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 Now for the writing of this werke, 
 I, who am a lonesome clerke, 
 Purposed for to write a book 
 After the world, that whilome took 
 Its course in olde days long passed : 
 But for men sayn, it is now lassed 
 In worser plight than it was tho, 
 I thought me for to touch also 
 The world which neweth every day 
 So as I can, so as I may, 
 Albeit I sickness have and pain, 
 And long have had, yet would I fain 
 Do my mind's hest and besiness, 
 That in some part, so as I guess, 
 The gentle mind may be advised. 
 
 GOWER, Pro. to the Confess. Amantis,
 
 SfacK 
 
 Annex 
 
 ADVEETISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 [1818.] 
 
 THE FBIEND was originally printed on stamped paper, and circulated 
 exclusively, by the general post, among the scanty number of subscribers : 
 with what advantage to himself the author has already related in his 
 literary life. Subscriptions still outstanding may be sent to the author by 
 the post, if there should be no means of conveying the sum without that 
 drawback ; or left for him at Messrs. Boosey and Sons, Booksellers, Broad- 
 street. The present volumes are rather a rifacciamento than a new 
 edition. The additions forming so large a proportion of the whole work, 
 and the arrangement being altogether new, I might indeed hesitate 
 in bestowing the title of a republication on a work which can scarcely 
 be said to have been ever published, in the ordinary trade-acceptation of 
 
 the word. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Highgate.
 
 DEDICATION TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 FRIEND ! were an author privileged to name his own judge in addition 
 to moral and intellectual competence I should look round for some man, 
 whose knowledge and opinions had for the greater part been acquired 
 experimentally ; and the practical habits of whose life had put him on 
 his guard with respect to all speculative reasoning, without rendering 
 him insensible to the desirableness of principles more secure than the 
 shifting rales and theories generalized from observations merely empi- 
 rical, or unconscious in how many departments of knowledge, and with 
 how large a portion even of professional men, such principles are still a 
 desideratum. I would select, too, one who felt kindly, nay, even par- 
 tially toward me ; but one whose partiality had its strongest founda- 
 tions in hope, and more prospective than retrospective would make him 
 quick-sighted in the detection, and unreserved in the exposure of the 
 deficiencies and defects of each present work, in the anticipation of a 
 more developed future. In you, honoured Friend! I have found all 
 these requisites combined and realized ; and the improvement which 
 these Essays have derived from your judgment and judicious sugges- 
 tions, would, of itself, have justified me in accompanying them with a 
 public acknowledgment of the same. But knowing, as you cannot but 
 know, that I owe in great measure the power of having written at all to 
 your medical skill, and to the characteristic good sense which directed 
 its exertion in my behalf; and whatever I may have written in happier 
 vein to the influence of your society and to the daily proofs of your dis- 
 interested attachment knowing too, in how entire a sympathy with 
 your feelings in this respect, the partner of your name has blended the 
 affectionate regards of a sister or daughter, with almost a mother's 
 watchful and unwearied solicitudes alike for my health, interest, and 
 tranquillity ; you will not, I trust, be pained you ought not, I am 
 sure, to be surprised that
 
 TO 
 
 ME. AND MES. GILLMAN, 
 
 OF HI GH GATS, 
 THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED, 
 
 IX TESTIMONY OF HIGH RESPECT AND GRATEFUL AFFECTION, 
 
 BY THEIR FRIEND, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 October 7, 1818,
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. ESSAYS : INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 II. THE FIRST LANDING-PLACE 77 
 
 III. ESSAYS : FIRST SECTION. PRINCIPLES OP POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE 101 
 
 IV. THE SECOND LANDING-PLACE 223 
 
 V. INTRODUCTION TO VOL. II. OF FORMER EDITION . . . 249 
 
 VI. ESSAYS : SECOND SECTION. GROUNDS OF MORALS AND RELIGION 273 
 
 VII. THE THIRD LANDING-PLACE 346 
 
 VIII. APPENDIX : ORIGINAL PROSPECTUS OF " THE FRIEND " (June 1, 
 
 1809) 387
 
 ' 
 
 
 THE FKIEND. 
 
 J- 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 Crede mOii, rum est parvm fiducice, polliceri opem decertantibus, cvnsttwm dubiis, 
 Cfecis, spem dcjectis, refrigeriumfessis. Magna quidem hoc sunt, si f ant ; pan-a, si promit- 
 tantur. Verum ego non tarn aliis Itgem ponam, quam legem robis mete proprice mentis 
 expvnam : quam gut probaverit, teneat ; cui non placuerit, abjiciat. Optarem.fateor, talis 
 ewe, qui prodesse possem quam plurim.it. PETRARCH, De Vita Solitaria. 
 
 (Translation.') Believe me, it requires no little confidence, to promise help to the strug- 
 gling, counsel to the doubtful, light to the blind, hope to the despondent, refreshment to the 
 weary. These are indeed great things, if they be accomplished ; trifles if they exist but in a 
 promise. I however aim not so much to prescribe a law for others, as to set forth the law 
 of my own mind ; which let the man, who shall have approved of it, abide by ; and let him, 
 to whom it bhall appear not reasonable, reject it. It is my earnest wish, I confess, to 
 employ my understanding and acquirements in that mode and direction, in which 1 may be 
 enabled to benefit the largest number possible of my fellow-creatures. 
 
 A NTECEDENT to all history, and long glimmering through it as 
 XA. a holy tradition, there presents itself to our imagination an inde- 
 finite period, dateless as Eternity, a state rather than a time. For even 
 the sense of succession is lost in the uniformity of the stream. 
 
 It was toward the close of this gulden age (the memory of which the 
 self-dissatisfied race of men have everywhere preserved and cherished) 
 when conscience acted in man with the ease and uniformity of instinct ; 
 when labour was a sweet name for the activity of sane mirids in 
 healthful bodies, and all enjoyed in common the bounteous harvest 
 produced, and gathered in, by common effort ; when there existed in the 
 st-.xcs, and in the individuals of each sex, just variety enough to permit 
 and call forth the gentle restlessness and final union of chaste love and 
 individual attachment, each seeking and finding the beloved one by the 
 natural affinity of their beings ; when the dread Sovereign of the 
 universe was known only as the Universal Parent, no altar but the pure 
 heart, and thanksgiving and grateful love the sole sacrifice 
 
 * 
 
 In this blest age of dignified innocence one of their honoured elders, 
 whose absence they were beginning to notice, entered with hurrying 
 
 '
 
 2 The Friend. 
 
 steps the place of their common assemblage at noon, and instantly 
 attracted the general attention and wonder by the perturbation of his 
 gestures, and by a strange trouble both in his eyes and over his whole 
 countenance. After a short but deep silence, when the first buzz of 
 varied inquiry was becoming audible, the old man moved toward a small 
 eminence, and having ascended it, he thus addressed the hushed and 
 listening company : 
 
 " In the warmth of the approaching mid-day, as I was reposing in the 
 vast cavern, out of which, from its northern portal, issues the river that 
 winds through our vale, a voice powerful, yet not from its loudness, sud- 
 denly hailed me. Guided by my ear I looked toward the supposed place of 
 the sound for some Form, from which it had proceeded. I beheld nothing 
 but the glimmering walls of the cavern. Again, as I was turning round, 
 the same voice hailed me ; and whithersoever I turned my face, thence 
 did the voice seem to proceed. I stood still therefore, and in reverence 
 awaited its continuation. ' Sojourner of earth ! (these were its words) 
 hasten to the meeting of thy brethren, and the words which thou now 
 hearest, the same do thou repeat unto them. On the thirtieth morn 
 from the morrow's sun-rising, and during the space of thrice three days 
 and thrice three nights, a thick cloud will cover the sky, and a heavy 
 rain fall on the earth. Go ye therefore, ere the thirtieth sun ariseth, 
 retreat to the cavern of the river and there abide, till the clouds have 
 passed away and the rain be over and gone. For know ye of a certainty 
 that whomever that rain wetteth, on him, yea, on him and on his children's 
 children will fall the spirit of madness.' Yes ! madness was the word 
 of the voice : what this be, I know not ! But at the sound of the word 
 trembling came upon me, and a feeling which I would not have had ; 
 and I remained even as ye beheld and now behold me." 
 
 The old man ended, and retired. Confused murmurs succeeded, and 
 wonder, and doubt. Day followed day, and every day brought with it 
 a diminution of the awe impressed. They could attach no image, no 
 remembered sensations, to the threat. The ominous morn arrived, the 
 Prophet had retired to the appointed cavern, and there remained alone 
 during the appointed time. On the tenth morning, he emerged from 
 hi? place of shelter, and sought his friends and brethren. But alas ! how 
 affrightful the change ! Instead of the common children of one great 
 family, working, towards the same aim by reason, even as the bees in 
 their hives by instinct, he looked and beheld, here a miserable wretch 
 watching over a heap of hard and unnutritious small substances, which 
 he had dug out of the earth, at the cost of mangled limbs and exhausted 
 faculties. This he appeared to worship, at this -he gazed, even as the 
 youths of the vale had been accustomed to gaze at their chosen virgins 
 in the first season of their choice. There he saw a former companion 
 speeding on and panting after a butterfly, or a withered leaf whirling
 
 Essay 1. 3 
 
 onward in the breeze ; and another with pale and distorted countenance 
 following close behind, and still stretching forth a dagger to stab his 
 precursor in the back. In another place he observed a whole troop of his 
 fellow-men famished and in letters, yet led by one of their brethren who 
 had enslaved them, and pressing furiously onwards in the hope of 
 famishing and enslaving another troop moving in an apposite direction. 
 For the first time, the Prophet missed his accustomed power of dis- 
 tinguishing between his dreams and his waking perceptions. He stood 
 gazing and motionless, when several of the race gathered around him, 
 and inquired of each other, Who is this man ? how strangely he looks ! 
 how wild! a worthless idler! exclaims one: assuredly, a very 
 dangerous madman ! cries a second. In short, from words they pro- 
 ceeded to violence: till harassed, endangered, solitary in a world of 
 forms like his own, without sympathy, without object of love, he 
 at length espied in some foss or furrow a quantity of the maddening 
 water still unevaporated, and uttering the last words of reason, IT is IN 
 VAIN TO BE SANE IN A WORLD OF MADMEN, plunged and rolled himself in 
 the liquid poison, and came out as mad as, and not more wretched than, 
 his neighbours and acquaintance. 
 
 The plan of The Friend is comprised in the motto to this Essay. This 
 tale or allegory seems to me to contain the objections to its practicability 
 in all their strength. Either, says the sceptic, you are the blind offering 
 to lead the blind, or you are talking the language of sight to those who 
 do not possess the sense of seeing. If you mean to be read, try to enter- 
 tain and do not pretend to instruct. To such objections it would be 
 amply sufficient, on my system of faith, to answer, that we are not 
 all blind, but all subject to distempers of " the mental sight," differing in 
 kind and in degree ; that though all men are in error, they are not all in 
 the same error, nor at the same time ; and that each therefore may 
 possibly heal the other, even as two or more physicians, all diseased in 
 their general health yet under the immediate action of the disease ou 
 different days, may remove or alleviate the complaints of each other. 
 But in respect to the entertainingness of moral writings, i'f in entertain- 
 ment be included whatever delights the imagination or affects the 
 generous passions, so far from rejecting such a mean of persuading the 
 human soul, my very system compels me to defend not only the pro- 
 priety but the absolute necessity of adopting it, if we really intend 
 to render our fellow-creatures better or wiser. 
 
 But it is with dullness as with obscurity. It may be positive, and 
 the author's fault; but it may likewise be relative, and if the author has 
 presented his bill of fare at the portal, the reader has himself only to 
 blame. The main question then is, of what class are the persons to be 
 entertained ? " One of the later schools of the Grecians (says Lord 
 Bacon, Essay I.) is at a stand to think what should be in it that men
 
 4 TJie Friend. 
 
 should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets ; 
 nor for advantage, as with the merchant ; but for the lie's sake. I 
 cannot tell why, this same truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth 
 not shew the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the present 
 world half so stately and daintily, as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps 
 come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day ; but it will not 
 rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, which sheweth best in 
 varied lights. A mixture of l^es doth ever add pleasure. Doth any 
 man doubt, that if there were taken from men's minds vain opinions, 
 nattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like 
 vinum dasmonum (as a father calleth poetry), but it would leave 
 the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy 
 and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?" 
 
 A melancholy, a too general, but not, I trust, a universal truth ! and 
 even where it does apply, yet in many instances not irremediable. Such 
 at least must have been my persuasion : or the present volumes must 
 have been wittingly written to no purpose. If I believed our nature 
 fettered to all this wretchedness of head and heart by an absolute and 
 innate necessity, at least by a necessity which no human power, no 
 efforts of reason or eloquence could remove or lessen ; I should deem it 
 even presumptuous to aim at other or higher object than that of amusing 
 a small portion of the reading public. 
 
 And why not ? whispers worldly prudence. To amuse though only 
 to amuse our visitors is wisdom as well as good-nature, where it is pre- 
 sumption to attempt their amendment. And truly it would be most 
 convenient to me in respects of no trifling importance, if I could persuade 
 myself to take the advice. Relaxed by these principles from all moral 
 obligation, and ambitious of procuring pastime and self-oblivion for 
 a race, which could have nothing noble to remember, nothing desirable 
 to anticipate, I might aspire even to the praise of the critics and 
 dilettanti of the higher circles of society ; of some trusty guide of blind 
 fashion ; some pleasant analyst of taste, as it exists both in the palate 
 and the soul ; some living gauge and mete-wand of past and present 
 genius. But alas ! my former studies would still have left a wrong 
 bias ! If instead of perplexing my common sense with the flights of 
 Plato, and of stiffening over the meditations of the imperial Stoic, I had 
 been labouring to imbibe the gay spirit of a Casti, or had employed my 
 erudition, for the benefit of the favoured few, in elucidating the 
 interesting deformities of ancient Greece and India, what might I not 
 have hoped from the suffrage of those, who turn in weariness from the 
 Paradise Lost, because compared with the prurient heroes and grotesque 
 monsters of Italian romance, or even with the narrative dialogues of the 
 melodious Metastasio, that " adventurous song, 
 
 1 Which Justifies the ways of God to man,"
 
 Essay 2. 5 
 
 has been found a poor substitute for a Grimaldi, a most inapt medicine 
 for an occasional propensity to yawn ? For, as hath been decided, to fill 
 up pleasantly the brief intervals of fashionable pleasures, and above all to 
 charm away the dusky Gnome of Ennui, is the chief and appropriate 
 business of the poet and the novelist ! This duty unfulfilled, Apollo 
 will have lavished his best gifts in vain ; and Urania henceforth must 
 be content to inspire astronomers alone, and leave the sons of verse to 
 more amusive patronesses. And yet and yet but it will be time to be 
 serious, when my visitors have sat down. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 Sic oportet ad librum, presertim. miscellanei generis, Itgendum accedere lectorem, ut solet 
 ad oanvivium owira cii'ilis. Oonaivator annititar omnibus satisfacere : et tamen si quid 
 appmitur, quod hujus ant illius palato non respondeat, et hie et Hie urbane dissimulant, et 
 alia fercula probant, ne quid conlristent ctmviaatorem. Quit enim eum convivamferat.qui 
 tantum lux aitimo ivniat ad niensam, ut carpens qiue apponuntur nee wscatitr ipse, nee olios 
 vesci siiuit f Lt tamen his quoque reperias inciciliurtf, qui /Hikim, qui finejinc damnent ac 
 lacerent opus, quod nunquam legeriat. Ast hoc plusqaam sycophautkum est damnare quod 
 nesciaf. 
 
 (Translation.) A reader should sit down to a book, especially of the miscellaneous kind, 
 ..-behavvd visitor does to a banquet. The master of the feast exerts himself to satisfy 
 all his guests; but if after ull his care ani pains there should still be something or otlier put 
 on the tnMe that does not suit this or that person's taste, they politely pass it over without 
 noticing the circumstance, and commend other dishes, that they may not distress their kind 
 host, or throw any damp on his ~]>ii:t<. For who could tolerate a guest that accepted an in- 
 vitation to yuiir table with no other purpose but that of finding fault with everything put 
 before him, neither eating himself, or suffering others to eat in comfort ? And j r et you may 
 fall in with a still worse set than even these, with churls that, in all companies and without 
 stop or stay, will cundemn and pull to pieces a work which they had never read. But this 
 sinks be-low the baseness of an informer, yea, though he were a false witness to boot ! The 
 man who atuiM-s a thing of which he is utterly ignorant, unites the infamy of both and in 
 addition to this, makes himself the pander and sycophant of his own and other men's envy 
 and malignity. 
 
 THE musician may tune his instrument in private, ere his audience 
 have yet assembled : the architect conceals the foundation of his 
 building beneath the superstructure. But an author's harp must be 
 tuned in the hearing of those, who are to understand its after har- 
 monies ; the foundation stones of his edifice must lie open to common 
 view, or his friends will hesitate to trust themselves beneath the roof. 
 
 From periodical literature the general reader deems himself entitled 
 to expect amusement and some degree of information, and if the writer 
 can convey any instruction at the same time and without demanding 
 any additional thought (as the Irishman, in the hackneyed jest, is said 
 to have passed off a light guinea between two good halfpence) this super- 
 erogatory merit will not perhaps be taken amiss. Now amusement in 
 and for itself may be afforded by the gratification either of the curiosity 
 or of the passions. I use the former word as distinguished from the
 
 6 The Friend. 
 
 love of knowledge, and the latter in distinction from those emotions 
 which arise in well-ordered minds, from the perception of truth or false- 
 hood, virtue or vice : emotions, which are always preceded by thought, 
 and linked with improvement. Again, all information pursued without 
 any wish of becoming wiser or better thereby, I class among the gratifi- 
 cations of mere curiosity, whether it be sought for in a light novel or a 
 grave history. We may therefore omit the word information, as in- 
 cluded either in amusement or instruction. 
 
 The present work is an experiment; not whether a writer may 
 honestly overlook the one, or successfully omit the other, of the two 
 elements themselves, which serious readers at least persuade themselves 
 they pursue ; but whether a change might not be hazarded of the usual 
 order, in which periodical writers have in general attempted to convey 
 them. Having myself experienced that no delight either in land or 
 degree, is equal to that which accompanies the distinct perception of a 
 fundamental truth, relative to our moral being ; having, long after the 
 completion of what is ordinarily called a learned education, discovered a 
 new world of intellectual profit opening on me not from any new 
 opinions, but lying, as it were, at the roots of those which I had been 
 taught in childhood in my catechism and spelling-book ; there arose a 
 soothing hope in my mind that a lesser public might be found, composed 
 of persons susceptible of the same delight, and desirous of attaining it 
 by the same process. I heard a whisper too from within, (I trust that 
 it proceeded from conscience, not vanity,) that a duty was performed in 
 the endeavour to render it as much easier to them, than it had been to 
 me, as could be effected by the united efforts of my understanding and 
 imagination. 
 
 Actuated by this impulse, the writer wishes, in the following Essays, 
 to convey not instruction merely, but fundamental instruction ; not so 
 much to show my reader this or that fact, as to kindle his own torch for 
 him, and leave i r to himself to choose the particular objects, which he 
 might wish to examine by its light. The Friend does not indeed exclude 
 from his plan occasional interludes, and vacations of innocent entertain- 
 ment and promiscuous information, but still in the main he proposes to 
 himself the communication of such delight as rewards the march of 
 truth, rather than to collect the flowers which diversify its track, in 
 order to present them apart from the homely yet foodful or medicinable 
 herbs, among which they had grown. To refer men's opinions to their 
 absolute principles, and thence their feelings to the appropriate objects, 
 and in their due degrees ; and finally, to apply the principles thus ascer- 
 tained, to the formation of stedfast convictions concerning the most im- 
 portant questions of politics, morality, and religion these are to be the 
 objects and the contents of h s wo:k. 
 
 Themes like these not even the genius of a Plato or a Bacon could
 
 Etsay 2. 7 
 
 render intelligible, without demanding from the reader thought some- 
 times, and attention generally. By thought I here mean the voluntary 
 production in our minds of those states of consciousness, to which, as to 
 his fundamental facts, the writer has referred us : while attention has 
 for its object the order and connection of thoughts and images, each of 
 which is in itself already and familiarly known. Thus the elements of 
 geometry require attention only ; but the analysis of cur primary facul- 
 ties, and the investigation of all the absolute grounds of religion and 
 morals, are impossible without energies of thought in addition to the 
 effort of attention. The Friend will not attempt to disguise from his 
 readers that both attention and thought are efforts, and the latter a most 
 difficult and laborious effort ; nor from himself, that to require it often 
 or for any continuance of time is incompatible with the nature of the 
 present publication, even were it less incongruous than it unfortunately 
 is with the present habits and pursuits of Englishmen. Accordingly I 
 shall be on my guard to make the numbers as few as possible, which 
 would require from a well-educated reader any energy of thought and 
 voluntary abstraction. 
 
 But attention, I confess, will be requisite throughout, except in the 
 excursive and miscellaneous essays that will be found interposed between 
 each of the three main divisions of the work. On whatever subject the 
 mind feels a lively interest, attention, though always an effort, becomes 
 a delightful effort. I should be quite at ease, could I secure for the 
 whole work as much of it, as a card party of earnest whist-players often 
 expend in a single evening, or a lady in the making-np of a fashionable 
 But where no interest previously exists, attention (as every 
 schoolmaster knows) can be procured only by terror : which is the true 
 reason why the majority of mankind learn nothing systematically, ex- 
 cept as schoolboys or apprentices. 
 
 Happy shall I be, from other motives besides those of self-interest, if 
 no fault or deficiency on my part shall prevent the work from furnishing 
 a presumptive proof, that there are still to be found among ns a respect- 
 able number of readers who are desirous to derive pleasure from the 
 consciousness of being instructed or ameliorated : and who feel a suffi- 
 cient interest as to the foundations of their own opinions in literature, 
 politics, morals, and religion, to afford that degree of attention, without 
 which, however men may deceive themselves, no actual progress ever 
 was or ever can be made in that knowledge, which supplies at oceeboth 
 strength and nourishment.
 
 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 'AAA' o>s Trope'XajSoi' riji' Te'xnjp irapa crcu, TO Trpwrov /iev evflus 
 Oi&ovaav UTTO KOjU.jrao-fiaTioi', Kai prjfxaTOJf en-a^Owi', 
 'lo'Xi'aoa fiei> TrpamOTOi/ a.VTT)!', (cat TO jSapos <x$f lAoy, 
 'ETrvAAi'ois KCU TrepiTraTOis Kdl TeurAioun. jiiixpois 
 XuAbi' SiSovs OTwp.uAfiaTuji', <L;rb fiifi\uav, an-' TJ^UH/- 
 
 Amsrorii. Ranee. 
 
 IMITATION.* 
 
 When I received the Muse from you, 1 found her puffed and pampered, 
 
 With pompous sentences and terms, a cumbrous huge virago. 
 
 My first attention was applied to make her look genteelly, 
 
 And bring her to a moderate bulk by dint of lighter diet, 
 
 I fed her with plain household phrase, and ;ool familiar salad, 
 
 With water-gruel episode, with sentimental jelly, 
 
 With moral mince-meat : till at length 1 brought her within compass. 
 
 FUERE. 
 
 IN the preceding number I named the present undertaking an experi- 
 ment. The explanation will be found in the following letter, written 
 to a correspondent during the first attempt, and before the plan was dis- 
 continued from an original error in the mode of circulation, as noticed in 
 the Preface.f 
 
 To S. L. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 WHEN I first undertook the present Publication for the sake and with 
 the avowed object of referring men in all things to principles or funda- 
 mental truths, I was well aware of the obstacles which the plan itself 
 would oppose to my success. For in order to the regular attainment of 
 this object, all the driest and least attractive essays must appear in the 
 first fifteen or twenty numbers, and thus subject me to the necessity of 
 demanding effort or soliciting patience in that part of the work, where it 
 was most my interest to secure the confidence of my readers by winning 
 their favour. Though I dared warrant for the pleasantness of the 
 journey on the whole ; though I might promise that the road would, for 
 the far greater part of it, be found plain and easy, that it would pass 
 through countries of various prospect, and that at every stage there 
 would be a change of company ; it still remained a heavy disadvantage, 
 that I had to start at the foot of a high and steep hill : and I foresaw, 
 not without occasional feelings of despondency, that during the slow and 
 laborious ascent it would require no common management to keep my 
 passengers in good humour with the vehicle and its driver. As far as 
 this inconvenience could be palliated by sincerity and previous confes- 
 
 * This imitation is printed here by per- that it will form an important epoch in 
 
 mission of the author, from a series of free English literature, and open out sources of 
 
 translations of selected scenes from Aristo- metrical and rhythmical wealth in the very 
 
 phanes : a work, of which (should the author heart of our language, of which few, if any, 
 
 be persuaded to make it public) it is my most among us are aware. S. T. C. 
 
 deliberate judgment, and inmost conviction, f See advertisement to second edition.
 
 Essay 3. 9 
 
 sion, I have no reason to accuse myself of neglect. In the prospectus* 
 of The Friend, which for this cause 1 reprinted and annexed to the first 
 number, I felt it my duty to inform such as might be inclined to pa- 
 tronise the publication, that I must submit to be esteemed dull by those 
 who sought chiefly for amusement : and this I hazarded as a general 
 confession, though in my own mind I felt a cheerful confidence that it 
 would apply almost exclusively to the earlier numbers. I could not 
 therefore be surprised, however much I may have been depressed, by the 
 frequency with which you hear The Friend complained of for its ab- 
 stmseness and obscurity ; nor did the highly flattering expressions, with 
 which you accompanied your communication, prevent me from feeling 
 its truth to the whole extent. 
 
 An author's pen, like children's legs, improves by exercise. That 
 part of the blame which rests on myself, I am exerting my best faculties 
 to remove. A man long accustomed to silent and solitary meditation, in 
 proportion as he increases the power of thinking in long and connected 
 trains, is apt to lose or lessen the talent of communicating, his thoughts 
 with grace and perspicuity. Doubtless too, I have in some measure in- 
 jured my style, in respect to its facility and popularity, from having 
 almost confined my reading, of late years, to the works of the ancients 
 and those of the elder writers in the modern languages. We insensibly 
 imitate what we habitually admire; and an aversion to the epigrammatic 
 unconnected periods of the fashionable Auglo-gallican taste has too often 
 made me willing to forget, that the stately march and difficult evolutions, 
 which characterise the eloquence of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and Jeremy 
 Taylor, are, notwithstanding their intrinsic excellence, still less suited 
 to a periodical essay. This fault I am now endeavouring to correct ; 
 though I can never so far sacrifice my judgment to the desire of being 
 immediately popular, as to cast my sentences in the French moulds, or 
 affect a style which an ancient critic would have deemed purposely in- 
 vented for persons troubled with asthma to read, and for those to com- 
 prehend who labour under the more pitiable asthma of a short-witted 
 intellect. It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be 
 called into effort : the habit of receiving pleasure without any 
 exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and sen- 
 sibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel 
 reading. It is true that these short and unconnected sentences are 
 easily and instantly understood : but it is equally true, that wanting all 
 the cement of thought as well as of style, all the connections, and (if 
 you will forgive so trivial a metaphor) all the hooks-and-eyes of the 
 memory, they are as easily forgotten : or rather, it is scarcely possible 
 that they should be remembered. NOT is it less true, that those Who 
 
 See the end of this volume.
 
 10 The Friend. 
 
 confine their reading to such books dwarf their own faculties, and finally 
 reduce their understandings to a deplorable imbecility : the fact you 
 mention, and which I shall hereafter make use of, is a fair instance and 
 a striking illustration. Like idle morning visitors, the brisk and breath- 
 less periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession ; 
 each indeed for the moments of its stay prevents the pain of vacancy, 
 while it indulges the love of sloth ; but all together they leave the mis- 
 tress of the house (the soul I mean) flat and exhausted, incapable of 
 attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of 
 more rational guests. 
 
 I know you will not suspect me of fostering so idle a hope, as that of 
 obtaining acquittal by recrimination ; or think that I am attacking one 
 fault, in order that its opposite may escape notice in the noise and smoke 
 of the battery. On the contrary, I shall do my best, and even make all 
 allowable sacrifices, to render my manner more attractive and my matter 
 more generally interesting. In the establishment of principles and 
 fundamental doctrines, I must of necessity require the attention of my 
 reader to become my fellow-labourer. The primary facts essential to the 
 intelligibility of my principles I can prove to others only as far as I can 
 prevail on them to retire into themselves and make their own minds the 
 objects of their stedfast attention. But, on the other hand, I feel too 
 deeply the importance of the convictions, which first impelled me to the 
 present undertaking, to leave unattempted any honourable means of re- 
 commending them to as wide a circle as possible. 
 
 Hitherto, my dear sir, I have been employed in laying the foundations 
 of my work. But the proper merit of a foundation is its massiveness 
 and solidity. The conveniences and ornaments, the gilding and stucco 
 work, the sunshine and sunny prospects, will come with the superstruc- 
 ture. Yet I dare not flatter myself, that any endeavours of mine, com- 
 patible with the duty I owe to truth and the hope of permanent utility, 
 will render The Friend agreeable to the majority of what is called the 
 reading public. I never expected it. How indeed could I, when I was 
 to borrow so little from the influence of passing events, and when I had 
 absolutely excluded from my plan all appeals to personal curiosity and 
 personal interests ? Yet even this is not my greatest impediment. No 
 real information can be conveyed, no important errors rectified, no 
 widely injurious prejudices rooted up, without requiring some effort of 
 thought on the part of the reader. But the obstinate (and toward a 
 contemporary writer, the contemptuous) aversion to all intellectual effort 
 is the mother evil of all which I had proposed to war against, the queen 
 bee in the hive of our errors and misfortunes, both private and national. 
 To solicit the attention of those, on whom these debilitating causes have 
 acted to their full extent, would be no less absurd than to recommend ex- 
 ercise with the dumb bells, as the only mode of cure, to a patient paralytic
 
 Essay 3. 11 
 
 in both arms. You, my dear sir, well know, that my expectations were 
 more modest as well as more rational. I hoped, that my readers in 
 general would be aware of the impracticability of suiting every essay to 
 every taste in any period of the work ; and that they would not attribute 
 wholly to the author, but in part to the necessity of his plan, the 
 austerity and absence of the lighter graces in the first fifteen or twenty 
 numbers. In my cheerful moods I sometimes flattered myself, that a 
 few even among those, who foresaw that my lucubrations would at all 
 times require more attention than from the nature of their own employ- 
 ments they could afford them, might yet find a pleasure in supporting 
 The Friend during its infancy, so as to give it a chance of attracting the 
 notice of others, to whom its style and subjects might be better adapted. 
 But my main anchor was the hope, that when circumstances gradually 
 enabled me to adopt the ordinary means of making the publication 
 generally known, there might be found throughout the kingdom a suffi- 
 cient number of meditative minds, who, entertaining similar convictions 
 with myself, and gratified by the prospect of seeing them reduced to 
 form and system, would take a warm interest in the work from the very 
 circumstance, that it wanted those allurements of transitory interests, 
 which render particular patronage superfluous, and for the brief season 
 of their blow and fragrance attract the eye of thousands, who would pass 
 unregarded 
 
 flowers 
 Of sober tint, and herbs of medicinable powers. 
 
 In these three introductory numbers, The Friend has endeavoured to 
 realize his promise of giving an honest bill of fare, both as to the objects 
 and the style of the work. With reference to both I conclude with a 
 prophecy of Simon Grynasus, from his premonition to the candid reader, 
 prefixed to Ficinus's translation of Plato, published at Leyden, 1557. 
 How far it has been gradually fulfilled in this country since the 
 Revolution in 1688, I leave to my candid and intelligent readers to 
 determine. 
 
 ' Ac dolet mihi quidem deliciis literarum inescatos snbitS jam homines 
 adeo esse, prsesertim qui Christianos se profitentur, ut legere nisi quod 
 ad presentem gustum facit, sustineant nihil : unde et disciplines et 
 philosophia ipsa jam fere prorsus etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod 
 quidem propositum studiorum nisi mature corrigetur, tarn magnum 
 rebus incommodum dabit, quam dedit barbaries olim. Pertinax res 
 barbaries est, fateor ; sed minus potest tamen, quam ilia persuasa 
 prudentia literarum, si ratione caret, sapiential virtutisque specie miserfe 
 lectores circumducens. 
 
 'Succedet igitur, ut arbitror, hand ita multopost, pro rusticana sseculi 
 nostri ruditate captatrix ilia blandiloquentia, robur aninii virilis omne, 
 omnem virtutem ujasculam profligatura. nisi cavetur.'
 
 12 The Friend. 
 
 (Translation.} In very truth, it grieveth me that men, those espe- 
 cially who profess themselves to be Christians, should be so taken with 
 the sweet baits of literature that they can endure to read nothing but 
 what gives them immediate gratification, no matter how low or sensual 
 it may be. Consequently, the more austere and disciplinary branches 
 of philosophy itself are almost wholly neglected, even by the learned. 
 A course of study (if such reading, with such a purpose in view, could 
 deserve that name) which, if not corrected in time, will occasion worse 
 consequences than even barbarism did in the times of our forefathers. 
 Barbarism is, I own, a wilful headstrong thing ; but with all its blind 
 obstinacy it has less power of doing harm than this self-sufficient, self- 
 satisfied plain good common-sense sort of writing, this prudent saleable 
 popular style of composition, if it be deserted by reason and scientific 
 insight ; pitiably decoying the minds of men by an imposing show of 
 amiableness, and practical wisdom, so that the delighted reader knowing 
 nothing knows all about almost everything. There will succeed there- 
 fore in my opinion, and that too within no long time, to the rudeness 
 and rusticity of our age, that ensnaring meretricious popularness in 
 literature, with all the tricksy humilities of the ambitious candidates for 
 the favourable suffrages of the judicious public, which if we do not 
 take good care will break up and scatter before it all robustness and 
 manly vigour of intellect, all masculine fortitude of virtue. 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 Si modb qwz natura et ratione concessa sint, assump?erimug, pra>swnptionis suspicio a nobit 
 quam langissime abesse debet. Mutta antiquitati, nobifmet nihil, arrogamus. Xihilnevost 
 Ai&t'I -mehercule, nisi quod omnia omni animo veritati arrogamus et sanctimonies. 
 
 ULR. Rtsov. De Controversiis. 
 
 (Translation.) If we assume only what nature and reason have granted, with no shadow 
 of right can we be suspected of presumption. To antiquity we arrogate many things, to our- 
 Belves nothing. Nothing? Aye, nothing: unless indeed it be, that with all our strength we 
 arrogate all things to truth and moral purity. 
 
 IT has been remarked by the celebrated Haller, that we are deaf while 
 we are yawning. The same act of drowsiness that stretches open our 
 mouths, closes our ears. It is much the same in acts of the understand- 
 ing. A lazy half-attention amounts to a mental yawn. Where then a 
 subject, that demands thought, has been thoughtfully treated, and with 
 an exact and patient derivation from its principles, we must be willing 
 to exert a portion of the same effort, and to think with the author, or 
 the author will have thought in vain for us. It makes little difference 
 for the time being, whether there be an hiatus oscitans in the reader's 
 attention, or an hiatus lacrymabilis in the author's manuscript. When 
 this occurs during the perusal of a work of known authority and 
 established fame, we honestly lay the fault on our own deficiency, or on
 
 E*say 4. 13 
 
 the unfitness of our present mood; but when it is a contemporary pro- 
 duction, over which we have been nodding, it is far more pleasant to 
 pronounce it insufferably dull and obscure. Indeed, as charity begins 
 at home, it would be unreasonable to expect that a reader should charge 
 himself with lack of intellect, when the effect may be equally well ac- 
 counted for by declaring the author unintelligible ; or that he should 
 accuse his own inattention, when by half a dozen phrases of abuse, as 
 " heavy stuff, metaphysical jargon," &c., he can at once excuse his lazi- 
 ness, and ^ratify his pride, scorn, and envy. To similar impulses we 
 must attribute the praises of a true modern reader, when he meets with 
 a work in the true modern taste : videlicet, either in skipping, uncon- 
 nected, short-winded asthmatic sentences, as easy to be understood as 
 impossible to be remembered, in which the merest common-place ac- 
 quires a momentary poignancy, a petty titillating sting, from affected 
 point and wilful antithesis ; or else in. strutting and rounded periods, in 
 which the emptiest truisms are blown Tip into illustrious bubbles by 
 help of film and inflation. " Aye !" (quoth the delighted reader) " this 
 is sense, this is genius ! this I understand and- admire ! I have thought 
 the very same a hundred times myself!'' In other words, this man has 
 reminded me of my own cleverness, and therefore I admire him. ! for 
 one piece of egotism that presents itself under its own honest bare face 
 of " I myself I," there are fifty that steal out in the mask of tu-isms and 
 itte-ismsl 
 
 It lias ever been my opinion, that an excessive solicitude to avoid the 
 use of our first personal pronoun more often has its source in conscious 
 selfishness than in true self-oblivion. A quiet observer of human follies 
 may often amuse or sadden his thoughts by detecting a perpetual feeling 
 of purest egotism through a long masquerade of disguises, the half of 
 which, hail old Proteus been master of as many, would have wearied 
 out the patience of Menelaus. I say, impatience only: for it would 
 ask more than the simplicity of Polypheme, with his one eye extin- 
 guished, to be deceived by so poor a repetition of Xobody. Yet I can 
 with strictest truth assure my readers that with a pleasure combined 
 with a sense of weariness I see the nigh approach of that point of my 
 labours, in which I can convey my opinions and the workings of my 
 heart without reminding the reader obtrusively of myself. But the 
 frequency, with which I have spoken in my own person, recalls my ap- 
 prehensions to the second danger, which it was my hope to guard 
 against ; the probable charge, of arrogance, or presumption, both for 
 daring to dissent from the opinions of great authorities, and, in my 
 following numbers perhaps, from the general opinion concerning the 
 true value of certain authorities deemed great. The word presumption 
 I appropriate to the internal feeling, and arrogance to the way and 
 manner of outwardly expressing ourselves.
 
 14 The Friend. 
 
 As no man can rightfully be condemned without reference to some 
 definite law, by the knowledge of which he might have avoided the 
 given fault, it is necessary so to define the constituent qualities and 
 conditions of arrogance, that a reason may be assignable why we 
 pronounce one man guilty and acquit another. For merely to call 
 a person arrogant or most arrogant, can convict no one of the vice except 
 perhaps the accuser. I was once present, when a young man who had 
 left his books and a glass of water to join a convivial party, each of 
 whom had nearly finished his second bottle, was pronounced very drank 
 by the whole party " he looked so strange and pale !" Many a man, 
 who has contrived to hide his ruling passion or predominant defect from 
 himself, will betray the same to dispassionate observers, by his proneness 
 on all occasions to suspect or accuse others of it. Now arrogance and 
 presumption, like all other moral qualities, must be shown by some act 
 or conduct: and this, too, must be an act that implies, if not an 
 immediate concurrence of the will, yet some faulty constitution of the 
 moral habits. For all criminality supposes its essentials to have been 
 within the power of the agent. Either, therefore, the facts adduced do 
 of themselves convey the whole proof of the charge, and the question 
 rests on the truth or accuracy with which they have been stated ; or 
 they acquire their character from the circumstances. I have looked 
 into a ponderous review of the corpuscular philosophy by a Sicilian 
 Jesuit, in which the acrimonious Father frequently expresses his doubt, 
 whether he should pronounce Boyle or Newton more impious than 
 presumptuous or more presumptuous than impious. They had both 
 attacked the reigning opinions on most important subjects opinions 
 sanctioned by the greatest names of antiquity, and by the general 
 suffrage of their learned contemporaries or immediate predecessors. 
 Locke was assailed with a full cry for his presumption in having 
 deserted the philosophical system at that time generally received by the 
 universities of Europe ; and of late years Dr. Priestley bestowed the 
 epithets of arrogant and insolent on Reid, Beattie, &c., for presuming to 
 arraign certain opinions of Mr. Locke, himself repaid in kind by many of 
 his own countrymen for his theological novelties. It will scarcely be 
 affirmed that these accusations were all of them just, or that any of 
 them were fit or courteous. Must we therefore say, that in order to 
 avow doubt or disbelief of a popular persuasion without arrogance, it is 
 required that the dissentient should know himself to possess the genius, 
 and foreknow that he should acquire the reputation, of Locke, Newton, 
 Boyle, or even of a Reid or Beattie ? But as this knowledge and 
 prescience are impossible in the strict sense of the words, and could mean 
 no more than a strong inward conviction, it is manifest that such a rule, 
 if it were universally established, would encourage the presumptuous, 
 and condemn modest and humble minds alone to silence. And as this
 
 Essay 4.. 15 
 
 silence could not acquit ths individual's own mind of presumption, 
 unless it were accompanied by conscious acquiescence ; modesty itself 
 must become an inert quality, which even in private society never 
 displays its charms more unequivocally than in its mode of reconciling 
 moral deference with intellectual courage, and general diffidence with 
 sincerity in the avowal of the particular conviction. 
 
 We must seek then elsewhere for the true marks, by which, 
 presumption or arrogance may be detected, and on which the charge may 
 bo grounded witli little hazard of mistake or injustice. And as I confine 
 my present observations to literature, I deem such criteria neither 
 difficult to determine or to apply. The first mark, as it appears to me, 
 is a frequent bare assertion of opinions not generally received, without 
 condescending to prefix or annex the facts and reasons on which such 
 opinions were formed ; especially if this absence of logical courtesy is 
 supplied by contemptuous or abusive treatment of such as happen to 
 doubt of, or oppose, the decisive ipse dixit. But to assert, however 
 nakedly, that a passage in a lewd novel, in which the Sacred Writings 
 are denounced as more likely to pollute the young and innocent mind 
 than a romance notorious for its indecency to assert, I say, that such a 
 passage argues equal impudence and ignorance in its author, at the time 
 of writing and publishing it this is not arrogance ; although to a vast 
 majority of the decent part of our countrymen it would be superfluous as 
 a truism, if it were exclusively an author's business to convey or revive 
 knowledge, and not sometimes his duty to awaken the indignation of his 
 reader by the expression of his own. 
 
