency to disgust and alienate the 
 public feeling. And with all this, the financial 
 errors and prejudices even of the more educa- 
 ted classes, in short, the general want or 
 imperfection of clear views and a scientific in- 
 sight into the true effects and influences of 
 Taxation, and the mode of its operation, be- 
 came now a real misfortune, and opened an 
 additional source of temporary embarrassment. 
 Retrenchment could no longer proceed by 
 cautious and calculated steps ; but was com- 
 pelled to hurry forward, like one who crossing 
 
127 
 
 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 agricultural- 
 ist, the manufacturer, or the tradesman, (all in 
 short but annuitants and fixed stipendiaries) 
 who during the war having paid as Five had 
 
 * The disturbance of this balance may be illustrated thus : — 
 Suppose a great Capitalist to have founded, in a large marked- 
 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 pro- 
 portion 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 greatest part on the books of 
 the tradesfolks. 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 preser- 
 ved. The circulations counterpoise each other, or rather they 
 are neutralized by influence. But some sudden event leads 
 or compels the Capitalist to put down both factories at once 
 
128 
 
 Fifteen left behind, would shortly 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 fluctua- 
 tions, some falling while others rise, and there- 
 fore in all times there will be a large sum of 
 
 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 consequence ? The work- 
 men 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 disturbed, — 
 Put the Country at large for the parishioners, and the Gov- 
 ernment 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 re- 
 cover its temporary prosperity, and the Capitalist may spend 
 his remaining fortune in another country ; but a nation, of 
 which the Government is an organic part with perfect inter- 
 dependence of interests, can never remain in a state of depres- 
 sion thus produced, but by its own fault : that is, from moral 
 causes. 
 
129 
 
 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 im- 
 providence prevailing among them. But be- 
 sides 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 innoxioifs 
 in its effects. Habit and the familiarity with 
 outward advantages, which takes off their daz- 
 zle ; sense of character; and above all, the 
 counterpoise of intellectual pursuits and re- 
 sources ; are all necessary preventives and 
 antidotes to the dangerous properties of wealth 
 and power with the great majority of mankind. 
 It is a painful subject : and I leave to your own 
 experience and recollection the assemblage of 
 folly, presumption, and extravagance, that fol- 
 lowed 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 
 
130 
 
 fooleries and sensual vices which the sudden 
 influx of wealth let in on our farmers and yeo- 
 manry. Now though the whole mass of ca- 
 lamity consequent on these aberrations from 
 prudence should in all fairness be attributed 
 to the sufferer's own conduct; yet when there 
 supervenes some one common cause or oc- 
 casion 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 ca- 
 lamity. 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 re- 
 pair 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 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 distresses 
 
131 
 
 common to all times alike, or though occasion- 
 ed by the general revolution and stagnation, 
 yet really cause$ by personal improvidence Or 
 misconduct, combine with its peculiar and ine- 
 vitable effects in making the cup overflow. 
 The latter class especially, as being in such 
 cases always the most clamorous 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 iayj*j so open to the 
 common sense of mankind, that the laboring 
 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 in- 
 stance 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 
 of itself a sufficient proof with the Many, that 
 it arose from the Peace. But this opinion 
 suited ill with the purposes of sedition. The 
 truth, that could not be precluded, must be 
 
132 
 
 removed; and "when the needy speaketh 
 aright" the more urgent occasion is there for 
 the " wicked device" and the »" lying words.'* 
 Where distress is felt, tales of wrong and op- 
 pression are readily believed, to the sufferer's 
 own disquiet. Rage and Revenge make the 
 cheek pale and the hand tremble, worse than 
 even want itself : and the cup of sorrow over- 
 flows by being held unsteadily. On the other 
 hand nothing calms the mind in the hour of 
 bitterness so efficaciously as the conviction that 
 it was not within the means of those above us, 
 or around us, to have prevented it. An influ- 
 ence, mightier than fascination, dwells in the 
 stern eye of necessity, when it is fixed steadily 
 on a man : for together with the power of resist- 
 ance it takes away its agitations likewise. 
 This is one mercy that always accompanies the 
 visitations of the Almighty when they are re- 
 ceived 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 in- 
 struments of mischief, they must be attributed 
 to causes that can be represented as removea- 
 ble ; either to individuals who had been previ- 
 ously rendered unpopular, or to whole classes 
 
133 
 
 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 1 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 mat- 
 ter of the fire is, so it burneth. Let the dema- 
 gogue but succeed in maddening the crowd, 
 he may bid defiance to demonstration, and 
 direct the madness against whom it pleaseth 
 him. Ji slanderous tongue has disquieted many, 
 and driven them from nation to nation ; strong 
 cities hath it pulled down and overthrown the 
 houses of great men. (Ecclesiasticus, xxviii. 
 14.) 
 
 We see in every promiscuous public meeting 
 the effect produced by the bold assertion that 
 
 the present hardships of all classes are owing 
 12 
 
134 
 
 to the number and amount of Pensions and 
 Sine-cures. Yet from the unprecedented 
 zeal and activity in the education* of the 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 
 
 * With all due humility we contended that the war in ques- 
 tion had likewise its golden side. The anomalous occasions 
 and stupendous events of the contest had roused us, like the 
 Mast 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 mor- 
 als and public security, mutually grounded each other, that 
 they were twined at the very root, and could not grow or 
 thrive but in intertwine : and we of Great Britain had acquir- 
 ed this instruction 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 occasion, the 
 late and present condition of manners and intellect among 
 the young men at Oxford and Cambridge, 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 
 Universities forty, or even thirty years ago, with the moral 
 contrast 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 predominant anxiety concerning the education 
 and principles of their children in all the respectable classes 
 
135 
 
 prove their impossibility by the first and sim- 
 plest rules of arithmetic; there is not one 
 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 cir- 
 
 of the community, and the unexampled 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 root- 
 less, 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 
 ef his own to read. The general wish organized itself into 
 act and plan : a discoyery, the living educt of one great man's 
 genius and benevolence, rendered the execution practicable 
 and even easy ; and the god-like idea began and is proceeding 
 to realize itself with a rapidity yet stedfastness 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 instinct of fervid yet orderly co-operation, 
 which most of all our honourable characteristics distinguishes, 
 secures, enriches, strengthens and elevates the people of Grent 
 Britain. [From an Essay by the Author, published in the Couri- 
 er, July, 1816.] 
 
136 
 
 cumstances, 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 re- 
 turned into the general circulation by Annui- 
 tants of the Treasury instead of Annuitants of 
 the Bank, by John instead of Peter : however 
 blameable the regulation might be in other re- 
 spects ? What then ? the hypothesis allows of 
 a continual reference to persons, and to all the 
 uneasy and malignant passions which personali- 
 ties 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 be first con- 
 verted 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 Farm- 
 ers 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 meet- 
 ing be composed of the Manufacturing Poor, 
 and then it is the Machinery of their employ- 
 ers that is devoted to destruction : though it 
 would not exceed the truth if I affirmed, that 
 
137 
 
 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 restrained 
 from levelling at them missiles more alarming 
 than the curse of the unwise that 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 Are- 
 na, and the chosen weapons of demagogues. 
 Wretches ! they would without remorse detract 
 
 the hope that is the subliming and expanding 
 12* 
 
138 
 
 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 ig- 
 nominiously beneath the strength of the out- 
 raged Law, or (if God in his anger, and for 
 the punishment of general depravity should 
 require a severer and more extensive retribu- 
 tion) 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 find its place 
 elsewhere ; the more readily, that having been 
 tempted by the foulness of the ways to turn 
 
139 
 
 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 de- 
 nied, 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 necessary com- 
 forts, 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 complete answer 
 to our enquiries after the occasion of this sul- 
 lenness or inappetence ; but the cause of it we 
 should be tempted to. seek in the man's own 
 undisciplined temper, or habits of self-indul- 
 gence. So far from agreeing therefore with 
 those who find the causes in the occasions, I 
 think the half of the question already solved 
 
140 
 
 of every unequal importance with that which 
 yet remains for solution. 
 
 The immediate occasions of the existing dis- 
 tress 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 appear to me, how- 
 ever, resolvable into the Overbalance* or 
 the Commercial Spirit in consequence 
 of the absence or weakness of the 
 counter- weights; this overbalance consider- 
 ed as displaying itself, 1. In the Commercial 
 
 * I entreat attention to the word, over- balance. My opin- 
 ions would be greatly misinterpreted if I were supposed lo 
 think hostilely of the spirit of commerce to which I attribute 
 the largest proportion of our actual freedom (i. e. as English- 
 men, and not merely as Landowners) 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 ten- 
 dency, stay here ! or flow there ! The excess can only 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 directors of political power, that 
 is, the great estates of the Realm, temporal and spiritual, and 
 not only the Parliament, but all the elements of Parliament. 
 
141 
 
 World itself: 2. In the Agricultural: 3. In 
 the Government : and 4. In the combined In- 
 fluence of all three on the more numerous and 
 labouring Classes. 
 
 Of the natural counter-forces to the impetus 
 of trade the first, that presents itself to my 
 mind, is the ancient feeling of rank and an- 
 cestry, compared with our present self-compla- 
 cent triumph over these supposed prejudices. 
 Not that titles and the rights of precedence 
 are pursued by us with less eagerness than by 
 our Forefathers. The contrary is the case ; 
 and for this very cause, because they inspire 
 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 accompanied 
 this state of things I am well aware : and like- 
 wise that many of the latter have become in- 
 compatible with far more important blessings. 
 It would therefore be sickly affectation to sus- 
 
142 
 
 pend the thankfulness 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 proponderated, 
 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 re- 
 spect of patriotism and public spirit at and 
 before the commencement of the French revo- 
 lution. 
 
 The limits and proportions of this address 
 allow little more than a bare reference to this 
 point. The same restraint I must impose on 
 myself in the following. For under this head 
 I conclude the general neglect of all the aus- 
 terer studies ; the long and ominous eclipse of 
 Philosophy; the usurpation of that venerable 
 name by physical and psychological Empiri- 
 cism ; and the non-existence of a learned and 
 philosophic Public, which is perhaps the only 
 innoxious form of an imperium 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 
 
143 
 
 the assertion itself is so likely to appear para- 
 doxical even to men of candid minds, that I 
 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 or Dillettanti, as Musicians, Botan- 
 ists, Florists, Mineralogists, and Antiquarians. 
 Nor is it denied that these are ingenuous pur- 
 suits, 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 pur- 
 suits 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 circula- 
 tion. But neither Philosophy or Theology in 
 the strictest sense of the words, can be said 
 
144 
 
 to have even a public existence among us. I 
 feel assured, that if Plato himself were to re- 
 turn and renew his sublime lucubrations in the 
 metropolis of Great Britain, a handicraftsman, 
 from a laboratory, who had just succeeded in 
 disoxydating an Earth, would be thought far 
 the more respectable, nay, the more illustri- 
 ous 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 Be- 
 ing 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 ol metaphysics, phi- 
 losophic 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 in- 
 tercourse with philosophy. I need only men- 
 tion the names of Lorenzo the magnificent ; 
 Picus, Count Mirandula, Ficinus and Politian; 
 the abstruse subjects of their discussion, and 
 
145 
 
 the importance attached to them, as the requi- 
 site qualifications of men placed by Providence 
 as guides and governors of their fellow-creatures. 
 If this be undeniable, equally notorious is it 
 that at present the more effective a man's tal- 
 ents 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 meta- 
 physical speculation, which are placed before 
 him : though they come with the recommen- 
 dation of being so many triumphs of modern 
 good sense over the schools of ancient phi- 
 losophy. Dante, Petrarch, Spencer, 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 solu- 
 tion of this difference in the men ; and if not, it 
 can be found only in the philosophic systems 
 themselves. And so in truth it is. The Liv- 
 ing of former ages communed gladly with a 
 life-breathing philosophy. The Living of the 
 present age wisely leave the dead to take care 
 of the dead. 13 
 
146 
 
 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 of the in- 
 tellect and the affections with permanent, unw 
 versal, and eternal truths. Let no man enter, 
 said Plato, who has not previously 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 j but that 
 there may be no danger of the pupil's becom- 
 ing 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 
 demonstrations of Mathematical Science, was 
 received even in a mathematical University. I 
 must not permit myself to say more on this 
 subject, desirous as I am of shewing the impor- 
 tance of a philosophic class, and of evincing 
 that it is of vital utility, and even an essential 
 element in the composition of a civilized com- 
 munity. It must suffice, that it has been ex- 
 
147 
 
 plained 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 therefore 
 a counterforce is wanting wherever Philosophy 
 is degraded in the estimation of society. What 
 are you (a philosopher was once asked) in con- 
 sequence of your admiration of these abstruse 
 speculations ? He answered : What I am, it 
 does not become me to say ; but what thou- 
 sands 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 un- 
 divided faith of Christ which demands the first- 
 fruits, of the whole man, his affections no less 
 than his outward acts, his understanding equal- 
 ly 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 
 
148 
 
 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 without insight ; if warmth with- 
 out light ; if an immunity from doubt given and 
 guaranteed by a resolute ignorance ; if the 
 habit of taking for granted the words of a cate- 
 chism, remembered or forgotten ; if a sensation 
 of positiveness substituted — I will not say, for 
 certainty; but — for that calm assurance, the 
 very means and conditions of which it super- 
 sedes ; 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 Christians, 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 receiv- 
 ed, 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 
 
149 
 
 every Christian, in proportion as he is indeed 
 a Christian, has received the Spirit that search- 
 eth all things, yea the deep things of God him- 
 self? — on what grounds could the Apostle de- 
 nounce even the sincerest fervor of spirit as 
 defective, where it does not bring forth fruits 
 in the Understanding ?* Or again : if to be- 
 lieve were enough, why are we commanded by 
 another Apostle, that, "besides this, giving all 
 diligence we should add to our faith manly en- 
 ergy and to manly energy knowledge /" Is it 
 not especially significant, that in the divine 
 ceconomy, as revealed to us in the New Tes- 
 tament, the peculiar office of Redemption is 
 attributed to the Word, that is, to the intelli- 
 gential wisdom which from all eternity is with 
 God, and is God 1 that in him is life, and the 
 life is the light of men 1 
 
 In the present day we hear much, and from 
 men of various creeds, of the plainness and 
 simplicity of the Christian religion : and strange 
 abuse has been made of these words, often 
 indeed with no ill intention, but still oftener by 
 men who would fain transform the necessity of 
 
 * Brethren ! be not children in understanding : howbeit, in 
 malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. 
 
 13* 
 
150 
 
 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 designate 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 indistin- 
 guishable Unicity or Oneness, are incompati- 
 ble terms: while, in the exclusive sense in 
 which they mean the name to be understood, 
 it is a presumptuous boast, and an uncharitable 
 calumny. Their true designation, which sim- 
 ply expresses a fact admitted on all sides, 
 would be that of Psilanthropists* or assertors 
 of the mere humanity of Christ. It is the inter- 
 est of these men to speak of the Christian reli- 
 
 * New things justify new terms. Novis in rebus licet nova 
 nobis verba confingere. — We never speak of the unity of At- 
 traction, or of the unity of Repulsion ; but of the unity of At- 
 traction and Repulsion in each one corpuscle. The essential 
 diversity of the ideas, unity and sameness, was among the ele- 
 mentary principles of the old Logicians ; and the sophisms 
 grounded on the confusion of these terms have been ably ex- 
 posed by Leibnitz, in bis Critique on Wissowatius, the acutest, 
 perhaps, of all the learned Socinian divines, whenSocinian di- 
 vines were undeniably men of learning. 
 
151 
 
 gion as comprized in a few plain doctrines, and 
 containing nothing not intelligible, at the first 
 hearing, to men of the narrowest capacities. 
 Well then, (it might be replied) we are dis- 
 posed to place a full reliance on the veracity of 
 the great Founder of the Christian Religion, 
 and likewise — which is more than you your- 
 selves are on all occasions willing to admit — on 
 the accuracy and competence of the Writers, 
 who first recorded his acts and sayings. We 
 have learned from you, whom, — and we now 
 wish to hear from you — what we are to believe. 
 The answer is : — the actural occurrence of an 
 extraordinary event, as recorded by the biog- 
 raphers of Jesus, in confirmation of doctrines, 
 without the previous belief of which, no man 
 would, or rather, according to St. Paul's dec- 
 laration, could become a convert to Christianity ; 
 doctrines, 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 politics, 
 they tell us, require but the application of a 
 common sense, which every man possesses, to 
 a subject in which every man is concerned. 
 " To be a musician, an orator, a painter, or 
 
152 
 
 even a good mechanician, pre -supposes genius ; 
 to be an excellent artizan or mechanic requires 
 more than an average degree of talent ; but to 
 be a legislator or a theologian, or both at once, 
 demands nothing but common sense."* Now 
 we willingly admit that nothing can be neces- 
 sary to the salvation of a Christian which is not 
 in his power. For such, therefore, as have 
 neither the opportunity or the capacity of learn- 
 ing more, sufficient, doubtless, will be the be- 
 lief of those plain truths, and the fulfilment of 
 those commands, which to be incapable of un- 
 derstanding, is to be a man in appearance only. 
 But even to this scanty creed the disposition of 
 faith must be added : and let it not be forgotten, 
 that though nothing can be easier than to un- 
 derstand a code of belief, four-fifths of which 
 consists in avowals of disbelief, and the re- 
 mainder in truths, concerning which (in this 
 country at least) a man must have taken pains 
 
 * The Friend, Vol. I. As the original work, 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 vo- 
 lumes, 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 arrangement, can be described as an edition of the former. 
 