 A second species of this unamiable quality, which has been often dis- 
 tinguished by the name of WarUirtonian arrogance, betrays itself, not as 
 in the former, by proud or petulant omission of proof or argument, but 
 by the habit of ascribing weakness of intellect, or want of taste and 
 sensibility, or hardness of heart, or corruption of moral principle, to all 
 who deny the truth of the doctrine, or the sufficiency of evidence, or the 
 fairness of the reasoning adduced in its support. This is, indeed, not 
 essentially different from the first, but assumes a separate character from 
 its accompaniments: for though both the doctrine and its proofs may 
 have been legitimately supplied by the understanding, yet the bitterness 
 of personal crimination will resolve itself into naked assertion. We are, 
 therefore, authorized by experience, and justified on the principle of self- 
 defence and by the law of fair retaliation, in attributing it to a vicious 
 temper, arrogant from irritability, or irritable from arrogance. This 
 learned arrogance admits of many gradations, and is palliated or 
 aggravated, accordingly as the point in dispute has been more or less 
 controverted, as the reasoning bears a greater or smaller proportion to 
 the virulence of the personal detraction, and as the person or parties,
 
 16 TheFrind. 
 
 who are the objects of it, are more or less respected, more or less worthy 
 of respect.* 
 
 Lastly, it must lie admitted as a just imputation of presumption when 
 an individual obtrudes on the public eye, with all the high pretensions 
 of originality, opinions and observations, in regard to which he must 
 plead wilful ignorance in order to be acquitted of dishonest plagiarism. 
 On the same seat must the writer be placed, who in a disquisition on any 
 important subject proves, by falsehoods either of omission or of positive 
 error, that he has neglected to possess himself, not only of the informa- 
 tion requisite for this particular subject, but even of those acquirements, 
 and that general knowledge, which could alone authorize him to 
 commence a public instructor : this is an office which cannot be procured 
 gratis. The industry necessary for the due exercise of its functions is 
 its purchase money ; and the absence or insufficiency of the same is so 
 far a species of dishonesty, and implies a presumption in the literal as 
 well as the ordinary sense of the word. He has taken a thing before he 
 had acquired any right or title thereto. 
 
 If in addition to this" unfitness which every man possesses the means 
 of ascertaining, his aim should be to unsettle a general belief closely 
 connected with public and private quiet ; and if his language and 
 manner be avowedly calculated for the illiterate (and perhaps licentious) 
 part of his countrymen ; disgusting as his presumption must appear, it 
 is yet lost or evanescent in the close neighbourhood of his guilt. That 
 Hobbes translated Homer in English verse and published his translation, 
 furnishes no positive evidence of his self-conceit, though it implies a 
 great lack of self-knowledge and of acquaintance with the nature of 
 poetry. A strong wish often imposes itself on the mind for an actual 
 power : the mistake is favoured by the innocent pleasure derived from 
 the exercise of versification, perhaps by the approbation of intimates ; 
 and the candidate asks from more impartial readers that sentence, which 
 
 * Had ihe author of the Divine Legation reputation of a Sykes and a Lardner, we not 
 of Hoses more skilfully appropriated his only confirm the verdict of his independent 
 coarse eloquence of abuse, his customary as- contemporaries, but cease to wonder, that 
 surances of the idiotcy, both In head and arrogance should render men an object of 
 heart, of all bis opponents; if he had em- contempt in many, and of aversion in all in- 
 ployed those vigorous arguments of his own stances, when it was capable of burryinga 
 vehement humour in the defence of truihs Christian teacher of equal talents and learn- 
 acknowledged and reverenced by learned men ing into a slanderous vulgarity, which es- 
 in general ; or if he had confined them to the capes our disgust only when we see the 
 names of Chubb, Woolston, and other pre- writer's own reputation the sole victim, 
 cursors of Mr. Thomas Paine; we should But throughout his great work, and the 
 perhaps still characterize his mode of coutro- pamphlets in which he supported it, he al- 
 vt-rsy by its rude violence, but not so often wuys seems to write as if he had deemed it a 
 have heard his name used, even by those who duty of decorum to publish his fancies on tlie 
 have never read his writings, as a proverbial Mosaic Law as the Law itself was delivered, 
 expression of learned arrogance. But when that Is, "in thunders and lightnings : ' or as if 
 a novel and doubtful hypothesis of his own he bad applied to his own book, instead of the 
 formaiion was tbe citadel to be delendi d, and sacred mount, the menace There shall not a 
 his mephiiic hand-granados were thrown hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned or 
 with the fury ot lawless despotitin at the lair fhkt through.
 
 Essay 4. 17 
 
 nature has not enabled him to anticipate. But when the philosopher of 
 Malmesbury waged war with Wallis and the fundamental truths of pure 
 geometry, every instance of his gross ignorance and utter misconception 
 of the very elements of the science he proposed to confute, furnished an 
 unanswerable fact in proof of his high presumption ; and the confident 
 and insulting language of the attack leaves the judicious reader in as 
 little doubt of his gross arrogance. An illiterate mechanic, who mis- 
 taking some disturbance of his nerves for a miraculous call proceeds alone 
 to convert a tribe of savages, whose language he can have no natural 
 means of acquiring, may have been misled by impulses very different 
 from those of high self-opinion ; but the illiterate perpetrator of " The 
 Age of Eeason," must have had his very conscience stupified by the 
 habitual intoxication of presumptuous arrogance, and his common-sense 
 overclouded by the vapours from his heart. 
 
 As long, therefore, as I obtrude no unsupported assertions on my 
 readers ; and as long as I state my opinions, and the evidence which 
 induced or compelled me to adopt them, with calmness and that 
 diffidence in myself, which is by no means incompatible with a firm 
 belief in the justness of the opinions themselves ; while I attack no 
 man's private life from any cause, and detract from no man's honours in 
 his public character, from the truth of his doctrines, or the merits of his 
 compositions, without detailing all my reasons and resting the result 
 solely on the arguments adduced ; while I moreover explain fully the 
 motives of duty, which influenced me in resolving to institute such 
 investigation ; while I confine all asperity of censure, and all expressions 
 of contempt, to gross violations of truth, honour, and decency, to the 
 base corrupter and the detected slanderer ; while I write on no subject 
 which I have not studied with my best attention, on no subject which 
 my education and acquirements have incapacitated me from properly 
 understanding ; and above all, while I approve myself, alike in praise 
 and in blame, in close reasoning and in impassioned declamation, a 
 steady friend to the two best and surest friends of all men truth and 
 honesty ; I will not fear an accusation of either presumption or arro- 
 gance from the good and the wise : I shall pity it from the weak, and 
 despise it from the wicked.
 
 18 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 In eodem pectore mdlum est honestorum turpiumque consortium : et cogitare optima simul 
 ae dtterrima non inagis est unius animi quam ejusdem twminis bonum esse ac malum. 
 
 QTJINTIUA:;. 
 
 There is no fellowship of honour and baseness in the same breast ; and to combine the 
 best and the worst designs is no more possible in one mind, than it is for the same man to be 
 at the same Instant virtuous and vicious. 
 
 Cognitio veritatis omnia falsa, si modoproferantur,etiam quce prius inaudita e>-ant,et 
 dijudicare et subvertere idonea est. AUGUSTINUS. 
 
 A knowledge of the truth is equal to the task both of discerning and of confuting all false 
 assertions and erroneous arguments, though never before met with, If only they may freely 
 be brought forward. 
 
 I HAVE said, that my very system compels me to make every fair ap- 
 peal to the feelings, the imagination, and even the fancy. If these are 
 to be withheld from the service of truth, virtue, and happiness, to what 
 purpose were they given ? in whose service are they retained ? I have 
 indeed considered the disproportion of human passions to their ordinary 
 objects among the strongest internal evidences of our future destination, 
 and the attempt to restore them to their rightful claimants the most 
 imperious duty and the noblest task of genius. The verbal enuncia- 
 tion of this master truth could scarcely be new to me at any period of 
 my life since earliest youth ; but I well remember the particular time, 
 when the words first became more than words to me, when they incor- 
 porated with a living conviction, and took their place among the realities 
 of my being. On some wide common or open heath, peopled with ant- 
 hills, during some one of the grey cloudy days of late autumn, many of 
 my readers may have noticed the effect of a sudden and momentary 
 flash of sunshine on all the countless little animals within bis view, 
 aware too that the selfsame influence was darted co-instantaneously 
 over all their swarming cities as far as his eye could reach ; may have 
 observed, with what a kindly force the gleam stirs and quickens them 
 all ! and will have experienced no unpleasurable shock of feeling in 
 seeing myriads of myriads of living and sentient beings united at the 
 same moment in one gay sensation, one joyous activity ! But awful 
 indeed is the same appearance in a multitude of rational beings, our 
 fellow-men, in whom too the effect is produced not so much by the ex- 
 ternal occasion as from the active quality of their own thoughts. I had 
 walked from Gottingen in the year 1799, to witness the arrival of the 
 Queen of Prussia, on her visit to the Baron Von Hartzberg's seat, five 
 miles from the university. The spacious outer court of the palace was 
 crowded with men and women, a sea of heads, with a number of children 
 rising out of it from their fathers' shoulders. After a buzz of two hours' 
 expectation, the avant-courier rode at full speed into the court. At the
 
 Essay 5. 19 
 
 loud cracks of his long whip and the trampling of his horse's hoofs, the 
 universal shock and thrill of emotion I have not language to convey 
 it expressed as it was in such manifold looks, gestures, and attitudes, 
 yet with one and the same feeling in the eyes of all ! Recovering from 
 the first inevitable contagion of sympathy, I involuntarily exclaimed, 
 though in a language to myself alone intelligible, " man ! ever nobler 
 than thy circumstances ! Spread but the mist of obscure feeling over 
 any form, and even a woman incapable of blessing or of injury to thee 
 shall be welcomed with an intensity of emotion adequate to the reception 
 of the Redeemer of the world !" 
 
 To a creature so highly, so fearfully gifted, who, alienated as he is by 
 a sorcery scarcely less mysterious than the nature on which it is ex- 
 ercised, yet like the fabled son of Jove in the evil day of his sensual 
 bewitchment, lifts the spindles and distaffs of Omphale with the arm of 
 a giant, truth is self-restoration : for that which is the correlative of 
 truth, the existence of absolute life, is the only object which can attract 
 toward it the whole depth and mass of his fluctuating being, and alone 
 therefore can unite calmness with elevation. But it must be truth 
 without alloy and unsophisticated. It is by the agency of indistinct 
 conceptions, as the counterfeits of the ideal and transcendent, that evil 
 and vanity exercise their tyranny on the feelings of man. The Powers 
 of Darkness are politic if not wise ; but surely nothing can be more 
 irrational in the pretended children of light, than to enlist themselves 
 under the banners of truth, and yet rest their hopes on an alliance with 
 delusion. 
 
 Among the numerous artifices by which austere truths are to be 
 softened down into palatable falsehoods, and virtue and vice, like the 
 atoms of Epicurus, to receive that insensible dinamen which is to make 
 them meet each other half way, I have an especial dislike to the ex- 
 pression, pious frauds. Piety, indeed, shrinks from the very phrase, as an 
 attempt to mix poison with the cup of blessing : while the expediency 
 of the measures which this phrase was framed to recommend or palliate, 
 appears more and more suspicious, as the range of our experience widens, 
 and our acquaintance with the records of history becomes more exten- 
 sive and accurate. One of the most seductive arguments of infidelity 
 grounds itself on the numerous passages in the works of the Christian 
 Fathers, asserting the lawfulness of deceit for a good purpose. That 
 the Fathers held, almost without exception, that " wholly without 
 breach of duty it is allowed to the teachers and heads of the Christian 
 church to employ artifices, to intermix falsehoods with truths, and 
 esj^ecially to deceive the enemies of the faith, provided only they hereby 
 serve the interests of truth and the advantage of mankind,"* is the un- 
 
 * De ceconomia patrum. Integrum am- tibus esse, ut dolos ver sent, falsa veria inter- 
 nino Doctoribus et ccetus Christiani antisti- misceantet imprimis religwnishostesfattant.
 
 20 The Friend. 
 
 willing confession of Eibof. St. Jerome, as is shown by the citations of 
 this learned Theologian, boldly attributes this management (falsitatem 
 dispensativam) even to the Apostles themselves. But why speak I of 
 the advantage given to the opponents of Christianity ? Alas ! to this 
 doctrine chiefly, and to the practices derived from it, we must attribute 
 the utter corruption of the religion itself for so many ages, and even 
 now over so large a portion of the civilized world. By a system of 
 accommodating truth to falsehood, the pastors of the Church gradually 
 changed the life and light of the Gospel into the very superstitions 
 which they were commissioned to disperse, and thus paganized 
 Christianity in order to christen Paganism. At this very hour Europe 
 groans and bleeds in consequence. 
 
 So much in proof and exemplification of the probable expediency of 
 pious deception, as suggested by its known and recorded consequences. 
 An honest man, however, possesses a clearer light than that of history. 
 He knows, that by sacrificing the law of his reason to the maxim of 
 pretended prudence, he purchases the sword with the loss of the arm 
 that is to wield it. The duties which we owe to our own moral being, 
 are the ground and condition of all other duties ; and to set our nature 
 at strife with itself for a good purpose, implies the same sort of pru- 
 dence, as a priest of Diana would have manifested, who should have 
 proposed to dig up the celebrated charcoal foundations of the mighty 
 temple of Ephesus, in order to furnish fuel for the burnt offerings on its 
 altars. Truth, virtue, and happiness, may be distinguished from each 
 other, but cannot be divided. They subsist by a mutual co-inherence, 
 which gives a shadow of divinity even to our human nature. " Will ye 
 speak deceitfully for God ?" is a searching question, which most affect- 
 ingly represents the grief and impatience of an uncorrupted mind at 
 perceiving a good cause defended by i 1 ! means : and assuredly if any 
 temptation can provoke a well-regulated temper to intolerance, it is the 
 shameless assertion, that truth and falsehood are indifferent in their own 
 natures ; that the former is as often injurious (and therefore criminal) as 
 the latter, and the latter on many occasions as beneficial (and conse- 
 quently meritorious) as the former. 
 
 I feel it incumbent on me, therefore, to place immediately before my 
 readers in the fullest and clearest light, the whole question of moral 
 obligation respecting the communication of truth, its extent and condi- 
 
 dummodo veritatis commodis et utHitati in- words, St. Paul strove to speak intelligibly, 
 
 serviant. I trust, 1 need not add, that the willingly sacrificed indifferent things to 
 
 imputation of-such principles of action to the matters of importance, and acted courteously 
 
 first inspired propagators of Christianity, is as a man, in order to win attention as an 
 
 founded on the gross misconstruction of those Apostle. A traveller prefers for daily use 
 
 passages in the writings of St. Paul, in which the coin of the nation through which he Is 
 
 the necessity cf employing different atvu- passing, to bullion or the mintage of his own 
 
 merits to men of different capacities and pre- country : and is this to justify n succeeding 
 
 judices. is supposed and acceded to. In other traveller in the use of counterfeit coin ?
 
 Essay 5. "21 
 
 tions. I would fain obviate all apprehensions either of any incaution on 
 the one hand, or of any insincere reserve on the other, by proving that 
 the more strictly we adhere to the letter of the moral law in this respect, 
 the more completely shall we reconcile the law with prudence; thus 
 securing a purity in the principle without mischief from the practice. I 
 would not, I could not dare, address my countrymen as a friend, if I 
 might not justify the assumption of that sacred title by more than mere 
 veracity, by open-heartedness, Pleasure, most often delusive, may be 
 born of delusion. Pleasure, herself a sorceress, may pitch her tents on 
 enchanted ground. But happiness (or, to use a far more accurate as 
 well as more comprehensive term, solid well-being) can be built on 
 virtue alone, and must of necessity have truth for itsfoundation. Add 
 too the known fact that the meanest of men feels himself insulted by an 
 unsuccessful attempt to deceive him ; and hates and despises the man 
 who had attempted it. What place then is left in the heart for virtue 
 to build on, if in any case we may dare practise on others what we 
 should feel as a cruel and contemptuous wrong in our own persons ? 
 Every parent possesses the opportunity of observing how deeply children 
 resent the injury of a delusion ; and if men laugh at the falsehoods that 
 were imposed on themselves during their childhood, it is because they 
 are not good and wise enough to contemplate the past in the present, 
 and so to produce by a virtuous and thoughtful sensibility that continuity 
 in their self-consciousness, which nature has made the law of their animal 
 life. Ingratitude, sensuality, and hardness of heart, all flow from this 
 source. Men are ungrateful to others only when they have ceased to 
 look back on their former selves with joy and tenderness. They exist in 
 fragments. Annihilated as to the past, they are dead to the future, or 
 seek for the proofs of it everywhere, only not (where alone they can be 
 found) in themselves. A contemporary poet has expressed and illustrated 
 this sentiment with equal fineness of thought and tenderness of feeling : 
 
 My heart leaps up when I behold 
 A rainbow in the sky ! 
 
 So was it, when my life began ; 
 
 So is it now i am a man ; 
 
 So let it be, when I grow old, 
 Or let me die. 
 
 The child is father of the man, 
 
 And I would wish my days to be 
 
 Bound each to each by natural piety.* WOBDSWOHTH. 
 
 * I am informed, that these very lines have assertions of another ? Opinions formed from 
 
 been cited, as a specimen of despicable opinions what are they, but clouds sailing 
 
 puerility. So much the worse for the cittr. under clouds, which impress shadows upon 
 
 Kot willingly In his presence would I behold shadows? 
 
 the sun setting behind our mountains, or Fungum pelle procul, Jubeo ! nam quid 
 
 listen to a tale of distress or virtue ; I should mihi tungo ? 
 
 be ashamed of the quiet tear on my own Conveniunt stomacho non minus ista sno. 
 
 cheek. But let the dead bury the dead! I was always pleased with the motto 
 
 The poet sang for the living. Of what value placed under the figure of the rosemary in 
 
 indeed, to a sane mind, are the likings or dis- old herbals : 
 
 likings of one man, grounded ou the mere Sus, apage ! Hand tibi spiro.
 
 22 The Friend. 
 
 Alas ! the pernicious influence of this lax morality extends from the 
 nursery and the school to the cabinet and senate. It is a common weak- 
 ness with men in power, who have used dissimulation successfully, to 
 form a passion for the use of it, dupes to the love of duping ! A pride is 
 flattered by these lies. He who fancies that he must be perpetually 
 stooping down to the prejudices of his fellow-creatures, is perpetually re- 
 minding and re-assuring himself of his own vast superiority to them. 
 But no real greatness can long coexist with deceit. The whole faculties 
 of man must be exerted in order to noble energies ; and he who is not 
 earnestly sincere, lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self- 
 paralysed. 
 
 The latter part of the proposition, which has drawn me into this dis- 
 cussion, that, I mean, in which the morality of intentional falsehood is 
 asserted, may safely be trusted to the reader's own moral sense. Is it a 
 groundless apprehension, that the patrons and admirers of such publica- 
 tions may receive the punishment of their indiscretion in the conduct of 
 their sons and daughters ? The suspicion of methodism must be expected 
 by every man of rank and fortune, who carries his examination respecting 
 the books which are to lie on his breakfast-table, farther than to their 
 freedom from gross verbal indecencies, and broad avowals of atheism in 
 the title-page. For the existence of an intelligent First Cause may be 
 ridiculed in the notes of one poem, or placed doubtfully as one of two or 
 three possible hypotheses, in the very opening of another poem, and 
 both be considered as works of safe promiscuous reading " virginibus 
 puerisque :" and this too by many a father of a family, who would hold 
 himself highly culpable in permitting his child to form habits of 
 familiar acquaintance with a person of loose habits, and think it even 
 criminal to receive into his house a private tutor without a previous 
 inquiry concerning his opinions and principles, as well as his manners 
 and outward conduct. How little I am an enemy to free inquiry of the 
 boldest kind, and where the authors have differed the most widely from 
 my own convictions and the general faith of mankind, provided only 
 the inquiry be conducted with that seriousness, which naturally accom- 
 panies the love of truth, and that it is evidently intended for the perusal 
 of those only, who may be presumed to be capable of weighing the 
 arguments, I shall have abundant occasion of proving, in the course of 
 this work. Quin ipsti philosophia talibus e disputationibus non nisi 
 beneficium recipit. Nam si vera proponit homo ingeniosus veritatisque 
 amans, nova ad earn accessio fiet : sin falsa, refutatione eorum priores 
 tanto magis stabilientur.* GALILJEI Syst. Cosm. p. 42. 
 
 * (Translation.) Moreover, philosophy of philosophic insight ; but if erroneous poti- 
 itself cannot but derive benefit from such dis- tions, the former truths will, by their con- 
 cussions. For if a man of genius and a lover filiation, be established so much the more 
 of truth brings just positions before the firmly, 
 public, there is a fresh accession to the stock
 
 Essay 5. 23 
 
 The assertion, that truth is often no less dangerous than falsehood, 
 sounds less offensively at the first hearing, only because it hides its 
 deformity in an equivocation, or double meaning of the word truth. 
 What may be rightly affirmed of truth, used as synonymous with verbal 
 accuracy, is transferred to it in its higher sense of veracity. By verbal 
 truth we mean no more than the correspondence of a given fact to given 
 words. In moral truth, we involve likewise the intention of the speaker, 
 that his words should correspond to his thoughts in the sense in which 
 he expects them to be understood by others; and in this latter import 
 we are always supposed to use the ward, whenever we speak of truth 
 absolutely, or as a possible subject of moral merit or demerit. It is ver- 
 bally true, that in the sacred Scriptures it is written : " As is the good, 
 so is the sinner, and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. A man 
 hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be 
 merry. For there is one event unto all : the living know they shall die, 
 but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a re- 
 ward."* Buthe who should repeat these words, with this assurance, to 
 an ignorant man in the hour of his temptation, lingering at the door of 
 the ale-house, or hesitating as to the testimony required of him in the 
 court of justice, would, spite of this verbal truth, be a liar, and the mur- 
 derer of his brother's conscience. Veracity, therefore, not mere accu- 
 racy ; to convey truth, not merely to say it, is the point of duty in dis- 
 pute : and the only difficulty in the mind of an honest man arises from 
 the doubt, whether more than veracity (i.e. the truth and nothing but 
 the truth) is not demanded of him by the law of conscience ; whether it 
 does not exact simplicity ; that is, the truth only, and the whole truth. 
 If we can solve this difficulty, if we can determine the conditions under 
 which the law of universal reason commands the communication of the 
 truth independently of consequences altogether, we shall then be enabled 
 to judge whether there is any such probability of evil consequences from 
 such communication, as can justify the assertion of its occasional crimi- 
 nality, as can perplex us in the conception, or disturb us in the perform- 
 ance, of our duty. 
 
 The conscience, or effective reason, commands the design of conveying 
 an adequate notion of the thing spoken of, when this is practicable ; but 
 at all events a right notion, or none at all. A schoolmaster is under 
 the necessity of teaching a certain rule in simple arithmetic empirically 
 (do so and so, and the sum will always prove true), the necessary truth 
 of the rule (i.e. that the rule having been adhered to, the sum must 
 always prove true) requiring a knowledge of the higher mathematics for 
 its demonstration. He, however, conveys a right notion, though he 
 cannot convey the adequate one. 
 
 * Eccles. viil. 15; ix.2, 5.
 
 24 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 Tlo\vfiaSiri Kapra [lev uxfwAe'et, Kapra Se fikairrei TOV (\ovra. 'fi</>Aei piv TOV Sef ibv avSpa., 
 jSAajrrei 5e TOV pr)i'Siius (^toirGi'Ta irav eiro? icai v irovrt firju&i. Xpij i xaipoD fierpa. ei&evai 
 <rcxii)9 yap OVTOS opos, 01 e eu tcatpov pijcriv fiovo'uojj' irenrvfieVus aetcrovati', oil i7apae- 
 jjoi'Tcu ti apyi'j) yv<i/ji>)i', aiTer^ 4" (mdius ani^v) exovcrt Capias. 
 
 HERACLITUS apd iSto&zum (Serm. xxsiv., d. Lugd., p. 216). 
 
 ( TVajrsZafion.) General knowledge and ready talent may be of very great benefit, but they 
 may likewise be of very great disservice to the possessor. They are highly advantageous to 
 the man of sound judgment, and dexterous in applying them ; but they injure your fluent 
 holder-forth on all subjects In all companies. It is necessary to know the measures of the 
 time and occasion ; for this is the very boundary of wisdom (that by which it Is defined and 
 distinguished from mere ability). But he who, without regard to the unfitness of the time 
 and the audience, " will soar in the high region of his fancies with his garland and singing 
 robes about him," will not acquire the credit of seriousness amidst frivolity, but will be con- 
 demned for his silliness, as the greatest idler of the company because the most unseasonable. 
 
 THE moral law, it has been shown, permits an inadequate communi- 
 cation of unsophisticated truth, on the condition that it alone is prac- 
 ticable, and binds us to silence when neither is in our power. We must 
 first inquire then, What is necessary to constitute, and what may allow- 
 ably accompany, a right though inadequate notion ? And secondly, 
 what are the circumstances, from which we may deduce the impractica- 
 bility of conveying even a right notion; the presence or absence of which 
 circumstances it therefore becomes our duty to ascertain ? In answer to 
 the first question, the conscience demands : 1. That it should be the 
 wish and design of the mind to convey the truth only ; that if, in addi- 
 tion to the negative loss implied in its inadequateness, the notion com- 
 municated should lead to any positive error, the cause should lie in the 
 fault or defect of the recipient, not of the communicator, whose para- 
 mount duty, whose inalienable right it is to preserve his own integrity,* 
 the integral character of his own moral being. Self-respect ; the reve- 
 rence which he owes to the presence of humanity in the person of his 
 neighbour ; the reverential upholding of the faith of man in man : gra- 
 titude for the particular act of confidence ; and religious awe for the 
 divine purposes in the gift of language, are duties too sacred and impor- 
 tant to be sacrificed to the guesses of an individual, concerning the ad- 
 
 * The best and most forcible sense of a stancy and Humility, the poem concludes 
 
 ward is often that which is contained in its with 
 
 .-tymology. The author of the poems ("The He y^ desires ^ ^ 
 
 Synagogue") frequently affixed to Herbert's j^ face of God in hls reli ^ on must 
 
 I euipls, gives the original purport of the Sincere, entire, constant, and humble be, 
 word integrity in the following lines (fourth 
 
 stanza of the eighth poem) : Having mentioned the name of Herbert, 
 
 that model of a man, a gentleman, and a 
 
 Next to sincerity, remember still clergyman, let me add, that the quaint-ness 
 
 fhou must reso ve upon integrity. of me of his thonghts (not of hia $ cllo ^ 
 
 (,od will have all thou hast, thy mind, thy than which nothing ^ teraore pure, manly, 
 
 and unaffected) has blinded modern readers 
 1 by thoughts, thy words, thy works. to the g,. eat general merlt of his p^,^ whicn 
 
 And again, after some verses on Con- are for the most part exquisite in their kino.
 
 Essay 6. 25 
 
 vantages to be gained by the breach of them. 2. It is further required 
 that the supposed error shall not be such as will pervert or materially 
 vitiate the imperfect truth, in communicating which we had unwillingly, 
 though not perhaps unwittingly, occasioned it. A barbarian so in- 
 structed in the power and intelligence of the Infinite Being as to be left 
 wholly ignorant of His moral attributes, would have acquired none but 
 erromous notions even of the former. At the very best, he would gain 
 only a theory to satisfy his curiosity with ; but more probably, would 
 deduce the belief of a Moloch or a Baal. (For the idea of an irresistible 
 invisible Being naturally produces terror in the mind of uninstructed 
 and unprotected man ; and with terror there will be associated what- 
 ever has bc'cn accustomed to excite it, as anger, vengeance, &c. ; as is 
 proved by the mythology of all barbarous nations.) This must be the 
 case with all organized truths ; the component parts derive their signifi- 
 cance from the idea of the whole. Bolingbroke removed love, justice, 
 and choice, from power and intelligence, and yet pretended to have left 
 unimpaired the conviction of a Deity. He might as consistently have 
 paralyzed the optic nerve, and then excused himself by affirming, that 
 he had, however, not touched th6 eye. 
 
 The third condition of a right though inadequate notion is, that the 
 error occasioned be greatly outweighed by the importance of the truth 
 communicated. The rustic would have little reason to thank the philo- 
 sopher, who should give him true conceptions of the folly of believing in 
 ghosts, omens, dreams, &c. at the price of abandoning his faith in Pro- 
 vidence and in the continued existence of his fellow-creatures after their 
 death. The teeth of the old serpent planted by the Cadmuses of French 
 literature, under Louis XV. produced a plenteous crop of philosophers 
 and truth-trumpeters of this kind, in the reign of his successor. They 
 taught many truths, historical, political, physiological, and ecclesiastical, 
 and diffused their notions so widely, that the very ladies and hairdressers 
 of Paris became fluent Encyclopaedists ; and the sole price which their 
 scholars paid for these treasures of new information, was to believe 
 Christianity an imposture, the Scriptures a forgery, the worship (if not 
 the belief) of God superstition, hell a fable, heaven a dream, our life 
 without Providence, and our death without hope. They became as gods 
 as soon as the fruit of this Upas tree of knowledge and liberty had opened 
 their eyes to perceive that they were no more than beasts -somewhat 
 more cunning perhaps, and abundantly more mischievous. What can 
 be conceived more natural than the result, that self-acknowledged 
 beasts should first act, and next suffer themselves to be treated as beasts ? 
 We judge by comparison. To exclude the great is to magnify the little. 
 The disbelief of essential wisdom and goodness, necessarily prepares the 
 imagination for the supremacy of cunning with, malignity. Folly and 
 vice have their appropriate religions, as well as virtue and true know-
 
 26 TJie Friend. 
 
 ledge ; and in some way or other fools will dance round the golden calf, 
 and wicked men beat their timbrels and kettle-drums to 
 
 Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood 
 Of human sacrifice and parents' tears. 
 
 My feelings have led me on, and in my illustration I had almost lost 
 from my view the subject to be illustrated. One condition yet remains : 
 that the error foreseen shall not be of a kind to prevent or impede the 
 after acquirement of that knowledge which will remove it. Observe, 
 how graciously Nature instructs her human children. She cannot give 
 us the knowledge derived from sight without occasioning us at first to 
 mistake images of reflection for substances. But the very consequences 
 of the delusion lead inevitably to its detection ; and out of the ashes 
 of the error rises a new flower of knowledge. We not only see, but are 
 enabled to discover by what means we see. So too we are under the 
 necessity, in given circumstances, of mistaking a square for a round 
 object ; but ere the mistake can have any practical consequences, it is 
 not only removed, but in its removal gives us the symbol of a new fact, 
 that of distance. In a similar train of thought, though more fancifully, 
 I might have elucidated the preceding condition, and have referred our 
 hurrying enlighteners and revolutionary amputators to the gentleness ot 
 nature, in the oak and the beech, the dry foliage of which she pushes 
 off only by the propulsion of the new buds, that supply its place. My 
 friends ! a clothing even of withered leaves is better than bareness. 
 
 Having thus determined the nature and conditions of a right notion, 
 it remains to determine the circumstances which tend to render the 
 communication of it impracticable, and oblige us, of course, to abstain 
 from the attempt oblige us not to convey falsehood under the pretext of 
 saying truth. These circumstances it is plain, must consist either in na- 
 tural or moral impediments. The former, including the obvious gradations 
 of constitutional insensibility and derangement, preclude all temptation 
 to misconduct, as well as all probability of ill consequences from acci- 
 dental oversight, on the part of the communicator. Far otherwise is it 
 with the impediments from moral causes. These demand all the atten- 
 tion and forecast of the genuine lovers of truth in the matter, the man- 
 ner, and the time of their communications, public and private ; and these 
 are the ordinary materials of the vain and the factious, determine them 
 in the choice of their audiences and of their arguments, and to each 
 argument give powers not its own. They are distinguishable into two 
 sources, the streams from which, however, must often become confluent, 
 viz. hindrances from ignorance (I here use the Word in relation to the 
 habits of reasoning as well as to the previous knowledge requisite for the 
 due comprehension of the subject) and hindrances from predominant 
 
 passions.* 
 
 * See the Author's second Lay Sermon.
 
 Essay 6. 27 
 
 From both these the law of conscience commands us to abstain, be- 
 cause such being the .ignorance and such the passions of the supposed 
 auditors, we ought to deduce the impracticability of conveying not orriy 
 adequate but even right notions of our own convictions : much less 
 does it permit us to avail ourselves of the causes of this impracticability 
 iu order to procure nominal proselytes, each of whom will have a dif- 
 ferent, and all a false, conception of those notions that were to be con- 
 veyed for their truth's sake alone. Whatever is (or but for some defect 
 in our moral character would have been) foreseen as preventing the 
 conveyance of our thoughts, makes the attempt an act of self-contradic- 
 tion : and whether the faulty cause exist in our choice of unfit words 
 or our choice of unfit auditors, the result is the same and so is the guilt. 
 We have voluntarily communicated falsehood. 
 
 Thus (without reference to consequences, if only one short digression 
 be excepted) from the sole principle of self-consistence or moral integrity, 
 we have evolved the clue of right reason, which we are bound to follow 
 in the communication of truth. Now then we appeal to the judgment 
 and experience of the reader, whether he who most faithfully adheres 
 to the letter of the law of conscience will not likewise act in strictest 
 correspondence to the maxims of prudence and sound policy. I am at 
 least unable to recollect a single instance, either in history or in my 
 personal experience, of a preponderance f injurious consequences from 
 the publication of any truth, under the observance of the moral con- 
 ditions above stated : much less can I even imagine any case, in which 
 truth, as truth, can be pernicious. But if the assertor of the indifferency 
 of truth and falsehood in their own natures, attempt to justify his position 
 by confining the word truth, in the first instance, to the correspondence of 
 given words to given facts, without reference to the total impression left 
 by such words ; what is this more than to assert, that articulated sounds 
 are things of moral indifferency ? and that we may relate a fact accurately 
 and nevertheless deceive grossly and wickedly ? Blifil related accu- 
 rately Tom Jones's riotous joy during his benefactor's illness, only omit- 
 ting that this joy was occasioned by the physician's having pronounced 
 him out of danger. Blifil was not the less a liar for being an accurate 
 matter-of-fact liar. Tell-truths in the service of falsehood we find every- 
 where, of various names and various occupations, from the elderly 
 young women that discuss the love affairs of their friends and acquaint- 
 ances at the village tea-tables, to the anonymous calumniators of literary 
 merit in reviews, and the more daring malignants, who dole out dis- 
 content, innovation, and panic in political journals : and a most per- 
 nicious race of liars they are ! But who ever doubted it? Why should 
 our moral feelings be shocked, and the holiest words with all their 
 venerable associations be profaned, in order to bring forth a truism ? 
 But thus it is for the must part with the venders of startling paradoxes.
 
 28 The Friend. 
 
 In the sense in which they are to gain for their author the character of 
 a bold and original thinker, they are false even .to absurdity ; and the 
 sense in which they are true and harmless, conveys so mere a truism, 
 that it even borders on nonsense. How often have we heard " the 
 rights of man hurra! the sovereignty of the people hurra !" roared 
 out by men who, if called upon in another place and before another 
 audience, to explain themselves, would give to the words a meaning, in 
 which the most monarchical of their political opponents would admit 
 them to be true, but which would contain nothing new, or strange, or 
 stimulant, nothing to flatter the pride or kindle the passions of the 
 populace. 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 
 At profanum vulgus lectonim qwmodo arcendum estt Librisne nostris jubeamus, ut 
 coram indignis obmutescant ? Si linguis, ut dicitur, emortuis utamur, eheu ! ingenium 
 quoque nobis emortuum jacet : sin aliter, Minervce secreta crassis ludibrium divulgamus, 
 et Dianam nostram impuris hujus sceculi Achsonibus nudam proferimus. Jtespondeo :ad 
 incommoditates hujusmodi evitandas, nee Greece, nee Latink scribere opus est. Sufficiet, 
 nos sicca luce usos fuisse et strictiore argumentandi methodo. Sufficiet, innocenter, ittiliter 
 scripsisse : eventus est apud lectorem. Jfuper emptum est a nobis Ciceronianum istud " De 
 Officiis," opus quod semper pane Christiana dignum putabamus. Minim ! libellus foetus 
 fuerat famosissimus. Credisne f yc : at quomodo ? Maligno quodam, nescio quern, 
 plena margine et super tergo, annotatum est, et exemplis, calumniis potius, superfaitatum ! 
 Sic et qui introrsum uritur inflammatianes animi vel Catonianis (ne dicam, sacrosanctis) 
 paginis accipti. Omni aurA mons, omnibus scriptis mens, ignita vescitur. 
 
 RPDOLPHI LANGII Epist. ad Amicum quemdam Italicum, in qua Linguae patrite 
 et hodiernas usnm defendit et erudltis commendat. 
 
 Nee mefattit, lit in corporibus hominum sic in animis multiplici passiane affectis, medi- 
 camenta verborum multis inefficacia visum iri. Sed nee illud quoque me prceterit, ut invi- 
 sibiles animorum morbos, sic invisibilia esse remedia. Falsis opinwnibus circumventi veris 
 sentenliis liberandi sunt, ut qui audiendo ceciderant audiendo consurgant. 
 
 PETBAKCHA. Prefat. in lib. de remed. utriusque fortuna3. 
 
 (Translation.) But how are we to guard against the herd of promiscuous readers ? Can 
 we bid our books be silent in the presence of the unworthy? If we employ what are called 
 the dead languages, our own genius, alas ! becomes flat and dead : and if we embody our 
 thoughts in the words native to them or in which they were conceived, we divulge the 
 secrets of Minerva to the ridicule of blockheads, and expose our Diana to the Acteons of a 
 sensual age. I reply : that in order to avoid inconveniences of this kind, we need write 
 neither in Greek nor in Latin. It will be enough if we abstain from appealing to the bad pas- 
 sions and low appetites, and confine ourselves to a strictly consequent method of reasoning. 
 To have written innocently, and for wise purposes, Is all that can be required of us : the 
 event lies with the reader. I purchased lately Cicero's work, De Officiis, which I had always 
 considered as almost worthy of a Christian. To my surprise it had become a most flagrant 
 libel. Nay ! but how ? Some one, I know not who, out of the fruitfulness of his own ma- 
 lignity had filled all the margins and other blank spaces with annotations a true super- 
 fcetation of examples, that is, of false and slanJerons tales ! In like manner, the slave of 
 impure desires will turn the pages of Cato, not to say, Scripture itself, into occasions and 
 excitements of wanton imaginations. There is no wind but fans a volcano, no work but 
 feeds a combustible mind.
 
 Essay 7. 29 
 
 I am well aware, that words will appear to many as inefficacious medicines when ad- 
 ministered to minds agitated with manifold passions, as when they are muttered by way of 
 charm over bodily ailments. But neither does it escape me on the other hand, that, as the 
 diseases of the mind are invisible, invisible must the remedies likewise be. Those who have 
 been entrapped by false opinions are to be liberated by convincing truths : that thus having 
 imbibed the poison through the ear they may receive the antidote by the same channel. 
 
 HHH AT our elder writers to Jeremy Taylor inclusive quoted to excess, it 
 JL would be the very blindness of partiality to deny. More than one 
 might be mentioned, whose works might be characterized in the words 
 of Milton, as " a paroxysm of citations, pampered metaphors, and 
 aphorisming pedantry." On the other hand, it seems to me that we 
 now avoid quotations with an anxiety that offends in the contrary 
 extreme. Yet it is the beauty and independent worth of the citations 
 far more than their appropriateness which have made Johnson's Dic- 
 tionary popular even as a reading book and the mottos with the 
 translations of them are known to add considerably to the value of the 
 Spectator. With this conviction I have taken more than common 
 pains in the selection of the mottos for The Friend : and of two 
 mottos equally appropriate prefer always that from the book which is 
 least likely to have come into my readers' hands. For I often please 
 myself, with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion 
 the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may 
 have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten. If this should 
 be attributed to a silly ambition in the display of various reading, I can 
 do no more than deny any consciousness of having been so actuated : 
 and for the rest, I must console myself by the reflection, that if it be 
 one of the most foolish, it is at the same time one of the most harmless, 
 of human vanities. 
 
 The passages prefixed lead at once to the question, which will pro- 
 bably have more than once occurred to the reflecting reader of the pre- 
 ceding essay. How will these rules apply to the most important mode 
 of communication ? to that, in which one man may utter his thoughts 
 to myriads of men at the same time, and to myriads of myriads at 
 various times and through successions of generations ? How do they apply 
 to authors, whose foreknowledge assuredly does not inform them who, or 
 how many, or of what description their readers will be ? How do these 
 rules apply to books, which once published, are as likely to fall in the 
 way of the incompetent as of the judicious, and will be fortunate indeed 
 if they are not many times looked at through the thick mists of ignor- 
 ance, or amid the glare of prejudice and passion? We answer in the 
 first place, that this is not universally true. The readers are not seldom 
 picked and chosen. Relations of certain pretended miracles performed a 
 few years ago, at Holywell, in consequence of prayers to the Virgin 
 Mary, on female servants, and these relations moralized by the old 
 Roman Catholic arguments without the old Protestant answers, have to
 
 30 The Friend. 
 
 my knowledge been sold by travelling pedlars in villages and farm- 
 houses, not only in a form which placed them within the reach of the 
 narrowest means, but sold at a price less than their prime cost, and 
 doubtless, thrown in occasionally as the make-weight in a bargain of 
 pins and stay-tape. Shall I be told, that the publishers and reverend 
 authorizers of these base and vulgar delusions had exerted no choice as 
 to the purchasers and readers ? But waiving this, or rather having first 
 pointed it out, as an important exception, we further reply : that if the 
 author have clearly and rightly established in his own mind the class of 
 readers, to which he means to address his communications ; and if both 
 in this choice, and in the particulars of the manner and matter of his 
 work, he conscientiously observe all the conditions which reason and 
 conscience have been shown to dictate, in relation to those for whom 
 the work was designed ; he will, in most instances, have effected hia 
 design and realized the desired circumscription. The posthumous work 
 of Spinoza (Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata) may, indeed, acci- 
 dentally fall into the hands of an incompetent reader. But (not to 
 mention, that it is written in a dead language) it will be entirely harm- 
 less, because it must needs be utterly unintelligible. I venture to 
 assert, that the whole first book, De Deo, might be read in a literal 
 English translation to any congregation in the kingdom, and that no 
 individual, who had not been habituated to the strictest and most 
 laborious processes of reasoning, would even suspect its orthodoxy or 
 piety, however heavily the few who listened would complain of its 
 obscurity and want of interest. 
 
 This, it may be objected, is an extreme case. But it is not so for the 
 present purpose. We are speaking of the probability of injurious conse- 
 quences from the communication of truth. This I have denied, if the 
 right means have been adopted, and the necessary conditions adhered to, 
 for its actual communication. Now the truths conveyed in a book are 
 either evident of themselves, or such as require a train of deductions in 
 proof: and the latter will be either such as are authorized and generally 
 received, or such as are in opposition to received and authorized 
 opinions ; or lastly, truths presented for the appropriate test of examina- 
 tion, and still under trial (adhuc sub lite). Of this latter class I affirm, 
 that in neither of the three sorts can an instance be brought of a prepon- 
 derance of ill consequences, or even of an equilibrium of advantage and 
 injury from a work, in which the understanding alone has been appealed 
 to, by results fairly deduced from just premises, in terms strictly ap- 
 propriate. Alas ! legitimate reasoning is impossible without severe 
 thinking, and thinking is neither an easy nor an amusing employment. 
 The reader, who would follow a close reasoner to the summit and 
 absolute principle of any one important subject, has chosen a chamois- 
 hunter for his guide. Our guide will, indeed, take us the shortest way.
 
 Essay 7. 31 
 
 will save us many a wearisome and perilous wandering, and warn us of 
 many a mock road that had formerly led himself to the brink of chasms 
 and precipices, or at best in an idle circle to the spot from whence he 
 started. But he cannot carry us on his shoulders : we must strain our 
 own sinews, as he lias strained his ; and make firm footing on the 
 smooth rock for ourselves, by the blood of toil from our own feet. Ex- 
 amine the journals of our humane and zealous missionaries in Hin- 
 dostan. How often and how feelingly do they describe the difficulty of 
 making the simplest chain of reasoning intelligible to the ordinary 
 natives : the rapid exhaustion of their whole power of attention, and 
 with what pain and distressful effort it is exerted, while it lasts. Yet 
 it is among this class, that the hideous practices of self-torture chiefly, 
 indeed almost exclusively, prevail. ! if folly were no easier than 
 wisdom, it being often so very much more grievous, how certainly 
 might not these miserable men be converted to Christianity ? But alas ! 
 to swing by hooks passed through the back, or to walk on shoes with 
 nails of iron pointed upward on the soles, all this is so much less 
 difficult, demands so very inferior an exertion of the will than to think, 
 and by thought to gain knowledge and tranquillity ! 
 
 It is not true, that ignorant persons have no notion of the advantages 
 of truth and knowledge. They confess, they see, those advantages in 
 the conduct, the immunities, and the superior powers of the possessors. 
 Were these attainable by pilgrimages the most toilsome, or penances 
 the most painful, we should assuredly have as many pilgrims and as 
 many self- tormentors in the service of true religion and virtue, as now 
 exist under the tyranny of Papal or Brahman superstition. This ineffi- 
 cacy of legitimate reason, from the want of fit objects, this its relative 
 weakness and how narrow at all times its immediate sphere of action 
 must be, is proved to us by the impostors of all professions. What, I 
 pray, is their fortress, the rock which is both their quarry and their 
 foundation, from which and on which they are built ? The desire of 
 arriving at the end without the effort of thought and will, which are the 
 appointed means. Let us look backward three or four centuries. Then 
 as now the great mass of mankind were governed by the three main 
 wishes, the wish for vigour of body, including the absence of painful feel- 
 ings : for wealth, or the power of procuring the external conditions of 
 bodily enjoyment : these during life and security from pain, and con- 
 tinuance of happiness, after death. Then, as now, men were desirous to 
 attain them by some easier means than those of temperance, industry, 
 and strict justice. They gladly therefore applied to the priest, who 
 could insure them happiness hereafter without the performance of their 
 duties here ; to the lawyer, who could make money a substitute for a 
 right cause ; to the physician, whose medicines promised to take the 
 sting out of the tail of their sensual indulgences, and let them fondle
 
 32 TJie Friend. 
 
 and play with vice, as with a charmed serpent ; to the alchemist, whose 
 gold-tincture would enrich them without toil or economy ; and to the 
 astrologer, from whom they could purchase foresight without knowledge 
 or reflection. The established professions were, without exception, no 
 other than licensed modes of witchcraft. The wizards, who would now 
 find their due reward in Bridewell, and their appropriate honours in the 
 pillory, sat then on episcopal thrones, candidates for saintship, and 
 already canonized in the belief of their deluded contemporaries ; while 
 the one or two real teachers and discoverers of truth were exposed to 
 the hazard of fire and faggot, a dungeon the best shrine that was vouch- 
 safed to a Roger Bacon and a Galileo ! 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 Pray, why is it, that people say that men are not such fools now-a-days as they were in the 
 days of yore? I would fain know, whether yon would nave us understand by this same 
 saying, as indeed you logically may, that formerly men were fools, and in this generation 
 are grown wise ? How many and what dispositions made them fools ? How many and what 
 dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise ? Why were those fools ? How should these 
 be wise ? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly fools ? How did you find 
 that they are now wise ? Who made them fools ? Who in Heaven's name made us wise ? 
 Who d'ye think are most, those that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise ? How 
 long has it been wise ? How long otherwise ? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly ? Whence 
 the following wisdom ? Why did the old folly end now and no later ? Why did the modern 
 wisdom begin now and no sooner ? What were we the worse for the former folly ? What 
 the better for the succeeding wisdom ? How should the ancient folly have come to nothing ? 
 How should this same new wisdom be started up and established? Now answer me, an't 
 please you ! 
 
 FB. RABELAIS' Preface to his 5th Book. 
 
 MONSTERS and madmen canonized, and Galileo blind in a dungeon ! 
 It is not so in our times. Heaven be praised, that in this respect, at 
 least, we are, if not better, yet better off than our forefathers ! But to what, 
 and to whom (under Providence) do we owe the improvement ? To any 
 radical change in the moral affections of mankind in general ? Perhaps 
 the great majority of men are now fully conscious that they are born 
 with the God-like faculty of reason, and that it is the business of life 
 to develop and apply it ? The Jacob's ladder of truth, let down from 
 heaven, with all its numerous rounds, is now the common highway, on 
 which we are content to toil upward to the objects of our desires ? We 
 are ashamed of expecting the end without the means? In order to 
 answer these questions in the affirmative, I must have forgotten the 
 animal magnetists ; the proselytes of Brothers and of Joanna Southcote ; 
 and some hundred thousand fanatics less original in their creeds, but not 
 a whit more rational in their expectations. I must forget the infamous 
 empirics, whose advertisements pollute and disgrace all our newspapers, 
 and almost paper the walls of our cities ; and the vending of whose
 
 Essay 8. 33 
 
 poisons and poisonous drams (with shame and anguish be it spoken) 
 supports a shop in every market-town ! I must forget that other oppro- 
 brium of the nation, that mother-vice, the lottery ! I must forget, that a 
 numerous class plead prudence for keeping their fellow-men ignorant 
 and incapable of intellectual enjoyments, and the revenue for upholding 
 such temptations as men so ignorant will not withstand yes ! that even 
 senators and officers of state hold forth the revenue as a sufficient plea 
 for upholding, at every fiftieth door throughout the kingdom, tempta- 
 tions to the most pernicious vices, which fill the land with mourning, 
 and fit the labouring classes for sedition and religious fanaticism ! Above 
 all I must forget the first years of the French Revolution, and the mil- 
 lions throughout Europe who confidently expected the best and choicest 
 results of knowledge and virtue, namely, liberty and universal peace, 
 from the votes of a tumultuous assembly that is, from the mechanical 
 agitation of the air in a large room at Paris and this too in the most 
 light, unthinking, sensual and profligate of the European nations, a 
 nation, the very phrases of whose language are so composed, that they 
 can scarcely speak without lying ! No ! let us not deceive ourselves. 
 Like the man who used to pull off his hat with great demonstration of 
 respect whenever he spoke of himself, we are fond of styling our own 
 the enlightened age : though as Jortin, I think, has wittily remarked, 
 the golden age would be more appropriate. But in spite of our great 
 scientific discoveries, for which praise be given to whom the praise is due, 
 and in spite of that general indifference to all the truths and all the 
 principles of truth that belong to our permanent being, and therefore do 
 not lie within the sphere of our senses, (that same indifference which 
 makes toleration so easy a virtue with us, and constitutes nine-tenths of 
 our pretended illumination,) it still remains the character of the mass of 
 mankind to seek for the attainment of their necessary ends by any means 
 rather than the appointed ones ; and for this cause only, that the latter 
 imply the exertion of the reason and the will. But of all things this de- 
 mands the longest apprenticeship, even an apprenticeship from infancy ; 
 which is generally neglected, because an excellence, that may and should 
 belong to all men, is expected to come to every man of its own accord. 
 
 To whom then do we owe our ameliorated condition ? To the succes- 
 sive Few in every age (more indeed in one generation than in another, 
 but relatively to the mass of mankind always few) who by the 
 intensity and permanence of their action have compensated for 
 the limited sphere, within which it is at any one time intelligible ; 
 and whose good deeds posterity reverences in their results, though the 
 mode in which we repair the inevitable waste of time, and the style of 
 our additions, too generally furnish a sad proof how little we understand 
 the principles. I appeal to the histories of the Jewish, the Grecian, and 
 the Koman republics, to the records of the Christian Church, to the his- 
 
 D
 
 34 The Friend. 
 
 tory of Europe from the treaty of Westphalia (1648). What do they 
 contain but accounts of noble structures raised by the wisdom of the 
 few, and gradually undermined by the ignorance and profligacy of the 
 many? If therefore, the deficiency of good, which every where surrounds 
 us, originate in the general unfitness and aversion of men to the process 
 of thought, that is, to continuous reasoning, it must surely be absurd to 
 apprehend a preponderance of evil from works which cannot act at all 
 except as far as they call the reasoning faculties into full coexertion with 
 them. 
 
 Still, however, there are truths so self-evident or so immediately and 
 palpably deduced from those that are, or are acknowledged for such, that 
 they are at once intelligible to all men, who possess the common advan- 
 tages of the social state ; although by sophistry, by evil habits, by the 
 neglect, false persuasions, and impostures of an antichristian priesthood 
 joined in one conspiracy with the violence of tyrannical governors, the 
 understandings of men may become so darkened and their consciences so 
 lethargic, that there may arise a necessity for the republication of these 
 truths, and this too with a voice of loud alarm and impassioned warn- 
 ing. Such were the doctrines proclaimed by the first Christians to the 
 Pagan world ; such were the lightnings flashed by Wickliff, Huss, 
 Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Latimer, &c. across the Papal darkness ; and 
 such in our own times the agitating truths, with which Thomas Clark- 
 son, and his excellent confederates the Quakers, fought and conquered 
 the legalized banditti of men-stealers, the numerous and powerful per- 
 petrators and advocates of rapine, murder, and (of blacker guilt than 
 either) slavery. Truths of this kind being indispensable to man, consi- 
 dered as a moral being, are above all expedience, all accidental conse- 
 quences ; for as sure as God is holy, and man immortal, there can be no 
 evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them. It is the very mad- 
 ness of mock prudence to oppose the removal of a poisoned dish on 
 account of the pleasant sauces or nutritious viands which would be lost 
 with it! The dish contains destruction to that, for which alone we 
 ought to wish the palate to be gratified, or the body to be nourished. 
 
 The sole condition, therefore, imposed on us by the law of conscience 
 in these cases is, that we employ no unworthy and heterogeneous means 
 to realize the necessary end ; that we intrust the event wholly to the 
 full and adequate promulgation of the truth, and to those generous affec- 
 tions which the constitution of our moral nature has linked to the full 
 perception of it. Yet evil may, nay it will be occasioned. Weak men 
 may take offence, and wicked men avail themselves of it ; though we 
 must not attribute to the promulgation, or to the truth promulgated, all 
 the evil, of which wicked men (predetermined, like the wolf in the fable, 
 to create some occasion) may choose to make it the pretext. But that 
 there ever was or ever can be a preponderance of evil, I defy either the
 
 Essay 8. 35 
 
 historian to instance or the philosopher to prove. " Let it fly away, all 
 that chaff of light faith that can fly off at any breath of temptation ; the 
 cleaner will the true grain be stored up in the granary of the Lord," we 
 are entitled to say with Tertullian :* and to exclaim with heroic Luther.f 
 " Scandal and offence ! Talk not to me of scandal and offence. Need 
 breaks through stone walls, and recks not of scandal. It is my duty to 
 spare weak consciences as far as it may be done without hazard of my 
 soul. Where not, I must take counsel for my soul, though half or the 
 whole world should be scandalized thereby." 
 
 Luther felt and preached and wrote and acted, as beseemed a Luther 
 to feel and utter and act. The truths, which had been outraged, he re- 
 proclaimed in the spirit of outraged truth, at the behest of his conscience 
 and in the service of the God of truth. He did his duty, come good, 
 come evil ! and made no question, on which side the preponderance 
 would be. In the one scale there was gold, and the impress thereon the 
 image and superscription of the Universal Sovereign. In all the wide 
 and ever-widening commerce of mind with mind throughout the world, 
 it is treason to refuse it. Can this have a counter-weight ? The other 
 scale, indeed, might have seemed full up to the very balance-yard ; but 
 of what worth and substance were its contents ? Were they capable of 
 being counted or weighed against the former ? The conscience, indeed, 
 is already violated when to moral good or evil we oppose things 
 possessing no moral interest. Even if the conscience dared waive this 
 her preventive veto, yet before we could consider the twofold results in 
 the relations of loss and gain, it must be known whether their kind is 
 the same or equivalent. They must first be valued, and then they may 
 lie weighed or counted, if they are worth it. But, in the particular case 
 at present before us, the loss is contingent and alien ; the gain essential 
 and the tree's own natural produce. The gain is permanent, and spreads 
 through all times and places ; the loss but temporary, and, owing its very 
 being to vice or ignorance, vanishes at the approach of knowledge and 
 moral improvement. The gain reaches all good men, belongs to all that 
 love light and desire an increase of light : to all and of all times who 
 thank Heaven for the gracious dawn, and expect the noon-day ; who 
 welcome the first gleams of spring, and sow their fields in confident 
 faith of the ripening summer and the rewarding harvest-tide ! But the 
 loss is confined to the unenlightened and the prejudiced say rather, to 
 the weak and the prejudiced of a single generation. The prejudices of 
 one age are condemned even by the prejudiced of the succeeding ages : 
 
 * Avolent quantum volent palea levis bricht Elsen, und hat kcin Aergemiss. Ich 
 
 fidei quocunque afflatu tentatlonum .' eo soil der schwachen Gewissen schonen so fern 
 
 purior massa frumenti in horrea domini re- es obne Gefahr melner Seelen geschehn mag. 
 
 ponetur. Wo nicht, so soil ich meiner Seelen ratlx n, 
 
 TERTTLLIAS. es argere sich daran die gauze oder halt* 
 
 t Aergerniss bin, Aergemiss her 1 Noth Welt.
 
 36 The Friend. 
 
 for endless are the modes of folly, and the fool joins with the wise in 
 passing sentence on all modes but his own. Who cried out with greater 
 horror -against the murderers of the Prophets, than those who likewise 
 cried out, Crucify Him ! Crucify Him ! The truth-haters of every 
 future generation will call the truth-haters of the preceding ages by their 
 true names : for even these the stream of time carries onward. In fine, 
 truth considered in itself and in the effects natural to it, may be con- 
 ceived as a gentle spring or water-source, warm from the genial earth, 
 and breathing up into the snow-drift that is piled over and around its 
 outlet. It turns the obstacle into its own form and character, and as it 
 makes its way increases its stream. And should it be arrested in its 
 course by a chilling season, it suffers delay, not loss, and waits only for a 
 change in the wind to awaken and again roll onwards : 
 
 / semplici paftori 
 Sul Yesolo nevoso 
 Fatti curd e canuti, 
 D' alto stupor son muti 
 Miranda alfonte ombroso 
 n Po con pochi vmori ; 
 Peseta udendo gli onori 
 Dell' urna angusta e stretta, 
 Che 'I Adda che'l Tesino 
 Sorerchia in suo cammino. 
 Cite ampio al mar s'affretta 
 Che .' spuma, e si suona, 
 Che gli si da corona '. * 
 
 CHIABREP.A. 
 
 (Literal Translatiort~). The simple shepherds, grown bent and hoary- 
 headed on the snowy Yesolo, are mute with deep astonishment, gazing 
 in the overshadowed fountain on the Po with his scanty waters ; then 
 hearing of the honours of his confined and narrow urn, how he receives 
 as a sovereign the ADDA and the TESIXO in his course, how ample he 
 hastens on to the sea, how he foams, how mighty his voice, and that to 
 him the crown is assigned. 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 Great men have liv'd among us, heads that plann'd 
 And tongues that utter'd wisdom better none. 
 
 Even so doth Heaven protect us ! 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IX the preceding number I have explained the good, that is, the natural 
 consequences of the promulgation to all of truths which all are bound 
 to know and to make known. The evils occasioned by it, with few and 
 
 * I give literal translations of my poetic the exact sense and order of the words: 
 as well as prose quotations, because the pro- which it is impossible always to retain in a 
 priety of their introduction olten depends on metrical version.
 
 Essay 9. 37 
 
 rare exceptions, have their origin in the attempts to suppress or pervert 
 it ; in the fury and violence of imposture attacked or undermined in her 
 strongholds, or in the extravagances of ignorance and credulity roused 
 from tneir lethargy, and angry at the medicinal disturbance awakening 
 not yet broad awake, and thus blending the monsters of uneasy dreams 
 with the real objects, on which the drowsy eye had alternately half- 
 opened and closed, again half-opened and again closed. This reaction of 
 deceit and superstition, with all the trouble and tumult incident, I 
 would compare to a fire which bursts forth from some stifled and 
 fermenting mass on the first admission of light and air. It roars and 
 blazes, and converts the already spoilt or damaged stuff with all tie 
 straw and straw-like matter near it, first into flame and the next 
 moment into ashes. The fire dies away, the ashes are scattered on all 
 the winds, and what began in worthlessness ends in nothingness. Such 
 are the evil, that is, the casual consequences of the same promulgation. 
 It argues a narrow or corrupt nature to lose the general and lasting 
 consequences of rare and virtuous energy in the brief accidents which 
 accompanied its first movements to set lightly by the emancipation of 
 the human reason from a legion of devils, in our complaints and 
 lamentations over the loss of a herd of swine ! The Cranmers, Hamp- 
 dens, and Sidneys : the counsellors of our Elizabeth, and the friends of 
 our other great deliverer, the third William, is it in vain, that these 
 have been our countrymen ? Are we not the heirs of their good deeds ? 
 And what are noble deeds but noble truths realized ? As Protestants, as 
 Englishmen, as the inheritors of so ample an estate of might and right, 
 an estate so strongly fenced, so richly planted, by the sinewy arms and 
 dauntless hearts of our forefathers, we of all others have good cause to 
 trust in the truth, yea, to follow its pillar of fire through the darkness 
 and the desert, even though its light should but suffice to make us 
 certain of its own presence. If there be elsewhere men jealous of the 
 light, who prophesy an excess of evil over good from its manifestation, 
 we are entitled to ask them, on what experience they ground their 
 bodings ? Our own country bears no traces, our own history contains 
 no records, to justify them. From the great a^ras of national illumina- 
 tion we date the commencement of our main national advantages. The 
 tangle of delusions, which stifled and distorted the growing tree, have 
 been torn away ; the parasite -weeds, that fed on its very roots, have 
 been plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only 
 quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the cautious, 
 unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener to 
 prune, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh 
 shoots the slug and the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue 
 with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our 
 predecessors, or even to condemn ill them that vehemence to which the
 
 38 The Friend. 
 
 blessings it won for us leave us now neither temptation or pretext. 
 That the very terms, with which the bigot or the hireling would blacken 
 the first publishers of political and religious truth, are, and deserve to be, 
 hateful to us, we owe to the effects of its publication. We antedate 
 the feelings in order to criminate the authors of our tranquillity, 
 opulence, and security. But let us be aware. Effects will not, indeed, 
 immediately disappear with their causes ; but neither can they long 
 continue without them. If by the reception of truth in the spirit of 
 truth, we became what we are ; only by the retention of it in the same 
 spirit, can we remain what we are. The narrow seas that form our 
 boundaries, what were they in times of old ? The convenient highway 
 lor Danish and Norman pirates. What are they now? Still but "a 
 span of waters." Yet they roll at the base of the inisled Ararat, on 
 which the ark of the hope of Europe and of civilization rested ! 
 
 Even so doth God protect us, if we be 
 Virtuous and wise. Winds blow and waters roll, 
 Strength to the brave, and power and deity : 
 Yet in themselves are nothing ! One decree 
 Spake laws to them, and said that by the soul 
 Only the nations shall be great and free ! 
 
 WOBDSWOBTH. 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth to bars 
 a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men. For books are not absolutely 
 dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose 
 progeny they are. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous 
 dragon's teeth : and being sown up and down may chance to spring up armed men. And 
 yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. 
 Many a man lives a burthen to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a 
 master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. MILTOS'S Speech 
 for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing. 
 
 rpHUS far, then, I have been conducting a cause between an individual 
 -I- and his own mind. Proceeding on the conviction, that to man is 
 intrusted the nature, not the result of his actions, I have presupposed no 
 calculations. I have presumed no foresight. Introduce no contradiction 
 into thy own consciousness. Acting or abstaining from action, 
 delivering or withholding thy thoughts, whatsoever thou doest, do it in 
 singleness of heart. In all things, therefore, let thy means correspond to 
 thy purpose, and let the purpose be one with the purport. To this 
 principle I have referred the supposed individual, and from this principle 
 solely I have deduced each particular of his conduct. As far, therefore, 
 as the court of conscience extends (and in this court alone I have been 
 pleading hitherto), I have won the cause. It has been decided, that 
 there is no just ground for apprehending mischief from truth com- 
 municated conscientiously, ('. e. with a strict observance of all the con-
 
 Essay 10. 39 
 
 ditions required V>y the conscience) that wnat is not so communicated 
 is falsehood, and that to the falsehood, not to the truth, must the ill 
 consequences be attributed. 
 
 Another and altogether different cause remains now to be pleaded ; a 
 different cause, and in a different court. The parties concerned are no 
 longer the well-meaning individual and his conscience, but the citizen 
 and the state the citizen, who may be a fanatic as probably as a 
 philosopher, and the state, which concerns itself with the conscience only 
 as far as it appears in the action, or still more accurately, in the fact ; 
 and which must determine the nature of the fact not merely by a rule of 
 right formed from the modification of particular by general consequences, 
 not merely by a principle of compromise, that reduces the freedom of 
 each citizen to the common measure in which it becomes compatible 
 with the freedom of all ; but likewise by the relation which the facts 
 bear to its (the state's) own instinctive principle of self-preservation. 
 For every depositary of the supreme power must presume itself rightful : 
 and as the source of law not legally to be endangered. A form of 
 government may indeed, in reality, be most pernicioxis to the governed, 
 and the highest moral honour may await the patriot who risks his life 
 in order by its subversion to introduce a better and juster constitution; 
 but it would be absurd to blame the law by which his life is declared 
 forfeit. It were to expect, that by an involved contradiction the law 
 should allow itself not to be law, by allowing the state, of which it is a 
 part, not to be a state. For as Hooker has well observed, the law of 
 men's actions is one, if they be respected only as men ; and another, 
 when they are considered as parts of a body politic. 
 
 But though every government subsisting in law (for pure lawless 
 despotism grounding itself wholly on terror precludes all consideration 
 of duty) though every government subsisting in law must, and ought 
 to, regard itself as the life of the body politic, of which it is the head, 
 and consequently must punish every attempt against itself as an act of 
 assault or murder, i. e. sedition or treason ; yet still it ought so to 
 secure the life as not to prevent the conditions of its growth, and of 
 that adaptation to circumstances, without which its very life becomes 
 insecure. In the application, therefore, of these principles to the public 
 communication of opinions by the most efficient means, the press we 
 have to decide, whether consistently with them there should be any 
 liberty of the press ; and if this be answered in the affirmative, what 
 shall be ckclared abuses of that liberty, and made punishable as 
 such ; and in what way the general law shall be applied to each par- 
 ticular case. 
 
 First then, should there be any liberty of the press ? we will not here 
 mean, whether it should be permitted to print books at all (for our essay 
 has little chance of being read in Turkey, and in any other part of
 
 40 The Friend. 
 
 Europe it cannot be supposed questionable) ; but whether by the appoint- 
 ment of a censorship the government should take upon itself the responsi- 
 bility of each particular publication. Jn governments purely monarchical 
 (i. e. oligarchies under one head), the balance of the advantage and dis- 
 advantage from this monopoly of the press will undoubtedly be affected 
 by the general state of information ; though, after reading Milton's 
 " Speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing,* " we shall probably be 
 inclined to believe, that the best argument in favour of licensing, &c. 
 under any constitution is that which, supposing the ruler to have a 
 different interest from that of his country, and even from himself as a 
 reasonable and moral creature, grounds itself on the incompatibility of 
 knowledge with folly, oppression, and degradation. AVhat our pro- 
 phetic Harrington said of religious, applies equally to literary toleration. 
 " If it be said that in France there is liberty of conscience in part, it is 
 also plain that while the hierarchy is standing, this liberty is falling, 
 and that if on the contrary, it comes to pull down the hierarchy, it 
 pulls down that monarchy also : wherefore the monarchy or hierarchy 
 will be beforehand with it, if they see their true interest." On the other 
 hand, there is no slight danger from general ignorance ; and the only 
 choice, which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government, is 
 either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, 
 or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant. 
 
 The nature of our constitution, since the revolution, the state of our 
 literature, and the wide diffusion, if not of intellectual yet of literary 
 power, and the almost universal interest in the productions of literature, 
 have set the question at rest relatively to the British press. However 
 great the advantages of previous examination might be under other cir- 
 cumstances, in this country it would be both impracticable and ineffi- 
 cient. I need only suggest in broken sentences the prodigious number 
 of licensers that would be requisite the variety of their attainments, 
 and (inasmuch as the scheme must be made consistent with our reli- 
 gious freedom) the ludicrous variety of their principles and creeds their 
 number being so great, and each appointed censor being himself a man 
 of letters, quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? If these numerous licensers hold 
 their offices for life, and independent of the ministry pro tempore, a 
 new, heterogeneous, and alarming power is introduced, which can never 
 be assimilated to the constitutional powers already existing : if they are 
 removeable at pleasure, that which is heretical and seditious in 1809 
 may become orthodox and loyal in 1810 and what man, whose attain- 
 ments and moral respectability gave him even an endurable claim to 
 
 * II y a un voile qui doit toujours couvrir tout ce que Ton pent dire et tout ce qu'on 
 peut croire do droit des peurAes et de celui des princes, qui ne s'accordent janiais si bien 
 ensemble que dans le silence. Mem. du Card, de Uttz. 
 
 How severe a satire where it can be justly applied ! how false and calumnious if meant 
 as a general maxim !
 
 Essay 10. 41 
 
 this awful trust, would accept a situation at once so invidious and 
 so precarious? And what institution can retain any useful influence 
 in so free a nation, when its abuses have made it contemptible ? 
 Lastly, and which of itself would suffice to justify the rejection of such 
 a plan unless all proportion between crime and punishment were 
 abandoned, what penalties could the law attach to the assumption of a 
 liberty, which it had denied, more severe than those which it now 
 attaches to the abuse of the liberty, which it grants? In all those 
 instances at least, which it would be most the inclination perhaps the 
 duty of the state to prevent, namely, in seditious and incendiary pub- 
 lications (whether actually such, or only such as the existing govern- 
 ment chose so to denominate, makes no difference in the argument), the 
 publisher, who hazards the punishment now assigned to seditious pub- 
 lications, would assuredly hazard the penalties of unlicensed ones, 
 especially as the very practice of licensing would naturally diminish the 
 attention to the contents of the works published, the chance of impunity 
 therefore be so much greater, and the artifice of prefixing an unau- 
 thorized license so likely to escape detection. It is a fact, that in many 
 of the former German states in which literature flourished, notwith- 
 standing the establishment of censors or licensers, three-fourths of the 
 books printed were unlicensed even those, the contents of which were 
 unobjectionable, and where the sole motive for evading the law *niust 
 have been either the pride and delicacy of the author, or the indolence 
 of the bookseller. So difficult was the detection, so various the means 
 of evasion, and worse than all, 'from the nature of the law and the 
 affront it offers to the pride of human nature, such was the merit at- 
 tached to the breach of it a merit commencing perhaps with Luther's 
 Bible, and other prohibited works of similar great minds, published 
 with no dissimilar purpose, and thence by many an intermediate link 
 of association finally connected with books, of the very titles of which a 
 good man would wish to remain ignorant. The interdictory catalogues 
 of the Roman hierarchy always present to my fancy the muster-rolls of 
 the two hostile armies of Michael and of Satan printed promiscuously, 
 or extracted at haphazard, save only that the extracts from the former 
 appear somewhat the more numerous. And yet even in Naples, and in 
 Eome itself, whatever difficulty occurs in procuring any article cata- 
 logued in these formidable folios, must arise either from the scarcity of 
 the work itself, or the absence of all interest in it. Assuredly there is 
 no difficulty in procuring from the most respectable booksellers the 
 vilest provocatives to the basest crimes, though intermixed with 
 gross lampoons on the heads of the Church, the religious orders, and on 
 religion itself. The stranger is invited into an inner room, and the 
 loathsome wares presented to him with most significant looks and 
 gestures, implying the hazard, and the necessity of secrecy. A credit-
 
 4iJ The Friend. 
 
 able English bookseller would deem himself insulted, if such works 
 were even inquired after at his shop. It is a well-known fact, that 
 with the mournful exception indeed of political provocatives, and the 
 titi'llations of vulgar envy provided by our anonymous critics, the 
 loathsome articles are among us vended and offered for sale almost ex- 
 clusively by foreigners. Such are the purifying effects of a free press, 
 and the dignified habit of action imbibed from the blessed air of law 
 and liberty, even by men who neither understand the principle nor feel 
 the sentiment of the dignified purity, to which they yield obeisance 
 from the instinct of character. As there is a national guilt which can be 
 charged but gently on each individual, so are there national virtues, 
 which can as little be imputed to the individuals, nowhere, however, 
 but in countries where liberty is the presiding influence, the universal 
 medium and mengtruum of all other excellence, moral and intellectual. 
 Admirably doth the admirable Petrarch * admonish us : 
 
 Nee sibi vero quisquam falso persuadeat, eos qui pro libertate excubant, 
 alienum agere negotium non suum. In hac una reposita, sibi omnia 
 norint omncs, securitatem mercator, gloriam miles, utilitatem agricola. 
 Postremo, in eadem libertate religiosi ca?rimonias, otium studiosi, requiem 
 senes, rudimenta disciplinaram pueri, nuptias et castitatem puellse, 
 pudicitiam matrons, pietatem et antiqui laris sacra patres familias, spem 
 atque gaudium omnes invenient. Huic uni igitur reliquje cedant curse ! 
 Si hanc omittitis, in quantalibet occupatione nihil agitis : si huic in- 
 cumbitis, et nihil agere videmini, cumulate tamen et civium et virorum 
 implevistis officia. 
 
 PETHARCH^E Horta. 
 
 (Translation?) Nor let any one falsely persuade himself, that those 
 who keep watch and ward for liberty, are meddling with things that do 
 not concern them, instead of minding their own business. For all men 
 should know, that all blessings are stored and protected in this one, as 
 in a common repository. Here is the tradesman's security, the soldier's 
 honour, the agriculturist's profit. Lastly, in this one good of liberty the 
 religious will find the permission of their rites and forms of worship, 
 the students their learned leisure, the aged their repose, boys the rudi- 
 ments of the several branches of their education, maidens their chaste 
 nuptials, matrons their womanly honour and the dignity of their mo- 
 
 * I quote Petrarch often in the hope of To give the true bent to the above extract 
 
 drawing the attention of scholars to his in- it is necessary to bear in mind, that he who 
 
 estimable Latin writings. Let me add, in the keeps watch and ward for freedom, has to 
 
 wish likewise of recommending a translation guard against two enemies, the despotism of 
 
 of select passages from his treatises and letters the few and the despotism of the many but 
 
 to the London publishers. If I except the especially in the present day against the 
 
 German writings and original letters of the sycophants of the populace, 
 
 heroic Luther, I do not remember a work Licence they mean, when they cry liberty ! 
 
 from which so delightful and instructive a For who loves that, must first be wise and 
 
 volume might be compiled. good.
 
 Essay 11. 43 
 
 desty, and fathers of families the dues of natural affection and the sacred 
 privileges of their ancient home. To this one solicitude therefore let 
 all other cares yield the priority. If you omit this, be occupied as 
 much and sedulously as you may, you are doing nothing : if you apply 
 your heart and strength to this, though you seem to be doing nothing, 
 you will, nevertheless, have been fulfilling the duties of citizens and of 
 men, yea, in a measure pressed down and running over. 
 
 ESSAY XI. 
 
 Xcmo verb fallatur, quasi minors sint anirnorum contagia quam corporum. Mnjora snnt ; 
 gravius laedunt ; altius descendant, serpuntque latentius. 
 
 PETRARCH, df Vit. Solit. L. 1, *. 3, c. 4. 
 
 (Translation.) And let no man be deceived as if the contagions of the soul were less than 
 those of the body. They are yet greater ; they convey more direful diseases ; they sink 
 deeper, ami creep on more unsuspectedly. 
 
 WE have abundant reason then to infer, that the law of England has 
 done well and concluded wisely in proceeding on the principle so 
 clearly worded by Milton : " that a book should be as freely admitted into 
 the world as any other birth ; and if it prove a monster, who denies but 
 that it may justly be burnt or sunk into the sea ?" We have reason 
 then, I repeat, to rest satisfied with our laws, which no more prevent a book 
 from coming into the world unlicensed, lest it should prove a libel, than 
 a traveller from passing unquestioned through our turnpike-gates, be- 
 cause it is possible he may be a highwayman. Innocence is presumed 
 in both cases. The publication is a part of the offence, and its necessary 
 condition. Words are moral acts, and words deliberately made public 
 the law considers in the same light as any other cognizable overt act. 
 
 Here however a difficulty presents itself. Theft, robbery, murder, 
 and the like, are easily defined : the degrees and circumstances likewise 
 of these and similar actions are definite, and constitute specific offences, 
 described and punishable each under its own name. We have only to 
 prove the fact and identify the offender. The intention too, in the great 
 majority of cases, is so clearly implied in the action, that the law can 
 safely adopt it as its universal maxim, that the proof of the malice is 
 included in the proof of the fact ; especially as the few occasional ex- 
 ceptions have their remedy provided in the prerogative of pardon 
 intrusted to the supreme magistrate. But in the case of libel, the degree 
 makes the kind, the circumstances jconstitute the criminality : and both 
 s and circumstances, like the ascending shades of colour or the 
 shooting hues of a dove's neck, die away into each other, incapable of 
 definition or outline. The eye of the understanding, indeed, sees the 
 determinate difference in each individual case, but language is most often 
 inadequate to express what the eye perceives, much less can a general
 
 44 Tlie Friend. 
 
 statute anticipate and pre-defiue it. Again : in other overt -acts a 
 charge disproved leaves the defendant either guilty of a different fault, 
 or at best simply blameless. A man having killed a fellow-citizen is 
 acquitted of murder the act was manslaughter only, or it was justi- 
 fiable homicide. But when we reverse the iniquitous sentence passed 
 on Algernon Sidney, during our perusal of his work on Government ; 
 at the moment we deny it to have been a traitorous libel, our beating 
 hearts declare it to have been a benefaction to our country, and under 
 the circumstances of those times the performance of an heroic duty. 
 From this cause therefore, as well as from a libel's being a thing made 
 up of degrees and circumstances (and these too discriminating offence 
 from merit by such dim and ambulant boundaries), the intention of the 
 agent, wherever it can be independently or inclusively ascertained, must 
 be allowed a great share in determining the character of the action, 
 unless the law is not only to be divorced from moral justice,* but to 
 wage open hostility against it. 
 
 Add too, that laws in doubtful points are to be interpreted according 
 to the design of the legislator, where this can be certainly inferred. But 
 the laws of England, which owe their own present supremacy and abso- 
 luteness to the good sense and generous dispositions diffused by the 
 press more, far more, than to any other single cause, must needs be 
 presumed favourable to its general influence. Even in the penalties 
 attached to its abuse, we must suppose the legislature to have been 
 actuated by the desire of preserving its essential privileges. The press 
 is indifferently the passive instrument of evil and of good : nay, there is 
 some good even in its evil. " Good and evil," says Milton, in the speech 
 from which I have selected the motto of the preceding essay, " in the field 
 of this world, grow up together almost inseparably : and the knowledge of 
 good is so intervolved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and 
 in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those 
 confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche as an incessant labour to 
 cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. As, therefore, 
 the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what 
 continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil ? He that can 
 apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures 
 and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly 
 better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive 
 and cloistered virtue, that never sallies out and sees her adversary 
 that which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows 
 not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but 
 a blank virtue, not a pure. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey 
 of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, 
 
 * According to tlie old adage : you are not not be stolen. To what extent this is true, 
 hung for stealing a horse, but thai horses may we shall have occasion to examine hereafter.
 
 Essay 11. 45 
 
 and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more 
 safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity, 
 than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of 
 reason ?" Again but, indeed the whole treatise is one strain of moral 
 wisdom and political prudence " Why should we then affect a rigour 
 contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by abridging or scanting 
 those means, which books, freely permitted, are both to the trial of 
 virtue and the exercise of truth ? It would be better done to learn, 
 that the law must needs be frivolous, which goes to restrain things un- 
 certainly, and yet equally working to good and to evil. And were I 
 the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times 
 as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems 
 the growth and completion of one virtuous person, more than the re- 
 straint of ten vicious." 
 
 The evidence of history is strong in favour of the same principles, 
 even in respect of their expediency. The average result of the press 
 from Henry VIII. to Charles I. was such a diffusion of religious light as 
 first redeemed and afterwards saved this nation from the spiritual and 
 moral death of popery ; and in the following period it is to the press 
 that we owe the gradual ascendancy of those wise political maxims, 
 which casting philosophic truth in the moulds of national laws, customs, 
 and existing orders of society, subverted the tyranny without suspending 
 the government, and at length completed the mild and salutary revo- 
 lution by the establishnient of the house of Brunswick. To what must 
 we attribute this vast overbalance of good in the general effects of the 
 Imt to the overbalance of virtuous intention in those who em- 
 ployed the press ? The law, therefore, will not refuse to manifest good 
 intention a certain weight even in cases of apparent error, lest it should 
 discourage and scare away those, to whose efforts we owe the compara- 
 tive infrequency and weakness of error on the whole. The law may, 
 however, nay, it must demand, that the external proofs of the author's 
 honest intentions should be supported by the general style and matter 
 of his work, and by the circumstances and mode of its publication. A 
 , which in a grate and regular disquisition would be blameless, 
 might become highly libellous and justly punishable if it were applied 
 to present measures or persons for immediate purposes, in a cheap and 
 popular tract. I have seldom felt greater indignation than at finding 
 in a large manufactory a sixpenny pamphlet, containing a selection of 
 inflammatory paragraphs from the prose-writings of Milton, without a 
 hint given of the time, occasion, state of government, &c., under which 
 they were written not a hint, that the freedom, which we now enjoy, 
 exceeds all that Milton dared hope for, or deemed practicable ; and that 
 his political creed sternly excluded the populace, and indeed the ma- 
 jority of the population, from all pretensions to political power. If the
 
 46 Tlie Friend. 
 
 manifest bad intention would constitute this publication a seditious 
 libel, a good intention equally manifest cannot justly be denied its share 
 of influence in producing a contrary verdict. 
 
 Here then is the difficulty. From the very nature of a libel it is 
 impossible so to define it, but that the most meritorious works will be 
 found included in the description. Not from any defect or undue 
 severity in the particular statute, but from the very nature of the offence 
 to be guarded against, a work recommending reform by the only ra- 
 tional mode of recommendation, that is, by the detection and exposure 
 of corruption, abuse, or incapacity, might, though it should breathe the 
 best and most unadulterated English feelings, be brought within the 
 definition of libel equally with the vilest incendiary brochure, that ever 
 aimed at leading and misleading the multitude. Not a paragraph in 
 the Morning Post during the peace of Amiens, (or rather the experi- 
 mental truce so called,) though, to the immortal honour of the then 
 editor, that newspaper was the chief secondary means of producing the 
 unexampled national unanimity, with which the war recommenced and 
 has since been continued not a paragraph warning the nation, as need 
 was and most imperious duty commanded, of the perilous designs and 
 unsleeping ambition of our neighbour, the mimic and caricaturist of 
 Charlemagne, but was a punishable libel. The statute of libel is a vast 
 aviary, which encages the awakening cock and the geese whose alarum pre- 
 served the Capitol, no less than the babbling magpie and ominous 
 screech-owl. And yet will we avoid this seeming injustice, we throw 
 down all fence and bulwark of public decency and public opinion ; 
 political calumny will soon join hands with private slander; and every 
 principle, every feeling, that binds the citizen to his country and the 
 spirit to its Creator, will be undermined not by reasoning, for from 
 that there is no danger ; but by the mere habit of hearing them reviled 
 and scoffed at with impunity. Were we to contemplate the evils of a 
 rank and unweeded press only in its effect on the manners of a people, 
 and on the general tone of thought and conversation, the greater the 
 love which we bore to literature and to all the means and instruments 
 of human improvement, the greater would 4)e the earnestness with 
 which we should solicit the interference of law ; the more anxiously 
 should we wish for some Ithuriel spear, that might remove from the ear 
 of the public, and expose in their own fiendish shape those reptiles, 
 which inspiring venom and forging illusions as they list, 
 
 Thence raise, 
 
 At least distempered discontented thoughts, 
 Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires. 
 
 PARADISE IXJST.
 
 Essay 12. 47 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 
 Q'Minodo auttm idfutu.ru.rn sit, ne quis incredibile arbitretur, ostendam. In primit multi- 
 plicabitur regnum, et summa rerum potestas per plurimos dissipata et concisa minuttur. 
 Tune discordicK ciciles eerentur, nee ulla requies bettis exitialibus erit, dum exercitibus in 
 immensum coach's, reges disperdent omnia, et commitment : donee adversus eos duxpotentis- 
 simus a plebe orietur, et assumetur in socittatem a cateris, etprinceps omnium corn, 
 Hie insustentabili dominatione vexabit orbem, divina et humana'miscebit : infanda dictu tt 
 execrabilia molietur : nova consilia in pectore suo volutabit, itt proprium sibi constituat 
 imptrium : leges commutabit, et sua sanciet, contaminabit, dinpiet, spoliabit, occidet. 
 Denique immutatis nominibus, et imperil sede translate, confusio ac perturbatio humani 
 generis conseqnetur. Turn vere detestabile, atque abominandum tempus existet, quo nulli 
 iwtniniiin sit vita jucunda. LACTAXTIUS, de Vita Beatd, Lib. vii., c. 16. 
 