153 
 
 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 requires all the resources 
 of verbal criticism, and all the perverse subtle- 
 ty of special pleading, to work out a plausible 
 semblance of correspondency between them. 
 It must, however, be conceded, that a man may 
 consistently spare himself the trouble of the 
 attempt, and leave the New Testament unread, 
 after he has once thoroughly persuaded himself 
 that it can teach him nothing of any real impor- 
 tance that he does not already know. St. Paul 
 indeed thought otherwise. For though he too 
 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 observ- 
 ed, that in the New Testament there are shal- 
 lows where the lamb may ford, and depths 
 where the elephant must swim. The Apostle 
 exhorts the followers of Christ to the continual 
 study of the new religion, on the ground that 
 in the mystery 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 
 
154 
 
 exhaust, 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 
 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 Ve- 
 rity, 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 rever- 
 sionary, 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 knowl- 
 edge is but one continued process of simplifi- 
 cation. But I cannot comprehend, in what 
 
155 
 
 ordinary sense of the words the properties of 
 plainness and simplicity can be applied 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 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 under- 
 stood, which the unlearned, as well as the 
 unstable, were in danger of wresting and mis- 
 interpreting. I can well understand, however, 
 what is and has been the practical consequence 
 of this notion. It is this very consequence in- 
 deed, 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 illustration. For what need 
 of any after-recurrence to the sources of infor- 
 mation concerning a religion, the whole con- 
 tents of which can be thoroughly acquired at 
 once, and in a few hours ? An occasional re- 
 membrancing 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 for us to 
 
156 
 
 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 no employment to the understand- 
 ing. The energies of the intellect, increase of 
 insight, and enlarging views, are necessary 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 an- 
 cient Hebrew Doctors interpreted as meaning 
 the powers and efforts of the Intellect, that we 
 must first be borne up to the "pure Empyre- 
 an :" 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 understanding 
 to the simple. I prevented the dawning of the 
 
157 
 
 morning : mine eyes prevent the night-watch- 
 es, that I might meditate upon thy word." 
 Now where the very contrary of this is the 
 opinion of many, and the practice of most, 
 what results can be expected but those which 
 are actually presented to us in our daily expe- 
 rience. 
 
 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 away 
 live-asunder, as it were, from the divine organ- 
 ism of the Bible, textuary morsels and frag- 
 ments for the support of doctrines which they 
 
 * 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 mat- 
 ter of boast, — that the number of its secret adherents, out- 
 wardly of other denominations, is tenfold greater than that of 
 its avowed and incorporated Followers. And truly, in our 
 cities and great manufacturing 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 as- 
 serted without good ground. For Socinianism in its present 
 form, consisting almost wholly in attack and imagined detec- 
 tion, has a particular charm for what are called shrewd, know- 
 ing men. Besides, the vain and half-educated, whose Chris- 
 tian and sir names in the title pages of our Magazines, Lady's 
 Diaries, &c. are the successors of the shame-faced Critos, 
 Phileleutheroses, and Philaletheses in the time of our Grand- 
 
 14 
 
158 
 
 had learned beforehand from the higher oracle 
 of their own natural Common- Sense. Sanctas 
 Scripturas frustant ut frustrent. Through the 
 gracious dispensations of Providence a com- 
 plexity of circumstances may co-operate as 
 antidotes to a noxious principle, and realize the 
 paradox of a very good man under a very evil 
 faith. It is not denied, that a Socinian may be 
 as honest, useful and benevolent 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 instances, and I am most wil- 
 ling to bear witness from my own experience, 
 
 fathers, will be something : and now that Deism has gone out 
 of fashion, Socinianisrn has swept up its Refuse. As the main 
 success of this sect is owing to the small proportion which the 
 affirmative articles of their Faith (rari nantes in gurgxte vasto) 
 bear to the negative, (that is, their Belief to their Disbelief, it 
 wUl 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 
 authenticated from the writings of Mr. Belsham. 
 
 1. They believe in one God, professing to differ from other 
 Christians only in holding the Deity to be unipersonal, 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 consistently 
 
159 
 
 that they are not infrequent, the fruit is from 
 the grafts not from the tree. The native pro- 
 duce is, or would be, an intriguing, overbear- 
 ing, 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 
 understandings of all who differ from them. 
 But be this as it may, and whatever be its ef- 
 fects, 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 
 
 with this affirm that the Christian Religion (i. e. their view of 
 it) precludes all remorse for our sins, they being a present ca- 
 lamity, but not guilt. 
 
 3. They believe the Gospels, though not written by inspira- 
 tion, to be authentic Histories on the whole : though with some 
 additions and interpolations. And on the authority of these 
 Writings, confirmed by other evidence, 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 i and differ from other Churches 
 hi 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. 
 
160 
 
 who do not trouble themselves at all with reli- 
 gious matters, which they resign to the clergy- 
 man of the parish. But while not a few among 
 these men consent to pray and hear by proxy ; 
 and while others, more attentive to the pru- 
 dential advantages of a decorous character, 
 yield the customary evidence of their church- 
 membership ; but, this performed, are at peace 
 with themselves, and 
 
 ■ — think their Sunday's task 
 
 As much as God or Man can fairly ask ; 
 
 there exists amongst the most respectable Lai- 
 ty of our cities and great towns, an active, 
 
 5. A certain indefinite number of Mankind thus renewed 
 to life and consciousness, it is the common belief of them alt, 
 will be placed in a state of happiness and immortality. But 
 with respect to those who have died in the calamitous condi- 
 tion of unreformed Sinfulness, (to what extent it is. for the su- 
 preme Judge to decide) 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 & 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 conjec- 
 tural Hopes and Fears t 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 
 
161 
 
 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 neighbourhood: 
 men whose lives are free from all disreputable- 
 infirmities, and of whose activity in the organi- 
 zation, patronage, and management 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 
 
 * And pure Religion breathing household laws. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 diner 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 physical, 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 
 ex-inanition 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, Offence, and Hatred, of Moral Evil, being 
 
 14* 
 
162 
 
 respects estimable persons, are for the greater 
 part in the habit of having family -prayer, and 
 a portion 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 accumulation. 
 This, I say, we might expect to find, if an un- 
 
 mere metaphors and figures of speech addressed to a rude and 
 barbarous People) they profess to hold a Redemption — not 
 however 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 Res- 
 urrection, 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 calcu- 
 lated to produce on the human mind. So that if it had so hap- 
 pened, that a man had been influenced to an innocent and 
 useful life by the example, precepts, and martyrdon of Socra- 
 tes, 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 be asked, why this 
 
163 
 
 doubting belief in the threats and promises of 
 Revelation, and a consequent regularity of per- 
 sonal, domestic, and social demeanor, sufficed 
 to constitute that Christianity, the power and 
 privilege of which is so to renew and irridiate 
 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, how- 
 ever ennobled by the magnitude and awfulness 
 of its objects, and though as the termination of a 
 lower, it may be the commencement (and not 
 
 resurrection, or re-creation is confined to the human animal, 
 the answer must be — that more than this has not been reveal- 
 ed. And so far all Christians will join assent. But some 
 have added, and in my opinion much to their credit, that they 
 hope, it may be ihe case with the Brutes likewise, as they see 
 no sufficient reason to the contrary. And truly, upon their 
 scheme, I agree with them. For if a Man be no other or no- 
 bler Creature essentially, than he is represented in their system, 
 the meanest reptile, that maps out its path on the earth by 
 lines of slime, must be of equal worth and respectability, not 
 only in the sight of the Holy One, but by a strange contradic- 
 tion even before Man's own reason. For remove all the sour- 
 ces of Esteem and the Love founded on esteem, and whatever 
 else pre-supposes a Will and, therein, a possible transcendence 
 to the material world : Mankind, as far as my experience has 
 
164 
 
 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 immediate offspring. It cannot be that 
 spirit of obedience to the commands of Christ, 
 by which the soul dwelleth in him, and he in 
 it : (1 John, c. iii. 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 
 
 extended, 'and I am less than the least of many whom I could 
 cite as having formed the veiy same judgment,) are on the 
 whole distinguished from the other Beasts incomparably more 
 to their disadwntage, by Lying, Treachery, Ingratitude, Mas- 
 sacre, 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 Intellect. 
 And what indeed, abstracted from the Free-will, could this in- 
 tellect be but a more shewy instinct ? of more various applica- 
 tion indeed, but far less secure, useful, or adapted to its pur- 
 poses, 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 < ause a 
 
165 
 
 Master in Israel, that he had not already known; 
 (John's Gospel, c. iii.) — this is elsewhere ex- 
 plained, as a seed which, though of gradual 
 developement, did yet potentially contain the 
 essential form not merely of a better, but of an 
 other life : amidst all the frailties and transient 
 eclipses of mortality making, I repeat, the sub- 
 jects of this regeneration not so properly bet- 
 ter 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 symyathies, 
 or of an intelligent self-interest, the utmost 
 heights to which the worldly life can ascend) 
 
 less efficient, Salt to preserve the Hog from putrifying before 
 its destined hour. 
 