 But lest this should be deemed incredible, 1 will show the manner in which it is to take 
 place. First there will be a multiplication of independent sovereignties, and the supreme 
 magistracy of the empire, scattered and cut up into fragments, will be enfeebled in the 
 exercise of power by law and authority. Then will be sown the seeds of civil discords, nor 
 will there be any rest or pause to wasteful and ruinous wars, while the soldiery kept together 
 in immense standing armies, the Kings will crush and lay waste at their will; until at length 
 there will rise up against them a most puissant military chieftain ol low birth, who will have 
 acceded to him a fellowship with the other Sovereigns of the earth, and will finally be con- 
 stituted the head of all. This man will harass the civilized world with an insupportable 
 despotism: he will confound and commix all things spiritual and temporal. He will form 
 plans and preparations of the most execrable and sacrilegious nature. He will be for ever 
 restlessly turning over new schemes in his imagination, in order that he may fix the imperial 
 power over all in his own name and possession. He will change the former laws, he will 
 sanction a code of his own, he will contaminate, pillage, lay waste and massacre. At length, 
 when he has succeeded in the change of names and titles, and in the transfer of the seat of 
 Empire, there will follow a confusion and perturbation of the human race; then will there 
 be for a while an sera of horror and abomination, during which no man will enjoy his life in 
 quiet 1 1 
 
 I INTERPOSE this essay as au historical comment on the words " mimic 
 and caricaturist of Charlemagne," as applied to the despot, whom since 
 the time that the words were first, printed, we have, thank Heaven ! 
 succeeded in encaging. The motto contains the most striking instance 
 of an uninspired prophecy fulfilled even in its rninutia?, that I recollect 
 ever to have met with : and it is hoped, that as a curiosity it will re- 
 concile my readers to its unusual length. But though my chief motive 
 was that of relieving (by the variety of an historical parallel) the series 
 of argument on this most important of all subjects, the communicability 
 of truth, yet the essay is far from being a digression. Having in the 
 preceding number given utterance to qiiicquid in rem tarn maleficam 
 indignatio dolorque dictarent, concerning the mischiefs of a lawless press, 
 I held it an act of justice to give a portrait no less lively of the excess 
 to which the remorseless ambition of a government might accumulate 
 its oppressions in the one instance before the discovery of printing, and 
 in the other during the suppression of its freedom. 
 
 I have translated the following from a voluminous German work, 
 Michael Ignaz Schmidt's History of the Germans, in which this ex- 
 tract forms the conclusion of the second chapter of the third book, from
 
 48 The Friend. 
 
 Charles the Great to Conrade the First. The late tyrant's close imita- 
 tion of Charlemagne was sufficiently evidenced by his assumption of the 
 Iron Crown of Italy; by his imperial coronation with the presence and 
 authority of the Holy Father ; by his imperial robe embroidered with 
 bees in order to mark him as a successor of Pepin, and even by his 
 ostentatious revocation of Charlemagne's grants to the Bishop of Rome. 
 But that the differences might be felt likewise, I prefaced the translation 
 here reprinted with the few following observations. 
 
 Let it be remembered then, that Charlemagne, for the greater part, 
 created for himself the means of which he availed himself ; that his very 
 education was his own work, and that unlike Peter the Great, he could 
 End no assistants out of his own realm ; that the unconquerable courage 
 and heroic dispositions of the nations he conquered, supplied a proof 
 positive of real superiority, indeed the sole positive proof of intellectual 
 power in a warrior : for how can we measure force but by the resistance 
 to it ? But all was prepared for Buonaparte : Europe weakened in the 
 very heart of all human strength, namely, in moral and religious principle, 
 and at the same time accidentally destitute of any one great or command- 
 ing mind : the French people, on the other hand, still restless from re- 
 volutionary fanaticism; their civic enthusiasm already passed into 
 military passion and the ambition of conquest ; and alike by disgust, 
 terror, "and characteristic unfitness for freedom, ripe for the reception of 
 a despotism. Add too, that the main obstacles to an unlimited system 
 of conquest, and the pursuit of universal monarchy had been cleared 
 away for him by his pioneers the Jacobins, viz., the influence of the 
 great landholders, of the privileged and of the commercial classes. Even 
 the naval successes of Great Britain, by destroying the trade, rendering 
 useless the colonies, and almost annihilating the navy of France, were 
 in some respects subservient to his designs by concentrating the powers 
 of the French empire in its armies, and supplying them out of the 
 wrecks of all other employments, save that of agriculture. France had 
 already approximated to the formidable state so prophetically described 
 by Sir James Steuart, in his Political Economy, in which the population 
 should consist chiefly of soldiers and peasantry : at least the interests of no 
 other classes were regarded. The great merit of Buonaparte has been 
 that of a skilful steersman, who with his boat in the most violent storm 
 still keeps himself on the summit of the waves, which not he, but the 
 winds had raised. I will now proceed to my translation. 
 
 " That Charles was an hero, his exploits bear evidence. The subjuga- 
 tion of the Lombards, protected as they were by the Alps, by fortresses 
 and fortified towns, by numerous armies, and by a great name ; of the 
 Saxons, secured by their savage resoluteness, by an untameable love of 
 freedom, by their desert plains and enormous forests, and by their own 
 poverty ; the humbling of the Dukes of Bavaria, Aquitania, Bretagne,
 
 Essay 12. 49 
 
 and Gascony ; proud of their ancestry as well as of their ample domains ; 
 the almost entire extirpation of the Avars, so long the terror of Europe ; 
 are assuredly works which demanded a courage and a firmness of mind 
 such as Charles only possessed. 
 
 " How great his reputation was, and this too beyond the limits of 
 Europe, is proved by the embassies sent to him out of Persia, Palestine, 
 Mauritania, and even from the Caliphs of Bagdad. If at the present 
 day an embassy from the Black or Caspian Sea comes to a prince on the 
 Baltic, it is not to be wondered at, since such are now the political rela- 
 tions of the four quarters of the world, that a blow which is given to 
 any one of them is felt more or less by all the others. Whereas in the 
 times of Charlemagne, the inhabitants in one of the known parts of the 
 world scarcely knew what was going on in the rest. Nothing but the 
 extraordinary, all-piercing report of Charles's exploits could bring this to 
 pass. His greatness, which set the world in astonishment, was likewise, 
 without doubt, that which begot in the Pope and the Romans the first 
 idea of the re-establishment of their empire. 
 
 "It is true, that a number of things united to make Charles a great 
 man favourable circumstances of time, a nation already disciplined to 
 warlike habits, a long life, and the consequent acquisition of experience, 
 such as no one possessed in his' whole realm. Still, however, the prin- 
 cipal means of his greatness Charles found in himself. His great mind 
 was capable of extending its attention to the greatest multiplicity of 
 affairs. In the middle of Saxony he thought on Italy and Spain, and at 
 Rome he made provisions for Saxony, Bavaria, and Pannonia. He gave 
 audience to the ambassadors of the Greek emperor and other potentates, 
 and himself audited the accounts of his own farms, where everything 
 was entered even to the number of the eggs. Busy as his mind was, his 
 body was not less in one continued state of motion. Charles would see 
 into everything himself, and do everything himself, as far as his 
 powers extended : and even this it was too, which gave to his under- 
 takings such a force and energy. 
 
 " But with all this the government of Charles was the government of 
 a conqueror, that is, splendid abroad and fearfully oppressive at home. 
 What a grievance must it not have been for the people that Charles for 
 forty years together dragged them now to the Elbe, then to the Ebro, 
 after this to the Po, and from thence back again to the Elbe, and this 
 not to check an invading enemy, but to make conquests which little 
 profited the French nation ! This must prove too much, at length, fora 
 hired soldier : how much more for conscripts, who did not live only to 
 fight, but who were fathers of families, citizens, and proprietors ? But 
 above all, it is to be wondered at, that a nation like the French, should 
 suffer themselves to be used as Charles used them. But the peoprte no 
 longer possessed any considerable share of influence. All depended on 
 
 E
 
 50 Tlie Friend. 
 
 the great chieftains, who gave their willing suffrage for endless wars, by 
 which they were always sure to win. They found the best opportunity, 
 under such circumstances, to make themselves great and mighty at the 
 expence of the freemen resident within the circle of their baronial courts ; 
 and when conquests were made, it was far more for their advantage than 
 that of the monarchy. In the conquered provinces there was a necessity 
 for dukes, vassal kings, and different high offices : all this fell to their share. 
 
 " I would not say this if we did not possess incontrovertible original 
 documents of those times, which prove clearly to us that Charles's 
 government was an unhappy one for the people, and that this great man, 
 by his actions, laboured to the direct subversion of his first principles. 
 It was his first pretext to establish a greater equality among the mem- 
 bers of his vast community, and to make all free and equal subjects 
 under a common sovereign. And from the necessity occasioned by con- 
 tinual war, the exact contrary took place. Nothing gives us a better 
 notion of the interior state of the French monarchy, than the third 
 capitular of the year 811.* All is full of complaint, the Bishops and 
 Earls clamouring against the freeholders, and these in their turn against 
 the Bishops and Earls. And in truth the freeholders had no small 
 reason to be discontented and to resist, as far as they dared, even the 
 imperial levies. A dependant must be content to follow his lord with- 
 out further questioning : for he was paid for it. But a free citizen, who 
 lived wholly on his own property, might reasonably object to suffer him- 
 self to be dragged about in all quarters of the world, at the fancies of his 
 lord : especially as there was so much injustice intermixed. Those who 
 gave up their properties entirely, or in part, of their own accord, were 
 left undisturbed at home, while those who refused to do this, were 
 forced so often into service, that at length, becoming impoverished, they 
 were compelled by want to give up, or dispose of their free tenures to 
 the Bishops or Earls. f 
 
 " It almost surpasses belief to what a height, at length, the aversion to 
 war rose in the French nation, from the multitude of the campaigns and 
 the grievances connected with them. The national vanity was now 
 satiated by the frequency of victories ; and the plunder which fell to 
 the lot of individuals, made but a poor compensation for the losses and 
 burthens sustained by their families at home. Some, in order to become 
 exempt from military service, sought for menial employments in the 
 establishments of the Bishops, Abbots, Abbesses, and Earls. Others 
 made over their free property to become tenants at will of such Lords, 
 as from their age or other circumstances, they thought would be called 
 to no further military services. Others, even privately took away the 
 
 * Compare with this the four or five discover parallels, or at ieast, equivalent 
 
 quarto vols. of the present French Conscript hardships to these, in the treatment of, and 
 
 Code. regulations concerning the reluctant con- 
 
 f It would require uo great ingenuity to scripts.
 
 Essay 12. 51 
 
 life of their mothers, aunts, or other of their relatives, in order that no 
 family residents might remain through whom their names might be 
 known, and themselves traced ; others voluntarily made slaves of them- 
 selves, in order thus to render themselves incapable of the military 
 rank." 
 
 When this extract was first published, namely, September 7, 1809, I 
 prefixed the following sentence. " This passage contains so much 
 matter for political anticipation and well-grounded hope, that I feel no 
 apprehension of the reader's being dissatisfied with its length." I trust, 
 that I may derive the same confidence from his genial exultation, as a 
 Christian ; and from his honest pride as a Briton ; in the retrospect of 
 its completion. In this belief I venture to conclude the essay with the 
 following extract from a " Comparison of the French Republic, under 
 Buonaparte, with the Roman Empire under the first Csesars," published 
 by me in the Morning Post, Tuesday, 21 Sept., 1802. 
 
 " If then there be no counterpoise of dissimilar circumstances, the 
 prospect is gloomy indeed. The commencement of the public 
 slavery in Rome was in the most splendid a;ra of human genius. Any 
 unusually nourishing period of the arts and sciences in any country is, 
 even to this day, called the Augustan age of that country. The Roman 
 poets, the Roman historians, the Roman orators, rivalled those of Greece ; 
 in military tactics, in machinery, in all the conveniences of private life, 
 the Romans greatly surpassed the Greeks. With few exceptions, all the 
 emperors, even the worst of them, were, like Buonaparte,* the liberal 
 encouragers of all great public works, and of every species of public 
 merit not connected with the assertion of political freedom. 
 
 ' Juvenes, circumspicit et agitat vos, 
 Materiamque sibi Ducis indulgentia qusriL" 
 
 " It is even so, at this present moment, in France. Yet, both in France 
 and in Rome, we have learned, that the most abject dispositions to 
 slavery rapidly trod on the heels of the most outrageous fanaticism for 
 an almost anarchical liberty. Urn- re in xtn-if-ium patres et populum. 
 Peace and the coadunation of all the civilised provinces of the earth 
 were the grand and plausible pretexts of Roman despotism : the dege- 
 
 * Imitators succeed better in copying the mangled in 'a most libellous work of Aulus 
 
 vices than the excellences of their archetypes. Ciecina, and he had been grossly lampooned 
 
 Where shall \ve find in the First Consul of in some verses by Pitholaus; but he bore 
 
 France a counterpart to the generous and both with the temper of a good citi. 
 dreadless clemency of the first Ca?sar ? For this part of the First Consul's cliarac- 
 
 livquenubus satis habuit pro condone ter, if common report speaks the truth, we 
 
 d'.'tmnc'.are, ne )>et severarent. Antique must seek a parallel in the dispositions of the 
 
 Gecina' crimii/osisMuio libro, et Htholai third Ctesar, who dreaded the pen of a para- 
 
 carmimbus maledicentissimis laceratam ex- graph writer, hinting aught against his murals 
 
 istimatioin m -uam civili auimo tulit. and measures, with as great anxiety, and 
 
 It deserves translation lor our English with as vindictive feelings, as if it had been 
 
 readers. " Jf any spoke bitterly against him, the dagger of an assassin lifttd up against 
 
 he held it sufficient to complain of it publicly, his life. From the third C*sar, too, he 
 
 to prevent them Irum persevering in the use adopted the abrogation of all popular elec- 
 
 of such language. His character had been tious.
 
 52 The Friend. 
 
 iieracy of the human species itself, in all the nations so blended, was the 
 melancholy effect. To-morrow, therefore, we shall endeavour to detect 
 all those points and circumstances of dissimilarity, which, though they 
 cannot impeach the rectitude of the parallel, for the present, may yet 
 render it probable, that as the same Constitution of Government has been 
 built up in France with incomparably greater rapidity, so it may have 
 an incomparably shorter duration. We are not conscious of any feelings 
 of bitterness towards the First Consul ; or, if any, only that venial 
 prejudice, which naturally results from the having hoped proudly of any 
 individual, and the having been miserably disappointed. But we will 
 not voluntarily cease to think freely and speak openly. We owe grateful 
 hearts and uplifted hands of thanksgiving to the Divine Providence, 
 that there is yet one European country (and that country our own) in 
 which the actions of public men may be boldly analysed, and the result 
 publicly stated. And let the Chief Consul, who professes in all things 
 to follow his fate, learn to submit to it, if he finds that it is still his fate 
 to struggle with the spirit of English freedom, and the virtues which are 
 the offspring of that spirit ! If he finds that the genius of Great Britain, 
 which blew up his Egyptian navy into the air, and blighted his Syrian 
 laurels, still follows him with a calm and dreadful eye ; and in peace, 
 equally as in war, still watches for tljat liberty, in which alone the 
 genius of our isle lives, and moves, and has its being ; and which being 
 lost, all our commercial and naval greatness would instantly languish, 
 like a flower, the root of which had been silently eaten away by a worm ; 
 and without which, in any country, the public festivals, and pompous 
 merriments of a nation present no other spectacle to the eye of reason, 
 than a mob of maniacs dancing in their fetters." 
 
 ESSAY XIII. 
 
 Must ihere be still some discord mixed among 
 The harmony of men, whose mood accords 
 Best with contention tuned to notes of wrong? 
 That when war fails, peace must make war with words, 
 With words unto destruction armed more strong 
 Than ever were our foreign foemen's swords : 
 Making as deep, though not yet bleeding wounds: 
 What war left scarless, calumny confounds. 
 
 Tnith lies entrapped where cunning finds no bar : 
 Since no proportion can there be betwixt 
 Our actions which in endless motions are, 
 And ordinances which are always flxt 
 Ten thousand laws more cannot reach so far, 
 But malice goes beyond, or lives commix t 
 So close with goodness, that it ever will, 
 Corrupt, disguise, or counterfeit it still.
 
 Essay 13. 63 
 
 And therefore would our glorious Alfred, who 
 Joined wilh the King's the good man's Majesty, 
 Not leave law's labyrinth without a clue 
 Gave to deep skill its just authority, 
 
 But tfce last Judgment (this his jury's plan) 
 Left to the natural sense of work-day man. 
 
 Adapted from an elder Poet. 
 
 WE recur to the dilemma stated in our eighth number. How shall we 
 solve this problem ? Its solution is to be found in that spirit which, 
 like the universal menstruum sought for by the old alchemists, can 
 blend and harmonize the most discordant elements it is to be found in 
 the spirit of a rational freedom diffused and become national, in the 
 consequent influence and control of public opinion, and in its most 
 precious organ, the jury. It is to be found, wherever juries are 
 sufficiently enlightened to perceive the difference, and to comprehend 
 the origin and necessity of the difference, between libels and other 
 criminal overt-acts, and are sufficiently independent to act upon the 
 conviction, that in a charge of libel, the degree, the circumstances, and 
 the intention, constitute (not merely modify) the offence, give it its 
 being, and determine its legal name. The words " maliciously and 
 advisedly," must here have a force of their own, and a proof of their 
 own. They will consequently consider the written law as a blank 
 power provided for the punishment of the offender, not as a light by 
 which they are to determine and discriminate the offence. The un- 
 derstanding and conscience of the jury are the judges in toto: the 
 statute a blank conge d? dire. The statute is the clay and those the 
 potter's wheel. Shame fall on that man, who shall labour to confound 
 what reason and nature have put asunder, and who at once, as far as in 
 him lies, would render the press ineffectual and the law odious ; who 
 would lock up the main river, the Thames of our intellectual commerce ; 
 would throw a bar across the stream, that must render its navigation 
 dangerous or partial, using as his materials the very banks that were 
 intended to deepen its channel and guard against its inundations! 
 Shame fall on him, and a participation of the infamy of those, who 
 misled an English jury to the murder of Algernon Sidney ! 
 
 But though the virtuous intention of the writer must be allowed a 
 certain influence in facilitating his acquittal, the degree of his moral 
 guilt is not the true index or mete-wand of his condemnation. For 
 juries do not sit in a court of conscience, but of law ; they are not the 
 representatives of religion, but the guardians of external tranquillity.. 
 The leading principle, the Pole Star, of the judgment in its decision 
 concerning the libellous nature of a published writing, is its more or less 
 remote connection with after overt-acts, as the cause or occasion of the 
 same. Thus the publication of actual facts may be, and most often will
 
 51 The Friend. 
 
 be, criminal and libellous, when directed against private characters : not 
 only because the charge will reach the minds of many who cannot be 
 competent judges of the truth or falsehood of facts to which themselves 
 were not witnesses, against a man whom they do not know, or at best 
 know imperfectly ; but because such a publication is of itself a very 
 serious overt-act, by which the author, without authority and without 
 trial, has inflicted punishment on a fellow-subject, himself being witness 
 and jury, judge and executioner. Of such publications there can be no 
 legal justification, though the wrong may l>e palliated by the circum- 
 stance that the injurious charges are not only true but wholly out of the 
 reach of the law. But in libels on the government there are two things 
 to be balanced against each other: first, the incomparably greater 
 mischief of the overt-acts, supposing them actually occasioned by the 
 libel (as for instance, the subversion of government and property, if 
 the principles taught by Thomas Paine had been realized, or if even an 
 attempt had been made to realize them, by the many thousands of his 
 readers) ; and second, the very great improbability that such effects will 
 be produced by such writings. Government concerns all generally, and 
 no one in particular. The facts are commonly as well known to the 
 readers as to the writer, and falsehood therefore easily detected. It is 
 proved, likewise, by experience, that the frequency of open political dis- 
 cussion, with all its blameable indiscretions, indisposes a nation to overt- 
 acts of practical sedition or conspiracy. They talk ill, said Charles the 
 Fifth, of his Belgian provinces, but they suffer so much the better for it. 
 His successor thought differently : he determined to be master of their 
 words and opinions, as well as of their actions, and in consequence lost 
 one half of those provinces, arid retained the other half at an expense of 
 strength and treasure greater than the original worth of the whole. An 
 enlightened jury, therefore, will require proofs of some more than 
 ordinary malignity of intention, as furnished by the style, price, mode of 
 circulation, and so forth ; or of punishable indiscretion arising out of the 
 state of the times, as of dearth, for instance, or of whatever other 
 calamity is likely to render the lower classes turbulent and apt to be 
 alienated from the government of their country. For the absence of a 
 right disposition of mind must be considered both in law and in morals, 
 as nearly equivalent to the presence of a wrong disposition. Under such 
 circumstances the legal paradox, that a libel may be the more a libel 
 for being true, becomes strictly just, and as such ought to be acted 
 upon. 
 
 Concerning the right of punishing by law the authors of heretical or 
 'deistical writings, I reserve my remarks for a future Essay, in which I 
 hope to state the grounds and limits of toleration more accurately than 
 they seem to me to have been hitherto traced. There is one maxim, 
 however, which I am tempted to seize as it passes across me. If I may
 
 Essay 13. 55 
 
 trust my own memory, it is indeed a very old truth : and yet if the 
 fashion of acting in apparent ignorance thereof be any presumption of its 
 novelty, it ought to be new, or at least have become so by courtesy of 
 oblivion. It is this: that as lar as human practice can realize the sharp 
 limits and exclusive proprieties of science, law and religion should be 
 kept distinct. There is, strictly speaking, no proper opposition but 
 between the two polar forces of one and the same power.* If I say then, 
 that law and religion are natural opposites, and that the latter is the 
 requisite counterpoise of the former, let it not be interpreted, as if I had 
 declared them to be contraries. The law has rightfully invested the 
 creditor with the power of arresting and imprisoning an insolvent debtor ; 
 the farmer with the power of transporting, mediately at least, the 
 pillagers of his hedges and copses ; but the law does not compel him to 
 exercise that power, while it will often happen, that religion commands 
 him to forego it. Nay, so well was this understood by our grandfathers, 
 that a man who squares his conscience by the law was a common para- 
 phrase or synonyme of a wretch without any conscience at all. We 
 have all of us learnt from history, that there was a long and dark period 
 during which the powers and the aims of law were usurped in the name 
 of religion by the clergy and the courts spiritual : and we all know 
 the result. Law and religion thus interpenetrating neutralized each 
 other ; and the baleful product, or tertium aliquid, of this union re- 
 tarded the civilization of Europe for centuries. Law splintered into the 
 minutiae of religion, whose awful function and prerogative it is to take 
 acccount of every " idle word," became a busy and inquisitorial tyranny : 
 and religion substituting legal terrors for the ennobling influences of 
 conscience remained religion in name only. The present age appears to 
 me approaching fast to a similar usurpation of the functions of religion 
 by law : and if it were required, I should not want strong presumptive 
 proofs in favour of this opinion, whether I sought for them in the charges 
 from the bench concerning wrongs, to which religion denounces the 
 fearful penalties of guilt, but for which the law of the land assigns 
 damages only : or in sundry statutes, and (all praise to the late Mr. 
 
 * Every power in nature and in spirit thesis. Thus water is neither oxygen nor 
 
 must evolve an opposite, us the sole means hydrogen, nor yet is it a commixture of 
 
 and condition of its manifestation: and all both ; but the synthesis or indifference of the 
 
 opposition is a tendeucy to reunion. This two: and as long as the copula endures, by 
 
 is the universal law of polarity or essential which it becomes water, or rather winch 
 
 dualism, first promulgated by Heraclltus, alone is water, it is not less a simple body 
 
 Juiiu years afterwards republished, and made than either of the imaginary elements, im- 
 
 the foundation both of logic, of physics, and properly called iu ingredients or components, 
 
 of metaphysics by Giordano Bruno. The It is the object of the mechanical atomistic 
 
 principle may be thus expressed. The philosophy to confound synthesis with syn- 
 
 kleiinty of thesis and anlithr a is is the sub- artesis, or rather w ith mere juxtaposition of 
 
 stance of all being ; their opposition the corpuscles separated by invisible interspaces, 
 
 condition of all existence, or being mar.i- J find it difficult to determine, whether this 
 
 fested; and every thing or phenomenon is theory contradicts the reason or th- 
 
 the exponent of a synthesis as long as the most ; for it is alike inconceivable and un- 
 
 opposite energies are retained in that i-yu- imaginable.
 
 56 The Friend. 
 
 Wyndham, Bomanorum ultimo) in a still greater number of attempts 
 towards new statutes, the authors of which displayed the most pitiable 
 ignorance, not merely of the distinction between perfected and im- 
 perfected obligations, but even of that still more sacred distinction 
 between things and persons. What the Son of Sirach advises con- 
 cerning the soul, every senator should apply to his legislative capacity 
 reverence it in meekness, knowing how feeble and how mighty a 
 thing it is ! 
 
 From this hint concerning toleration, we may pass by an easy tran- 
 sition to the, perhaps, still more interesting subject of tolerance. And 
 here I fully coincide with Frederic H. Jacobi, that the only true spirit 
 of tolerance consists in our conscientious toleration of each other's into- 
 lerance. Whatever pretends to be more than this, is either the un- 
 thinking cant of fashion, or the soul-palsying narcotic of moral and 
 religious indifference. All of us without exception, in the same mode 
 though not in the same degree, are necessarily subjected to the risk of 
 mistaking positive opinions for certainty and clear insight. From this 
 yoke we cannot free ourselves, but by ceasing to be men ; and this, too, 
 not in order to transcend but to sink below our human nature. For if in 
 one point of view it be the mulct of our fall, and of the corruption of 
 our will ; it is equally true, that contemplated from another point, it is 
 the price and consequence of our progressiveness. To him who is 
 compelled to pace to and fro within the high walls and in the narrow 
 court-yarfl of a prison, all objects may appear clear and distinct. It is 
 the traveller journeying onward, full of heart and hope, with an ever- 
 varying horizon, on the boundless plain, that is liable to mistake clouds 
 for mountains, and the mirage of drought for an expanse of refreshing 
 waters. 
 
 But notwithstanding this deep conviction of our general fallibility, 
 and the most vivid recollection of my own, I dare avow with the German 
 philosopher, that as far as opinions, and not motives ; principles, and 
 not men, are concerned ; I neither am tolerant, nor wish to be regarded 
 as such. According to my judgment, it is mere ostentation, or a poor 
 trick that hypocrisy plays with the cards of nonsense, when a man 
 makes protestation of being perfectly tolerant in respect of all princi- 
 ples, opinions, and persuasions, those alone excepted which render the 
 holders intolerant. For he either means to say by this, that he is 
 utterly indifferent towards all truth, and finds nothing so insufferable as 
 the persuasion of there being any such mighty value or importance 
 attached to the possession of the Truth as should give a marked 
 preference to any one conviction above any other ; or else he means 
 nothing, and amuses himself with articulating the pulses of the air 
 instead of inhaling it in the more healthful and profitable exercise of 
 yawning. That which doth not withstand hath itself no standing
 
 Essay 13. 57 
 
 place. To fill a station is to exclude or repel others, and this is not 
 less the definition of moral, than of material, solidity. We live by 
 continued acts of defence, that involve a sort of offensive warfare. But 
 a man's principles, on which he grounds his hope and his faith, are 
 the life of his life. We live by faith, says the philosophic Apostle ; and 
 faith without principles is but a flattering phrase for wilful positive- 
 ness, or fanatical bodily sensation. Well, and of good right therefore, 
 do we maintain with more zeal, than we should defend body or estate, a 
 deep and inward conviction, which is as the moon to us ; and like the 
 moon with all its massy shadows and deceptive gleams, it yet lights us 
 on our way, poor travellers as we are, and benighted pilgrims. With all 
 its spots and changes and temporary eclipses, with all its vain halos 
 and bedimming vapours, it yet reflects the light that is to rise on us, 
 which even now is rising, though intercepted from our immediate view 
 by the mountains that enclose and frown over the vale of our mortal 
 life. 
 
 This again is the mystery and the dignity of our human nature, that 
 we cannot give \ip our reason, without giving up at the same time our 
 individual personality. For that must appear to each man to be his 
 reason which produces in him the highest sense of certainty ; and yet it 
 is not reason, except as far as it is of universal validity and obliga- 
 tory on all mankind. There is one heart for the whole mighty mass of 
 humanity, and every pulse in each particular vessel strives to beat in 
 concert with it. He who asserts that truth is of no importance except 
 in the sense of sincerity, confounds sense with madness, and the word of 
 God with a dream. If the power of reasoning be the gift of the Supreme 
 Reason, that we be sedulous, yea, and militant in the endeavour to reason 
 aright, is His implied command. But what is of permanent and 
 essential interest to one man must needs be so to all, in proportion to the 
 means and opportunities of each. Woe to him by whom these are 
 neglected, and double woe to him by whom they are withheld ; for he 
 robs at once himself and his neighbour. That man's soul is not dear to 
 himself, to whom the souls of his brethren are not dear. As far as they 
 can be influenced by him, they are parts and properties of his own soul, 
 their faith his faith, their errors his burthen, their righteousness and bliss 
 his righteousness and his reward and of their guilt and misery his own 
 will be the echo. As much as I love my fellow-men, so much and no 
 more will I be intolerant of their heresies and unbelief and I will 
 honour and hold forth the right hand of fellowship to every individual 
 who is equally intolerant of that which he conceives such in me. We 
 will both exclaim I know not what antidotes among the complex 
 views, impulses, and circumstances, that form your moral being, God's 
 gracious Providence may have vouchsafed to you against the serpent 
 fang of this error but it is a viper, and its poison deadly, although
 
 58 The Friend. 
 
 through higher influences some men may take the reptile to their bosom, 
 and remain unstung. 
 
 In one of those viperous journals, which deal out profaneness, hate, 
 fury, and sedition throughout the land, I read the following paragraph. 
 " The Brahman believes that every man will be saved in his own 
 persuasion, and that all religions are equally pleasing to the God of all. 
 The Christian confines salvation to the believer in his own Vedas and 
 Shasters. Which is the more humane and philosophic creed of the 
 two ?" Let question answer question. Self-complacent scoffer ! Whom 
 meanest thou by GOD ? The God of truth 1 and can He be pleased with. 
 falsehood and the debasement or utter suspension of the reason which 
 He gave to man that He might receive from him the sacrifice of truth ? 
 Or the God of love and mercy ? And can He be pleased with the blood 
 of thousands poured out under the wheels of Jaggernaut, or with the 
 shrieks of children offered up as fire-offerings to Baal or to Moloch ? Or 
 dost thou mean the God of holiness and infinite purity ? and can He be 
 pleased with abominations unutterable and more than brutal defilements ? 
 and equally pleased too as with that religion, which commands us that 
 we have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but to 
 reprove them? With that religion, which strikes the fear of the Most 
 High so deeply, and the sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin so 
 inwardly, that the Believer anxiously inquires : " Shall I give my 
 first-bom for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
 soul ?" and which makes answer to him : " He hath shewed thee, O 
 man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to 
 do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."* 
 But I check myself. It is at once folly and profanation of truth, to 
 reason with the man who can place before his eyes a minister of the 
 Gospel directing the eye of the widow from the corpse of her husband 
 upward to his and her Eedeemer (the God of the living and not of the 
 dead), and then the remorseless Brahmin goading on the disconsolate 
 victim to the flames of her husband's funeral pile, abandoned by, and 
 abandoning, the helpless pledges of their love and yet dare ask, which is 
 the more humane and philosophic creed of the two ? No ! No ! when 
 such opinions are in question I neither am, or will be, or wish to be 
 regarded as, tolerant. 
 
 * Micah vi. 7, 8.
 
 Essay 14. 59 
 
 ESSAY XIV. 
 
 Knowing the heart of man is set to be 
 The centre of this world, about the which 
 These revolutions of disturbances 
 Still roll ; where all th' aspects of misery 
 Predominate ; whose strong effects are snch, 
 As he must bear, being powerless to redress : 
 And that unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is Man ! 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 1HAVE thus endeavoured, with an anxiety which may perhaps have 
 misled me into prolixity, to detail and ground the conditions under 
 which the communication of truth is commanded or forbidden to us' as 
 individuals, by our conscience ; and those too, under which it is 
 permissible by the law which controls our conduct as members of the 
 state. But is the subject of sufficient importance to deserve so minute 
 an examination ? O that my readers would look round the world, as it 
 now is, and make to themselves a faithful catalogue of its many 
 miseries ! From what do these proceed, and on what do they depend 
 for their continuance ? Assuredly for the greater part on the actions of 
 men, and those again on the want of a vital principle of action. We 
 live by faith. The essence of virtue consists in the principle. And the 
 reality of this, as well as its importance, is believed by all men in fact, 
 few as there may be who bring the truth forward into the light of distinct 
 consciousness. Yet all men feel, and at times acknowledge to themselves, 
 the true cause of their misery. There is no man so base, but that at 
 some time or other, and in some way or other, he admits that he is not 
 what he ought to be, though by a curious art of self-delusion, by an 
 effort to keep at peace with himself as long and as much as possible, he 
 will throw off the blame from the amenable part of his nature, his 
 moral principle, to that which is independent of his will, namely, the 
 of his intellectual faculties. Hence, for once that a man exclaims, 
 How dishonest I am, on what base and unworthy motives I act ! we may 
 hear a hundred times, What a fool I am ! curse on my folly ! * and the 
 like. 
 
 Yet eTen this implies an obscure sentiment, that with clearer concep- 
 tions in the understanding, the principle of action would become purer 
 in the will. Thanks to the image of our Maker not wholly obliterated 
 from any human soul, we dare not purchase an exemption from guilt by 
 an excuse, which would place our amelioration out of our own power. 
 
 * We do not consider as exceptions the and rottenness of their hearts, are then 
 
 thousands that abuse themselves by rote with commonly the warmest in their own good 
 
 Hp-penltence, or the wild ravings of fanati- opinion, covered round and comfortable in 
 
 cisrn : for these persons at the very time the imzp-roscal of self-hypocrisy, 
 they speak so vehemently of the wickedness
 
 60 The Friend. 
 
 Thus the very man, who will abuse himself for a fool but not for a 
 villain, would rather, spite of the usual professions to the contrary, be 
 condemned as a rogue by other men, than be acquitted as a blockhead. 
 But be this as it may, out of himself, however, he sees plainly the true 
 cause of our common complaints. Doubtless, there seem many physical 
 causes of distress, of disease, of poverty and of desolation tempests, 
 earthquakes, volcanoes, wild or venomous animals, barren soils, uncertain 
 or tyrannous climates, pestilential swamps, and death in the very air we 
 breathe. Yet when do we hear the general wretchedness of mankind 
 attributed to these? In Iceland, the earth opened and sent forth three 
 or more vast rivers of fire. The smoke and vapour from them dimmed 
 the light of Heaven through all Europe, for months ; even at Cadiz, the 
 sun and moon, for several weeks, seemed turned to blood. What was 
 the amount of the injury to the human race ? sixty men were destroyed, 
 and of these the greater part in consequence of their own imprudence. 
 Natural calamities that do indeed spread devastation wide, (for instance, 
 the Marsh Fever,) are almost without exception, voices of Nature in her 
 all-intelligible language do this ! or cease to do that ! By the mere 
 absence of one superstition, and of the sloth engendered by it, the Plague 
 would cease to exist throughout Asia and Africa. Pronounce medita- 
 tively the name of JENNER, and ask what might we not hope, what need 
 we deem unattainable, if all the time, the effort, the skill, which we 
 waste in making ourselves miserable through vice, and vicious through 
 misery, were embodied and marshalled to a systematic war against the 
 existing evils of nature ? No, " It is a wicked world !" This is so 
 generally the solution, that this very wickedness is assigned by selfish men, 
 as their excuse for doing nothing to render it better, and for opposing 
 those who would make the attempt. What have not Clarkson, Granville 
 Sharp, Wilberforce, and the Society of the Friends, effected for the honour, 
 and if we believe in a retributive Providence, for the continuance of the 
 prosperity of the English nation, imperfectly as the intellectual and 
 moral faculties of the people at large are developed at present ? What 
 may not be effected, if the recent discovery of the means of educating 
 nations (freed, however, from the vile sophistications and mutilations of 
 ignorant mountebanks,) shall have been applied to its full extent? 
 Would I frame to myself the most inspiriting representation of future 
 bliss, which my mind is capable of comprehending, it would be embodied 
 to me in the idea of Bell receiving, at some distant period, the appropriate 
 reward of his earthly labours, when thousands and ten thousands of 
 glorified spirits, whose reason and conscience had, through his efforts, 
 been unfolded, shall sing the song of their own redemption, and pouring 
 forth praises to God and to their Saviour, shall repeat his " Xew name ' 
 in Heaven, give thanks for his earthly virtues, as the chosen instruments 
 of divine mercy to themselves, and not seldom, perhaps, turn their ey s
 
 Essay 14. 61 
 
 toward him, as from the sun to its image in the fountain, with secondary 
 gratitude and the permitted utterance of a human love! Were but a 
 hundred men to combine a deep conviction that virtuous habits may be 
 formed by the very means by which knowledge is communicated, that 
 men may be made better, not only in consequence, but by the mode and 
 in the process, of instruction : were but a hundred men to combine that 
 clear conviction of this, which I myself at this moment feel, even as I 
 feel the certainty of my being, with the perseverance of a Clarkson or a 
 Bell, the promises of ancient prophecy would disclose themselves to our 
 faith, even as when a noble castle hidden from us by an intervening mist, 
 discovers itself by its reflection in the tranquil lake, on the opposite 
 shore of which we stand gazing. What an awful duty, what a nurse 
 of all other, the fairest virtues, does not hope become ! We are bad 
 ourselves, because we despair of the goodness of others. 
 
 If then 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 prin- 
 ciple of moral 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 aidanccs given by religion, maybe necessary for him. Vain, 
 of themselves, may be 
 
 The sayings of the wise 
 In ancient and in modern books inrolled 
 
 Unless he feel within 
 Some source of consolation from above, 
 Secret refreshings, that repair his strength 
 And fainting spirits uphold. 
 
 SAMSON AGOKISTES. 
 
 This is not the question. Virtue would not be virtue, could it be 
 given by one fellow-creature to another. To make use of all the means 
 and appliances in our power to the actual attainment of rectitude, 
 is the abstract of the duty which we owe to ourselves : to supply 
 those means as far as we can, comprises our duty to others. The 
 question then is, what are these means ? Can they be any other than 
 the communication of knowledge, and the removal of those evils and 
 impediments which prevent its reception ? It may not be in our 
 power to combine both, but it is in the power of every man to contri- 
 bute to the former, who is sufficiently informed to feel that it is his 
 duty. 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 effective faith presupposes 
 knowledge and individual conviction. If the mere acquiescence in 
 truth, uncomprehended and unfathomed, were sufficient, few iinUcd
 
 62 The Friend. 
 
 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 already an undue proportion. It is highly 
 worthy of observation, that the inspired writings received by Christians 
 are distinguishable from all oth'er books pretending to inspiration, 
 from the scriptures of the Brahmins, and even from the Koran, in their 
 strong and frequent recommendations 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 honour of a man, but to seek after it is again 
 and again commanded us as one of our most sacred duties. 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 its 
 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 its warmth that of the stove, warmth without light. Reli- 
 gion 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 to all others. 
 
 But though knowledge be not the only, yet that it is an indispensable 
 and most effectual agent in the direction of our actions, one considera- 
 tion will convince us. It is an undoubted fact of human nature, that 
 the sense of impossibility quenches all will. Sense of utter inaptitude 
 does the same. The man shuns the beautiful flame, which is eagerly 
 grasped at by the infant. The sense of disproportion of a certain after- 
 harm to present gratification produces effects almost equally uniform : 
 though almost perishing with thirst, we should dash to the earth a 
 goblet of wine in which we had seen a poison infused, though the poison 
 were without taste or odour, or even added to the pleasures of both. 
 Are not all our vices equally inapt to the universal end of human 
 actions, the satisfaction of the agent ? Are not their pleasures equally 
 disproportionate to the after-harm ? Yet many a maiden, who will not 
 grasp at the fire, will yet purchase a wreath of diamonds at the price of 
 her health, her honour, nay (and she herself knows it at the moment of 
 her choice) at the sacrifice of her peace and happiness. The sot would 
 reject the poisoned cup, yet the trembling hand with which he raises 
 his daily or hourly draught to his lips, has not left him ignorant that 
 this too is altogether a poison. I know, it will be objected, that the 
 consequences foreseen are less immediate ; that they are diffused over a 
 larger space of time ; and that the slave of vice hopes where no hope is. 
 This, however, only removes the question one step further : for why 
 should the distance or diffusion of known consequences produce so
 
 Essay 14. 
 
 63 
 
 great a difference ? Why are men the dupes of the present moment ? 
 Evidently because the conceptions are indistinct in the one case, and 
 vivid in the other ; because all confused conceptions render us restless ; 
 and because restlessness can drive us to vices that promise no enjoy- 
 ment, no not even the cessation of that restlessness. This is indeed 
 the dread punishment attached by nature to habitual vice, that its im- 
 pulses wax as its motives wane. No object, not even the light of a 
 solitary taper in the far distance, tempts the benighted mind from 
 before ; but its own restlessness dogs it from behind, as with the iron 
 goad of destiny. What then is or can be the preventive, the remedy, 
 the counteraction, but the habituation of the intellect to clear, distinct, 
 and adequate conceptions concerning all things that are the possible 
 objects of clear conception, and thus to reserve the deep feelings which 
 belong, as by a natural right to those obscure ideas * that are necessary to 
 the moral perfection of the human being, notwithstanding, yea, even in 
 consequence, of their obscurity to reserve these feelings, I repeat, for 
 objects, which their very sublimity renders indefinite, no less than their 
 indefmiteness renders them sublime : namely, to the ideas of being, 
 form, life, the reason, the law of conscience, freedom, immortality, God ! 
 To connect with the objects of our senses the obscure notions and conse- 
 quent vivid feelings, which are due only to immaterial and permanent 
 things, is profanation relatively to the heart, and superstition in the 
 understanding. It is in this sense, that the philosophic Apostle calls 
 covetousness idolatry. Could we emancipate ourselves from the be- 
 dimming influences of custom, and the transforming witchcraft of 
 early associations, we should see as numerous tribes of fetish-worship- 
 pers in the streets of London and Paris, as we hear of on the coasts of 
 Africa. 
 