 Well may the words of Isaiah be applied and addressed to 
 the Teachers and Followers of this Sect, or rather, I would 
 say, to their Tenets as personified — f The word of the Lord 
 was unto them, precept upon preeept, 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 b© annull- 
 ed, and your agreement with Hell shall not stand. For you* 
 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 xxviiu 
 
166 
 
 the World has always been ready and willing 
 to acknowledge and admire. They are of the 
 world : therefore speak they out of the heart of 
 the world ( s* ™ xda>ou ) 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 qualities 
 so palpably indispensable to the temporal in- 
 terests 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 ordinary 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 man- 
 ners 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 
 
167 
 
 something better, long may we continue such ! 
 — a busy, 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 mar- 
 ket, and to estimate the Worth of all pursuits 
 and attainments by their marketable value. In 
 this does the Spirit of Trade consist. Now 
 would the general experience bear us out in 
 the assertion, that amid the absence or declen- 
 sion of all other antagonist Forces, there is 
 found in the very circle of the trading and opu- 
 lent themselves, in the increase, namely, of re- 
 ligious professors among them, a spring of 
 resistance to the excess of the commercial im- 
 petus, from the impressive example of their 
 unworldly feelings evidenced by their modera- 
 tion in worldly pursuits ? I fear, that we may 
 anticipate the answer wherever the religious 
 zeal of such professors does not likewise mani- 
 fest itself by the glad devotion of as large a 
 portion of their Time and Industry, as the duty 
 of providing a fair competence for themselves 
 and their families leaves at their own disposal, 
 
168 
 
 to the comprehension of those inspired wri- 
 tings and the evolution of those pregnant truths, 
 which are proposed for our earnest, sedulous 
 research, in order that by occupying our un- 
 derstandings they may more and more assimi- 
 late our affections ? 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 prophet- 
 ic, "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 annoyingly, 
 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 dealings, 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 
 
169 
 
 cheap with him of wealthy religious practition- 
 ers, who never travel for orders without cards 
 of edification in prose and verse, and small 
 tracts of admonition and instruction, all " plain 
 and easy, and suited to the meanest capaci- 
 ties ;" 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 all the interval with an edge 
 of appetite keen as the scythe of Death in the 
 pursuit of yet more and yet more of a tempta- 
 tion so perilous, that (as they have full often 
 read, and heard read, without the least ques- 
 tioning, or whisper of doubt) no power short 
 of Omnipotence could make their deliverance 
 from it credible or conceivable. Of all denom- 
 inations of Christians, there is not one in exist- 
 ence 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 ! not one, in which the 
 church members are connected, and their pro- 
 fessed principles enforced, by so effective and 
 wonderful a form of discipline. But in the zeal 
 of their Founders and first Proselytes for per- 
 
 15 
 
170 
 
 feet Spirituality they excluded from their sys- 
 tem all ministers specially trained and educated 
 for the ministry, with all Professional Theolo- 
 gians : and they omitted to provide for the rais- 
 ing up among themselves any other established 
 class of learned men, as teachers and school- 
 masters for instance, in their stead. Even at 
 this day, though the Quakers are in general 
 remarkably shrewd and intelligent in all world- 
 ly concerns, yet learning, and more particularly 
 theological learning, is more rare among them 
 in proportion 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 tin- 
 sel 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- 
 tions of its demands and purposes does, even 
 
171 
 
 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 ap- 
 pointed checks and counteragents. Now as 
 the system of the Friends in its first intention 
 is of all others most hostile to worldly-minded- 
 ness on the one hand ; and as, on the other, 
 the adherents of this system both in confes- 
 sion and practice confine Christianity to feelings 
 and motives ; they may be selected as repre- 
 sentatives of the strict, but unstudied and un- 
 inquiring, Religionists of every denomination. 
 Their characteristic propensities will supply, 
 therefore, no unfair test for the degree of re- 
 sistance, which our present Christianity is ca- 
 pable 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 
 
172 
 
 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 motely reflexes of my experience move 
 in long procession of manifold groups before 
 me, the distinguished and world-honored com- 
 pany 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 beasts and baggage. 
 
 Not without an uneasy reluctance have I ven- 
 tured to tell the truth on this subject, least 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 
 
" 173 
 
 so dear a concernment as that of preparing my 
 country for a change in its external relations, 
 which must come sooner or later ; which I be- 
 lieve 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 molester 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 er- 
 rors, are. not grounded on any peculiar notions 
 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 acute T 
 ness and profundity as a Philosopher, may, 
 perhaps, be accepted as proof. 
 
 " Prevailing studies, he observes, are of no 
 15* 
 
174* 
 
 small consequence to a state, the religion, man- 
 , ners, and civil government of a country ever 
 taking some bias from its philosophy, which af- 
 fects not only the minds of its professors and 
 students, but also the opinions of all the better 
 sort, and the practice of the whole people, re- 
 motely and consequentially indeed, though not 
 inconsiderably. Have not the doctrines of Ne- 
 cessity and Materialism, with the consequent 
 denial of men's responsibility, of his corrupt and 
 fallen nature, and of the whole scheme of Re- 
 demption by the incarnate Word gained ground 
 during the general passion for the Corpuscu- 
 larian and Experimental Philosophy which hath 
 prevailed about a century ? This indeed might 
 usefully enough have employed some share of 
 the leisure and curiosity of inquisitive persons. 
 But when it entered the seminaries of Learn- 
 ing, as a necessary accomplishment and as the 
 most important part of knowledge, by engross- 
 ing men's thoughts and fixing their minds so 
 much on corporeal objects, it hath, however 
 undesignedly, not a little indisposed them for 
 spiritual, moral, and intellectual matters. Cer- 
 tainly, had the philosophy of Pythagoras and 
 Socrates prevailed in this age, we should not 
 
175 
 
 have seen interest take so general and fast hold 
 on the minds of men. But while the employ- 
 ment 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 objects of sense are too often 
 counted the chief good. For these things men 
 fight, cheat, and scramble. Therefore, in or- 
 der to tame mankind 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 intellec- 
 tual. 
 
 It might very well be thought serious trifling 
 to tell my readers that the greatest men had 
 ever an high 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 
 
176 
 
 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 celebrated ancients are by 
 most men treated on a level with the dry and 
 barbarous lucubrations of the Schoolmen. It 
 may, however, be 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 ot 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 Socratic writers. Certain- 
 ly, where the people are well educated, the art 
 of piloting a state is best learnt from the wri- 
 tings of Plato. But among a people void of 
 discipline 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 an- 
 tagonists to the Spirit of Barter, and the accom- 
 panying disposition to overvalue Riches wijth 
 
177 
 
 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 ac- 
 credited, learned, and Philosophic Class ; and 
 lastly, Religion ; we have found the first de- 
 clining, the second not existing, and the third 
 efficient, indeed, in many respects 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 repute among us holds all the truths of 
 Scripture and all the doctrines of Christianity 
 so very transcendent, or so very easy, as to 
 make study and research either vain or need- 
 less. It professes, 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 
 
178 
 
 thorough insight into present and temporal in- 
 terests : which, doubtless, is the true reason 
 why its followers, are in general such shrewd, 
 knowing, wary, well-informed, thrifty and thriv- 
 ing 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 commercial 
 Spirit possesses, must its over-balance be at- 
 tributed, not to the extent or magnitude of the 
 Commerce itself. 
 
 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 general 
 distress have worked, I must entreat my Read- 
 ers to reflect that the spirit of Trade has been 
 a thing of insensible growth; that whether it be 
 enough, or more or less than enough, is a mat- 
 ter of relative, rather than of positive deter- 
 mination ; 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 
 
179 
 
 on either by the Too Much or 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 na- 
 tional character, with the institution of the 
 Funds in the reign of William the Third, and 
 from the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, to 
 have been hurrying onward to its maximum, 
 which it seems to have attained during the late 
 war. The short interruptions may be well rep- 
 resented as a few steps backward, that it might 
 leap forward with an additional momentum. 
 The words, old and modern, now and then, 
 are applied by me, the latter to the whole pe- 
 riod since the Revolution, and the former to 
 the interval between this epoch and the Refor- 
 mation ; 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 ? 
 
180 
 
 Was the wish to make a fortune or, if you pre- 
 fer an invidious phrase, the lust of lucre, less 
 natural to our forefathers than to their descend- 
 , ants ? If you say, that though a not less fre- 
 quent, or less powerful passion with them than 
 with us, it yet met with a more frequent and 
 more powerful check, a stronger and more ad- 
 vanced boundary -line, in the Religion of old 
 times, and in the faith, fashion, habits, and au- 
 thority of the Religious : in what did this dif- 
 ference consist 1 and in what way did these 
 points of difference act ? If indeed the antidote 
 in question once possessed virtues which it no 
 longer possesses, or not in the same 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 effi- 
 ciency, nor any points of difference capable of 
 accounting for it ! Yet it might still be a suf- 
 
181 
 
 ficient answer to this objection, that as the 
 commerce of the country, and with it the spi- 
 rit of commerce, has increased fifty-fold since 
 the commencement of the latter period, it is 
 not enough that the counterweight 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 important than it is 
 obvious, yet I do not purpose 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 remembered, that it is not to any ex- 
 traordinary influences of the religious principle 
 that I am referring, not to voluntary poverty, 
 or sequestration from social and active life, or 
 schemes of mortification. I speak of Religion 
 merely as I should of any worldly object, 
 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 espe- 
 cially the case in the instance of Religion 
 because beyond all other Interests it is cal- 
 culated to occupy the whole mind, and em- 
 ploy successively all the faculties of man : and 
 
 16 
 
182 
 
 because the objects which it presents to the 
 Imagination as well as to the Intellect cannot 
 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 Poetry tends to 
 render its devotees* careless of money and 
 outward appearances, while Philosophy inspires 
 a contempt of both as objects of Desire or Ad- 
 miration. But Religion is the Poetry and Phi- 
 losophy of all mankind ; unites in itself whatev- 
 er 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, su- 
 peradds the interests of the most substantial 
 and home-felt reality to both, to the poetic vi- 
 sion and the philosophic idea. But in order to 
 
 *Hic error tamen et levis hie insania quantas 
 Virtutes habeat, sic collige : vatis avarus 
 Non temere est animus ; versus amat, hoc studet unum ; 
 Detrimenta, fugas servorum, incendia ridet ; 
 Non fraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullam 
 Pupillo ; vivit siliquis et pane secundo : 
 Militise quanquam piger et malus, utilis urbi. 
 
 HORAT. EPIST. II. 1. 
 
183 
 
 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 individual acts. 
 
 Now as my first presumptive proof of a dif- 
 ference (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 gener- 
 ally, of the latter period. It is my full convic- 
 tion, that in any half dozen Sermons of Dr. 
 Donne, or Jeremy Taylor, there are more 
 thoughts, more facts and images, more ex- 
 citements to inquiry and intellectual effort, than 
 are presented to the congregations of the pre- 
 sent day in as many churches or meetings 
 during twice as many months. Yet both these 
 were the most popular 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 
 affectionate remembrance by many attendants 
 
184 
 
 on their ministry, who like the pious Isaac Wal- 
 ton, were not themselves men of learning or 
 education. In addition to this fact, think like- 
 wise on the large and numerous editions of 
 massy, closely printed folios : the impressions 
 so large and the editions so numerous, that all 
 the industry of destruction for the last hundred 
 years has but of late sufficed to make them 
 rare. From the long list select those works 
 alone, which we know to have been the most 
 current and favorite works of their day : and of 
 these again no more than may well be suppos- 
 ed to have had a place in the scantiest libraries, 
 or perhaps 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 could inter- 
 est or instruct a reader whose whole heart was 
 in his religion, discussed with a command of in- 
 tellect 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 "rich souls of 
 wit and knowledge" fixed the eyes, ears, and 
 hearts of their crowded congregations, are a 
 source of wonder now-a-days, and (we may 
 
185 
 
 add) of self- congratulation, to many a sober 
 christian, who forgets with what delight he 
 himself has listened to a two hours' harangue 
 on a Loan or Tax, or at the trial of some re- 
 markable cause or culprit. The transfer of the 
 interest makes and explains the whole differ- 
 ence. For though much may be fairly char- 
 ged on the revolution in the mode of preaching 
 as well as in the matter, since the fresh morn- 
 ing and fervent noon of the Reformation, when 
 there was no need to visit the conventicles of 
 fanaticism in order to 
 
 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 change 
 in the habits of men's minds, a change that in- 
 volves 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 contro- 
 versies during the former of the two periods ; 
 the deep interest excited by them among all 
 
 16* * 
 
186 
 
 but the lowest and most ignorant classes ; the 
 importance attached to them by the very high- 
 est; the number, and in many instances the 
 transcendent merit, of the controversial publi- 
 cations — in short, the rank and value assigned 
 to polemic divinity. The~ subjects of the con- 
 troversies may or may not have been trifling ; 
 the warmth, with which they were conducted, 
 may have been disproportionate and indeco- 
 rous ; 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 general state of men's feel- 
 ings, as an evidence of the direction and main 
 channel, in which the thoughts and interests 
 of men were then flowing. We all know, that 
 lovers are apt to take offence and wrangle 
 with each other on occasions that perhaps are 
 but trifles, and which assuredly would appear 
 such to those who had never been under the 
 influence of a similar passion. These quar- 
 rels may be no proofs of wisdom ; but still in 
 the imperfect state of our nature the entire ab- 
 sence of the same, and this too on far more 
 serious provocations, would excite a strong 
 
187 
 
 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 Litigators 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 commer- 
 cial spirit, and with Religion therefore no oth- 
 erwise, than as a counter-charm to the sorcery 
 of wealth : and my main position is that neither 
 by reasons drawn from the nature of the hu- 
 man mind, or by facts of actual experience, 
 are we justified in expecting this from a reli- 
 gion which does not employ and actuate the 
 understandings of men, and combine their af- 
 fections with it as a system of Truth gradually 
 and progressively manifesting itself to the in- 
 tellect ; 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 capacities. Hence it is, 
 
188 
 
 that Objects, the ostensible principle of which 
 I have felt it my duty to oppose (vide the 
 Statesman's Manual, p. 54.) and objects, 
 the which and the measures for the attainment 
 of which possess my good wishes and have had 
 the humble tribute of my public advocation 
 and applause — I am here alluding to the Brit- 
 ish and Foreign Bible Society — may yet con- 
 verge, as to the point now in question. They 
 may, both alike, be symptoms of the same pre- 
 dominant disposition to that Coalition-system 
 in Christianity, for the expression of which 
 Theologians have invented or appropriated 
 the term, Syncretism:* although the former 
 may be an ominous, the latter an auspicious 
 
 * Clementia Evangelica (writes a German Theologian of the 
 last Century) quasi matron a habenda est, purioris doctrines 
 custos, mitis quidem, at sedula tamen, at vigilans, at seducto- 
 rum impatiens. Iste vero Syncretismus, quern Laodiceni 
 apud nos tantopore collaudant, nusqum a me nisi meretrix 
 audiet, Fidei vel pigrai vel status sui ignarae proles, postea 
 autem indolis secularis genetrix, et quacum nee sincera fides» 
 nee genuina Caritas commorari feret. 
 
 Translation. — The true* Gospel Spirit of Toleration we 
 should regard as a Matron, a kind and gentle guardian indeed 
 of the pure Doctrine, but sedulous, but vigilant, but impatient 
 of Seducers. This Syncretism on the contrary, which the 
 Loadieeans among us join in extolling so highly, shall no where 
 
189 
 
 symptom, 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 pub- 
 licly exclaim (and not viewing it as a lesser 
 inconvenience to be endured for the attainment 
 of a far greater good, but as a thing desirable 
 and to be preferred^ for its own sake) JYo 
 JYotes ! JYo Comment ! Distribute the Bible and 
 the Bible only 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 illumination 
 superseding the necessity of human teaching, 
 or to an ignorance of difficulties which (and 
 what more worthy .?) have successfully employ- 
 ed all the learning, sagacity, and unwearied 
 labors of great and wise men, and eminent 
 servants of Christ, during all the ages of Chris- 
 tianity, and will doubtless continue to yield 
 
 hear from me other or better name than that of Harlot, the off- 
 spring of a Belief either slothful or ignorant of its own condi- 
 tion, and then the parent of Worlclly-mindedness, and with 
 whom therefore neither sincere Faith nor genuine Charity 
 will endure to associate. 
 