 * I have not expressed myself as clearly 
 as I conld wish. But the truth of the asser- 
 tion, that deep feeling has a tendency to 
 combine with olecure ideas, in preference to 
 distinct and clear notions, may be proved by 
 the history of fanatics and fanaticism in all 
 ages and countries. The odium theologicnm 
 is even proverbial : and it is the common 
 complaint of philosophers and philosophic 
 
 historians, that the passions of the di.-putants 
 are commonly violent in proportion to the 
 subtlety and obscurity of the questions in 
 dispute. Nor is this fact confined to pro- 
 fessional theologians : for whole nations have 
 displayed the same agitations, and have 
 sacrificed national policy to the more power- 
 ful interest of a controverted obscurity.
 
 64 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY XV. 
 
 A palace when 'tis that which it should be 
 Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays ; 
 With him who dwells there, 'tis not so : for he 
 Should still urge upward, and his fortune raise. 
 
 Our bodies had their morning, have their noon, 
 And shall not better the next change is night ; 
 But their far larger guest, t' whom sun and moon 
 Are sparks and short-lived, claims another right. 
 
 The noble soul by age grows lustier, 
 Her appetite and her digestion mend ; 
 We must not starve nor hope to pamper her 
 With woman's milk and pap unto the end. 
 
 Provide you manlier diet ! DOKSE. 
 
 I AM fully aware, that what lam writing and have written (in these latter 
 essays at least) will expose me to the censure of some, as bewildering 
 myself and readers with metaphysics ; to the ridicule of others as a 
 schoolboy declaimer on old and worn-out truisms or exploded fancies ; 
 and to the objection of most as obscure. The last real or supposed 
 defect has already received an answer both in the preceding Numbers, 
 and in the Appendix to the author's first Lay Sermon, entitled " The 
 Statesman's Manual." Of the two former, I shall take the present 
 opportunity of declaring my sentiments : especially as I have already 
 received a hint that my " idol, Milton, has represented metaphysics as 
 the subject which the bad spirits in hell delight in discussing." And 
 truly, if I had exerted my subtlety and invention in persuading myself 
 and others that we are but living machines, and that (as one of the late 
 followers of Hobbes and Hartley has expressed the system) the assassin 
 and his dagger are equally fit objects of moral esteem and abhorrence ; 
 or if with a writer of wider influence and higher authority, I had re- 
 duced all virtue to a selfish prudence eked out by superstition, (for 
 assuredly a creed which takes its central point in conscious selfishness, 
 whatever be the forms or names that act on the selfish passion, a ghost 
 or a constable, can have but a distant relationship to that religion, 
 which places its essence in our loving our neighbour a* ourselves, and 
 God above all,) I know not by what arguments I could repel the sarcasm. 
 But what are my metaphysics ? merely the referring of the mind to its 
 own consciousness for truths indispensable to its own happiness ! To 
 what purposes do I or am I about to employ them ? To perplex our 
 clearest notions and living moral instincts ? To deaden the feelings of 
 will and free power, to extinguish the light of love and of conscience, to 
 make myself and others worthless, soul-less, God-less? No! to expose 
 the folly and the legerdemain of those who have thus abused the blessed 
 machine of language ; to support all old and venerable truths ; and by
 
 Essay 15. 65 
 
 them to support, to kindle, to project the spirit ; to make the reason 
 spread light over our feelings, to make our feelings, with their vital 
 warmth, actualize our reason : these are my objects, these are my 
 subjects, and are these the metaphysics which the bad spirits in hell 
 delight in ? 
 
 But how shall I avert the scorn of those critics who laugh at the 
 oldness of my topics, evil and good, necessity and arbitremeut, immor- 
 tality and the ultimate aim ? By what shall I regain their favour ? Jly 
 themes must be new, a French constitution ; a ballcon ; a change of 
 ministry; a fresh batch of kings on the Continent, or of peers in our 
 happier island ; or who had the best of it of two parliamentary glaiiia- 
 tors, and whose speech, on the subject of Europe bleeding at a thousand 
 wounds, or our own country struggling for herself and all human nature, 
 was cheered by the greatest number of " laughs," " loud laughs," and 
 " very loud laughs :" (which, carefully marked by italics, form most 
 conspicuous and strange parentheses in the newspaper reports.) Or if I 
 must be philosophical, the last chemical discoveries, provided I do not 
 trouble my reader with the principle which gives them their highest 
 interest, and the character of intellectual grandeur to the discoverer ; 
 or the last shower of stones, and that they were supposed, by certain 
 philosophers, to have been projected from some volcano in the moon, 
 taking care, however, not to add any of the cramp reasons for this 
 opinion ! Something new, however, it must be, quite new and quite 
 out of themselves! for whatever is within them, whatever is deep within 
 them, must be as old as the first dawn of human reason. But to find 
 no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the 
 Ancient of Days with feelings as fresh as if they then sprang forth at 
 His own fiat, this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the 
 world, and may help to unravel it ! To carry on the feelings of child- 
 hood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of won- 
 der and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty 
 years has rendered familiar, 
 
 With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, 
 And man and woman 
 
 this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which 
 distinguish genius from talent. And so to represent familiar objects as 
 to awaken the minds of others to a like freshness of sensation concern- 
 ing them (that constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, 
 convalescence) to the same modest questioning of a self-discovered 
 and intelligent ignorance, which, like the deep and massy foundations 
 of a Roman bridge, forms half of the whole structure (prw'' 
 gatio dimidium xci< atice, says Lord Bacon) this is the prime merit of 
 genius, and its most unequi vocal mode of manifestation. "\Vho has not,
 
 66 The Friend. 
 
 a thousand times, seen it snow upon water? Who has not seeu it with 
 a new feeling, since he has read Burns's comparison of sensual pleasure to 
 
 the snowfall in the river, 
 A moment white then melts for ever ! 
 
 fn philosophy, equally as in poetry, genius produces the strongest 
 impressions of novelty, while it rescues the stalest and most admitted 
 truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their 
 universal admission. Extremes meet a proverb, by-the-by, to collect and 
 explain all the instances and exemplifications of which, would constitute 
 and exhaust all philosophy. Truths, of all others the most awful and mys- 
 terious, yet being at the same time of universal interest, are too often 
 considered as so true that they 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 as the class of critics, whose contempt I have anticipated, com- 
 monly consider themselves as men of the world, instead of hazarding 
 additional sneers by appealing to the authorities of recluse philosophers, 
 (for such, in spite of all history, the men who have distinguished them- 
 selves by profound thought, are generally deemed, from Plato and Aris- 
 totle to Cicero, and from Bacon to Berkeley,) I will refer them 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-companion of those who pride themselves on uniting the scholar 
 with the gentleman. This accomplished man of the world has given us 
 an account of the subjects of conversation between himself and the 
 illustrious statesman who governed, and the brightest luminaries who 
 then adorned the empire of the civilized world : 
 
 Sermo oritur non de villis dcmibusve alienis, 
 
 ffec male, necne, lepus sattet. Sed quod, magis ad nos 
 
 Pertinet, et nescire malum eft, affitamus : utrumne 
 
 Jtivitiis homines, an sint virtute beatif 
 
 Et qua sit natura txmi f summumque quid ejus t 
 
 HORAT. SERM. L. II. Sat 6. v. 71.* 
 
 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. Would to Heaven that the verdict to be 
 passed on my labours depended on those who least needed them ! The 
 water-lily in the midst of waters lifts up its broad leaves, and expands 
 its petals at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain 
 with a quicker sympathy than the parched shrub in the sandy desert. 
 
 * (Literal Translation.) Conversation an evil not to know : whether men are made 
 
 arises not concerning the country seats or happy l>y riches or by virtue? And in what 
 
 iiimiiiesof strangers, nor whether the dancing consists the nature of good? and what is the 
 
 hare performed well cr ill. But we discuss ultimate or supreme good? (i.e. the summum 
 
 what more nearly concerns us, and which it U bonum.)
 
 Essay 15. 67 
 
 God created man in His own image. To be the image of His o\vu 
 eternity created He man ! Of eternity and self-existence what other likeness 
 is possible in a finite being, but immortality and moral self-determination ? 
 In addition to sensation, perception, and practical judgment (instinctive 
 or acquirable), concerning the notices furnished by the organs of percep- 
 tion, all which, in kind at least, the dog possesses in common with his 
 master ; in addition to these, God gave us reason, and with reason He 
 gave us reflective self-consciousness ; gave us principles, distinguished 
 from the maxims and generalizations of outward experience by their 
 absolute and essential universality and necessity ; and above all, by 
 superadding to reason the mysterious faculty of free-will and consequent 
 personal amenability, He gave us conscience thatlaw of conscience, which 
 in the power, and as the indwelling word, of a holy and omnipotent 
 legislator commands us from among the numerous ideas mathematical 
 and philosophical, which the reason by the necessity of its own excellence 
 creates for itself, unconditionally commands us to attribute reality, and 
 actual existence, to those ideas and to those only, without which the 
 conscience itself would be baseless and contradictory, to the ideas of soul, 
 of free-will, of immortality, and of God ! 
 
 To God, as the Reality of the conscience and the Source of all obliga- 
 tion; to free- will, as the power of the human being to maintain the 
 obedience, which God through the conscience has commanded, against 
 all the might of nature ; and to the immortality of the soul, as a state 
 in which the weal and woe of man shall be proportioned to his moral 
 worth. 
 
 With this faith all nature, 
 
 Of eye and ear 
 
 all the mighty world 
 
 presents itself to us, now as the aggregated material of duty, and now as 
 a vision of the Most High revealing to us the mode, and time, and ] -ar- 
 ticular instance of applying and realizing that universal rule, pre- 
 established in the heart of our reason ! 
 
 "The displeasure of some readers may, perhaps, be incurred by my 
 having surprised them into certain reflections and inquiries, for which 
 they have no curiosity. But perhaps some others may be pleased to 
 find themselves carried into ancient times, even though they should con- 
 sider the hoary maxims, defended in these essays, barely as hints to 
 awaken and exercise the inquisitive reader, on points not beneath the 
 attention of the ablest men. Those great men, Pythagoras, Plato, and 
 Aristotle, men the most consummate in politics, who founded states, or 
 instructed princes, or wrote most accurately on public government, were 
 at the same time the most acute at all abstracted and sublime specula- 
 tions : the clearest light being ever necessary to guide the most impor-
 
 68 The Frwwl. 
 
 tant actions. And whatever the world may opine, he who hath not 
 much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, 
 may possibly make a thriving earth-worm, but will most indubitably 
 make a blundering patriot and a sorry state sman." 
 
 BERKELEY'S SIBIS, 350. 
 
 ESSAY XVI. 
 
 Blind is that soul which from this truth can swerve, 
 No state stands sure, but on the grounds of right, 
 Of virtue, knowledge; judgment to preserve, 
 And all the pow'rs of learning requisite : 
 Though other shifts a present turn may serve, 
 Yet In the trial they will weigh too light. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 I EARNESTLY entreat the reader not to be dissatisfied either with him- 
 self or with the author, if he should not at once understand every part 
 of the preceding number ; but rather to consider it as a mere annuncia- 
 tion of a magnificent theme, the different parts of which are to be de- 
 monstrated and developed, explained, illustrated, and exemplified in the 
 progress of the work. I likewise entreat him to peruse with attention 
 and with candour the weighty extract from the judicious Hooker, pre- 
 fixed as the motto to a following number of The Friend. In works of rea- 
 soning, as distinguished from narration of events or statements of facts ; 
 but more particularly in works, the object of which is to make us better 
 acquainted with our own nature, a writer, whose meaning is everywhere 
 comprehended as quickly as his sentences can be read, may indeed have 
 produced an amusing composition, nay, by awakening and re-enlivening 
 our recollections, a useful one ; but most assuredly he will not have 
 added either to the stock of our knowledge, or to the vigour of our in- 
 tellect. For how can we gather strength, but by exercise ? How can a 
 truth, new to us, be made our own without examination and self-ques- 
 tioning ? any new truth, I mean, that relates to the properties of the 
 mind, and its various faculties and affections ! But whatever demands 
 effort, requires time. Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes 
 into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into 
 day through twilight. All speculative truths begin with a postulate, 
 even the truths of geometry. They all suppose an act of the will ; for 
 in the moral being lies the source of the intellectual. The first step to 
 knowledge, or rather the previous condition of all insight into truth, is 
 to dare commune with our very and permanent self. It is Warburton's 
 remark, not The Friend's, that " of all literary exercitatious, whether 
 designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so 
 much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us 
 into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the un-
 
 Essay 16. 69 
 
 derstanding or amuse the imagination ; but these only can improve the 
 heart and form the human mind to wisdom." 
 
 The recluse Hermit ofttimes more doth know 
 
 Of the world's inmost wheels, than worldlings <^", 
 
 As man is of the world, the heart of man 
 
 Is an epitome of God's great book 
 
 Of creatures, and men need no further look. 
 
 DONKE. 
 
 The higher a man's station, the more arduous and full of peril his 
 duties, the more comprehensive should his foresight be, the more rooted 
 his tranquillity concerning life and death. But these are gifts which 
 no experience can bestow, but the experience from within : and there is 
 a nobleness of the whole personal being, to which the contemplation of 
 all events and phenomena in the light of the three master ideas, an- 
 nounced in the foregoing pages, can alone elevate the spirit. Anima 
 sapiens, (says Giordano Bruno, and let the sublime piety of the passage 
 excuse some intermixture of error, or rather let the words, as they well 
 may, be interpreted in a safe sense) aniina sapiens non timet mortem, 
 immo interdum illam ultro appctit, illi ultra occurrit. Manet quippe 
 substantiam omnem pro durations eternitas, pro loco immensitas, pro 
 actu omniformitas. Non levem iyitur ac futilem, atqui gravissimam 
 perfectoque homine dignissimam contemplationis partem persequimur 
 abi divinitatis, naturceque splendorem, fusionem, tt eommunicationem, 
 non in cibo, potu, et ignobiliore quddam materid cum attonitorum seculo 
 perquirimus', sed in augustd Omnipotentis regia, immenso cetherit 
 spacio, in infinita naturae gemince omnia fientis et omnia facientis po- 
 tentia, unde tot astrorum, mundorum inquam et numinum, uni altissimo 
 concinentium atque saltantium absque numero atque fine juxta proposi- 
 tos ubique fines atque ordines, contemplamur. Sic ex visibilium oKterno, 
 immenso et innumerabili effectu, sempiterna immensa ilia Majestas atque 
 bonitas intdlecta conspicitur, proque sua dignitate innumerabilium 
 Deorum (mundorum dico} adsistentia, concinentia, et glorice, ipsius 
 enarratione, immo ad oculos expressa condone glorificatur. Cui im- 
 menso mensum non quadrabit domicilium atque templum ad cujus 
 Majestatis pleuitudinem agnoscendam atque percolendam, numerabifium 
 ministrorum nullus esset ordo. Eia igitur ad omniformis Dei omnifor- 
 mem imaginem conjectemus oculos, vivum et magnum illius admiremttr 
 simulacrum! Ilinc miraculum magnum a Trismegisto appcllabatur 
 homo, qni in Deum transeat quasi i})se sit Deus, qui conatur omnia fieri 
 sicul Deus est omnia; ad objectum sine fine, ubique tamen finiendo, con- 
 tendit, sicut injinitus est Deus, immensus, ubique totus* 
 
 * (Translation.) A wiso spirit does not fear place Immensity, for action omniformity. 
 
 death, nay, soim-times (as in cases of volun- We pursue, therefore, a species of contem- 
 
 lary martyrdom) sec-ks and goes forth to plation not light or futile, but the weightiest 
 
 meet it, of its own accord. For there awaits and most worthy of an accomplished man, 
 
 all actual beings, for duration eternity, for while we examine and seek for the splendour,
 
 70 
 
 The Friend. 
 
 If this be regarded as the fancies of an enthusiast, by such as 
 
 deem themselves most free, 
 When they within this gross and visible sphere 
 Chain down the winged soul, scoffing ascent, 
 Proud in their meanness, 
 
 by such as pronounce every man out of his senses who has not lost his 
 reason ; even such men may find some weight in the historical fact that 
 from persons, who had previously strengthened their intellects and feel- 
 ings by the contemplation of principles principles, the actions corre- 
 spondent to which involve one half of their consequences, by their 
 ennobling influence on the agent's own soul, and have omnipotence, as 
 the pledge for the remainder we have derived the surest and most 
 general maxims of prudence. Of high value are they all. Tet there is 
 one among them worth all the rest, which in the fullest and primary 
 sense of the word is, indeed, the maxim (i.e. the maximum) of human 
 prudence ; and of which history itself, in all that makes it most worth 
 studying, is one continued comment and exemplification. It is this : 
 that there is a wisdom higher than prudence, to which prudence stands 
 in the same relation as the mason and carpenter to the genial and scien- 
 tific architect : and from the habits of thinking and feeling, that in this 
 wisdom had their first formation, our Nelsons and Wellingtons inherit 
 that glorious hardihood, which completes the undertaking, ere the con- 
 
 the interfusion, and communication of the 
 Divinity and of nature, not in meats or drink, 
 or any yet ignobler matter, with the race of 
 the thunder-stricken ; but in the august 
 palace of the Omnipotent, in the illimitable 
 ethereal space, in the infinite power, that 
 creates all things, and is the abiding being of 
 all things. 
 
 There we may contemplate the host of 
 stars, of worlds and their guardian Deities, 
 numbers without number, each in its ap- 
 pointed sphere, singing together, and dancing 
 in adoration of the One Most High. Thus 
 from the perpetual, immense, and innumer- 
 able goings on of the visible world, that sem- 
 piternal and absolutely infinite Majesty is 
 intellectually beheld, and is glorified accord- 
 ing to His glory by the attendance and choral 
 symphonies of innumerable gods, who utter 
 forth the glory of their ineffable Creator in 
 the expressive language of vision ! To Him 
 illimitable, a limited temple will not corre- 
 spond to the acknowledgment and due wor- 
 ship of the plenitude of His Majesty there 
 would be no proportion in any numerable 
 army of ministrant spirits. Let us then cast 
 our eyes upon the omniform image of the 
 attributes of the all-creating Supreme, nor 
 admit any representation of His excellency 
 but the living universe, which He has created ! 
 Thence was man entitled by Trismegistus, 
 " the great miracle," inasmuch as he has been 
 made capable of entering into union with 
 
 God, as if he were himself a divine nature ; 
 tries to become all things, even as in God all 
 things are; and in limitless progression of 
 limited states of being, urges onward to the 
 ultimate aim, even as God is simultaneously 
 infinite, and everywhere All ! 
 
 I purpose to give an account of the life of 
 Giordano Bruno, the friend of Sir Philip 
 Sidney, who was burnt under pretence of 
 atheism, at Rome, in the year 1600 ; and of 
 his works, which are perhaps the scarcest 
 books ever printed. They are singularly in- 
 teresting as portraits of a vigorous mind 
 struggling after truth, amid many prejudices, 
 which from the state of the Roman Church, 
 in which he was born, have a claim to much 
 indulgence. One of them (entitled Ember 
 Week) is curious for its lively accounts of the 
 rude state of London, at that time, both as 
 to the streets and the manners of the citizens. 
 The most industrious historians of specula- 
 tive philosophy, have not been able to pro- 
 cure more than a few of his works. Acci- 
 dentally I have been more fortunate in this 
 respect, than those who have written hitherto 
 on the unhappy philosopher of Nola : as out 
 of eleven works, the titles of which are pre- 
 served to us, 1 have ha-1 an opportunity of 
 perusing six. I was told, when in Germany, 
 that there is a complete collection of then) in 
 the royal library at Copenhagen. If so, it so 
 unique.
 
 Essay 16. 71 
 
 temptuous calculator (who has left nothing omitted in his scheme of 
 probabilities, except the might of the human mind) has finished his 
 pretended proof of its impossibility. You look to facts and profess to 
 take experience for your guide. Well ! I too appeal to experience : and 
 let facts be the ordeal of my position ! Therefore, although I have in 
 this and the preceding numbers quoted more frequently and copiously 
 than I shall permit myself to do in future, I owe it to the cause I am 
 pleading, not to deny myself the gratification of supporting this connec- 
 tion of practical heroism with previous habits of philosophic thought, by 
 a singularly appropriate passage from an author whose works can be 
 called rare only from their being, I fear, rarely read, however commonly 
 talked of. It is the instance of Xenophon as stated by Lord Bacon, who 
 would himself furnish an equal instance, if there could be found an 
 equal commentator. 
 
 "It is of Xenophon the philosopher, who went from Socrates' school 
 into Asia, in the expedition of Cyrus the younger, against King Arta- 
 xerxes. This Xenophon, at that time, was very young, and never had 
 seen the wars before ; neither had any command in the army, but only 
 followed the war as a volunteer, for the love and conversation of Prox- 
 enus, his friend. He was present when Falinus came in message from 
 .vat King to the Grecians, after that Cyrus was slain in the field, 
 and they, a handful of men, left to themselves in the midst of the Kind's 
 territories, cut off from their country by many navigable rivers, and 
 many hundred miles. The message imported, that they should deliver 
 up their arms and submit themselves to the King's mercy. To which 
 message, before answer was made, divers of the army conferred familiarly 
 with Faliuus, and amongst the rest Xenophon happened to say : ' Why, 
 Falinus, we have now but these two things left, our arms and our 
 virtue; and if we yield up our arms, how shall we make use of our 
 virtue ?' Whereto Falinus, smiling on him, said, ' If I be not deceived, 
 young gentleman, you are an Athenian, and I believe you study phi- 
 losophy, and it is pretty that you say ; but you are much abused, if you 
 think your virtue can withstand the King's power.' Here was the 
 scorn : the wonder followed which was, that this young scholar or phi- 
 losopher, after all the captains were murdered in parley, by treason, con- 
 ducted those ten thousand foot through the heart of all the King's high 
 countries from Babylon to Gr.Tcia, in safety, in despite of all the King's 
 forces, to the astonishment of the world, and the encouragement of the 
 Grecians, in times succeeding, to make invasion upon the kings of 
 Persia ; as was after purposed by Jason the Thessalian, attempted by 
 Agesilaus the Spartan, and achieved by Alexander the Macedonian, all 
 upon the ground of the act of that young scholar." 
 
 Often have I reflected with awe on the great and disproportionate 
 power, which an individual of no extraordinary talents or attainments
 
 72 The Friend. 
 
 may exert, by merely throwing off all restraint of conscience. WLat 
 then must not be the power, where an individual, of consummate wick- 
 edness, can organize into the unity and rapidity of an individual will all 
 the natural and artificial forces of a populous and wicked nation? And 
 could we bring within the field of imagination, the devastation effected 
 in the moral world, by the violent removal of old customs, familiar 
 sympathies, willing reverences, and habits of subordination almost natu- 
 ralized into instinct ; of the mild influences of reputation, and the other 
 ordinary props and aidances of our infirm virtue, or at least, if virtue be 
 too high a name, of our well-doing ; and above all, if we could give form 
 and body to all the effects produced on the principles and dispositions of 
 nations by the infectious feelings of insecurity, and the soul-sickening 
 sense of unsteadiness in the whole edifice of civil society ; the horrors of 
 battle, though the miseries of a whole war were brought together before 
 our eyes in one disastrous field, would present but a tame tragedy in 
 comparison. Nay, it would even present a sight of comfort and of ele- 
 vation, if this field of carnage were the sign and result of a national 
 resolve, of a general will, so to die, that neither deluge nor fire should 
 take away the name of Country from their graves, rather than to tread 
 the same clods of earth, no longer a country, and themselves alive in 
 nature, but dead in infamy. What is Greece at this present moment? 
 It is the country of the heroes from Codrus to Philopcemen ; and so it 
 would be, though all the sands of Africa should cover its corn fields and 
 olive gardens, and not a flower were left on Hymettus for a bee to 
 murmur in. 
 
 If then the power with which wickedness can invest the human being 
 l)e thus tremendous, greatly does it behove us to inquire into its source 
 and causes. So doing we shall quickly discover that it is not vice, as 
 vice, which is thus mighty ; but systematic vice ! Vice self-consistent 
 and entire ; crime corresponding to crime ; villainy entrenched and 
 barricadoed by villainy : this is the condition and main constituent of 
 its power. The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul 
 to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this 
 one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mourn- 
 ful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than pro- 
 duction, so may all its means and instruments be more easily arranged 
 into a scheme and system. Even as in a siege every building and garden, 
 which the faithful governor must destroy, as impeding the defensive 
 means of the garrison, or furnishing means of offence to the besieger, 
 occasions a wound in feelings which virtue herself has fostered : and 
 virtue, because it is virtue, loses perforce part of her energy in the 
 reluctance with which she proceeds to a business so repugnant to her 
 wishes, as a choice of evils. But he, who has once said with his whole 
 heart, Evil, be thou my good ! has removed a world of obstacles by the
 
 Essay 16. 73 
 
 very decision, that he will have no obstacles but those of force and brute 
 natter. The road of justice 
 
 Curves round the cornfield and the hill of vines, 
 Honouring the holy bounds of property ! 
 
 But the path of the lightning is straight : and straight the fearful 
 path 
 
 Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid, 
 
 Shatt'ring that it may reach, and shatt'rmg what it reaches. * 
 
 Happily ibr mankind, however, the obstacles which a consistently evil 
 mind no longer finds in itself, it finds in its own unsuitableuess to 
 human nature. A limit is fixed to its power : but within that limit, 
 both as to the extent and duration of its influence, there is little hope of 
 checking its career, if giant and united vices are opposed only by mixed 
 and scattered virtues : and those too, probably, from the want of some 
 combining principle, which assigns to each its due place and rank, 
 at civil war with themselves, or at best perplexing and counteracting 
 each other. In our late agony of glory and of peril, did we not too often 
 hear even good men declaiming on the horrors and crimes of war, and 
 softening or staggering the minds of their brethren by details of indi- 
 vidual wretchedness? Thus under pretence of avoiding blood, they 
 were withdrawing the will from the defence of the very source of those 
 blessings without which the blood would flow idly in our veins ! Thus 
 lest a few should fall on the bulwarks in glory, they were preparing us 
 to give up the whole state to baseness, and the children of free ancestors 
 to become slaves, and the fathers of slaves ! 
 
 Machiavelli has well observed, " Sono di ire generazione cervelli : 
 Tuno intende per se ; Taltro intende quanta da altri gli e mostro ; e il 
 terzo non intende ne per se stesso ne per dimostrazione d'altri." " There 
 are brains of three races. The one understands of itself; the second 
 understands as much as is shown it by others ; the third neither under- 
 stands of itself nor what is shown it by others." I should have no hesi- 
 tation in placing that man in the third class of brains, for whom the 
 history of the last twenty years has not supplied a copious comment on 
 the preceding text. The widest maxims of prudence are like arms 
 without hearts, disjoined from those feelings which flow forth from 
 principle as from a fountain. So little are even the genuine maxims of 
 expedience likely to be perceived or acted upon by those who have been 
 habituated to admit nothing higher than expedience, that I dare hazard 
 
 * WAI.LKXSTKIN, from Schiller, by S. T. age have united in giving no ordinary praise 
 
 Coleriilge. I return my thanks to the un- to a work, which our anonymous crities were 
 
 \uthor of Waverley, Guy ilamiering, equally unanimous in abusing as below all 
 
 &c. for having quoted this free translation criticism: though they charitably added, 
 
 from Schiller's best (anil therefore mo:-t neg- that the fault was, doubtless, chiefly, if not 
 
 lected) drama with applause : and uni m.t wholly, in the translator's dullness and in- 
 
 ashamed to avow that 1 have derived a )*;- capacity, 
 culiar gratification, that the first men of our
 
 74 The Friend. 
 
 the assertion, that in the whole chapter of contents of European rain, 
 every article might be unanswerably deduced from the neglect of some 
 maxim that had been repeatedly laid down, demonstrated, and enforced 
 with a host of illustrations, in some one or other of the works of 
 Machiavelli, Bacon, or Harrington.* Indeed I can remember no one 
 event of importance which was not distinctly foretold, and this not by a 
 lucky prize drawn among a thousand blanks out of the lottery wheel of 
 conjecture, but legitimately deduced as certain consequences from esta- 
 blished premises. It would be a melancholy, but a very profitable em- 
 ployment, for some vigorous mind, intimately acquainted with the 
 recent history of Europe, to collect the weightiest aphorisms of Machia- 
 velli alone, and illustrating by appropriate facts the breach or observa- 
 tion of each, to render less mysterious the present triumph of lawless 
 violence. The apt motto to such a work would be, " The children of 
 darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light." 
 
 So grievously, indeed, have men been deceived by the showy mock 
 theories of unlearned mock thinkers, that there seems a tendency in the 
 public mind to shun all thought, and to expect help from any quarter 
 rather than from seriousness and reflection : as if some invisible power 
 would think for us, when we gave up the pretence of thinking for our- 
 selves. But in the first place, did those, who opposed the theories of 
 innovators, conduct their untheoretic opposition with more wisdom or to 
 a happier result ? And secondly, are societies now constructed on prin- 
 ciples so few and so simple, that we could, even if we wished it, act as 
 it were "by instinct, like our distant forefathers in the infancy of states ? 
 Doubtless, to act is nobler than to think ;but as the old man doth not 
 become a child by means of his second childishness, as little can a 
 nation exempt itself from the necessity of thinking, which has once 
 learnt to think. Miserable was the delusion of the late mad realizer of 
 mad dreams, in his belief that he should ultimately succeed in trans- 
 forming the nations of Europe into the unreasoning hordes of a Baby- 
 lonian or Tartar empire, or even in reducing the age to the simplicity, 
 (so desirable for tyrants) of those times, when the sword and the plough 
 were the sole implements of human skill. Those are epochs in the his- 
 tory of a people which having been can never more recur. Extirpate all 
 civilization and all its arts by the sword, trample down all ancient 
 institutions, rights, distinctions, and privileges, drag us backward to our 
 old barbarism, as beasts to the den of Cacus deem you that thus you 
 could recreate the uttexamining and boisterous youth of the world, when 
 the Bole questions were " What is to be conquered ? and who is the 
 most famous leader ?" 
 
 In an age in which artificial knowledge is received almost at the birth, 
 intellect, and thought alone can be our upholder and judge. Let the 
 * See the Statesman's Manual : a Lay Sermon, by the Author.
 
 Essay 16. 75 
 
 imjx)rtance of this truth procure pardon for its rej>etition. Only by 
 means of seriousness and meditation, and the free infliction of censure in 
 the spirit of love, can the true philanthropist of the present time, curb 
 in himself and his contemporaries ; only by these can he aid in prevent- 
 ing the evils which threaten us, not from the terrors of an enemy so 
 much as from our fear of our own thoughts, and our aversion to all the 
 toils of reflection. For all must now be taught in sport science, mo- 
 rality, yea, religion itself. And yet few now sport from the actual 
 impulse of a believing fancy and in a happy delusion. Of the most 
 influeusive class, at least, of our literary guides, (the anonymous authors 
 of our periodical publications,) the most part assume this character from 
 cowardice or malice, till having begun with studied ignorance and a 
 premeditated levity, they at length realize the lie, and end indeed in a 
 pitiable destitution of all intellectual power. 
 
 To many I shall appear to speak insolently, because the public, (for 
 that is the phrase which has succeeded to " The Town," of the wits of 
 the reign of Charles II.) the public is at present accustomed to find 
 itself appealed to as the infallible judge, and each reader complimented 
 with excellencies, which if he really possessed, to what purpose is he 
 a reader, unless, perhaps, to remind himself of his own superiority. 
 I confess that I think widely different. I have not a deeper convic- 
 tion on earth, than that the principles of taste, morals, and religion, 
 which are taught in the commonest books of recent composition, are 
 false, injurious, and debasing. If these sentiments should be just, the 
 consequences must be so important, that every well-educated man, who 
 professes them in sincerity, deserves a patient hearing. He may fairly 
 appeal even to those whose persuasions are most opposed to his own 
 in the words of the Philosopher of Xola : " Ad istlicec quceso vos, 
 quaUacunque primo videantur aspectu, adtendite, ut qui vobis forsan 
 e videur, saltern quilxs insaniam rationibus cognoscatis." What 
 \ feel deeply, freely will I utter. Truth is not detraction ; and assuredly 
 we do not hate him, to whom we tell the Truth. But with whomso- 
 ever we play the deceiver and flatterer, him at the bottom we despise- 
 We are, indeed, under a necessity to conceive a vileness in him, in order 
 to dimmish the sense of the wrong we have committed, by the worth- 
 lessness of the object. 
 
 Through no excess of confidence in the strength of my talents, but 
 with the deepest assurance of the.justice of my cause, T bid defiance to 
 all the flatterers of the folly and foolish self-opinion of the half-in- 
 structed many ; to all who fill the air with festal explosions and false 
 fires sent up against the lightnings of heaven, in order that the people 
 may neither distinguish the warning flash nor hear the threatening 
 thunder ! How recently did we stand alone in the world ? And though 
 the one storm has blown over, another may even now be gathering : or
 
 76 The Friend. 
 
 haply the hollow murmur of the earthquake within the bowels of -our 
 own commonweal may strike a direr terror than ever did the tempest 
 of foreign warfare. Therefore, though the first quatrain is no longer 
 applicable, yet the moral truth and the sublime exhortation of the 
 following sonnet can never be superannuated. With it I conclude this 
 number, thanking Heaven that I have communed with, honoured, and 
 loved its wise and high-rru'nded author. To know that such men are 
 among us, is of itself an antidote against despondence. 
 
 Another year ! another deadly blow ! 
 Another mighty empire overthrown ! 
 And we are left, or shall be left, alone ; 
 The last that dares to struggle with the foe. 
 'Tis well ! from this day forward we shall know 
 That in ourselves our safety must be sought ; 
 That by our own right hands it must be wrought ; 
 That we must stand unpropt or be laid low. 
 dastard ! whom such foretaste doth not cheer ! 
 We shall exult, If they, who rule the land, 
 Be men who hold its many blessings dear, 
 AVise, upright, valiant ; not a venal band, 
 Who are to Judge of danger which they fear, 
 And honour which they do not understand. 
 
 WOKDSWOBTO.
 
 THE 
 
 LANDING-PLACE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ESSAYS INTEBPOSED FOE AMUSEMENT, BETBOSPECT, 
 AND PBEPABATION. 
 
 MISCELLANY THE FIRST. 
 
 Etiam a Musis si quando animum paullsper abducamos, apnd Musas nihilomlnns feriamnr : 
 at reclines quidem, at otiosas, at de his et illis inter se libere colloquentes.
 
 78 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 blessed letters ! that combine in one 
 All ages past, and make one live with all : 
 By you we do confer with who are gone, 
 And the dead-living unto council call ! 
 By you the unborn shall have communion 
 Of what we feel and what doth us befall. 
 
 Since writings are the veins, the arteries, 
 And undecaying life-strings of those hearts, 
 That still shall pant and still shall exercise 
 Their mightiest powers when nature none imparts : 
 And the strong constitution of their praise 
 Wear out the Infection of distemper'd days. 
 
 DANIEL'S MUSOPHILUS. 
 
 THE intelligence, which produces or controls human actions and occur- 
 rences, is often represented by the Mystics under the name and notion 
 of the supreme harmonist. I do not myself approve of these metaphors : 
 they seem to imply a restlessness to understand that which is not among 
 the appointed objects of our comprehension or discursive faculty. But 
 certainly there is one excellence in good music, to which, without mys- 
 ticism, we may find or make an analogy in the records of history. I 
 allude to that sense of recognition, which accompanies our sense of 
 novelty in the most original passages of a great composer. If we listen 
 to a symphony of Cimarosa, the present strain still seems not only to 
 recall, but almost to renew, some past movement, another and yet the 
 same ! Each present movement bringing back, as it were, and em- 
 bodying the spirit of some melody that had gone before, anticipates and 
 seems trying to overtake something that is to come : and the musician 
 has reached the summit of his art, when, having thus modified the 
 present by the past, he at the same time weds the past in the present to 
 some prepared and corresponsive future. The auditor's thoughts and 
 feelings move under the same influence : retrospection blends with anti- 
 cipation, and hope and memory (a female Janus) become one power 
 with a double aspect. A similar effect the reader may produce for 
 himself in the pages of history, if he will be content to substitute an 
 intellectual complacency for pleasurable sensation. The events and 
 characters of one age, like the strains in music, recall those of another, 
 and the variety by which each is individualized, not only gives a charm 
 and poignancy to the resemblance, but likewise renders the whole more 
 intelligible. Meantime ample room is afforded for the exercise both of 
 the judgment and the fancy, in distinguishing cases of real resemblance 
 from those of intentional imitation, the analogies of nature, revolving 
 upon herself, from the masquerade figures of cunning and vanity. 
 
 It is not from identity of opinions, or from similarity of events and
 
 Essay 1. 79 
 
 outward actions, that a real resemblance in the radical character can be 
 deduced. On the contrary, men of great and stirring powers, who are 
 destined to mould the age in which they are born, must first mould 
 themselves upon it Mahomet born twelve centuries later, and in the 
 heart of Europe, would not have been a false prophet ; nor would a false 
 prophet of the present generation have been a Mahomet in the sixth 
 century. I have myself, therefore, derived the deepest interest from 
 the comparison of men, whose characters at the first view appear widely 
 dissimilar, who yet have produced similar effects on their different ages, 
 and this by the exertion of powers which on examination will be found 
 far more alike, than the altered drapery and costume would have led us 
 to suspect. Of the heirs of fame few are more respected by me, though 
 for very different qualities, than Erasmus and Luther : scarcely any 
 one has a larger share of my aversion than Voltaire ; and even of the 
 better-hearted Rousseau 1 was never more than a very lukewarm admirer. 
 I should perhaps too rudely affront the general opinion, if I avowed my 
 whole creed concerning the proportions of real talent between the two 
 purifiers of revealed religion, now neglected as obsolete, and the two 
 modern conspirators against its authority, who are still the Alpha and 
 Omega of continental genius. Yet when I abstract the .questions of 
 evil and good, and measure only the effects produced and the mode of 
 producing them, I have repeatedly found the idea of Voltaire, Rous- 
 seau, and Robespierre, recall in a similar cluster and connection that of 
 Erasmus, Luther, and Munster. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the works of Erasmus, and who know 
 the influence of his wit, as the pioneer of the Reformation ; and who 
 likewise know, that by his wit, added to the vast variety of knowledge 
 communicated in his works, he had won over by anticipation so large a 
 part of the polite and lettered world to the Protestant party ; will be at 
 no loss in discovering the intended counterpart in the life and writings 
 of the veteran Frenchman. They will see, indeed, that the knowledge 
 of the one was solid through its whole extent, and that of the other 
 extensive at a cheap rate, by its superficiality : that the wit of the one 
 is always bottomed on sound sense, peoples and enriches the mind of the 
 reader with an endless variety of distinct images and living interests ; 
 and that his broadest laughter is everywhere translatable into grave and 
 weighty truth : while the wit of the Frenchman, without imagery, 
 without character, and without that pathos which gives the magic 
 charm to genuine humour, consists, when it is most perfect, in happy 
 turns of phrase, but far too often in fantastic incidents, outrages of the 
 pure imagination, and the poor low trick of combining the ridiculous 
 with the venerable, where he, who does not laugh, abhors. Neither 
 will they have forgotten, that the object of the one was to drive th* 
 thieves and mummers out of the temple, while the other was propelling
 
 80 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 a worse banditti, first to profane and pillage, and ultimately to raze it. 
 Yet not the less will they perceive, that the effects remain parallel, the 
 circumstances analogous, and the instruments the same. In each case 
 the effects extended over Europe, were attested and augmented by the 
 praise and patronage of thrones and dignities, and are not to be explained 
 but by extraordinary industry and a life of literature ; in both instances 
 the circumstances were supplied by an age of hopes and promises the 
 age of Erasmus restless from the first vernal influences of real knowledge, 
 that of Voltaire from the hectic of imagined superiority. In the vo- 
 luminous works of both, the instruments employed are chiefly those of 
 wit and amusive erudition, and alike in both the errors and evils (real 
 or imputed) in religion and politics are the objects of the battery. And 
 here we must stop. The two men were essentially different. Exchange 
 mutually their dates and spheres of action, yet Voltaire, had he been ten- 
 fold a Voltaire, could not have made up an Erasmus ; and Erasmus 
 must have emptied himself of half his greatness, and all his goodness, to 
 have become a Voltaire. 
 
 Shall we succeed better or worse with the next pair, in this our new 
 dance of death, or rather of the shadows which we have brought forth 
 two by two from the historic ark? In our first couple we have at least 
 secured an honourable retreat, and though we failed as to the agents, we 
 have maintained a fair analogy in the actions and the objects. But the 
 heroic Luther, a giant awaking in his strength ! and the crazy Rous- 
 seau, the dreamer of love-sick tales, and the spinner of speculative 
 cobwebs ; shy of light as the mole, but as quick-eared too for every 
 whisper of the public opinion ; the teacher of Stoic pride in his principles, 
 yet the victim of morbid vanity in his feelings and conduct ! From 
 what point of likeness can we commence the comparison between a 
 Luther and a Eousseau ? And truly had I been seeking for characters 
 that, taken as they really existed, closely resemble each other, and this 
 too to our first apprehensions, and according to the common rules of 
 biographical comparison, I could scarcely have made a more unlucky 
 choice : unless I had desired that my parallel of the German " Son of 
 Thunder" and the visionary of Geneva, should sit on the same bench 
 with honest Fluellin's of Alexander the Great and Harry of Monmouth. 
 Still, however, the same analogy would hold as in my former instance : 
 the effects produced on their several ages by Luther and Rousseau were 
 commensurate with each other, and were produced in both cases by 
 (what their contemporaries felt as) serious and vehement eloquence, 
 and an elevated tone of moral feeling : and Luther, not less than Rous- 
 seau, was actuated by an almost superstitious hatred of superstition, and 
 a turbulent prejudice against prejudices. In the relation too which 
 their writings severally bore to those of Erasmus and Voltaire, and the 
 way in which the latter co-operated with them to the same general
 
 Essay 1. 81 
 
 end, each finding its own class of admirers and proselytes, the parallel 
 is complete. 
 