190 
 
 new fruits of Knowledge and Insight to a long 
 series of Followers.* 
 
 Though an overbalance of the commercial 
 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 
 
 * I am well aware, that by these open avowals, that with 
 much to honor aud 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 elo- 
 quent 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 volume 
 of my own, which has been long printed, for the greater part, 
 and which will, I trust, now be soon published. 
 
 " AH my experience from my first entrance into life to the 
 present hour is in favour 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 thai 
 transfer of the feelings of private life into the discussions of 
 public questions, which is the queen bee in the hive of party 
 
191 
 
 purpose the least important point of view. A 
 portion of the facts belonging to this division, 
 of the subject I have already noticed, p. 37. 
 38 ; and for the remainder let the following 
 suffice as the substitute or representative. 
 The moral of the tale I leave to the Reader's 
 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 
 
 fanaticism, the partizan has more .sympathy with an intem- 
 perate opposite than with a moderate Friend. We now enjoy 
 an intermission and long may it continue ! In addition to far 
 higher and more important merits, our present bible societies, 
 and other numerous associations for national or charitable ob- 
 jects, may serve perhaps to carry off the superfluous activity and 
 fervor of stirring minds in innocent hj perboles 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 ; sectari- 
 an antipathy most obtrusively displayed in the promotion 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 con- 
 duct." — Biographia Literaria, or Sketches of my Literary Life, 
 and Opinions, p. 190. 
 
192 
 
 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 pro- 
 priety, ascensions to a certain utmost possible 
 height, which has been different in each suc- 
 cessive instance ; but in every instance the at- 
 tainment of this, its ne plus ultra, has been in- 
 stantly announced by a rapid series of explo- 
 sions (in mercantile language, a Crash) and a 
 consequent precipitation of the general sys- 
 tem. For a short time this Icarian* Credit, 
 or rather this illegitimate offspring of Confi- 
 dence, 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 re- 
 
 * " 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 connections with a forced or 
 contraband Trade, and its succesful evasions of what has been 
 lately called the continental system, as may induce him to for- 
 give the triteness and school-boy character which all allusions 
 of this sort have at first sight for a sensible mind. 
 
193 
 
 covering, again it strives upward, and having 
 once more regained its mid region, 
 
 thence many a league, 
 
 As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 
 Audacious ! 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 till at the destined zenith of its vaporous exal- 
 tation, " all unawares, fluttering its pennons 
 vain, plumb down it drops /" Or that I may 
 descend myself to the " 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 
 ever to have been found, among the wicked 
 lunacies of the Gaming Table. 
 
 I am not ignorant that the power and cir- 
 17' 
 
194 
 
 cumstantial prosperity of the Nation has been 
 increasing during the same period, with an ac- 
 celerated force unprecedented in any country, 
 the population of which bore the same propor- 
 tion to its productive soil : and partly, perhaps, 
 even in consequence of this system. By facili- 
 tating the means of enterprize it must have call- 
 ed into activity a multitude of enterprizing 
 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 instruments, 
 even an unsound credit has been able within 
 a short time to* substantiate itself. We shall 
 
 * 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 indo- 
 lent Highlanders to bring a tract of waste land into profitable 
 cultivation, the promissory Notes of the Owner, which derived 
 their first value from a delusion, would end in representing a 
 real property, and this their own product. A most improbable 
 ease ! In its accidental features, I reply, rather than in its ea- 
 sentials. How many thousand acres have been reclaimed 
 from utter unproductiveness, how many doubled in value, by 
 the agency of notes issued beyond the bona 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 
 
195 
 
 perhaps be told too, that the very Evils of tFis 
 System, even the periodical crash itself, are to 
 be regarded but as so much superfluous 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 disposition as motive to recant 
 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 scheme of Things, 
 as adduced in the preceding paragraph : but I 
 likewise see, and always have seen, much that 
 needs winnowing. Thus instead of the posi- 
 
 having redeemed a promise, made by me (November 1809) 
 in the Essay " On vulgar errors concerning Taxation." Hav- 
 ing demonstrated the favourable influences of the system " on 
 our political strength and circumstantial prosperity," the 
 friend added the following pledge : " What have been its 
 injurious effects on our Literature, Morals, and Religious Prin- 
 pipleSj I shall hereafter develope with the same boldness." 
 
^ 196 
 
 tion, that all things find, it would be less equi- 
 vocal and far more descriptive 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 Intelli- 
 gence) and before the Spirit of Wisdom* mov- 
 ed 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 calam- 
 itous 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 overseer, 
 and question the parish doctor, whether the 
 workman's health and temperance with the 
 staid and respectful Manners best taught by 
 the inward dignity of conscious self-support, 
 
 * Uocfiia, 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 addressed and disting- 
 uished the Holy Ghost. 
 
197 
 
 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 impress- 
 ed on their frames by the former ill-fed, ill- 
 clothed, and unfuelled winters. But as witt| 
 the Body, so or still worse with the Mind. 
 Nor is the effect confined to the laboring class- 
 es, whom by an ominous but too appropriate 
 a change in our phraseology we are now ac- 
 customed 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 Speculation 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 espe- 
 cially 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 ! — in times, when the Fate flies 
 17* 
 
198 
 
 swifter than the Fear, and yet the report, that 
 follows the flash, has a ruin of its own and ar- 
 rives but to multiply the Blow ! — when prince- 
 ly 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 hum- 
 ble ; 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 comfort ; when the Orphan's Funds ; the 
 Widow's Livelihood ; the fond confiding Sis- 
 ter'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 Selfishness that for a few months re- 
 spite dares incur a debt of guilt and infamy, for 
 which the grave itself can plead no statute of 
 limitation. Name to me any Revolution re- 
 corded in History, that was not followed by a 
 depravation of the national Morals. The Ro- 
 man character during the Triumvirate, and 
 
199 
 
 under Tiberius ; the reign of Charles the Sec- 
 ond ; and Paris at the present moment ; are ob- 
 vious instances. What is the main cause? 
 The sense of Insecurity. On what ground 
 then dare we hope, that with the same accom- 
 paniment Commercial Revolutions should not 
 produce the same effect, in proportion to the 
 extent of their sphere 1 
 
 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 1 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 fortunately 
 the labors of others, with the communications 
 
200 
 
 of medical men concerning the state ot the 
 manufacturing Poor, have rendered it unneces- 
 sary. I will rather (though in strict 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, w r ho ex- 
 pressed 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 all, with a propriet}^ of phrase and 
 a discrimination of tone and emphasis that more 
 than compensated for the scantiness of her vo- 
 cabulary. 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 where- 
 withal to live, and was blessed with a son 
 well to do in the world), she made a move- 
 ment 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 
 
201 
 
 first drop or cadence — Within this space — how- 
 short a time back ! there lived a hundred and 
 seventy-three persons : and now there is only 
 a shepherd, and an underling or two. Yes, 
 Sir ! One hundred and seventy-three Christ- 
 ian souls, man, woman, boy, girl, and babe ; 
 and in almost every home an old man by the 
 fire-side, 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,f and the 
 potatoe plot that looked as gay as any flower 
 garden with its blossoms ! I sometimes fancy, 
 that the very birds are gone, all but the crows 
 and the gleads ! Well, and what then ? In- 
 stead 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 proceedings ? 
 
 Some days before this conversation, and 
 
 * A species of Barley. f A species of Oats, 
 
202 
 
 while I was on the shores of the Loch Ka- 
 thern,* I had heard of a sad counterpart to the 
 widow's tale, and told with a far fiercer indig- 
 nation, of a " 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 1 
 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 
 
 * The Lake so widely celebrated since then by a Poet, to 
 whose writings a larger number of persons have owed a lar- 
 ger portion of innocent, and heart-bettering amusement, than 
 perhaps to any favorite of the Muses recorded in English lit- 
 erature: while the most learned of his readers must feel grate- 
 ful for the mass of interesting and highly instructive informa- 
 tion scattered throughout his works, in which respect |3ov„ 
 thkv is his only rival. 
 
203 
 
 been a price set upon his head, and his ene- 
 mies had been coming upon him, he needed 
 but have whistled, and a hundred brave lads 
 would have made a wall of flame round about 
 him with the flash of their broad-swords! 
 
 Now if the should come among us, as 
 
 (it is said) they will, let him whistle to his sheep 
 and see if they will fight for him !" The fre- 
 quency with which I heard, during my solitary 
 walk from the end of Loch- Lomond to Inver- 
 ness, confident expectations of the kind expres- 
 sed in his concluding words — nay, far too often 
 eager hopes mingled with vindictive resolves — 
 I spoke of with complaint and regret to an el- 
 derly man: whom by his dress and way of 
 speaking, I took to be a schoolmaster. Long 
 shall I recollect his reply : " 0, 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 politi- 
 cal 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 
 
204 
 
 where 1 If three were fed at Manchester in- 
 stead of two at Glenco or the Trossacs, the 
 balance of human enjoyment was in favor of 
 the former. I have passed through many a 
 manufacturing town since then, and watched 
 many a group of old and young, male and fe- 
 male, going to, or returning from, many a fac- 
 tory, but I could never yet persuade myself to 
 be of his opinion. Men, 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 jus- 
 tifiable, as this plan of reprisal by anticipation 
 may be in the case of each individual dealer, 
 
205 
 
 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 promiscuous in its exac- 
 tions 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 a Benefit Socie- 
 ty 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 para- 
 mount causes, the Paper Currency 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 re- 
 placed, is itself one of these results. Retrace 
 the progress of things from 1792 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 
 18 
 
206 
 
 may not be generalized, under the following 
 heads. Fluctuation in the wages of labor, al- 
 ternate privation and excess (not in all at the 
 same time, but successively in each) conse- 
 quent improvidence, and overall discontent and 
 a system of factious confederacy — these form 
 the history of the mechanics and lower ranks of 
 our cities and towns. In the country, a peas- 
 antry sinking into pauperism, step forstep with 
 the rise of the farmer's profits and indigencies. 
 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 increase 
 of prices were in the necessaries of life, they 
 
 * During the composition of this sheet I have had, and avail- 
 ed myself of the opportunity of perusing the Report of the 
 Board of Agriculture for the year 1816. The numerous reflec- 
 tions, which this most extraordinary volume excited in my 
 mind, I cannot even touch on, in this closing sheet of an Ad- 
 dress that has already extended far beyond my original pur- 
 pose. But had I perused it at the commencement, I should 
 still have felt it my duty to direct the main force of my animad- 
 versions 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 antici- 
 pated its extent. There is, however, one communication (p. 
 208 to 327) from Mr. Mosely, from which, with the abate- 
 
207 
 
 were still greater, disproportionally greater, in 
 all articles of shew and luxury. With few ex- 
 ceptions, it soon became difficult, and at length 
 impracticable, for the gentry of the land, for 
 the possessors of fixed property to retain the 
 rank of their ancestors, or their own former es- 
 tablishments, without joining in the general 
 competition under the 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 unprincipled projector found his readiest 
 dupes. Had we but the secret history of the 
 building speculations only in the vicinity of the 
 metropolis, too many of its pages would sup- 
 ply an afflicting but instructive comment. 
 That both here, and in all other departments, 
 this increased momentum in the spirit of trade 
 
 ment only of the passage on tythes, I cannot withhold my 
 entire admiration. It almost redeems the remainder of the 
 Report, 
 
208 
 
 has been followed by results of the most desi- 
 rable nature, I have myself*, exerted my best 
 powers to evince, at a period when to present 
 the fairest and most animating features 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 ag- 
 ricultural system, added to the overbalance of 
 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 
 
 * In a variety of articles published at different periods in the 
 Morning Post and Courier ; but with most success in the Es- 
 say, 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 
 Hamburgh Correspondenten. 
 
209 
 
 predisposing cause, without which the late oc- 
 casions would (some of them not have existed, 
 and the remainder) not have produced the 
 present distresses. 
 
 That Agriculture requires principles essenti- 
 ally different from those of Trade, — that a gen- 
 tleman ought not to regard his estate as a mer- 
 chant his cargo, or a shopkeeper his stock, — 
 admits of an easy proof from the different ten- 
 ure of Landed Property,* and from the purpo- 
 ses of Agriculture itself, which ultimately are 
 
 * The veiy idea of individual or private property, in our pre- 
 sent acceptation of the term, and according to the current no^ 
 tion of the right to it, was originally confined to moveable 
 things : and the more moveable, the more susceptible of the 
 nature of property- Proceeding from the more to the less per- 
 fect 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 permission 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 sub-i 
 ject; and last of all, and in certain cases, the live stock, the^?e^ 
 culium apecus. 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. 
 
 18* 
 
210 
 
 the same as those of the State of which it is 
 the offspring. (For we do not include in the 
 name of Agriculture the cultivation of a few 
 vegetables by the women of the less savage 
 Hunter Tribes.) If the continuance and inde- 
 pendence 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 al- 
 ready 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 : — 1. To make 
 the means of subsistence more easy to each 
 individual. 2. To secure to each of its mem- 
 bers the hope* of bettering his own condi- 
 tion or that of his children. 3. The develope- 
 
 Abbots prepared an asylum for the fugitive Vassal and the op- 
 pressed Frankling, and thus laid the first foundations of a 
 fourth class of freemen, that of Citizens and Burghers. To 
 the Feudal system we owe the forms, to the Church the sub- 
 stance 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 
 
 [This note is left imperfect in the London copy. Am. Pub.] 
 
 * 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 
 
211 
 
 ment 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 de- 
 grees of intellectual cultivation which distin- 
 guish man from man in the same civilized 
 society, but those only that raise the civilized 
 man above the Barbarian, the Savage, and the 
 Animal. We require, 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 discourage- 
 ment of all such Tenures and Relations as must 
 in the very nature of things render this knowl- 
 edge 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 na- 
 tion may unhappily place the actual statesman, 
 
 him from the Brute that perishes, by making Hope an instinct 
 of his nature and an indispensable 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 advantageous- 
 ly they might otherwise be situated. 
 
212 
 
 still every movement ought to be in this direc- 
 tion. But the negative merit of not forwarding 
 — but the exemption from the crime of neces- 
 sitating — 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 dif- 
 ficulties in repulse or demur of this claim, 
 impeaches its own wisdom and fortitude. But 
 as the specific ends of Agriculture are the main- 
 tenance, strength, and security of the State, 
 so (we repeat) must its ultimate ends be the 
 same as those of the State : even as the ulti- 
 mate 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 aggravated, in pro- 
 portion 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 Cabinet 
 or Senate of an Empire, may justify an earnest 
 reprobation in the management of private Es- 
 
213 
 
 tates : 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 In- 
 terests, and that does not leave the merit of 
 having effected it sacred to the individual pro- 
 prietor, it were folly to propose, and worse 
 than folly to attempt. Madmen only would 
 dream of digging 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 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 contain- 
 ed in the Rights of its proprietary Trustees 
 are incroachments on its own Rights, and a de- 
 structive Trespass on a part of its own inalien- 
 able and untransferable Property — I mean the 
 health, strength, honesty, and filial love of its 
 children, 
 
214 
 
 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 produce 
 of his Estates were made a subordinate consid- 
 eration to the living and moral growth that is 
 to remain on the land. I mean a healthful, cal- 
 lous-handed but high-and-warm-hearted Ten- 
 antry, twice the number of the present landless, 
 parish-paid Laborers, and ready to march off 
 at the first call ol 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 para- 
 mount #e//'-commandment, were comprized in 
 
 * Or, (to put the question more justly as well as more can- 
 didly) 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 awaits a deviation from it ? 
 On the distinction mentioned, p. 216, 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 lat- 
 ter dare not be employed as the means to an end without di- 
 rectly or indirectly sharing in that end. 
 
 See Friend, American Edition. 
 