 I cannot, however, rest here. Spite of the apparent incongruities, I 
 am disposed to plead for a resemblance in the men themselves, for that 
 similarity in their radical natures, which I abandoned all pretence and 
 desire of showing in the instances of Voltaire and Erasmus. But then 
 my readers must think of Luther not as he really was, but as he might 
 have been, if he had been born in the age and under the circumstances 
 of the Swiss philosopher. For this purpose I must strip him of many 
 advantages which he derived from his own times, and must contemplate 
 him in his natural weaknesses as well as in his original strength. Each 
 referred all things to his own ideal. The ideal was indeed widely dif- 
 ferent in the one and in the other : and this was not the least of Luther's 
 many advantages, or (to use a favourite phrase of his own) not one of 
 his least favours of preventing grace. Happily for him he had derived 
 his standard from a common measure already received by the good and 
 wise : I mean the inspired writings, the study of which Erasmus had 
 previously restored among the learned. To know that we are in sym- 
 pathy with others, moderates our feelings as well as strengthens our con- 
 victions : and for the mind, which opposes itself to the faith of the 
 multitude, it is more especially desirable that there should exist an 
 object out of itself, on which it may fix its attention, and thus balance 
 its own energies. 
 
 Rousseau, on the contrary, in the inauspicious spirit of his age and 
 birth-place,* had slipped the cable of his faith, and steered by the com- 
 pass of unaided reason, ignorant of the hidden currents that were bearing 
 him out of his course, and too proud to consult the faithful charts prized 
 and held sacred by his forefathers. But the strange influences of his 
 bodily temperament on his understanding ; his constitutional melancholy 
 pampered into a morbid excess by solitude ; his wild dreams of suspicion ; 
 his hypochondriacal fancies of hosts of conspirators all leagued against him 
 and his cause, and headed by some arch-enemy, to whose machinations 
 he attributed every trifling mishap, (all as much the creatures of his 
 imagination, as if instead of men he had conceived them to be infernal 
 spirits and beings preternatural) these, or at least the predisposition to 
 them, existed in the ground-work of his nature : they were parts of 
 Rousseau himself. And what corresponding in kind to these, not to 
 speak of degree, can we detect in the character of his supposed parallel ? 
 This difficulty will suggest itself at the first thought, to those who derive 
 
 * Infidelity was so common in Geneva lies of exaggeration : it is not however to be 
 
 about that time, that Voltaire in one of his denied, that here, and throughout Switzer- 
 
 letters exults, that in this, Calvin's own city, land, he and the dark master in whose service 
 
 some half dozen only of the most ignorant he employed himself, had ample grounds 
 
 believed in Christianity under any form, of triumph. 
 This was, no doubt, oiie of Voltaire's u=ual 
 
 Q
 
 82 TJte First Landing-Place. 
 
 all their knowledge of Luther from the meagre biography met with in 
 " The Lives of eminent Reformers," or even from the ecclesiastical 
 histories of Mosheim or Milner : for a life of Luther, in extent and style 
 of execution proportioned to the grandeur and interest of the subject, a 
 life of the man Luther, as well as of Luther the theologian, is still a 
 desideratum in English literature, though perhaps there is no subject for 
 which so many unused materials are extant, both printed and in manu- 
 script.* 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 Is it, I ask, most important to the best interests of mankind, temporal as well as spiritual, 
 that certain works, the names and number of which are fixed and unalterable, should be dis- 
 tinguished from all other works, not in degree only but even in kind ? And that these, 
 collectively should form THE BOOK, to which, in all the concerns of faiih and morality the 
 last recourse is to be had, and from the decisions of which no man dare appeal ? If the 
 mere existence of a book so called and charactered be, as the Koran itself suffices to evince, 
 a mighty bond of union, among nations whom all other causes tend to separate ; if more- 
 over the book revered by us and our forefathers has been the foster-nurse of learning in the 
 darkest, and of civilization in the rudest, times ; and lastly, if this so vast and wide a blessing 
 Is not to be founded in a delusion, and doomed therefore to the impermanence and scorn in 
 which sooner or later all delusions must end, how, I pray you, is it conceivable that this 
 should be brought about and secured, otherwise than by a special voucbsafement to this one 
 Book, exclusively, of that divine mean, that uniform and perfect middle way, which in all 
 points is at safe and equal distance from all errors whether of excess or defect ? But again if 
 this be true, (and what Protestant Christian worthy of his baptismal dedication will deny its 
 truth ?) surely we ought not to be hard and over-stem in our censures of the mistakes and in- 
 firmities of those, who pretending to no warrant of extraordinary inspiration hare yet been 
 raised up by God's providence to be of highest power and eminence in the reformation of 
 His Church. Far rather does it behove us to consider, in how many instances the peccant 
 humour native to the man had been wrought upon by the faithful study of that only fault- 
 less model, and corrected into an unsinning, or at least a venial, predominance in the writer 
 or preacher. Yea, that not seldom the infirmity of a zealous soldier in the warfare of Christ 
 has been made the very mould and ground-work of that man's peculiar gifts and virtues. 
 Grateful too we should be, that the very faults of famous men have been fitted to the age 
 on which they were to act; and that thus the folly of man has proved the wisdom of God, 
 and been made the instrument of His mercy to mankind. ANON. 
 
 WHOEVER has sojourned in Eisenach,f will assuredly have visited 
 the Warteburg, interesting by so many historical associations, 
 which stands on a high rock, about two miles to the south from the city 
 gate. To this castle Luther was taken on his return from the imperial 
 Diet, where Charles V., had pronounced the ban upon him, and limited 
 his safe convoy to one and twenty days. On the last but one of these 
 
 * The affectionate respect in which I hold must have discovered, that Jortin had neither 
 
 the name of l>r Jortin (one of the many collected sufficient, nor the best, materials 
 
 illustrious nurselings of the College to which for his work; and (perhaps from that very 
 
 I deem it no small honour to have belonged cause) he grew weary of his task, before he 
 
 Jesus, Cambridge) renders it painful to me had made a full use of the scanty materials 
 
 to assert, that the above remark holds al- which he had collected, 
 most equally true of a Life of Erasmus. But f Durchfli'ige durch Deutchland, die Nieder- 
 
 every scholar well read in the. writings of lande und Frankreich : zweit. theil. p. 126. 
 Erasmus and his illustrious contemporaries,
 
 Essay 2. 88 
 
 days, as be was on his way to Waltershausen (a town in the duchy of 
 Saxe Gotha, a few leagues to the south-east of Eisenach) he was stopped 
 in a hollow behind the Castle Altenstein, and carried to the Warteburg. 
 The Elector of Saxony, who could not have refused to deliver up Luther, 
 as one put in the ban by the Emperor and the Diet, had ordered John 
 of Berleptsch, the governor of the \Varteburg, and Burckhardt von 
 Hundt, the governor of Altenstein, to take Luther to one or the other of 
 these castles, without acquainting him which ; in order that he might 
 be able, with safe conscience, to declare, that he did not know where 
 Luther was. Accordingly they took him to the Warteburg, under the 
 name of the Chevalier (Ritter) George. 
 
 To this friendly imprisonment the Reformation owes many of Luther's 
 most Important labours. In this place he wrote his works against 
 auricular confession, against Jacob Latronum, the tract on the abuse of 
 Masses, that against clerical and monastic vows, composed his Exposition of 
 the 22nd, 27th, and 68th Psalms, finished his Declaration of the Magnificat, 
 began to write his Church Homilies, and translated the New Testament. 
 Here too, and during this time, he is said to have hurled his ink-stand 
 at the Devil, the black spot from which yet remains on the stone wall of 
 the room he studied in ; which, surely, no one will have visited the 
 Warteburg without having had pointed out to him by the good Catholic 
 who is, or at least some few years ago was, the Warden of the castle. 
 He must have been either a very supercilious or a very incurious 
 traveller if he did not, for the gratification of his guide at least, infonn 
 himself by means of his pen-knife, that the said marvellous blot bids 
 defiance to all the toils of the scrubbing brush, and is to remain a sign 
 for ever ; and with this advantage over most of its kindred, that being 
 capable of a double interpretation, it is equally flattering to the Protestant 
 and the Papist, and is regarded by the wonder-loving zealots of both 
 parties, with equal faith. 
 
 Whether the great man ever did throw his ink -stand at his Satanic 
 Majesty, whether he ever boasted of the exploit, and himself declared 
 the dark blotch on his study wall in the Warteburg, to be the result and 
 relict of this author-like hand-grenado, (happily for mankind he used his 
 ink-stand at other times to better purpose, and with more effective 
 hostility against the arch-fiend,) I leave to my reader's own judgment; 
 on condition, however, that he has previously perused Luther's Table Talk, 
 and other writings of the same stamp, of some of his most illustrious 
 contemporaries, which contain facts still more strange and whimsical, 
 related by themselves and of themselves, and accompanied with solemn 
 protestations of the truth of their statements. Luther's Table Talk, 
 which to a truly philosophic mind will not be less interesting than 
 Rousseau's Confessions. I have not myself the means of consulting at 
 present, and cannot therefore say, whether this ink-pot adventure is, or
 
 84 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 is not, told or referred to in it ; but many considerations incline me to 
 give credit to the story. 
 
 Luther's unremitting literary labour and his sedentary mode of life, 
 during his confinement in the Warteburg, where he was treated with the 
 greatest kindness, and enjoyed every liberty consistent with his own 
 safety, had begun to undermine his former unusually strong health. 
 He suffered many and most distressing effects of indigestion and a 
 deranged state of the digestive organs. Melaricthon, whom he had 
 desired to consult the physicians at Erfurth, sent him some deobstnient 
 medicines, and the advice to take regular and severe exercise. At first 
 he followed the advice, sate and laboured less, and spent whole days in 
 the chase ; but like the younger Pliny, he strove in vain to form a taste 
 for this favourite amusement of the " Gods of the earth," as appears from 
 a passage in his letter to George Spalatin, which I translate for an 
 additional reason : to prove to the admirers of Eousseau, (who perhaps 
 will not be less affronted by this biographical parallel, than the zealous 
 Lutherans will be offended,) that if my comparison should turn out 
 groundless on the whole, the failure will not have arisen either from the 
 want of sensibility in our great reformer, or of angry aversion to those in 
 high places, whom he regarded as the oppressors of their rightful equals. 
 " I have been," he writes, " employed for two days in the sports of the 
 field, and was willing myself to taste this bitter-sweet amusement of the 
 great heroes : we have caught two hares, and one brace of poor little 
 partridges. An employment this which does not ill suit quiet leisurely 
 folks : for even in the midst of the ferrets and dogs, I have had theologi- 
 cal fancies. But as much pleasure as the general appearance of the scene 
 and the mere looking on occasioned me, even so much it pitied me to 
 think of the mystery and emblem which lies beneath it. For what does 
 this symbol signify, but that the Devil, through his godless huntsmen 
 and dogs, the Bishops and Theologians to wit, doth privily chase and 
 catch the innocent poor little beasts ? Ah ! the simple and credulous 
 souls came thereby far too plain before my eyes. Thereto comes a yet 
 more frightful mystery : as at my earnest entreaty we had saved alive 
 one poor little hare, and I had concealed it in the sleeve of mv great- 
 coat, and had strolled off a short distance from it, the dogs in the mean- 
 time found the poor hare. Such, too, is the fury of the Pope with 
 Satan, that he destroys even the souls that had been saved, and troubles 
 himself little about my pains and entreaties. Of such hunting then I 
 have had enough." In another passage he tells his correspondent, " you 
 know it is hard to be a prince, and not in some degree a robber, and the 
 greater a prince the more a robber." Of our Henry VIII. he says, " I 
 must answer the grim lion that passes himself off for King of England. 
 The ignorance in the book is such as one naturally expects from a King; 
 but the bitterness and impudent falsehood is quite leonine." And in his
 
 Essay 2. 85 
 
 circular letter to the princes, on occasion of the peasants war, he uses a 
 language so inflammatory, and holds forth a doctrine which borders so 
 near on the holy right of insurrection, that it may as well remain un- 
 translated. 
 
 Had Luther been himself a prince, he could not have desired better 
 treatment than he received during his eight months' stay in theWarteburg ; 
 and in consequence of a more luxurious diet than he had been accus- 
 tomed to, he was plagued with temptations both from the " flesh and the 
 devil." It is evident from his letters* that he suffered under great irri- 
 tability of his nervous system, the common effect of deranged digestion 
 in men of sedentary habits, who are at the same time intense thinkers ; 
 and this irritability added to, and revivifying, the impressions made 
 upon him in early life, and fostered by the theological systems of bis 
 manhood, is abundantly sufficient to explain all his apparitions and all 
 his nightly combats with evil spirits. I see nothing improbable in the 
 supposition, that in one of those unconscious half-sleeps, or rather those 
 rapid alternations of the sleeping with the half-waking state, which is 
 
 the true witching time, 
 
 the season 
 Wherein the spirits hold their wont to walk, 
 
 the fruitful matrix of ghosts I see nothing improbable, that in some 
 one of those momentary slumbers, into which the suspension of all 
 thought in the perplexity of intense thinking so often passes, Luther 
 should have had a full view of the room in which he was sitting, of 
 his writing-table and all the implements of study as they really existed, 
 and at the same time a brain-image of the Devil, vivid enough to have 
 acquired apparent outness, and a distance regulated by the proportion of 
 its distinctness to that of the objects really impressed on the outward 
 senses. 
 
 If this Christian Hercules, this heroic cleanser of the Augean stable 
 of apostacy, had been born and educated in the present or the preceding 
 generation, he would, doubtless, have held himself for a man of genius 
 and original power. But with this faith alone he would scarcely have 
 removed the mountains which he did remove. The darkness and super- 
 stition of the age, which required such a reformer, had moulded his mind 
 for the reception of ideas concerning himself, better suited to inspire the 
 strength and enthusiasm necessary for the task of refoi-mation, ideas 
 more in sympathy with the spirits whom he was to influence. He 
 deemed himself gifted with supernatural influxes, an especial servant of 
 Heaven, a chosen warrior, fighting as the general of a small but faithful 
 
 * I can scarcely conceive a more delightful difficult task I admit and scarcely possible 
 
 volume than might be made from Luihi r's for any man, however great his talents in 
 
 letters, especially from those that were other respects, whose favourite reading has 
 
 written from the Warteburg, if they were not lain among the English writers from 
 
 translated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic, Edward VI. to Charles 1. 
 hearty mother-tongue of the original. A
 
 86 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 troop, against an army of evil beings headed by the prince of the air. 
 These were no metaphorical beings in his apprehension. He was a poet 
 indeed, as great a poet as ever lived in any age or country ; but his poetic 
 images were so vivid, that they mastered the poet's own mind ! He was 
 possessed with them, as with substances distinct from himself : Luther 
 did not write, he acted poems. The Bible was a spiritual indeed but 
 not a figurative armoury in his belief: it was the magazine of his war- 
 like stores, and from thence he was to arm himself, and supply both 
 shield and sword, and javelin, to the elect. Methinks I see him sitting, 
 the heroic student, in his chamber in the Warteburg, with his midnight 
 lamp before him, seen by the late traveller in the distant plain of Bis- 
 chofsroda, as a star on the mountain ! Below it lies the Hebrew Bible 
 open, on which he gazes, his brow pressing on his palm, brooding over 
 some obscure text, which he desires to make plain to the simple boor 
 and to the humble artizan, and to transfer its whole force into their own 
 natural and living tongue. And he himself does not understand it! 
 Thick darkness lies on the original text : he counts the letters, he calls 
 up the roots of each separate word, and questions them as the familiar 
 spirits of an oracle. In vain ! thick darkness continues to cover it ! not 
 a ray of meaning dawns through it. With sullen and angry hope he 
 reaches for the Vulgate, his old and sworn enemy, the treacherous con- 
 federate of the Roman anti-Christ, which he so gladly, when he can, re- 
 bukes for idolatrous falsehoods, that had dared place 
 
 Within the sanctuary itself their shrines, 
 Abominations ! 
 
 Now thought of humiliation ! he must entreat its aid. See ! there 
 has the sly spirit of apostacy worked in a phrase, which favours the doc- 
 trine of purgatory, the intercession of saints, or the efficacy of prayers 
 for the dead. And what is worst of all, the interpretation is plausible. 
 The original Hebrew might be forced into this meaning : and no other 
 meaning seems to lie in it, none to hover above it in the heights of alle- 
 gory, none to lurk beneath it even in the depths of Cabala ! This is 
 the work of the tempter ! it is a cloud of darkness conjured up between 
 the truth of the sacred letters and the eyes of his understanding, by the 
 malice of the evil one, and for a trial of his faith ! Must he then at 
 length confess, must he subscribe the name of Luther to an exposition 
 which consecrates a weapon for the hand of the idolatrous hierarchy ? 
 Never ! never ! 
 
 There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the 
 seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the Church itself, could 
 intend no support to its corruptions the Septuagint will have profaned 
 the altar of truth with no incense for the nostrils of the universal bishop 
 to snuff up. And here again his hopes are baffled ! Exactly at this 
 perplexed passage had the Greek translator given his understanding a
 
 Essay 2. 87 
 
 holiday, and made his pen supply its place. honoured Luther ! as 
 easily mightest thou convert the whole city of Rome, with the Pope and 
 the conclave of Cardinals inclusive, as strike a spark of light from the 
 words, and nothing but words, of the Alexandrine Version. Disap- 
 pointed, despondent, enraged, ceasing to think, yet continuing his brain 
 on the stretch in solicitation of a thought ; and gradually giving him- 
 self up to angry fancies, to recollections of past persecutions, to uneasy 
 fears and inward defiances and floating images of the evil being, their 
 supposed personal author ; he sinks, without perceiving it, into a trance 
 of slumber : during which his brain retains its waking energies, ex- 
 cepting that what would have been mere thoughts before, now (the 
 action and counterweight of his senses and of their impressions being 
 withdrawn,) shape and condense themselves into things, into realities ! 
 Repeatedly half-wakening, and his eye-lids as often re-closing, the objects 
 which really surround him form the place and scenery of his dream. All 
 at once he sees the arch-fiend coming forth on the wall of the room, 
 from the very spot perhaps on which his eyes had been fixed vacantly 
 during the perplexed moments of his former meditation ; the ink-stand, 
 which he had at the same time been using, becomes associated with it ; 
 and in that struggle of rage, which in these distempered dreams almost 
 constantly precedes the helpless terror by the pain of which we are 
 finally awakened, he imagines that he hurls it at the intruder, or not 
 improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet both his imagi- 
 nation and his eyes are possessed by the dream, he actually hurls it. 
 Some weeks after, perhaps, during which interval he had often musi-d 
 on the incident, undetermined whether to deem it a visitation of Satan 
 to him in the body or out of the body, he discovers for the first time 
 the dark spot on his wall, and receives it as a sign and pledge vouch- 
 safed to him of the event having actually taken place. 
 
 Such was Luther under the influences of the age and country in and 
 for which he was born. Conceive him a citizen of Geneva, and a con- 
 temporary of Voltaire : suppose the French language his mother-tongue, 
 and the political and moral philosophy of English free-thinkers remo- 
 delled by Parisian fort esprits, to have been the objects of his study ; 
 conceive this change of circumstances, and Luther will no longer dream 
 of fiends or of anti-Christ but will he have no dreams in their place? 
 His melancholy will have changed its drapery ; but will it find no new 
 costume wherewith to clothe itself? His impetuous temperament, his 
 deep-working mind, his busy and vivid imaginations would they not 
 have been a trouble to him in a world, where nothing was to be altered, 
 where nothing was to obey his power, to cease to be that which it had 
 been, in order to realize his preconceptions of what it ought to be ? His 
 sensibility, which found objects for itself, and shadows of human suffering 
 in the harmless brute, and even in the flowers which he trod nj)on might
 
 88 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 it not naturally, in an unspiritualized age, have wept, and trembled, and 
 dissolved, over scenes of earthly passion, and the struggles of love with 
 duty ? His pity, that so easily passed into rage, would it not have 
 found in the inequalities of mankind, in the oppressions of governments 
 and the miseries of the governed, an entire instead of a divided ohject ? 
 And might not a perfect constitution, a government of pure reason, a 
 renovation of the social contract, have easily supplied the place of the 
 reign of Christ in the new Jerusalem, of the restoration of the visible 
 Church, and the union of all men by one faith in one charity ? Hence- 
 forward then, we will conceive his reason employed in building up anew 
 the edifice of earthly society, and his imagination as pledging itself for 
 the possible realization of the structure. We will lose the great reformer, 
 who was born in an age which needed him, in the philosopher of 
 Geneva, who was doomed to misapply his energies to materials the 
 properties of which he misunderstood, and happy only that he did not 
 live to witness the direful effects of his system. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 Pectora cni credam ? quis me lenire docebit 
 Mordaces curas, quis longas fallere nodes 
 Ex quo summa dies tulerit Damona sub umbras f 
 Omnia paulatim consutnit longior setas, 
 Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo. 
 Ite tamen, lacrynue ! purum colls aethera, Damon ! 
 Nee mibl conveniunt lacrymae. Non omnia terra 
 Obruta ! vivit amor, vivit dolor ! ora negatur 
 Dulcia conspicere : flere et meminisse relictum est. 
 
 THE two following essays I devote to elucidation, the first of the theory 
 of Luther's apparitions stated perhaps too briefly in the preceding 
 number : the second for the purpose of removing the only difficulty, which 
 I can discover in the next section of The Friend, to the reader's ready 
 comprehension of the principles, on which the arguments are grounded. 
 First, I will endeavour to make my ghost-theory more clear to those of 
 my readers, who are fortunate enough to find it obscure in consequence 
 of their own good health and unshattered nerves. The window of my 
 library at Keswick is opposite to the fire-place, and looks out on the very 
 large garden that occupies the whole slope of the hill on which the house 
 stands. Consequently, the rays of light transmitted through the glass 
 (i.e. the rays from the garden, the opposite mountains, and the bridge, 
 river, lake, and vale interjacent) and the rays reflected from it (of the 
 fire-place, &c.) enter the eye at the same moment. At the coming on 
 of evening, it was my frequent amusement to watch the image or re- 
 flection of the fire, that seemed burning in the bushes or between the 
 trees in different parts of the garden or the fields beyond it, according
 
 Essay 3. 89 
 
 as there was more or less light ; and which still arranged itself among 
 the real objects of vision, with a distance and magnitude proportioned 
 to its greater or lesser faiutness. For still as the darkness increased, the 
 linage of the fire lessened and grew nearer and more distinct ; till the 
 twilight had deepened into perfect night, when all outward objects being 
 excluded, the window became a perfect looking-glass : save only that my 
 books on the side shelves of the room were lettered, as it were, on their 
 backs with stars, more or fewt-r as the sky was more or less clouded, 
 (the rays of the stars being at that time the only ones transmitted). 
 Now substitute the phantom from Luther's brain for the images of re- 
 flected light (the fire for instance), and the forms of his room and its 
 furniture for the transmitted rays, and you have a fair resemblance of 
 an apparition, and a just conception of the manner in which it is seen 
 together with real objects. I have long wished to devote an entire work 
 to the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts, witchcraft, &c. in which I 
 might first give, and then endeavour to explain the most interesting 
 and best attested fact of each, which has come within my knowledge, 
 either from books or from personal testimony. I might then explain in 
 a more satisfactory way the mode in which our thoughts, in states of 
 morbid slumber, become at times perfectly dramatic (for in certain sorta 
 of dreams the dullest wight becomes a Shakespeare), and by what law 
 the form of the vision appears to talk to us its own thoughts in a voice as 
 audible as the shape is visible ; and this too oftentimes in connected trains, 
 and not seldom even with a concentration of power which may easily 
 impose on the soundest judgements, uninstructed in the optics and 
 acoustics of the inner sense, for revelations and gifts of prescience. In 
 aid of the present case, I will only remark, that it would appear incre- 
 dible to persons not accustomed to these subtle notices of self-observa- 
 tion, what small and remote resemblances, what mere hints of likeness 
 from some real external object, especially if the shape be aided by colour, 
 will suffice to make a vivid thought consxibstantiate with the real object, 
 and derive from it an outward perceptibility. Even when we are broad 
 awake, if we are in anxious expectation, how often will not the most 
 confused sounds of nature be heard by us as articulate sounds ? For 
 instance, the babbling of a brook will appear for a moment the voice of 
 a friend, for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names, &c. A 
 short meditation, therefore, on the great law of the imagination, that a 
 likeness in part tends to become a likeness of the whole, will make it 
 not only conceivable but probable, that the inkstand itself, and the dark- 
 coloured stone on the wall, which Luther perhaps had never till then 
 noticed, might have a considerable influence in the production of the 
 fiend, and of the hostile act by which his obtrusive visit was repelled. 
 
 A lady once asked me if I believed in ghosts and apparitions. I an- 
 swered with truth and simplicity : "No, madam ! I have seen far too
 
 90 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 many myself." I have indeed a whole memorandum-book filled with 
 records of these phenomena, many of them interesting as facts and data 
 for psychology, and affording some valuable materials for a theory of 
 perception and its dependence on the memory and imagination. " In 
 omnem actum perceptionis imaginaiio influit efficienter." Wolfe. But 
 he is no more who would have realized this idea, who had already 
 established the foundations and the law of the theory ; and for whom 
 I had so often found a pleasure and a comfort, even during the wretched 
 and restless nights of sickness, in watching and instantly recording these 
 experiences of the world within us, of the " gemina natura, quce fit et 
 facit, et creat et creatur .'" He is gone, my friend! my munificent co- 
 patron, and not less the benefactor of my intellect ! He who, beyond 
 all other men known to me, added a fine and ever-wakeful sense of 
 beauty to the most patient accuracy in experimental philosophy and 
 the profounder researches of metaphysical science ; he who united all 
 the play and spring of fancy with the subtlest discrimination and an 
 inexorable judgment ; and who controlled an almost painful exquisite- 
 ness of taste by a warmth of heart, which in the practical relations of 
 life made allowances for faults as quick as the moral taste detected them ; 
 a warmth of heart, which was indeed noble and pre-eminent, for alas ! 
 the genial feelings of health contributed no spark towards it ! Of these 
 qualities I may speak, for they belonged to all mankind. The higher 
 virtues, that were blessings to his friends, and the still higher that re- 
 sided in and for his own soul, are themes for the energies of solitude, for 
 the awfulness of prayer ! virtues exercised in the barrenness and deso- 
 lation of his animal being ; while he thirsted with the full stream at 
 his lips, and yet with unwearied goodness poured out to all around him, 
 like the master of a feast among his kindred in the day of his own 
 gladness ! Were it but for the remembrance of him alone and of his 
 lot here below, the disbelief of a future state would sadden the earth 
 around me, and blight the very grass in the field. 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 XoXeirw, co Sai^oiae, /ai) TrapaSe'iy^aax \piajievov ucavu? evSeiKW<r9ai TI TWV fmfdwov. Klv ~ 
 Svvivei yap TtfMav eicaoros olov ovap, eiSw? airavTa, Ttavr' av iraAii/ di<nrp uirap ayvofiv 
 
 PLATO, PolH. p. 47, Ed. Bip. 
 
 (Translation.) It is difficult, excellent friend! to make any comprehensive truth com- 
 pletely intelligible, unless we avail ourselves of an example. Otherwise we may as in a 
 dream, seem to know all, and then as it were, awaking find that we know nothing. PLATO. 
 
 AMOXG my earliest impressions I still distinctly remember that of my 
 first entrance into the mansion of a neighbouring baronet, awfully 
 known to me by the name of the Great House, its exterior having been 
 long connected in my childish imagination with the feelings and fancies
 
 Essay 4. 91 
 
 stirred up in me by the perusal of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.* 
 Beyond all other objects, I was most struck with the magnificent stair- 
 case, relieved at well-proportioned intervals by spacious landing-places, 
 this adorned with grand or showy plants, the next looking out on an 
 extensive prospect through the stately window with its side panes of 
 rich blues and saturated amber or orange tints : while from the last and 
 highest the eye commanded the whole spiral ascent with the marbled 
 pavement of the great hall from which it seemed to spring up as if it 
 merely used the ground on which it rested. My readers will find no 
 difficulty in translating these forms of the outward senses into their 
 intellectual analogies, so as to understand the purport of The Friend's 
 landing-places, and the objects, he proposed to himself, in the small 
 groups of essays interposed under this title between the main divisions 
 of the work. 
 
 My best powers would have sunk within me, had I not soothed my 
 solitary toils with the anticipation of many readers (whether during 
 the writer's life, or when his grave shall have shamed his detractors 
 into a sympathy with its own silence, formed no part in this self-flattery,) 
 who would submit to any reasonable trouble rather than read " as in a 
 dream seeming to know all, to find on awaking that they know no- 
 thing." Having, therefore, in the three preceding numbers selected 
 from my conservatory a few plants, of somewhat gayer petals and a 
 livelier green, though like the geranium tribe of a sober character in the 
 whole physiognomy and odour, I shall first devote a few sentences to a 
 catalogue raisonne* of my introductory lucubrations, and the remainder 
 of the essay to the prospect, as far as it can be seen distinctly from our 
 present site. Within a short distance, several ways meet : and at that 
 point only does it appear to me that the reader will be in danger of 
 mistaking the road. Dropping the metaphor, I would say that there is 
 one term, the meaning of which has become unsettled. To different 
 persons it conveys a different idea, and not seldom to the same person 
 at different times ; while the force, and to a certain extent, the intelli- 
 gibility of the following sections depend on its being interpreted in one 
 sense exclusively. 
 
 Essays from I. to IV. inclusive convey the design and contents of the 
 work-, The Friend's judgment respecting the style, and his defence of 
 himself from the charges of arrogance and presumption. Say rather, 
 that such are the personal threads of the discourse : for it will not have 
 
 As I had read one volume of these tales dread and intense desire I used to look at the 
 over and over again before my fifth birth- volume and watch it, till the morning sun- 
 day, it may be readily conjectured of what shine had reached and nearly covered it, 
 sort these fancies and feelings must have when, and not before, 1 felt the courage given 
 been. The book, I well remember, used to me to seize the precious treasure and hurry 
 lie in a corner of the parlour-window at my off with it U> some sunuy corner in our play- 
 dear father's vicarage-house : and I can never ground, 
 forget with what a strange mixture of obscure
 
 92 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 escaped the reader's observation, that even in these prefatory pages 
 principles and truths of general interest form the true contents, and that 
 amid all the usual compliments and courtesies of The Friend's first 
 presentation of himself to his reader's acquaintance the substantial 
 object is still to assert the practicability, without disguising the diffi- 
 culties, of improving the morals of mankind by a direct appeal to their 
 understandings ; to show the distinction between attention and thought, 
 and the necessity of the former as a habit or discipline without which 
 the very word, thinking, must remain a thoughtless substitute for 
 dreaming with our eyes open ; and lastly, the tendency of a certain 
 fashionable style with all its accommodations to paralyse the very 
 faculties of manly intellect by a series of petty stimulants. After this 
 preparation The Friend proceeds at once to lay the foundations common 
 to the whole work by an inquiry into the duty of communicating truth, 
 and the conditions under which it may be communicated with safety, 
 from the fifth to the sixteenth essay inclusive. Each essay will, he 
 believes, be found complete in itself, yet an organic part of the whole 
 considered as one disquisition. First, the inexpediency of pious frauds is 
 proved from history, the shameless assertion of the indifference of truth 
 and falsehood exposed to its deserved infamy, and an answer given to 
 the objection derived from the impossibility of conveying an adequate 
 notion of the truths, we may attempt to communicate. The conditions 
 are then detailed, under which, right though inadequate notions may be 
 taught without danger, and proofs given, both from facts and from 
 reason, that he, who fulfils the conditions required by conscience, takes 
 the surest way of answering the purposes of prudence. This is, indeed, 
 the main characteristic of the moral system taught by The Friend 
 throughout, that the distinct foresight of consequences belongs exclu- 
 sively to that Infinite Wisdom which is one with that Almighty AVill, 
 on which all consequences depend ; but that for man to obey the 
 simple unconditional commandment of eschewing every act that implies 
 a self-contradiction, or in other words, to produce and maintain the 
 greatest possible harmony in the component impulses and faculties of 
 his nature, involves the effects of prudence. It is, as it were, prudence 
 in short-hand or cipher. A pure conscience, that inward something, 
 that 6f6s olKfios, which being absolutely unique no man can describe, 
 because every man is bound to know, and even in the eye of the law is 
 held to be a person no longer than he may be supposed to know it 
 the conscience, I say, bears the same relation to God, as an accurate 
 time-piece bears to the sun. The time-piece merely indicates the 
 relative path of the sun, yet we can regulate our plans and proceedings 
 by it with the same confidence as if it was itself the efficient cause of 
 light, heat, and the revolving seasons : on the self-evident axiom, that 
 in whatever sense two things, for instance, A. and G D E. are both
 
 Essay 4. 93 
 
 equal to a third thing B. they are in the same sense equal to each 
 other. Cunning is circuitous folly. In plain English, to act the knave 
 is but a round-about way of playing the fool ; and the man, who will 
 not permit himself to call an action by its projier name without a previous 
 calculation of all its probable consequences, may be indeed only a 
 coxcomb, who is looking at his fingers through an opera glass ; but he 
 runs no small risk of becoming a knave. The chances are against him. 
 Though he should begin by calculating the consequences with regard to 
 others, yet by the mere habit of never contemplating an action in its own 
 proportions and immediate relations to his moral being, it is scarcely pos- 
 sible but that he must end in selfishness : for the ' you,' and the ' they ' 
 will stand on different occasions for a thousand different persons, while 
 the ' I ' is one only, and recurs in every calculation. Or grant that the 
 principle of expediency should prompt to the same outward deeds as 
 are commanded by the law of reason ; yet the doer himself is debased. 
 But if it be replied, that the reaction on the agent's own mind is to 
 form a part of the calculation, then it is a rule that destroys itself in the 
 very propounding, as will be more fully demonstrated in the second or 
 ethical division of The Friend, when we shall have detected and exposed 
 the equivoque between an action and the series of motions by which the 
 determinations of the will are to be realized in the world of the senses. 
 What modification of the latter corresponds to the former, and is entitled 
 to be called by the same name, will often depend on time, place, per- 
 sons and circumstances, the consideration of which requires an exertion 
 of the judgment ; but the action itself remains the same, and like all 
 other ideas pre-exists in the reason,* or (in the more expressive and 
 perhaps more precise and philosophical language of St. Paul,) in the 
 spirit, unalterable because unconditional, or with no other than that 
 most awful condition, as sure as God liveth, it is so ! 
 
 These remarks are inserted in this place, because the principle admits 
 of easiest illustration in the instance of veracity and the actions con- 
 nected with the same, and may then be intelligibly applied to other 
 departments of morality, all of which Wollston indeed considers as 
 only so many different forms of truth and falsehood. So far The Friend 
 has treated of oral communication of the truth. The applicability of 
 the same principle is then tried and affirmed in publications by the 
 first as between the individual and his own conscience and then 
 between the publisher and the state : and under this head The Friend 
 has considered at large the questions of a free press and the law of libel, 
 the anomalies and peculiar difficulties of the latter, and the only pos- 
 sible solution compatible with the continuance of the former : a solution 
 rising out of and justified by the necessarily anomalous and unique 
 nature of the law itself. He c :iat he looks back on this 
 
 So the Statesman's Manual, p. 23.
 
 94 27;e First Landing-Place. 
 
 discussion concerning the press and its limits with a satisfaction un- 
 usual to him in the review of his own labours : and if the date of their 
 first publication (September, 1809) be remembered, it will not perhaps 
 be denied, on an impartial comparison, that he has treated this most 
 important subject (so especially interesting in the present times) more 
 fully and more systematically than it had hitherto been. Interim turn 
 recti conscienttd, turn illo me consolor, quod optimis quidusque certe non 
 improbamur,fortassis omnibus placituri, simul atque livor ab obitu con- 
 quieverit. 
 
 Lastly, the subject is concluded even as it commenced, and as 
 beseemed a disquisition placed as the steps and vestibule of the whole 
 work, with an enforcement of the absolute necessity of principles 
 grounded in reason as the basis or rather as the living root of all genuine 
 expediency. Where these are despised or at best regarded as aliens 
 from the actual business of life, and consigned to the ideal world of 
 speculative philosophy and Utopian politics, instead of state- wisdom we 
 shall have state-craft, and for the talent of the governor the cleverness 
 of an embarrassed spendthrift which consists in tricks to shift off 
 difficulties and dangers when they are close upon us, and to keep them 
 at arm's length, not in solid and grounded courses to preclude or subdue 
 them. We must content ourselves with expedient-makers with fire- 
 engines against fires, life-boats against inundations; but no houses 
 built fire-proof, no dams that rise above the water-mark. The reader 
 will have observed that already has the term, reason, been frequently 
 contradistinguished from the understanding and the judgment. If The 
 Friend could succeed in fully explaining the sense in which the word 
 reason, is employed by him, and in satisfying the reader's mind con- 
 cerning the grounds and importance of the distinction, he would feel 
 little or no apprehension concerning the intelligibility of these essays 
 from first to last. The following section is in part founded on this 
 distinction: the which remaining obscure, all else will be so as a 
 system, however clear the component paragraphs may be, taken sepa- 
 rately. In the appendix to his first Lay Sermon, the author has indeed 
 treated the question at considerable length, but chiefly in relation to 
 the heights of theology and metaphysics. In the next number he 
 attempts to explain himself more popularly, and trusts that with no 
 great expenditure of attention the reader will satisfy his mind, that our 
 remote ancestors spoke as men acquainted with the constituent parts of 
 their own moral and intellectual being, when they described one man as 
 being out of his senses, another as out of his wits, or deranged in his 
 understanding, and a third as having lost his reason. Observe, the 
 understanding may be deranged, weakened or perverted ; but the reason 
 is either lost or not lost, that is, wholly present or wholly absent.
 
 Essay 5. 95 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 Man may rather be defined a religious than a rational character, in regard that in other 
 creatures there may be something of reason, but there is nothing of religion. 
 
 HAREINGTOS. 
 
 IF the reader will substitute the word " understanding " for " reason," 
 and the word " reason " for " religion," Harrington has here completely 
 expressed the truth for which The Friend is contending. But that this 
 was Harrington's meaning is evident. Otherwise instead of comparing 
 two faculties with each other, he would contrast a faculty with one of 
 its own objects, which would involve the same absurdity as if he had 
 said, that man might rather be denned an astronomical than a seeing 
 animal, because other animals possessed the sense of sight, but were in- 
 capable of beholding the satellites of Saturn, or the nebula? of fixed 
 stars. If further confirmation be necessary, it may be supplied by the 
 following reflections, the leading thought of which I remember to have 
 read in the works of a continental philosopher. It should seem easy to 
 give the definite distinction of the reason from the understanding, 
 because we constantly imply it when we speak of the difference between 
 ourselves and the brute creation. No one, except as a figure of speech, 
 ever speaks of an animal reason ; * but that many animals possess a 
 share of understanding, perfectly distinguishable from mere instinct, we 
 all allow. Few persons have a favourite dog without making instances 
 of its intelligence an occasional topic of conversation. They call for our 
 admiration of the individual animal, and not with exclusive reference to 
 the wisdom in nature, as in the case of the a-ropy!) or maternal instinct of 
 beasts ; or of the hexangular cells of the bees, and the wonderful coinci- 
 dence of this form with the geometrical demonstration of the largest 
 possible number of rooms in a given space. Likewise, we distinguish 
 various degrees of understanding there, and even discover from induc- 
 tions supplied by the zoologists, that the understanding appears (as a 
 general rule) in an inverse proportion to the instinct. We hear little or 
 nothing of the instincts of " the half-reasoning elephant," and as little 
 of the understanding of caterpillars and butterflies. (N. B. Though 
 reasoning does not in our language, in the lax use of words natural in 
 
 I have this moment looked over a trans- naturalists, Blumenbach remained ardent and 
 lation of Blumenbach's Physiology by Dr. instant in controverting the opinion, and ex- 
 Elliotson, which forms a glaring exception, posing its fallacy and falsehood, both as a man 
 p 45. I do not know, Dr. Elliot-son, but I of sense and as a naturalist. I may truly say, 
 do know Professor Blumenbach, and was an that it was uppermost in his heart and fore- 
 assiduous attendant on the lectures, of which most in his speech. Therefore, and from no 
 this classical work was the text-book : and 1 hostile feeling to Dr. Elliotson (whom 1 hear 
 know that that good and great man would spoken of with great repird and respect, anil 
 start back with surprise and indignation at to whom I myself give credit for his manly 
 the gross materialism morticed on to his openness in the avowal of his opinions), I 
 work : the more so because during the whole have felt the present animadversion a duty 
 period, in which the identification of man of justice as well as gratitude, 
 with the brute in kind was the fashion of S. T. C. 8 April, 181 7.
 
 96 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 conversation or popular writings, imply scientific conclusion, yet the 
 phrase "half-reasoning" is evidently used by Pope as a poetic hyper- 
 bole.) But reason is wholly denied, equally to the highest as to the 
 lowest of the brutes ; otherwise it must be wholly attributed to them, 
 and with it therefore self-consciousness, and personality, or moral being. 
 I should have no objection to define reason with Jacobi, and with his 
 friend Hemsterhuis, as an organ bearing the same relation to spiritual 
 objects, the universal, the eternal, and the necessary, as the eye bears to 
 material and contingent phenomena. But then it must be added, that 
 it is an organ identical with its appropriate objects. Thus God, the 
 soul, eternal truth, &c. are the objects of reason ; but they are them- 
 selves reason. We name God the Supreme Reason ; and Milton says, 
 " Whence the soul reason receives, and reason is her being." Whatever 
 is conscious self-knowledge is reason ; and in this sense it may be safely 
 defined the organ of the supersensuous ; even as the understanding 
 wherever it does not possess or use the reason, as another and inward 
 eye, may be defined the conception of the sensuous, or the faculty by 
 which we generalize and arrange the phenomena of perception : 
 that faculty, the functions of which contain the rules and constitute 
 the possibility of outward experience. In short, the understanding 
 supposes something that is understood. This may be merely its own 
 acts or forms, that is, formal logic ; but real objects, the materials of 
 substantial knowledge, must be furnished, we might safely say revealed, 
 to it by organs of sense. The understanding of the higher brutes has 
 only organs of outward sense, and consequently material objects only ; 
 but man's understanding has likewise an organ of inward sense, and 
 therefore the power of acquainting itself with invisible realities or 
 spiritual objects. This organ is his reason. Again, the understanding 
 and experience may exist* without reason. But reason cannot exist 
 without understanding ; nor does it or can it manifest itself but in and 
 through the understanding, which in our elder writers is often called 
 discourse, or the discursive faculty, as by Hooker, Lord Bacon, and 
 Hobbes : and an understanding enlightened by reason Shakespeare 
 gives as the contra-distinguishing character of man, under the name 
 " discourse of reason." In short, the human understanding possesses two 
 distinct organs, the outward sense, and " the mind's eye " which is 
 reason : wherever we use that phrase (the mind's eye) in its proper 
 sense, and not as a mere synonyme of the memory or the fancy. In 
 this way we reconcile the promise of revelation, that the blessed will see 
 
 Of this no one would feel inclined to only to hatch the eggs of the ben with all the 
 
 donbt, who had seen the poodle dog, whom mother's care and patience, but to attend the 
 
 the celebrated Blumenhach, a name so dear chicken afterwards, and find the food for them, 
 
 to science as a physiologist and comparative 1 have myself known a Newfoundland dog 
 
 anatomist, and not less dear as a man, to all who watched and guarded a family of young 
 
 Englishmen who have resided at Gotiingen in children with all the intelligence of a uurse, 
 
 the course of their education, trained up, not during their walks.
 