215 
 
 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 pro- 
 blem, the solution of which may be safely en- 
 trusted 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 Winch elsea's communi- 
 cation, in 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 Ag- 
 riculture is carried on in the spirit of Trade ; 
 and 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 
 
216 
 
 African commerce nominally abolished after a 
 hard-fought battle of twenty years, no distinc- 
 tion is or can be acknowledged between Things 
 and Persons. If the latter are part of the con- 
 cern, they come under the denomination 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 expenditure of money paid for 
 other mens' time and attention, or of the trades- 
 man's own, which are to him money's worth, 
 makes no difference in the argument. Ami 
 disposing of a bale of goods ? The man whom 
 I most love and esteem must yield to the stran- 
 ger 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 re- 
 gard 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 
 
217 
 
 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 adequate security for Arti- 
 cles fairly described, would be tantamount to 
 the position, that Trade ought not to exist. If 
 this be admitted, then what as a Tradesman I 
 cannot do, it cannot be my Duty, as a Trades- 
 man, to attempt : and the only remaining ques- 
 tion 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 
 19 
 
218 
 
 into the best market from my Land, I will en- 
 trust 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 prefer 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 engagements, the ob- 
 jects 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 machine- 
 ry for human labor where ever the former will 
 cost less and do the same work. What are the 
 modest remedies proposed by the majority of 
 correspondents in the last Report of the Board 
 of Agriculture ? Let measures be taken, that 
 rents, taxes, and wages be lowered, and the 
 Markets raised ! A great calamity has befall- 
 en us, from importation, the lessened purchases 
 of Government, and " the evil of a superabundant 
 Harvest" — of which we deem ourselves the 
 
219 
 
 more entitled to complain, because "we had 
 been long making 112 shillings per quarter of 
 our Corn," and of all other articles in propor- 
 tion. As the best remedies for this calamity, 
 we propose that we should pay less to our 
 Landlords, less to our Laborers, nothing to our 
 Clergyman, 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 pernicious 
 tendency and consequences. But let it not 
 be forgotten, that in agricultural districts three- 
 forths of the Poors' Rates are paid to healthy, 
 robust, and (O sorrow and shame!) industri- 
 ous, hard-working Paupers- in lieu of Wages 
 — (for men cannot at once work and starve :) 
 and therefore if there are twenty House-keep- 
 ers in the Parish, who are not holders of Land, 
 their contributions are so much Bounty Money 
 to the latter. But the Poor Laws form a sub- 
 ject, which I should not undertake without 
 trembling, had I the space of a whole volume 
 to allot to it. Suffice, that this enormous mis- 
 chief is undeniably the offspring of the Com- 
 
220 
 
 mercial System. In the only plausible Work, 
 that I have seen, in favor of our Poor Laws on 
 the present plan, the Defence is grounded: 
 first, on the expediency of having Labor cheap, 
 and Estates let out in. the fewest possible por- 
 tions — in other words, of large Farms and low 
 Wages — each as indispensable to the other, 
 and both conjointly as the only means of draw- 
 ing 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 Pro- 
 duce 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 
 Manufactures were not secured by the State 
 against the worst consequences of those fail- 
 ures, stagnations, and transfers, to which the 
 different branches of Trade are exposed, in a 
 greater or less degree, beyond all human pre- 
 vention ; or if the Master Manufacturers were 
 compelled to give previous security lor the 
 maintenance of those whom they had, by the 
 
221 
 
 known Law of human Increase, virtually called 
 into existence. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I do not 
 myeslf admit this impossibility. I have already 
 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 enlightened 
 by the Spirit of the State, to the advantage of 
 both. But I do assert, that they are necessa- 
 ry consequences of the Commercial Spirit un- 
 counteracted and sm-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 He- 
 brew Legislator, were anticommercial : those 
 of Solon and Numa were at least uncommer- 
 cial. Now I ask myself, what the impression 
 would have been on the Senate of the Roman 
 or of the Athenian Republic, if the following 
 proposal had been made to them and introdu- 
 ced by the following preamble. " Conscript 
 Fathers, (or Senators of Athens !) it is well 
 19* 
 
222 
 
 known to you, that circumstances being the 
 same and the time allowed proportional, the 
 human animal may be made to multiply as ea- 
 sily, and at as small an expence, as your sheep 
 or swine : which is meant, perhaps, in the fic- 
 tion of our philosophers, 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 ordained to prevent this increase of births 
 from becoming such as should frustrate or 
 greatly endanger the ends for Avhich freemen 
 are born ; yet the most efficient limit must be 
 sought for in the moral and intellectual prerog- 
 atives of men, in their foresight, in their habit- 
 uation 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 number of the rich, the 
 wealth of those that are already such, and the 
 revenues of the State : and the latter, Fathers ! 
 
223 
 
 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 oc- 
 casion, the birth of many myriads of free citi- 
 zens, who from their childhood are to be amas- 
 sed in clusters and employed as parts of a 
 mighty system of machinery. While ail 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 instances where 
 the individual may have rendered himself use- 
 less by the effects of his own vices. It dare 
 not, however, be disguised from you, that the 
 nature of the employments and the circumstan- 
 ces to which these citizens will be exposed, 
 will often greatly tend to render them intem- 
 perate, diseased, and restless. Nor has it been 
 yet made a part of the proposal, that the em- 
 ployers should be under any bond to counter- 
 act such injurious circumstances by education, 
 discipline, or other efficient regulations. Still 
 
224 
 
 less may it be withheld from your knowledge, 
 O Fathers of the State, that should events 
 hereafter prove hostile to all or to any branch 
 of these speculations, 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 confes- 
 sedly subject to partial and even to total eclip- 
 ses, which there are no means of precisely fore- 
 telling ! the guardian planets, to whose conjunc- 
 tion their success is fatally linked, will at un- 
 certain periods, for a longer or shorter time, 
 act in malignant oppositions ! — Then, Fathers, 
 the Principals are to shift for themselves, 
 and leave the disposal of the calamitous, and 
 therefore too probably turbulent, multitude, 
 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 imme- 
 diate answer would have been : — "We should 
 deem it danger and detriment, were we to per- 
 mit so indefinite and improvident increase even 
 
225 
 
 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 recognize, 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 Winchel- 
 sea's Report, whatever I could have added 
 would have been equally in vain. His Lord- 
 ship speaking of the causes which oppose all 
 attempts to better the Laborers condition, men- 
 tions, as one great cause, the dislike the gen- 
 erality of Farmers have to seeing the Laborers 
 rent any land. Perhaps, (he continues) " 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 
 
226 
 
 is, that they rather wish to have the laborers 
 more dependant upon them ; for which reasons 
 thej are always desirous of hiring the house 
 and land occupied by a laborer, under pretence, 
 that by that m ^ans 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 complaints of 
 the poor. All parties therefore join in pursuad- 
 ing the landlord, who it is natural to suppose 
 (unless he has time and inclination to investi- 
 gate 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 increased ; the value of the Estate 
 to the Landowner diminished ; and the house 
 suffered to go to decay; which once fallen 
 
227 
 
 the tenant will never rebuild, but the landlord 
 must, at a considerable expence. Whoever 
 travels through the midland counties, and will 
 take the trouble of enquiring, will generally re- 
 ceive for an 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 
 confirmation 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 consequen- 
 ces 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 peas- 
 antry therefore are eager to have their chil- 
 dren add as early as possible to their wretched 
 
228 
 
 pittances, by letting them out to manufactories ; 
 while the youths take every opportunity of es- 
 caping to towns and cities. And if I were 
 questioned, as to my opinion respecting the ul- 
 timate cause of our liability to distresses like the 
 present, the cause of what has been called a vi- 
 cious (i. e. excessive) population with all the fu- 
 ries that follow in its train — in short, of the state 
 of things so remote from the simplicity of na- 
 ture that we have almost deprived Heaven it- 
 self of the power of blessing us ; a state in 
 which, without absurdity, a superabundant Har- 
 vest 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 
 disproportionate number oj men who are to be 
 fed from the produce of the fields, on which they 
 do not labor. 
 
 What then is the remedy 1 Who the phy- 
 sicians 1 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 na- 
 tionally as well as individually, as Christians. 
 
229 
 
 We must remove half-truths, the most danger- 
 ous of errors (as those of the poor visionaries 
 called Spenceans) by the whole Truth. The 
 Government is employed already in retrench- 
 ments ; but he who expects immediate 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 distress, 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 Lotte- 
 ries accompanied with a public and parliamenta- 
 ry declaration or 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 exem- 
 plary from the present pressure on the Re- 
 venue 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 
 
 20 
 
230 
 
 Legislators should pledge themselves at the 
 same time, that they would hereafter take 
 council for the gradual removal or counterac- 
 tion of all similar encouragements and tempta- 
 tions to Vice and Folly, that had alas ! been 
 tolerated hitherto, as the easiest way of sup- 
 plying the exchequer. And truly, the financial 
 motives would be strong indeed, if the Revenue 
 Laws in question were but 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 re- 
 gard their estates as secured indeed from all 
 human interference by every principle of law, 
 and policy, but yet as offices of trust, with du- 
 ties to be performed, in the sight of God and 
 their Country. Let us become a better peo- 
 ple, 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 con- 
 
231 
 
 tribute money where he cannot act personally ; 
 bullet him act personally and in detail wherev- 
 er it is practicable. Let us palliate 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." 
 
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