 Essay 5. 97 
 
 God, with the declaration of St. John, God hath no one seen at any 
 time. 
 
 We will add one other illustration to prevent any misconception, as it 
 we were dividing the human soul into different essences, or ideal 
 persons. In this piece of steel I acknowledge the properties of hardness, 
 brittlenees, high polish, and the capability of forming a mirror. I find 
 all these likewise in the plate glass of a friend's carriage ; but in addition 
 to all these, I find the quality of transparency, or the power of trans- 
 mitting as well as of reflecting the rays of light. The application is 
 obvious. 
 
 If the reader therefore will take the trouble of bearing in mind these 
 and the following explanations, he will have removed beforehand every 
 possible difficulty from The Friend's political section. For there is 
 another use of the word reason, arising out of the former indeed, but 
 less definite, and more exposed to misconception. In this latter use it 
 means the understanding considered as using the reason, so far as by the 
 ovuau of reason only we jx>ssess the ideas of the necessary and the 
 universal ; and this is the more common use of the word, when it is 
 applied with any attempt at clear and distinct conceptions. In this 
 narrower and derivative sense the best definition of reason, which I can 
 give, will be found in the third member of the following sentence, in 
 which the understanding is described in its threefold operation, and 
 from each receives an appropriate name. The sense (vis sensitiva vel 
 'i'(t') perceives ; 17s rvjulatrix (the understanding, in its own 
 peculiar operation) conceives; I -'is (the reason or rational- 
 
 ized understanding) comprehends. The first is impressed through the 
 organs of sense ; the second combines these multifarious impressions 
 into individual notions, and by reducing these notions to rules, according 
 to the analogy of all its former notices, constitutes experience ; the third 
 subordinates both these notions and the rules of experience to absolute 
 principles or necessary laws : and thus concerning objects, which oui 
 experience has proved to have real existence, it demonstrates moreover, 
 in what way they are possible, and in doing this constitutes science. 
 Reason therefore, in this secondary sense, and used, not as a spiritual 
 organ but as a faculty (namely, the understanding or soul enlightened 
 by that oriran) reason, I say, or the scientific faculty, is the intellection 
 of the ]iossibility or essential properties of things by means of the laws 
 that constitute them. Thus the rational idea of a circle is that of a 
 figure constituted by the circumvolution of a straight line with its one 
 end fixed. 
 
 Every man must feel, that though he may not lie exerting different 
 faculties, he is exerting his faculties in a different way, when in one 
 instance lielv..ins with some one self-evident truth, (that the radii of a 
 circle, for instance, are all equal,) and in consequence of this being true 
 
 H
 
 98 The First Landing-Place. 
 
 sees at once, without any actual experience, that some other thing must 
 be true likewise, and that, this being true, some third thing must be 
 equally true, and so on till he comes, we will say, to the properties of 
 the lever, considered as the spoke of a circle ; which is capable of having 
 all its marvellous powers demonstrated even to a savage who had never 
 seen a lever, and without supposing any other previous knowledge in his 
 mind, but this one, that there is a conceivable figure, all possible lines 
 from the middle to the circumference of which are of the same length : or 
 when, in the second instance, he brings together the facts of experience, each 
 of which has its own separate value, neither increased nor diminished by 
 the truth of any other fact which may have preceded it ; and making 
 these several facts bear upon some particular project, and finding some 
 in favour of it, and some against it, determines for or against the project, 
 according as one or the other class of facts preponderate : as, for instance, 
 whether it would be better to plant a particular spot of ground with 
 larch, or with Scotch fir, or with oak in preference to either. Surely, 
 every man will acknowledge, that his mind was very differently em- 
 ployed in the first case from what it was in the second ; and all men 
 have agreed to call the results of the first class the truths of science 
 such as not only are true, but which it is impossible to conceive other- 
 wise ; while the results of the second class are called facts, or things of 
 experience: and as to these latter we must often content ourselves with 
 the greater probability, that they are so, or so, rather than otherwise 
 nay, even when we have no doubt that they are so in the particular 
 case, we never presume to assert that they must continue so always, and 
 under all ci cumstances. On the contrary, our conclusions depend 
 altogether on contingent circumstances. Now when the mind is 
 employed, as in the case first mentioned, I call it reasoning, or the use 
 of the pure reason ; but, in the second case, the understanding or pru- 
 dence. 
 
 This reason applied to the motives of our conduct, and combined with 
 the sense of our moral responsibility, is the conditional cause of con- 
 science, which is a spiritual sense or testifying state of the coincidence or 
 discordance of the free will with the reason. But as the reasoning 
 consists wholly in a man's power of seeing, whether any two ideas, which 
 happen to be in his mind, are, or are not in contradiction with each 
 other, it follows of necessity, not only that all men have reason, but 
 that every man has it in the same degree. For reasoning (or reason, in 
 this its secondary sense) does not consist in the ideas, or in their clear- 
 ness, but simply, when they are in the mind, in seeing whether they 
 contradict each other or no. 
 
 And again, as in the determinations of conscience the only knowledge 
 required is that of my own intention whether in doing such a thing, 
 instead of leaving it undone, I did what I should think right if any
 
 Essay 5. 99 
 
 other person had done it ; it follows that in the mere question of guilt 
 or innocence, all men have not only reason equally, but likewise all the 
 materials on which the reason, considered as conscience, is to work. 
 But when we pass out of ourselves, and speak, not exclusively of the 
 agent as meaning well or ill, hut of the action in its consequences, then 
 of course experience is required, judgment in making use of it, and all 
 those other qualities of the mind which are so differently dispensed to 
 different persons, both by nature and education. And though the 
 reason itself is the same in all men, yet the means of exercising it, and 
 the materials (i. e. the facts and ideas) on which it is exercised, being 
 possessed in very different degrees by different persons, the practical 
 result is, of course, equally different, and the whole groundwork of 
 Rousseau's philosophy ends in a mere nothingism. Even in that branch 
 of knowledge, on which the ideas, on the con^ruity of which with each 
 other the reason is to decide, are all possessed alike by all men, namely, 
 in geometry, (for all men in their senses possess all the component 
 images, viz. simple curves and straight lines) yet the power of attention 
 required for the perception of linked truths, even of such truths, is so 
 very different in A and in B, that Sir Isaac Newton professed that it 
 was in this power only that he was superior to ordinary men. In short, 
 the sophism is as gross as if I should say the souls of all men have the 
 faculty of sight in an equal degree forgetting to add, that this faculty 
 cannot be exercised without eyes, and that some men are blind, and 
 others short-sighted, (fee. and should then take advantage of this my 
 omission to conclude against the use or necessity of spectacles, micro- 
 scopes, &c., or of choosing the sharpest-sighted men for our guides. 
 
 Having exposed this gross sophism, I must warn against an opposite 
 error namely, that if reason, as distinguished from prudence, consists 
 merely in knowing that black cannot be white or when a man has a 
 clear conception of an inclosed figure, and another equally clear concep- 
 tion of a straight line, his reason teaches him that these two conceptions 
 are incompatible in the same object, i. e. that two straight lines cannot 
 include a space the said reason must be a very insignificant faculty. 
 But a moment's steady self- reflection will show us, that in the simple 
 determination "black is not white" or, " that two straight lines cannot 
 include a space," all the powers are implied that distinguish man from 
 animals 1st, the power of reflection ; 2nd, of comparison ; 3rd, and 
 therefore of suspension of the mind ; 4th, therefore of a controlling will, 
 and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting 
 appetites; from motives, and not from mere dark instincts. Was it an 
 insignificant thin.n to weigh the planets, to determine all their courses, 
 and prophesy every possible relation of the hea\ usand years 
 
 hence? Yet all this mighty chain of science is nothing hut a linking 
 together of truths of the same kind, as, the whole is greater tL:
 
 100 TJte First Landing-Place. 
 
 part : or, if A and B = C, then A = B : or 3 + 4 = 7, therefore 7 + 5 
 = 12, and so forth. X is to be found either in A or B, or C or D : It 
 is not found in A, B, or C, therefore it is to be found in D. What can be 
 simpler ? Apply this to a brute animal a dog misses his master where 
 four roads meet he has come up one, smells to two of the others, and 
 then with his head aloft darts forward to the third road without any 
 examination. If this was done by a conclusion, the dog would have 
 reason how comes it then, that he never shows it in his ordinary 
 habits? Why does this story excite either wonder or incredulity ? If 
 the story be a fact, and not a fiction, I should say the breeze brought 
 his master's scent down the fourth road to the dog's nose, and that 
 therefore he did not put it down to the road, as in the two former 
 instances. So awful and almost miraculous does the simple act of 
 concluding, that take 3 from 4 there remains one, appear to us when 
 attributed to the most sagacious of all brute animals.
 
 THE FEIEND. 
 
 ^return tfjc jftrjEit. 
 
 ON THE PBINCIPLES OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Hoc ponssmuii PACTO FELICEM AC MAGXUH REGEM SE KORE JCDICANS : MIX si QCAM 
 
 PLCBIMIS SED SI QUAM OPTIMIS QTPERET. rROINPE 1'ARtIM ESSE PDTAT JUSTIS PRSIDIIS 
 BEQNUM SITM JITISUSSE, NISI IDEM VIRIS ERUDITIOKf: JUXTA AC VIT.S: ISTEGRITATE PRCEI.- 
 IENTIBUS DITET ATQUE HONESTET. KIMIKUM IKTELLIGIT, H^C PEJICM ES.SE VE1LA. IIHGNI 
 DECOBA, HAS VEBAS OPES. 
 
 KRASJTCS : EPIST. AD. EIT3C.
 
 102 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 Dumpolitici sa>piuscuUhominibusmagis insidiantitr quam consulimt, potius callidi qvam 
 saiuntts ; theontici e contrario se rem dii-inamfacereetsapienti&culmen attingere credunt, 
 quan/lo humanam naturam, quo? nullibi est, multis modis laudare, ft earn, qua re rera erf, 
 diet is lacessere nwunt. Cndefactum est, ut nunquam politicam conceperint qua possit ad 
 usum recocari ; sed qua in Utopia vel in Ulopoetarum aureo sceculo, ubi scilicet mini me neceae 
 erat, institui potuisset. At mihi plane persuadeo, experientiam omnia civitatum genera, 
 qws concipi possunt tit homines concorditer vivant, et simul media, quibus multitude dirigi, 
 tea quibus infra certos limites contineri debeat, ostendisse : ita ut non credam, nos potte 
 aliquid, quod ab experientid size praxi non abliorreat, cogitations de hoc re assequi, quod 
 nondum expertum cr/mpertumque sit. 
 
 Cum igitur animum ad politicam applicuerim, nihil quod noi-um vel inaudititm eft; fed 
 tantum ea qua cum praxi optime conveniunt, certa et indubitata ratione demonstrare aut ea> 
 ipsa humana naturce conditione deducere, intendi. Etutea qua ad hanc scientiam fpectant, 
 eatlem animi libertate, qua res mathematicas solemus, inquirerem, sedulo curari humanat 
 actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari ; sed intelligere. Nee ad imperil sectiritatem 
 refert quo animo homines inducantur ad res recte administrandas, modo res recte adminis- 
 trtntur. Animi enim'libertas, seufortitudo,privata virtus est ; at imperil virtus securitas. 
 
 SPINOZA, Op. Post. p. 267. 
 
 (.Translation.") While the mere practical statesman too often rather plots against man- 
 kind, than consults their interest, crafty not wise; the mere theorists, on the other hand, 
 imagine that they are employed in a glorious work, and believe themselves at the very 
 summit of earthly wisdom, when they are able, in set and varied language, to extol that 
 human nature, which exists nowhere (except indeed in their own fancy), and to accuse and 
 vilify our nature as it really is. Hence it has happened, that these men have never con- 
 ceived a practical scheme of civil policy, but, at best, such forms of government only, as 
 might have been instituted in Utopia, or during the golden age of the poets : that is to say, 
 forms of government excellently adapted for those who need no government at all. But I 
 am fully persuaded, that experience has already brought to light all conceivable sorts of 
 political institutions under which human society can be maintained in concord, and likewise 
 the chief means of directing the multitude, or retaining them within given boundaries : so 
 that I can hardly believe, that on this subject the deepest research would arrive at any 
 result, not abhorrent from experience and practice, which has not been already tried and 
 proved. 
 
 When, therefore, I applied my thoughts to the study of political economy, I proposed to 
 myself nothing original or strange as the fruits of my reflections ; but simply to demonstrate 
 from plain and undoubted principles, or to deduce frem the very condition and necessities of 
 human nature, those plans and maxims which square the best with practice. And that in all 
 things which relate to this province, I might conduct my investigations with the same 
 freedom of intellect with which we proceed in questions of pure science, I sedulously dis- 
 ciplined my mind neither to laugh at, or bewail, or detest, the actions of men ; but to under- 
 stand them. For to the safety of the state it is not of necessary importance, what motives 
 induce men to administer public affairs rightly, provided only that public affairs be rightly 
 administered. For moral strength, or freedom from the selfish passions, is the virtue of 
 individuals ; but security is the virtue of a state. 
 
 ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ALL the different philosophical systems of political justice, all the 
 theories on the rightful origin of government, are reducible in the 
 end to three classes, correspondent to the three different points of view 
 in which the human being itself may be contemplated. The first denies 
 all truth and distinct meaning to the words right and duty, and affirm- 
 ing that the human mind consists of nothing but manifold modifications 
 of passive sensation, considers men as the highest sort of animals indeed,
 
 Section 1. Essay 1. 103 
 
 but at the same time the most wretched ; inasmuch as their defenceless 
 nature forces them into society, while such is the multiplicity of wants 
 engendered by the social state, that the wishes of one are sure to be in 
 contradiction with those of some other. The assertors of this system 
 consequently ascribe the origin and continuance of government to fear, 
 or the power of the stronger, aided by the force of custom. This is the 
 system of Hobbes. Its statement is its confutation. It is, indeed, in the 
 literal sense of the word preposterous : for fear presupposes conquest, and 
 conquest a previous union and agreement between the conquerors. A 
 vast empire may perhaps be governed by fear ; at least the idea is not 
 absolutely inconceivable, under circumstances which prevent the con- 
 sciousness of a common strength. A million of men united by mu- 
 tual confidence and free intercourse of thoughts form one power, and 
 this is as much a real thing as a steam engine ; but a million of insu- 
 lated individuals is only an abstraction of the mind, and but one told 
 so many times over, without addition, as an idiot would tell the clock 
 at noon one, one, one, &c. But when, in the first instances, the 
 descendants of one family joined together to attack those of another 
 family, it is impossible that their chief or leader should have appeared 
 to them stronger than all the rest together ; they must therefore have 
 chosen him, and this as for particular purposes, so doubtless under par- 
 ticular conditions, expressed or understood. Such we know to be the 
 case with the North American tribes at present ; such, we are informed 
 by history, was the case with our own remote ancestors. Therefore, 
 even on the system of those who, in contempt of the oldest and most 
 authentic records, consider the savage as the first and natural state of 
 man, government must have originated in choice and an agreement. 
 The apparent exceptions in Africa and Asia are, if possible, still more 
 subversive of this system : for they will be found to have originated in 
 religious imposture, and the first chiefs to have secured a willing and 
 enthusiastic obedience to themselves as delegates of the Deity. 
 
 But the whole theory is baseless. We are told by history, we learn 
 from our experience,- we know from our own hearts, that fear, of itself, 
 is utterly incapable of producing any regular, continuous, and calculable 
 effect, even on an individual ; and that the fear, which does act sys- 
 tematically upon the mind, always presupposes a sense of duty, as its 
 cause. The most cowardly of the European nations, the Neapolitans 
 and Sicilians, those among whom the fear of death exercises the most 
 tyrannous influence relatively to their own persons, are the very men 
 who icast fear to take away the life of a fellow-citizen by poison or as- 
 sassination ; while in Great Britain, a tyrant, who has abused the power, 
 which a vast property has given him, to oppress a whole neighbour- 
 hood, can walk in safety unarmed, and imattended, amid a hundred 
 men, each of whom feels his heart burn with rage and indignation at
 
 104 The Friend. 
 
 the sight of him. "It was this man who broke my father's heart" 
 or, " It is through him that my children are clad in rags, and cry for 
 the food which I am no longer able to provide for them." And yet they 
 dare not touch a hair of his head ! Whence does this arise ? Is it from 
 a cowardice of sensibility that makes the injured man shudder at the 
 thought of shedding blood ? Or from a cowardice of selfishness which 
 makes him afraid of hazarding his own life? Neither the one or the 
 other ! The field of Waterloo, as the most recent of an hundred equal 
 proofs has borne witness that 
 
 Bring a Briton fra his hill, 
 
 * * * 
 
 Say, such is Royal George's will, 
 
 And there's the foe, 
 He has nae thought but how to kill 
 
 Twa at a blow. 
 
 Nae cauld, faint-hearted doublings tease him ; 
 Death comes, wi' fearless eye he sees him ; 
 Wi' bluidy hand a welcome gies him ; 
 
 And when he fa's, 
 His latest draught o' breathin' leaves him 
 
 Jn faint huzzas." BURXS. 
 
 Whence then arises the difference of feeling in the former case ? To 
 what does the oppressor owe his safety ? To the spirit-quelling thought : 
 the laws of God and of my country have made his life sacred ! I dare 
 not touch a hair of his head ! " 'Tis conscience that makes cowards of 
 us all," but oh ! it is conscience too which makes heroes of us all. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 Le plus fort n'estjamais assez fort pour gtre toujours le maitre, s'U ne transforme sa force, 
 en droit el I'obeissance en devoir. ROCSSBAU. 
 
 Viribus parantur provincial, jure retinentur. Igitur breve id gaudium, quippe Germani 
 vic'i magis, quam domiti. FLOR. iv. 12. 
 
 (Iranslation.) The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless ho 
 transform his power into right and obedience into duty. ROUSSEATJ. 
 
 Provinces are taken by force, but they are kept by right. This exultation therefore was of 
 brief continuance, inasmuch as the Germans had been overcome, hut not subdued. 
 
 FLOBTJS. 
 
 A TRULY great man (the best and greatest public character that I had 
 ever the opportunity of making myself acquainted with), on assuming 
 the command of a man-of-war, found a mutinous crew, more than one 
 half of them uneducated Irishmen, and of the remainder no small por- 
 tion had become sailors by compromise of punishment. What terror 
 could effect by severity and frequency of acts of discipline had been 
 already effected. And what was this effect ? Something like that of a 
 polar winter on a flask of brandy. The furious spirit concentrated 
 itself with tenfold strength at the heart ; open, violence was changed
 
 Section I. Essay 2. 105 
 
 into secret plots and conspiracies ; and the consequent orderliness of the 
 crew, as tar as they were orderly, was but the brooding of a tempest. 
 The new commander instantly commenced a system of discipline as 
 near as possible to that of ordinary law as much as possible, he 
 avoided, in his own person, the appearance of any will or arbitrary 
 power to vary, or to remit, punishment. The rules to be observed 
 were affixed to a conspicuous part of the ship, with the particular pe- 
 nalties for the breach of each particular rule ; and care was taken that 
 every individual of the ship should know and understand this code. 
 With a single exception in the case of mutinous behaviour, a space of 
 twenty-four hours was appointed between the first charge and the 
 second hearing of the cause, at which time the accused person was per- 
 mitted and required to bring forward whatever he thought conducive 
 to his defence or palliation. If, as was commonly the case (for the 
 officers well knew that the commander would seriously resent in them 
 all caprice of will, and by no means permit to others what he denied to 
 himself) if no answer could be returned to the three questions Did you 
 not commit the act? Did you not know that it was in contempt of 
 such a rule, and in defiance of such a punishment ? And was it not 
 wholly in your own power to have obeyed the one and avoided the 
 other? the sentence was then passed with the greatest solemnity, 
 and another, but shorter, space of time was again interposed between it 
 and its actual execution. During this space the feelings of the com- 
 mander, as, a man, were so well blended with his inflexibility, as the 
 organ of the law ; and how much he suffered previous to and during 
 the execution of the sentence was so well known to the crew, that it 
 became a common saying with them, when a sailor was about to be 
 punished, " The captain takes it more to heart than the fellow himself." 
 But whenever the commander perceived any trait of pride in the 
 offender, or the germs of any noble feeling, he lost no opportunity of 
 saying, " It is not the pain that you are about to suffer which grieves me ! 
 You are none of you, I trust, such cowards as to turn faint-hearted at 
 the thought of that ! but that, being a man, and one who is to fight for 
 his king and country, you should have made it necessary to treat you 
 as a vicious beast, it is this that grieves me." 
 
 I have been assured, both by a gentleman who was a lieutenant on 
 board that ship at the time when the heroism of its captain, aided by 
 his characteristic calmness and foresight, greatly influenced the decision 
 of the most glorious battle recorded in the annals of our naval glory ; 
 and very recently by a grey-headed sailor, who did not even know my 
 name, or could have suspected that 1 was previously acquainted with the 
 circumstances I have been assured, I say, that the success of this plan 
 was such as astonished the oldest officers, and convinced the most incre- 
 dulous. Ruffians, who like the old Buccaneers, had been used to inflict
 
 106 The Friend. 
 
 torture on themselves for sport, or in order to harden themselves before- 
 hand, were tamed and overpowered, how or why they themselves knew 
 not. From the fiercest spirits were heard the most earnest entreaties for 
 the forgiveness of their commander ; not before the punishment, for it 
 was too well known that then they would have been to no purpose, but 
 days after it, when the bodily pain was remembered but as a dream. 
 An invisible power it was that quelled them, a power, which was there- 
 fore irresistible, because it took away the very will of resisting ! It was 
 the awful power of law, acting on natures pre-configured to its influences. 
 A faculty was appealed to in the offender's own being ; a faculty and a 
 presence, of which he had not been previously made aware but it 
 answered to the appeal ! its real existence therefore could not be doubted, 
 or its reply rendered inaudible ! and the very struggle of the wilder pas- 
 sions to keep uppermost counteracted their own purpose, by wasting in 
 internal contest that energy, which before had acted in its entireness on 
 external resistance or provocation. Strength may be met with strength ; 
 the power of inflicting pain may be baffled by the pride of endurance ; 
 the eye of rage may be answered by the stare of defiance, or the downcast 
 look of dark and revengeful resolve ; and with all this there is an out- 
 ward and determined object to which the mind can attach its passions 
 and purposes, and bury its own disquietudes in the full occupation of the 
 senses. But who dares struggle with an Invisible combatant ? with an 
 enemy which exists and makes us know its existence but where it is, 
 we ask in vain. No space contains it ; time promises no control over it ; 
 it has no ear for my threats ; it has no substance that my hands can 
 grasp, or my weapons find vulnerable ; it commands and cannot be 
 commanded ; it acts and is insusceptible of my re-action ; the more I jtrive 
 to subdue it, the more am I compelled to think of it, and the more I 
 think of it, the more do I find it to possess a reality out of myself, and 
 not to be a phantom of my own imagination ; that all, but the most 
 abandoned men, acknowledge its authority, and that the whole strength 
 and majesty of my country are pledged to support it ; and yet that for 
 me its power is the same with that of my own permanent self, and that 
 all the choice, which is permitted to me, consists in having it for my 
 guardian Angel or my avenging fiend ! This is the spirit of law ! the 
 lute of Amphion, the harp of Orpheus ! This is the true necessity, which 
 compels man into the social state, now and always, by a still-beginning, 
 never-ceasing force of moral cohesion. 
 
 Thus is man to be governed, and thus only can he be governed. For 
 from his creation the objects of his senses were to become his subjects, 
 and the task allotted to him was to subdue the visible world within the 
 sphere of action circumscribed by those senses, as far as they could act 
 in concert. What the eye beholds the hand strives to reach ; what it 
 reaches, it conquers, and makes the instrument of further conquest.
 
 Section 1. Essay 2. 107 
 
 We can be subdued by that alone which is analogous in kind to that by 
 which we subdue : therefore by the invisible powers of our nature, whose 
 immediate presence is disclosed to our inner sense, and only as the sym- 
 bols and language of which all shapes and modifications of matter become 
 formidable to us. 
 
 A machine continues to move by the force which first set it in motion. 
 If only the smallest number in any state, properly so called, hold together 
 through the influence of any fear that does not itself presuppose the sense 
 of duty, it is evident that the state itself could not have commenced 
 through animal fear. We hear, indeed, of conquests ; but how does 
 history represent these ? Almost without exception as the substitution 
 of one set of governors for another ; and so far is the conqueror from 
 relying on fear alone to secure the obedience of the conquered, that his 
 first step is to demand an oath of fealty from them, by which he would 
 impose upon them the belief, that they become subjects ; for who would 
 think of administering an oath to a gang of slaves ? But what can make 
 the difference between slave and subject, if not the existence of an implied 
 contract in the one case, and not in the other ? And to what purpose 
 would a contract serve if, however it might be entered into through fear, 
 it were deemed binding only in consequence of fear ? To repeat my 
 former illustration where fear alone is relied on, as in a slave ship, the 
 chains that bind the poor victims must be material chains ; for these only 
 can act upon feelings which have their source wholly in the material 
 organization. Hobbes has said, that laws without the sword are but bits 
 of parchment. How far this is true every honest man's heart will best 
 tell him, if he will content himself with asking his own heart, and not 
 falsity the answer by his notions concerning the hearts of other men. 
 But were it true, still the fair answer would be Well ! but without the 
 laws the sword is but a piece of iron. The wretched tyrant, who 
 disgraces the present age and human nature itself, had exhausted the 
 whole magazine of animal terror, in order to consolidate his truly Satanic 
 government. But look at the new French catechism, and in it read the 
 misgivings of the monster's mind, as to the sufficiency of terror alone ! 
 The system, which 1 have been confuting, is indeed so inconsistent with 
 the facts revealed to us by our own mind, and so utterly unsupported by 
 any facts of history, that I should be censurable in wasting my own 
 time and my reader's patience by the exposure of its falsehood, but that 
 the arguments adduced have a value of themselves independent of their 
 present application. Else it would have been an ample and satisfactory 
 reply to an assertor of this bestial theory Government is a thing which 
 relates to men, and what you say applies only to beasts. 
 
 Before I proceed to the second of the three systems, let me remove a 
 possible misunderstanding that may have arisen from the use of the 
 word contract : as if I had asserted, that the whole duty of obedience to
 
 108 TJie Friend. 
 
 governors is derived from, and dependent on, the fact of an original con- 
 tract. I freely admit, that to make this the cause and origin of political 
 obligation, is not only a dangerous but an absurd theory ; for what could 
 give moral force to the contract ? The same sense of duty which binds 
 us to keep it^ must have pre-existed as impelling us to make it For 
 what man in his senses would regard the faithful observation of a con- 
 tract entered into to plunder a neighbour's house, but as a treble crime ? 
 First the act, which is a crime of itself; secondly, the entering into a 
 contract which it is a crime to observe, and yet a weakening of one of 
 the main pillars of human confidence not to observe, and thus voluntarily 
 placing ourselves under the necessity of choosing between two evils ; 
 and thirdly, the crime of choosing the greater of the two evils, by the 
 unlawful observance of an unlawful promise. But in my sense, the 
 word contract is merely synonymous with the sense of duty acting in a 
 specific direction, i. e. determining our moral relations, as members of a 
 body politic. If I have referred to a supposed origin of government, it 
 has been in courtesy to a common notion : for I myself regard the sup- 
 position as no more than a means of simplifying to our apprehension the 
 ever-continuing causes of social union, even as the conservation of the 
 world may be represented as an act of continued creation. For, what if 
 an original contract had really been entered into, and formally recorded ? 
 Still it could do no more than bind the contracting parties to act for the 
 general good in the best manner, that the existing relations among them- 
 selves, (state of property, religion, &c.) on the one hand, and the external 
 circumstances on the other (ambitious or barbarous neighbours, <Src.), 
 required or permitted. In after times it could be appealed to only for 
 the general principle, and no more than the ideal contract could it affect 
 a question of ways and means. As each particular age brings with it its 
 own exigencies, so must it rely on its own prudence for the specific mea- 
 sures by which they are to be encountered. 
 
 Nevertheless, it assuredly cannot be denied, that an original (in 
 reality, rather an ever-originating) contract is a very natural and signifi- 
 cant mode of expressing the reciprocal duties of subject and sovereign. 
 We need only consider the utility of a real and formal state contract, the 
 Bill of Rights for instance, as a sort of est demonstratum in politics ; and 
 the contempt lavished on this notion, though sufficiently compatible with 
 the tenets of a Hume, will seem strange to us in the writings of a Pro- 
 testant clergyman, who surely owed some respect to a mode of thinking 
 which God Himself had authorized by His own example, in the esta- 
 blishment of the Jewish constitution. In this instance there was no neces- 
 sity for deducing the will of God from the tendency of the laws to the 
 general happiness : His will was expressly declared. Nevertheless, it 
 seemed good to the Divine wisdom, that there should be a covenant, an 
 original contract, between Himself as Sovereign, and the Hebrew nation
 
 Section I. Essay 3. . 109 
 
 as subjects. This, I admit, was a written and formal contract ; but the 
 relations of mankind, as members of a body spiritual, or religious com- 
 monwealth, to the Saviour, as its Head or Regent is not this too styled 
 a covenant, though it would be absurd to ask for the material instrument 
 that contained it, or the time when it was signed or voted by the members 
 of the church collectively.* 
 
 With this explanation, the assertion of an original (still better, of a 
 perpetual) contract is rescued from all rational objection ; and however 
 speciously it may be Urged, that history can scarcely produce a single 
 .example of a state dating its primary establishment from a free and 
 mutual covenant, the answer is ready : if there be any difference between 
 a government and a band of robbers, an act of consent must be supposed 
 on the part of the people governed. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 Human institutions cannot be wholly constructed on principles of science, which is proper 
 to immutable objects. In the government of the visible world the Supreme Wisdom itself 
 submits to be the Author of the better : not of the best, but of the best possible in the sub- 
 sisting relations. Much more must all human legislators give way to many evils rather than 
 encourage the discontent that would lead to worse remedies. If it is not in the power of man 
 to construct even the arch of a bridge that shall exactly correspoud in its strength to the cal- 
 culations of geometry, how much less can human science construct a constitution except by 
 rendering itself flexible to experience and expediency : where so many things must fall out 
 accidentally, and come not into any compliance with the preconceived ends ; but men are 
 forced to comply subsequently, and to strike in with things as they fall out, by after appli- 
 cations of them to their purposes, or by framing their purposes to them. SOUTH. 
 
 THE second system corresponds to the second point of view under which 
 the human being may be considered, namely, as an animal gifted 
 with understanding, or the faculty of suiting measures to circumstances. 
 According to this theory, every institution of national origin needs no 
 other justification than a proof, that under the particular circumstances 
 it is expedient. Having in my former numbers expressed myself (so at 
 least I am conscious I shall have appeared to do to many persons) with 
 comparative slight of the understanding considered as the sole guide of 
 human conduct, and even with something like contempt and reprobation 
 of the maxims of expedience, when represented as the only steady light 
 of the conscience, and the absolute foundation of all morality ; I shall 
 perhaps seem guilty of an inconsistency, in declaring myself an adherent 
 of this second system, a zealous advocate for deriving the origin of all 
 government from human prudence, and of deeming that to be just which 
 
 * It is perhaps to be regretted, that the keep in sight a notion, which appeared to the 
 
 words, Old and New Testament, they having primitive Church the fittest and most -rip- 
 
 x:nse inti-ndi-d by the translators of tural mode ot representing the sum of the 
 
 the Bible, have nut been changed into the Old contents of the sacred writings, 
 aud .New Covenant. We <xmnut ux> carefully
 
 110 
 
 Tlie Friend. 
 
 experience has proved to be expedient. From this charge of inconsist- 
 ency* I shall best exculpate myself by the full statement of the third 
 system, and by the exposition of its grounds and consequences.- 
 
 The third and last system then denies all rightful origin to govern- 
 ment, except as far as they are derivable from principles contained in 
 the reason of man, and judges all the relations of men in society by the 
 laws of moral necessity, according to ideas (I hero use the word in its 
 highest and primitive sense, and as nearly synonymous with the modern 
 word ideal) according to archetypal ideas co-essential with the reason, 
 and the consciousness of which is the sign and necessary product of its 
 full development. The following then is the fundamental principle of 
 this theory : nothing is to be deemed rightful in civil society, or to be 
 tolerated as such, but what is capable of being demonstrated out of the 
 original laws of the pure reason. Of course, as there is but one system 
 of geometry, so according to this theory there can be but one constitu- 
 tion and one system of legislation, and this consists in the freedom, 
 which is the common right of all men, under the control of that moral 
 necessity, which is the common duty of all men. Whatever is not 
 
 * Distinct notions do not suppose different 
 things. When we make a threefold distinc- 
 tion in human nature, we are fully aware, 
 that It Is a distinction not a division, and 
 that in every act of mind the man unites the 
 properties of sense, understanding, and 
 reason. Nevertheless, it is of great practical 
 importance, thai these distinctions should be 
 made and understood, the ignorance or per- 
 version of them being alike injurious ; as the 
 first French constitution has most lamentably 
 proved. It was the fashion in the profligate, 
 times of Charles II. to laugh at the Presby- 
 terians, for distinguishing between the person 
 and the King ; while in fact they were ridi- 
 culing the most venerable maxims of English 
 law; (the King never dies the King can do 
 no wrong, &c.) and subverting the principles 
 of genuine loyalty, in order to prepare the 
 minds of the people for despotism. 
 
 Under the term sense, I comprise whatever 
 is passive in our being, without any reference 
 to the questions of materialism or immate- 
 rialism ; all that man is in common with 
 animals, in kind at least his sensations, and 
 impressions, whether of his outward senses, or 
 the inner sense of imagination. This, in the 
 language of the schools, was called the CM 
 reception, or recipient property of the soul, 
 from the original constitution of which we 
 perceive and imagine all things under the 
 forms of space and time. By the understand- 
 ing, I mean the faculty of thinking and 
 forming judgments on the notices furnished 
 by the sense, according to certain rules ex- 
 isting in itself, which rules constitute its dis- 
 tinct nature. By the pure reason, I mean 
 the power by which we br come possessed of 
 principles (the eternal verities of Plato and 
 Descartes), and of ideas (N.B. Dot images), as 
 
 the ideas of a point, a line, a circle, in ma- 
 thematics ; and of justice, holiness, free-will, 
 &c., in morals. Hence in works of pure 
 science the definitions of necessity precede 
 the reasoning; in other works they more 
 aptly form the conclusion. 
 
 To many of my readers it will, I trust, be 
 some recommendation of these distinctions, 
 that they are more than once expressed, and 
 everywhere supposed, in the writings of St. 
 PauL 1 have no hesitation in undertaking to 
 prove, that every heresy which has disquieted 
 the Christian Church, from Tritheism to So- 
 cinianism, has originated in and supported 
 itself by, arguments rendered plausible only 
 by the confusion of these faculties, and thus 
 demanding for the objects of one, a sort of 
 evidence appropriated to those of another 
 faculty These disquiMtions have the misfor- 
 tune of being in ill-report, as dry and unsatis- 
 factory; but 1 hope, in the course of the 
 work, to gain them a better character and if 
 elucidations of their practical importance 
 from the most momentous events of history, 
 can render them interesting, to give them 
 that interest at least. Besides, there is surely 
 some good in the knowledge of truth, as 
 truth (we were not made to live by bread 
 alone) and in the strengthening of the intel- 
 lect. It is an excellent remark of Scaliger's 
 "Harum indaiia'wsuljtilitatum.'.ifi on est 
 titilis ad machines fiirinarit:. 
 exuit animtim tanu n inscitia rubigine acuit- 
 que ad alia." SCALIG. Exerc. 3U7, $}. 3, i. e. 
 The invesiieation of these subtleties, though 
 it is of no use to (he construction of machines 
 to grind corn with, yet clears the mind from 
 the rust of ignorance, and sharpens it for 
 other things.
 
 Section 1. Essay 3. Ill 
 
 everywhere necessary, is nowhere right. On this assumption the whole 
 theory is built. To state it nakedly is to confute it satisfactorily. So 
 at least it should seem ! But in how winning and specious a manner 
 this system may be represented even to minds of the loftiest order, if 
 undisciplined and unhumbled by practical experience, has been proved by 
 the general impassioned admiration and momentous effects of Rousseau's 
 Du Contrat Social, and the writings of the French economists, or as they 
 more appropriately entitled themselves, physiocratic philosophers : and 
 in how tempting and dangerous a manner it may be represented to the 
 populace, has been made too evident in our own country by the tempo- 
 rary effects of Paine's Rights of Man. Relatively, however, to this latter 
 work it should be observed, that it is not a legitimate offspring of any 
 one theory, but a confusion of the immorality of the first system with 
 the misapplied universal principles of the last : and in this union, or 
 rather lawless alternation, consists the essence of Jacobinism, as fer as 
 Jacobinism is anything but a term of abuse, or hfls any meaning of its 
 own distinct from democracy and sedition. 
 
 A constitution equally suited to China and America, or to Russia and 
 Great Britain, must surely be equally unfit for both, and deserve as 
 little respect in political, as a quack's panacea in medical practice. Yet 
 there are three weighty motives for a distinct exposition of this theory,* 
 and of the ground on which its pretensions are bottomed : and I dare 
 affirm, that for the same reasons there are few subjects which in the 
 present state of the world have a fairer claim to the attention of every 
 serious Englishman, who is likely, directly or indirectly, as partisan or 
 as opponent, to interest himself in schemes of reform. 
 
 The first motive is derived from the propensity of mankind to mistake 
 the feelings of disappointment, disgust, and abhorrence occasioned by the 
 unhappy effects or accompaniments of a particular system for an insight 
 into the falsehood of its principles which alone can secure its permanent 
 rejection. For by a wise ordinance of nature our feelings have no 
 abiding-place in our memory, nay the more vivid they are in the 
 moment of their existence the more dim and difficult to be remembered 
 do they make the thoughts which accompanied them. Those of my 
 readers who at any time of their life have been in the habit of reading 
 novels may easily convince themselves of this truth by comparing their 
 recollections of those stories, which most excited their curiosity and 
 even painfully affected their feelings, with their recollections of the calm 
 and meditative pathos of Shakespeare and Milton. Hence it is that 
 
 * As " Metaphysics " are the science Itself possible, even as the eye must cxi-t 
 
 which determines what can and what cannot previous to any particular act of swine, 
 
 he known of being and the laws of being, it though by sight only can wp know that we 
 
 .'that is, from those necessities of the have eyes) so might the philosophy of Koiis- 
 
 inind or forms of thinking, which, though seau and his followers not inaptly be entitled, 
 
 fir.-t revealed to us by experience, mi'st yrt Metapolltkat, and the doctors of this school, 
 
 have pre-existed iu order to make experience metapoliticians.
 
 112 Tlie Friend. 
 
 human experience, like the stern lights of a ship at sea, illumines only 
 the path which we have passed over. The horror of the Peasants' War 
 in Germany, and the direful effects of the Anabaptist tenets, which were 
 only nominally different from those of Jacobinism by the substitution of 
 religious for philosophical jargon, struck all Europe for a time with 
 affright. Yet little more than a century was sufficient to obliterate all 
 effective memory of those events : the same principles budded forth 
 anew, and produced the same fruits from the imprisonment of Charles I. 
 to the restoration of his son. In the succeeding generations, to the 
 follies and vices of the European courts, and to the oppressive privileges 
 of the nobility, were again transferred those feelings of disgust and 
 hatred, which for a brief while the multitude had attached to the crimes 
 and extravagances of political and religious fanaticism : and the same 
 principles aided by circumstances and dressed out in the ostentatious 
 garb* of a fashionable philosophy, once more rose triumphant, and 
 effected the French revolution. That man has reflected little on human 
 nature who does not perceive that the detestable maxims and corre- 
 spondent crimes of the existing French despotism, have already dimmed 
 the recollections of the democratic frenzy in the minds of men ; by 
 little and little, have drawn off to other objects the electric force of the 
 feelings, which had massed and upheld those recollections ; and that a 
 favourable concurrence of occasions is alone wanting to awaken the 
 thunder and precipitate the lightning from the opposite quarter of the 
 political heaven.* The true origin of hitman events is so little sus- 
 ceptible of that kind of evidence which can compel our belief even 
 against our will ; and so many are the disturbing forces which 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. I well remember, that 
 when the examples of former Jacobins, Julius Csesar, Cromwell, &c., 
 were adduced in France and England at the commencement of the 
 French Consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedants' ignorance, 
 to fear a repetition of such usurpation at the close of the enlightened 
 eighteenth century. Those who possess the Moniteurs of that date 
 will find set proofs, that such results were little less than impossible, 
 and that it was an insult to so philosophical an age, and so enlightened 
 a nation, to dare direct the public eye towards them as lights of 
 admonition and warning. 
 
 It is a common foible with official statesmen, and with those who 
 
 deem themselves honoured by their acquaintance, to attribute great 
 
 national events to the influence of particular persons, to the errors of 
 
 one man and to the intrigues of another, to any possible spark of a par- 
 
 * The reader will recollect that these essays were first published in 1809.
 
 Section 1. Essay 3. 113 
 
 ticular occasion, rather than to the true cause, the predominant state of 
 public opinion. I have known men who, with most significant nods, 
 and the civil contempt of pitying half smiles, have declared the natural 
 explanation of the French revolution to be the mere fancies of gar- 
 retteers, and then with the solemnity of Cabinet Ministers have pro- 
 ceeded to explain the whole by anecdotes. It is so stimulant to the 
 pride of a vulgar mind, to be persuaded that it knows what few others 
 know, and that it is the important depositary of a sort of state secret, by 
 communicating which it confers an obligation on others ! But I have 
 likewise met with men of intelligence, who at the commencement of the 
 revolution were travelling on foot through the French provinces, and 
 they bear witness, that in the remotest villages every tongue was em- 
 ployed in echoing and enforcing the doctrines of the Parisian journalists, 
 that the public highways were crowded with enthusiasts, some shouting 
 the watch-words of the revolution, others disputing on the most abstract 
 principles of the universal constitution, which they fully believed, that 
 all the nations of the earth were shortly to adopt ; the most ignorant 
 among them confident of his fitness for the highest duties of a legis- 
 lator ; and all prepared to shed their blood in the defence of the in- 
 alienable sovereignty of the self-governed people. The more abstract the 
 notions were, with the closer aflinity did they combine with the most 
 fervent feelings and all the immediate impulses to action. The Lord 
 Chancellor Bacon lived in an age of court intrigues, and was familiarly 
 acquainted with all the secrets of personal influence. He, if any man, 
 was qualified to take the gauge and measurement of their comparative 
 power, and he has told us, that there is one, and but one infallible source 
 of political prophecy, the knowledge of the predominant opinions and 
 the speculative principles of men in general, between the age of twenty 
 and thirty. Sir Philip Sydney, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, the 
 paramount gentleman of Europe, the nephew, and (as far as a good man 
 could be) the confidante of the intriguing and dark-minded Earl of 
 Leicester, was so deeply convinced that the principles diffused through 
 the majority of a nation are the true oracles from whence statesmen are 
 to learn wisdom, and that " when the people speak loudly it is from 
 their being strongly possessed either by the Godhead or the demon," 
 that in the revolution of the Netherlands he considered the universal 
 ion of one set of principles, as a proof of the divine presence. " If 
 her Majesty," says he, " were the fountain, I would fear, considering 
 what i daily find, that we should wax dry. But she is but a means 
 which God useth." But if my readers wish to see the question of the 
 efficacy of principles and popular opinions for evil and for good proved 
 and illustrated with an eloquence worthy of the subject, I can refer them 
 with the hardiest anticipation of their thanks, to the late work con- 
 cerning the relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal, by my 
 
 I
 
 114 
 
 The Friend. 
 
 honoured friend, William Wordsworth* quern quoties lego, non verba 
 mihi videor audire, sed tonitrua ! 
 
 That erroneous political notions (they having become general and a 
 part of the popular creed) have practical consequences, and these, of 
 course, of a most fearful nature, is a truth as certain as historic evidence 
 can make it : and that when the feelings excited by these calamities 
 have passed away, and the interest in them has been displaced by more 
 recent events, the same errors are likely to be started afresh, pregnant 
 with the same calamities, is an evil rooted in human nature in the 
 present state of general information, for which we have hitherto found 
 no adequate remedy. (It may, perhaps in the scheme of Providence, be 
 proper and conducive to its ends, that no adequate remedy should 
 exist ; for the folly of men is the wisdom of God.) But if there be any 
 means, if not of preventing, yet of palliating the disease and, in the 
 more favoured nations, of checking its progress at the first symptoms ; 
 and if these means are to be at all compatible with the civil and intel- 
 lectual freedom of mankind ; they are to be found only in an intelligible 
 and thorough exposure of the error, and, through that discovery, of the 
 
 * I consider this reference to, and strong 
 recommendation of the work above-men- 
 tioned, not as a voluntary tribute of admira- 
 tion, but as an act of mere justice both to 
 myself and to the readers of The Friend. My 
 own heart bears me witness, that 1 am ac- 
 tuated by the deepest sense of the truth of 
 the principles, which it has been and still 
 more will be my endeavour to enforce, and 
 of their paramount importance to the well- 
 being of society at the present juncture ; and 
 that the duty of making the attempt, and the 
 hope of not wholly failing in it, are, far 
 more than the wish for the doubtful good of 
 literary reputation, or any yet meaner object, 
 my great and ruling motives. Mr. Words- 
 worth I deem a fellow-labourer in the same 
 vineyard, actuated by the same motives, and 
 teaching the same principles, but with far 
 greater powers of mind, and an eloquence 
 more adequate to the importance and majesty 
 of the cause. I am strengthened too by the 
 knowledge, that I am not unauthorized by 
 the sympathy of many wise and good men, 
 and men acknowledged as such by the public, 
 in my admiration of his pamphlet. Xeque 
 enim debf.t aperibus ejus obesse, quod .vivit. 
 An si inter eos, quos nunquam vidimus, 
 floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam 
 imagines conquireremus, ejusdem nunc honor 
 proesentis, tt gratia quasi satietate ianyufs- 
 et? At hocpravum, malignumque est, non 
 admirari hominem admiratione dignissi- 
 mum, quia videre, compUcti, nee lau/lare 
 tantum, verum etiam amare contingit. 
 PUN. Epist lib. i. 
 
 It is hardly possible for a man of ingenuous 
 mind to act under the fear that he shall be 
 suspected by honest men of the vileuess of 
 
 praising a work to the public, merely because 
 he happens to be personally acquainted with 
 the author. That this is so commonly done 
 in reviews furnishes only an additional 
 proof of the morbid hardness produced in 
 the moral sense by the habit of writing 
 anonymous criticisms, especially under the 
 further disguise of a pretended board or asso- 
 ciation of critics, each man expressing him- 
 self, to vise the words of Andrew Marvel, as 
 a synodical individuum. AVith regard, how- 
 ever, to the probability of the judgment being 
 warped by partiality, I can only say that I 
 judge of all works indifferently by certain 
 fixed rules previously formed in my mind 
 with all the power and vigilance of my judg- 
 ment ; and that I should certainly of the two 
 apply them with greater rigour to the produc- 
 tion of a friend than that of a person indif- 
 ferent to me. But wherever 1 find in any 
 work all the conditions of excellence in its 
 kind, it is not the accident of the author's 
 being my contemporary or even my friend, or 
 the sneers of bad-hearted men, that shall pre- 
 vent me from speaking of it, as in my inmost 
 convictions I deem it deserves. 
 
 No. friend ! 
 
 Though it be now the fashion to commend, 
 As men of strong minds, those alone who 
 
 can 
 
 Censure with judgment, no such piece of man 
 Makes up my spirit : where desert does live, 
 There will I plant my wonder, and there 
 
 give 
 
 My best endeavours to build up his glory, 
 That truly merits ! 
 
 Recommendatory Tcrses to one of the 
 Old i. lays.
 
 Section 1. Essay 4. 116 
 
 source, from -which it derives its speciousness and powers of influence on 
 1' e human mind. This, therefore, is my first motive for undertaking the 
 disquisition. 
 
 The second is, that though the French code of revolutionary prin- 
 ciples is now generally rejected as a system, yet everywhere in the 
 speeches and writings of the English reformers, nay, not seldom in those 
 of their opponents, I find certain maxims asserted or appealed to which 
 are not tenable, except as constituent parts of that system. Many of 
 the most specious arguments in proof of the imperfection and injustice 
 of the present constitution of our legislature will be found, on closer 
 examination, to presuppose the truth of certain principles, from which 
 the adducers of these arguments loudly profess their dissent. But in 
 political changes no permanence can be hoped for in the edifice, without 
 consistency in the foundation. 
 
 The third motive is, that by detecting the true source of the influence 
 of these principles, we shall at the same time discover their natural 
 place and object ; and that in themselves they are not only truths, but 
 most important and sublime truths; and that their falsehood and their 
 danger consist altogether in their misapplication. Thus the dignity of 
 human nature will be secured, and at the same time a lesson of 
 humility taught to each individual, when we are made to see that the 
 universal necessary laws, and pure ideas of reason, were given us, not 
 for the purpose of flattering our pride and enabling us to become national 
 legislators ; but that by an energy of continued self-conquest, we might 
 establish a free and yet absolute government in our own spirits. 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 Albeit therefore, much of that we are to speak in this present cause may seem to a 
 number perhaps tedious, perhaps obscure, dark and intricate, (for many talk of the truth, 
 which never sounded the depth from whence it springeth ; and therefore, when they are led 
 thereunto they are soon weary, as men drawn from those beaten paths, wherewith they have 
 been inured ;) yet this may not so far prevail, as to cut off that which the matter itself re- 
 quireth, howsoever the nice humour of some be therewith pleased or no. They unto whom 
 we shall seem tedious are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spore 
 that labour which they are not willing to endure. And if any complain of obscurity, ttuy 
 must consider, that in these matters it cometh no otherwise to pass than in sundry the works 
 both of art and also of nature, where that which hath greatest force in the very things we 
 see, is, notwithstanding, itself oftentimes not seen. The statellness of houses, the goodlmess 
 of trees, when we behold them, delighteth the eye ; but that foundation which beareth up the 
 one, that root which ministereth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosom i'f the 
 earth concealed ; and if there be occasion at any time to search into it, such labour is then 
 more necessary than pleasant, both to them which undertake it and for the lo..k. . r> i n. In 
 like manner, the use and benefit if good laws, all that live under them may enjoy witU 
 delight ami comfort, albeit the grounds and first original causes from whence thi-y have 
 sprung be unknown as to the greatest part of men they are. But when they who withdraw 
 their obedience, pretend that the laws which they should obey are corrupt and vicious; for 
 better examination of their quality, it bthoveih the very foundation and ruot, the highest
 
 116 The Friend. 
 
 well-spring and fountain of them to be discovered. Which because we are not oftentimes 
 accustomed to do, when we do it, the pains we take are more needful a great deal than ac- 
 ceptable, and the matters which we handle seem by reason of newness (till the mind grow 
 better acquainted with them), dark, intricate, and unfamiliar. For as much help whereof, as 
 maybe in this case, I have endeavoured throughout the body of this whole discourse, that 
 every former part might give strength to all that follow, and every latter bring some light to 
 all before ; so that if the judgments of men do but hold themselves in suspense, as touching 
 these first more general meditations, till in order they have perused the rest that ensue ; 
 what may seem dark at the first, will afterwards be found more plain, even as the latter 
 particular decisions will appear, I doubt not, more strong when the other have been read 
 before. HOOKER'S Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 
 ON THE GROUNDS OF GOVERNMENT AS LAID EXCLUSIVELY IN THE PUEE 
 REASON ; OB A STATEMENT AND CRITIQUE OF THE THIRD SYSTEM OF 
 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, VIZ., THE THEORY OF KOUSSEAU AND THE 
 FRENCH ECONOMISTS. 
 
 IHETURN to my promise of developing from its embryo principles the 
 tree of French liberty, of which the declaration of the rights of man, 
 and the constitution of 1791 were the leaves, and the succeeding and 
 present state of France the fruits. Let me not be blamed, if, in the 
 interposed essays, introductory to this section, I have connected this 
 system, though only in imagination, though only as a possible case, 
 with a name so deservedly reverenced as that of Luther. It is some 
 excuse, that to interweave with the reader's recollections a certain life 
 and dramatic interest, during the perusal of the abstract reasonings that 
 are to follow, is the only means I possess of bribing his attention. We 
 have most of us, at some period or other of our lives, been amused with 
 dialogues of the dead. Who is there, that wishing to form a probable 
 opinion on the grounds of hope and fear for an injured people warring 
 against mighty armies, would not be pleased with a spirited fiction, 
 which brought before him an old Numautian discoursing on that sub- 
 ject in Elysium, with a newly-arrived spirit from the streets of Sara- 
 gossa or the walls of Gevona ? 
 
 But I have a better reason. I wished to give every fair advantage to 
 the opinions, which 1 deemed it of importance to confute. It is bad 
 policy to represent a political system as having no charm but for rob- 
 bers and assassins, and no natural origin but in the brains of fools or 
 madmen, when experience has proved, that the great danger of the 
 svstem consists in the peculiar fascination it is calculated to exert on 
 noble and imaginative spirits ; on all those who in the amiable intoxica- 
 tion of youthful benevolence, are apt to mistake their own best virtues 
 and choicest powers for the average qualities and attributes of the 
 human character. The very minds, which a good man would most 
 wish to preserve or disentangle from the snare, are by these angry mis- 
 representations rather lured into it. Is it wonderful that a man should 
 reject the arguments unheard, when his own heart proves the falsehood 
 of the assumptions by which they are prefaced ? or that he should
 
 Section 1. Essay 4. 117 
 
 retaliate on the aggressors their own evil thoughts ? I am well aware 
 that the provocation was great, the temptation almost inevitable ; yet 
 still I camrot repel the conviction from my mind, that in part to this 
 error and in part to a certain inconsistency in his fundamental prin- 
 ciples, we are to attribute the small number of converts made by Burke 
 during his life-time. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean, 
 that this great man supported different principles at different eras of 
 his political life. On the contrary, no man was ever more like him- 
 self! From his first published speech on the American colonies to his 
 last posthumous tracts, we see the same man, the same doctrines, the 
 same uniform wisdom of practical counsels, the same reasoning, and the 
 same prejudices against all abstract grounds, against all deduction of 
 practice from theory. The inconsistency to which I allude, is of a 
 diiferent kind : it is the want of congruity in the principles appealed 
 to in different parts of the same work, it is an apparent versatility of 
 the principle with the occasion. If his opponents are theorists, then 
 everything is to be founded on prudence, on mere calculations of expe- 
 diency ; and every man is represented as acting according to the state of 
 his own immediate self-interest. Are his opponents calculators? 
 Then calculation itself is represented as a sort of crime. God has given 
 us feelings, and we are to obey them ! and the most absurd prejudices 
 become venerable, to which these feelings have given consecration. I 
 have not forgotten that Burke himself defended these half contradictions, 
 on the pretext of balancing the too much on the one side by a too 
 much on the other. But never can I believe, but that the straight line 
 must needs be the nearest ; and that where there jis the most, and the 
 most unalloyed truth, there will be the greatest and most permanent power 
 of persuasion. But the fact was, that Burke in his public character 
 found himself, as it were, in a Noah's ark, with a very few men and a 
 great many beasts ! He felt how much his immediate power was 
 id by the very circumstance of his measureless superiority to 
 those about him : he acted, therefore, under a perpetual system of 
 compromise a compromise of greatness with meanness ; a compromise 
 of comprehension with narrowness ; a compromise of the philosopher 
 (who armed with the twofold knowledge of history and the laws of 
 spirit looked, as with a telescope, far around and into the far distance) 
 with the mere men of business, or with yet coarser intellects, who 
 handled a truth, which they were required to receive, as they would 
 handle an ox, which they were desired to purchase. But why need I 
 repeat what has been already said in so happy a manner by Goldsmith, 
 of this great man :
 
 118 The Friend. 
 
 Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind ; 
 Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throa 
 To persuade Tommy Townshend to give him a vote; 
 Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, 
 And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining ! 
 
 And if in consequence it was his fate to " cut blocks with a razor," I 
 may be permitted to add, that, in respect of truth though not of genius, 
 the weapon was injured by the misapplication. 
 
 The Friend, however, acts and will continue to act under the belief, 
 that the whole truth is the best antidote to falsehoods which are dan- 
 gerous chiefly because they are half-truths ; and that an erroneous 
 system is best confuted, not by an abuse of theory in general, nor by an 
 absurd opposition of theory to practice, but by a detection of the errors 
 in the particular theory. For the meanest of men has his theory, and 
 to think at all is to theorize. With these convictions I proceed imme- 
 diately to the system of the economists and to the principles on which it 
 is constructed, and from which it must derive all its strength. 
 
 The system commences with an undeniable truth, and an important 
 deduction therefrom equally undeniable. All voluntary actions, say 
 they, having for their objects good or evil, are moral actions. But all 
 morality is grounded in the reason. Every man is born with the 
 faculty of reason ; and whatever is without it, be the shape what it 
 may, is not a man or person, but a thing. Hence the sacred principle, 
 recognized by all laws, human and divine, the principle, indeed, which 
 is the ground-work of all law and justice, that a person can never be- 
 come a thing, nor be treated as such without wrong. But the distinc- 
 tion between person and thing consists herein, that the latter may 
 rightfully be used, altogether and merely, as a means ; but the former 
 must always be included in the end, and form a part of the final cause. 
 We plant the tree and we cut it down, we breed the sheep and we kill it, 
 wholly as means to our own ends. The wood-cutter and the hind are 
 likewise employed as means, but on an agreement of reciprocal advan- 
 tage, which includes them as well as their employer in the end. 
 Again : as the faculty of reason implies free agency, morality (i. e. the 
 dictate of reason) gives to every rational being the right of acting as a 
 free agent and of finally determining his conduct by his own will, 
 according to his own conscience : and this right is inalienable except by 
 guilt, which is an act of self-forteiture, and the consequences therefore 
 to be considered as the criminal's own moral election. In respect of 
 their reason* all men are equal. The measure of the understanding, 
 and of all other faculties of man, is different in different persons ; but 
 reason is not susceptible of degree. For since it merely decides whether 
 
 This position has heen already explained, and the sophistry grounded on it detected and 
 exposed, in the fifth essay of the First Landing-Place.
 
 Section I. Essay 4. 119 
 
 any given thought or action is or is not in contradiction with the rest, 
 there can be no reason better, or more reason, than another. 
 
 Reason ! best and holiest gift of Heaven and bond of union with the 
 Giver ! The high title by which the majesty of man claims precedence 
 above all other living creatures! Mysterious faculty, the mother of 
 conscience, of language, of tears, and of smiles ! Calm and incorruptible 
 legislator of the soul, without whom all its other powers would " meet 
 in mere oppugnancy!" Sole principle of permanence amid endless 
 change ! in a world of discordant appetites and imagined self-interests 
 the one only common measure ! which taken away, 
 
 Force should be right ; or, rather right and wrong. 
 (Between whose endless jar Justice resides,) 
 Should lose their names and so should justice too. 
 Then everything includes itself in power. 
 Power into will, will into appetite ; 
 And appetite an universal wolf, 
 So doubly seconded with will and power, 
 Must make perforce an universal prey ! 
 
 Thrice-blessed faculty of reason ! all other gifts, though goodly and of 
 celestial origin, health, strength, talents, all the powers and all the means 
 of enjoyment, seem dispensed by chance or sullen caprice thou alone, 
 more than even the sunshine, more than the common air, art given to 
 all men, and to every man alike ! To thee, who being one art the same 
 in all, we owe the privilege, that of all we can become one, a living 
 whole ! that we have a country ! Who then shall dare prescribe a law 
 of moral action for any rational being, which does not flow immediately 
 from that reason, which is the fountain of all morality ? Or how with- 
 out breach of conscience can we limit or coerce the powers of a free 
 agent, except by coincidence with that law in his own mind, which is at 
 once the cause, the condition, and the measure of his free agency ? Man 
 must be free ; or to what purpose was he made a spirit of reason, and 
 not a machine of instinct ? Man must obey ; or wherefore has he a con- 
 science ? The powers, which create this difficulty, contain its solution 
 likewise ; for their service is perfect freedom. And whatever law or 
 system of law compels any other service, disennobles our nature, leagues 
 itself with the animal against the Godlike, kills in us the very principle 
 of joyous well-doing, and fights against humanity. 
 
 By the application of these principles to the social state there arises 
 the following system, which as far as respects its first grounds is 
 developed the most fully by J. J. Rousseau in his work Du Control 
 Social. If, then, no individual possesses the right of prescribing anything 
 to another individual, the rule of which is not contained in their common 
 reason, society, which is but an aggregate of individuals, can communi- 
 cate this right to no one. It cannot possibly make that rightful which 
 the higher and inviolable law of human nature declares contradictory
 
 120 TJie Friend. 
 
 and unjust. But concerning right and wrong, the reason of each and 
 every man is the competent judge ; for how else could he be an 
 amenable being, or the proper subject of any law ? This reason, there- 
 fore, in any one man, cannot even in the social state be rightfully sub- 
 jugated to the reason of any other. Neither an individual, nor yet the 
 whole multitude which constitutes the state, can possess the right of 
 compelling him to do anything, of which it cannot be demonstrated that 
 his own reason must join in prescribing it. If therefore society is to be 
 under a rightful constitution of government, and one that can impose on 
 rational beings a true and moral obligation to obey it, it must be framed 
 on such principles that every individual follows his own reason while he 
 obeys the laws of the constitution, and performs the will of the state 
 while he follows the dictates of his own reason. This is expressly 
 asserted by Rousseau, who states the problem of a perfect constitution 
 of government in the following words: Trouver une forme (P Association, 
 par laquelle chacun s' unissant a tous, n'obeisse pourtant qu' a lui-meme, 
 et rests aussi libre qu' auparavant ; i. e., to find a form of society 
 according to which each one uniting with the whole shall yet obey him- 
 self only and remain as free as before. This right of the individual to 
 retain his whole natural independence, even in the social state, is abso- 
 lutely inalienable. He cannot possibly concede or compromise it : for 
 this very right is one of his most sacred duties. He would si-n against 
 himself and commit high treason against the reason which the Almighty 
 Creator has given him, if he dared abandon its exclusive right to govern 
 his actions. 
 
 Laws obligatory on the conscience, can only therefore proceed from 
 that reason which remains always one and the same, whether it speaks 
 through this or that person ; like the voice of an external veutriloquist, 
 it is indifferent from whose lips it appears to come, if only it be audible. 
 The individuals indeed are subject to errors and passions, and each man 
 has his own defects. But when men are assembled in person or by real 
 representatives, the actions and reactions of individual self-love balance 
 each other ; errors are neutralized by opposite errors ; and the winds 
 rushing from all quarters at once with equal force, produce for the time 
 a deep calm, during which the general will arising from the general 
 reason displays itself. " It is fittest," says Burke himself, (see his note 
 on his motion relative to the Speech from the Throne, vol. ii. p. 647, 
 4to. edit.) " It is fittest that sovereign authority should be exercised 
 where it is most likely to be attended with the most effectual correctives. 
 These correctives are furnished by the nature and course of parliamen- 
 tary proceedings, and by the infinitely diversified characters who com- 
 pose the two Houses. The fulness, the freedom, and publicity of 
 discussion, leave it easy to distinguish what are acts of power, and what 
 the determinations, of equity and reason. There prejudice corrects
 
 Section 1. Essay 4. 121 
 
 prejudice, and the different asperities of party zeal mitigate and neutralize 
 each other." 
 
 This, however, as my readers will have already detected, is no longer 
 a demonstrable deduction from reason. It is a mere probability, against 
 which other probabilities may be weighed: as the lust of authority, the 
 contagious nature of enthusiasm, and other of the acute or chronic 
 diseases of deliberative assemblies. But which of these results is the 
 more probable, the correction or the contagion of evil, must depend on 
 circumstances and grounds of expediency : and thus we already find 
 ourselves beyond the magic circle of the pure reason, and within the 
 sphere of the understanding and of prudence. Of this important fact 
 Rousseau was by no means unaware in his theory, though with gross 
 inconsistency he takes no notice of it in his application of the theory to 
 practice. He admits the possibility, he is compelled by history to allow 
 even the probability, that the most numerous popular assemblies, nay 
 even whole nations, may at times be hurried away by the same passions, 
 and under the dominion of a common error. This will of all is then of 
 no more value than the humours of any one individual ; and must 
 therefore be sacredly distinguished from the pure will which flows from 
 universal reason. To this point then I entreat the reader's particular 
 attention ; for in this distinction, established by Rousseau himself, 
 between the Volonte de tous and the Volonte generale, (j. e. between the 
 collective will, and a casual over-balance of wills,) the falsehood or 
 nothingness of the whole system becomes manifest. For hence it 
 follows, as an inevitable consequence, that all which is said in the 
 contrat social of that sovereign will, to which the right of universal 
 legislation appertains, applies to no one human being, to no society or 
 assemblage of human beings, and least of all to the mixed multitude 
 that makes up the people ; but entirely and exclusively to reason itself, 
 which, it is true, dwells in every man potentially, but actually and in 
 perfect purity is found in no man and in no body of men. This distinc- 
 tion the later disciples of Rousseau chose completely to forget and (a 
 far more melancholy case !) the constituent legislators of France forgot it 
 likewise. With a wretched parrotry they wrote and harangued without 
 ceasing of the Volonte generale the inalienable sovereignty of the 
 people; and by these high-sounding phrases led on the vain, ignorant, 
 and intoxicated populace to wild excesses and wilder expectations, which 
 entailing on them the bitterness of disappointment cleared the way for 
 military despotism, for the Satanic government of horror under the 
 Jacobius, and of terror under the Corsicans. 
 
 Luther lived long enough to see the consequences of the doctrines 
 into which indignant pity and abstract ideas of right had hurried him 
 to see, to retract, and to oppose them. If the same had been the lot of 
 Rousseau, I doubt not, that his conduct would have been the same. In
 
 122 The Friend. 
 
 his whole system there is beyond controversy much that is true and well 
 reasoned, if only its application be not extended farther than the nature 
 of the case permits. But then we shall find that little or nothing is 
 won by it for the institutions of society ; and least of all for the con- 
 stitution of governments, the theory of which it was his wish to ground 
 on it. Apply his principles to any case, in which the sacred and 
 inviolable laws of morality are immediately interested, all becomes just 
 and pertinent. No power on earth can oblige me to act against my 
 conscience. No magistrate, no monarch, no legislature, can without 
 tyranny compel me to do anything which the acknowledged laws of 
 God have forbidden me to do. So act that thou mayest be able, with- 
 out involving any contradiction, to will that the maxim of thy conduct 
 should be the law of all intelligent beings is the one universal and 
 sufficient principle and guide of morality. And why ? Because the 
 object of morality is not the outward act, but the internal maxim of our 
 actions. And so far it is infallible. But with what show of reason can 
 we pretend, from a principle by which we are to determine the purity of 
 our motives, to deduce the form and matter of a rightful government, 
 the main office of which is to regulate the outward actions of particular 
 bodies of men, according to their particular circumstances ? Can we 
 hope better of constitutions framed by ourselves, than of that which was 
 given by Almighty Wisdom itself? The laws of the Hebrew common- 
 wealth, which flowed from the pure reason, remain and are immutable ; 
 but the regulations dictated by prudence, though by the Divine pru- 
 dence, and though given in thunder from the mount, have passed away ; 
 and while they lasted, were binding only for that one state, the par- 
 ticular circumstances of which rendered them expedient. 
 
 Rousseau indeed asserts, that there is an inalienable sovereignty 
 inherent in every human being possessed of reason ; and from this the 
 framers of the Constitution of 1791 deduce, that the people itself is its 
 own sole rightful legislator, and at most dare only recede so far from its 
 right as to delegate to chosen deputies the power of representing and 
 declaring the general will. But this is wholly without proof ; for it has 
 already been fully shown, that according to the principle out of which 
 this consequence is attempted to be drawn, it is not the actual man, but 
 the abstract reason alone, that is the sovereign and rightful lawgiver. 
 The confusion of two things so different is so gross an error, that the 
 constituent assembly could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of 
 rights without some glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from 
 all political power are they not human beings in whom the faculty of 
 reason resides ? Yes ; but in them the faculty is not yet adequately 
 developed. But are not gross ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the 
 habitual tyranny of passion and sensuality, equally preventives of the 
 development, equally impediments to the rightful exercise of the reason,
 
 Section 1. Essay 4. 123 
 
 as childhood and early youth ? Who would not rely on the judgment 
 of a well-educated English lad, bred in a virtuous and enlightened 
 family, in preference to that of a brutal Russian, who believes that he 
 can scourge his wooden idol into good humour, or attributes to himself 
 the merit of perpetual prayer, when he has fastened the petitions, which 
 his priest has written for him, on the wings of a windmill ? Again : 
 women are likewise excluded a full half, and that assuredly the most 
 innocent, the most amiable half of the whole human race, is excluded, and 
 this too by a constitution which boasts to have no other foundations bu-t 
 those of universal reason ! Is reason then an affair of sex ? No ! But 
 women are commonly in a state of dependence, and are not likely to 
 exercise their reason with freedom. Well ! and does not this ground of 
 exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the infirm, to 
 men in embarrassed circumstances, to all in short whose maintenance, 
 be it scanty or be it ample, depends on the will of others ? How far 
 are we to go ? Where must we stop ? What classes should we admit ? 
 Whom must we disfranchise ? The objects, concerning whom we are to 
 determine these questions, are all human beings and differenced from 
 each other by degrees only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet 
 the principle on which the whole system rests is, that reason is not 
 susceptible of degree. Nothing, therefore, which subsists wholly in 
 degrees, the changes of which do not obey any necessary law, can be 
 subjects of pure science, or determinable by mere reason. For these 
 things we must rely on our understandings, enlightened by past expe- 
 rience and immediate observation, and determining our choice by com- 
 parisons of expediency. 
 
 It is therefore altogether a mistaken notion, that the theory which 
 would deduce the social rights of man, and the sole rightful form of 
 government, from principles of reason, involves a necessary preference 
 of the democratic, or even the representative constitutions. Accordingly, 
 several of the French economists, although devotees of Rousseau and 
 the physiocratic system, and assuredly not the least respectable of their 
 party either in morals or in intellect ; and these too men, who lived 
 and wrote under the unlimited monarchy of France, and who were there- 
 fore well acquainted with the evils connected with that system ; did yet 
 declare themselves for a pure monarchy in preference to the aristocratic, 
 the popular, or the mixed form. These men argued, that no other laws 
 being allowable but those which are demonstrably just, and founded in 
 the simplest ideas of reason, and of which every man's reason is the 
 competent judge, it is indifferent whether one man, or one or more 
 assemblies of men, give form and publicity to them. For being matters 
 of pure and simple science, they require no experience in order to see 
 their truth, and among an enlightened people, by whom this system 
 had been once solemnly adopted, no sovereign would dare to make other
 
 124 The Friend. 
 
 laws than those of reason. They further contend that if the people were 
 not enlightened, a purely popular government could not coexist with 
 this system of absolute justice ; and if it were adequately enlightened, 
 the influence of public opinion would supply the place of formal repre- 
 sentation, while the/orm of the government would be in harmony with 
 the unity and simplicity of its principles. This they entitle le Desf>o- 
 tisme legal sous V Empire de I 1 Evidence. (The best statement of the 
 theory thus modified may be found in Mercier de la Riviere, ' 
 naturel et essentiel des societes politiques.') From the proofs adduced in 
 the preceding paragraph, to which many others might be added, I have 
 no hesitation in affirming that this latter party are the more consistent 
 reasoners. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that the influence of these writings contri- 
 buted greatly, not indeed to raise the present emperor, but certainly to 
 reconcile a numerous class of politicians to his unlimited authority ; and 
 as far as his lawless passion for war and conquests allows him to govern 
 according to any principles, he favours those of the physiocratic philo- 
 sophers. His early education must have given him a predilection for a 
 theory conducted throughout with mathematical precision ; its very 
 simplicity promised the readiest and most commodious machine for 
 despotism, for it moulds a nation into as calculable a power as an army ; 
 while the stern and seeming greatness of the whole, and its mock eleva- 
 tion above human feelings, flattered his pride, hardened his conscience, 
 and aided the efforts of self-delusion. Eeason is the sole sovereign, the 
 only rightful legislator ; but reason to act on man must be imperson- 
 ated. The Providence which had so marvellously raised and supported 
 him, had marked him out for the representative of reason, and had 
 armed him with irresistible force, in order to realize its laws. In him 
 therefore might becomes right, and his cause and that of destiny (or as 
 the wretch now chooses to word it, exchanging blind nonsense for staring 
 blasphemy), his cause and the cause of God, are one and the same. Ex- 
 cellent postulate for a choleric and self-willed tyrant ! What avails the 
 impoverishment of a few thousand merchants and manufacturers ? "What 
 even the general wretchedness of millions of perishable men, for a short 
 generation ? Should these stand in the way of the chosen conqueror, 
 the " Innovator mundi, et stupor sceculorum," or prevent a constitution 
 of things, which, erected on intellectual and perfect foundations, groweth 
 not old, but like the eternal justice, of which it is the living image, 
 
 may despise 
 The strokes of Fate and see the world's last hour ! 
 
 For Justice, austere unrelenting Justice, is everywhere held up as the 
 one thing needful ; and the only duty of the citizen, in fulfilling which 
 he obeys all the laws, is not to encroach on another's sphere of action. 
 The greatest possible happiness of a people is not, according to this
 
 Section 1. Essay 4. 125 
 
 system, the object of a governor ; but to preserve the freedom of all, by 
 coercing within the requisite bounds the freedom of each. Whatever a 
 government does more than this comes of evil, and its best employ- 
 ment is the repeal of laws and regulations, not the establishment of 
 them. Each man is the best judge of his own happiness, and to himself 
 must it therefore be entrusted. Remove all the interferences of positive 
 statutes, all monopoly, all bounties, all prohibitions, and all encourage- 
 ments of importation and exportation, of particular growth and parti- 
 cular manufactures ; let the revenues of the state be taken at once frdm 
 the produce of the soil ; and all things will then find their level, all 
 irregularities will correct each other, and an indestructible cycle of 
 harmonious motions take place in the moral equally as in the natural 
 world. The business of the governor is to watch incessantly, that the 
 state shall remain composed of individuals, acting as individuals, by 
 which alone the freedom of all can be secured. Its duty is to take care 
 that itself remain the sole collective power, and that all the citizens 
 should enjoy the same rights, and without distinction be subject to the 
 same duties. 
 
 Splendid promises ! Can anything appear more equitable than the 
 last proposition, the equality of rights and duties ? Can anything be 
 conceived more simple in the idea ? But the execution ? let the four 
 or five quarto volumes of the Conscript Code be the comment ! But as 
 briefly as possible I shall prove, that this system, as an exclusive total, 
 is under any form impracticable ; and that if it were realized, and as 
 far as it were realized, it would necessarily lead to general barbarism 
 and the most grinding oppression ; and that the final result of a general 
 attempt to introduce it, must be a military despotism inconsistent with 
 the peace and safety of mankind. That reason should be our guide and 
 governor is an undeniable truth, and all our notion of right and wrong 
 is built thereon ; for the whole moral nature of man originated and 
 subsists in his reason. From reason alone can we derive the principles 
 which our understandings are to apply, the ideal to which by means of 
 our understandings we should endeavour to approximate. This, how- 
 ever, gives no proof that reason alone ought to govern and direct human 
 beings, either as individuals or as states. It ought not to do this, be- 
 cause it cannot. The laws of reason are unable to satisfy the first 
 conditions of human society. We will admit that the shortest code of 
 law is the best, and that the citizen finds himself most at ease where 
 the government least intermeddles with his affairs, and confines its 
 efforts to the preservation of public tranquillity we will sutler this to 
 ;t present undisputed, though the examples of England, and before 
 the late events, of Holland and Switzerland, (surely the three happiest 
 nations of the world,) to which perhaps we might add the major part of 
 the former German free towns, furnish stubborn facts in presumption of
 
 126 The Friend. 
 
 the contrary'; yet still the proof is wanting that the first and most 
 general applications and exertions of the power of man can be definitely 
 regulated by reason unaided by the positive and conventional laws in 
 the formation of which the understanding must be our guide, and which 
 become just because they happen to be expedient. 
 
 The chief object for which men first formed themselves into a state 
 was not the protection of their lives but of their property. Where the 
 nature of the soil and climate precludes all property but personal, and 
 permits that only in its simplest forms, as in Greenland, men remain in 
 the domestic state and form neighbourhoods, but not governments. 
 And in North America, the* chiefs appear to exercise government in 
 those tribes only which possess individual landed property. Among 
 the rest the chief is their general ; but government is exercised only in 
 families by the fathers of families. But where individual landed 
 property exists, there must be inequality of property ; the nature of 
 the earth and the nature of the mind unite to make the contrary im- 
 possible. But to suppose the land the property of the state, and the 
 labour and the produce to be equally divided among all the members of 
 the state, involves more than one contradiction ; for it could not subsist 
 without gross injustice, except where the reason of all and of each was 
 absolute master of the selfish passions of sloth, envy, &c. : and yet the 
 same state would preclude the greater part of the means by which the 
 reason of man is developed. In whatever state of society you would 
 place it, from the most savage to the most refined, it would be found 
 equally unjust and impossible ; and were there a race of men, a country, 
 and a climate, that permitted such an order of things, the same causes 
 would render all government superfluous. To property, therefore, and 
 to its inequalities, all human laws directly or indirectly relate, which 
 would not be equally laws in the state of nature. Now it is impossible 
 to deduce the right of property* from pure reason. The utmost which 
 reason could give would be a property in the forms of things, as far as 
 the forms were produced by individual power. In the matter it could 
 give no property. We regard angels and glorified spirits as beings of 
 pure reason ; and whoever thought of property in heaven ? Even the 
 simplest and most moral form of it, namely marriage (we know from 
 the highest authority), is excluded from the state of pure reason. Eous- 
 seau himself expressly admits that property cannot be deduced from 
 the laws of reason and nature ; and he ought therefore to have admitted 
 at the same time, that his whole theory was a thing of air. In the 
 most respectable point of view he could regard his system as analogous 
 to geometry. (If indeed it be purely scientific, how could it be other- 
 wise?) Geometry holds forth an ideal which can never be fully 
 * I mean, practically and with the in- to property is deducible from the free-agency 
 equalities inseparable from the actual exist- of man. Jf to act freely be a right, a sphere 
 ence of property. Abstractedly, the right of action must be so too.
 
 Section 1. Essay <i. 127 
 
 realized in nature, even because it is nature : because bodies are more 
 than extension, and to pure extension of space only the mathematical 
 theorems wholly correspond. In the same manner the moral laws of 
 the intellectual world, as far as they are deducible from pure intellect, 
 are never perfectly applicable to our mixed and sensitive nature, be- 
 cause man is something besides reason ; because his reason never acts 
 by itself, but must clothe itself in the substance of individual under- 
 standing and specific inclination, in order to become a reality and an 
 object of consciousness and experience. It will be seen hereafter that 
 together with this, the key-stone of the arch, the greater part and the 
 most specious of the popular arguments in favour of universal suffrage 
 fall in and are crushed. I will mention one only at present Major 
 Cartvvright, in his deduction of the rights of the subject from principles 
 " not susceptible of proof, being self-evident if one of which be vio- 
 lated all are shaken," affirms (Principle 98th ; though the greater part 
 indeed are moral aphorisms, or blank assertions, not scientific principles) 
 " that a power which ought never to be used ought never to exist." 
 Again he affirms that " Laws to bind all must be assented to by all, 
 and consequently every man, even the poorest, has an equal right to 
 suffrage :" and this for an additional reason, because " all without ex- 
 ception are capable of feeling happiness or misery, accordingly as they 
 are well or ill governed." But are they not then capable of feeling 
 happiness or misery accordingly as they do or do not possess the means 
 of a comfortable subsistence ? and who is the judge, what is a comfortable 
 subsistence, but the man himself? Might not then, on the same or 
 equivalent principles, a leveller construct a right to equal property? 
 The inhabitants of this country without property form, doubtless, a 
 great majority ; each of these has a right to a suffrage, and the richest 
 man to no more : and the object of this suffrage is, that each individual 
 may secure himself a true efficient representative of his will. Here 
 thi'ii is a legal power of abolishing or equalizing property ; and ac- 
 cording to the Major himself, a power which ought never to be used 
 ought not to exist. 
 
 Therefore, unless he carries his system to the whole length of commor 
 labour and common possession, a right to universal suffrage caunoi 
 exist; but if not to universal suffrage, there can exist no natural righi 
 to suffrage at all. In whatever way he would obviate this objection, he 
 must admit expedience founded -on experience and particular circum- 
 stances, which will vary in every different nation, and in the same nation 
 at different times, as the maxim of all legislation and the ground of all 
 legislative power. For his universal principles, as far as they are prin- 
 ciples and universal, necessarily suppose uniform and perfect subjects, 
 which are to be found in the ideas of pure geometry and (I trust) in the 
 realities of Heaven, but never, never, in creatures of ilesh and blowd.
 
 128 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 ON THE ERRORS OF PARTY SPIRIT : OR, EXTREMES MEET. 
 
 And it was no wonder if some good and innocent men, especially such as he (Lightfoot) 
 who was generally more concerned about what was done in Judea many centuries ago, than 
 what was transacted in his own time in his own country it is no wonder if some such were 
 for a while borne away to the approval of opinions which they after more sedate reflection 
 disowned. Yet his innocency from any self-interest or design, together with his learning, 
 secured him from the extravagancies of demagogues, the people's oracles. 
 
 LIGHTFOOT'S works, Publisher's preface to the reader. 
 
 I HAVE never seen Major Cartwright, much less enjoy the honour of his 
 acquaintance ; but I know enough of his character from the testimony 
 of others and from his own writings, to respect his talents, and revere 
 the purity of his motives. I am fully persuaded, that there are few 
 better men, few more fervent or disinterested adherents of their country 
 or the laws of their country, of whatsoever things are lovely, of whatso- 
 ever things are honourable. It would give me great pain should I be 
 supposed to have introduced, disrespectfully, a name which from my 
 early youth I never heard mentioned without a feeling of affectionate 
 admiration. I have indeed quoted from this venerable patriot, as from 
 the most respectable English advocate for the theory, which derives the 
 rights of government, and the duties of obedience to it, exclusively from 
 principles of pure reason. It was of consequence to my cause that I 
 should not be thought to have been waging war against a straw image of 
 my own setting up, or even against a foreign idol that had neither wor- 
 shippers nor advocates in our own country ; and it was not less my 
 object to keep my discussion aloof from those passions, which more un- 
 popular names might have excited. I therefore introduced the name of 
 Cartwright, as I had previously done that of Luther, in order to give 
 every fair advantage to a theory, which I thought it of importance to 
 confute ; and as an instance that though the system might be made 
 tempting to the vulgar, yet that, taken unmixed and entire, it was 
 chiefly fascinating for lofty and imaginative spirits, who mistook their 
 own virtues and powers for the average character of men in general. 
 
 Neither by fair statements nor by fair reasoning should I ever give 
 offence to Major Cartwright himself, nor to his judicious friends. If I 
 am in danger of offending them, it must arise from one or other of two 
 causes; either that I have falsely represented his principles, or his 
 motives and the tendency of his writings. In the book from which I 
 quoted ("The People's Earner against undue influence, &c." the only one 
 of Major Cartwright's which I possess) I am conscious that there are six 
 foundations stated of constitutional government. Therefore, it may be 
 urged, the author cannot be justly classed with those who deduce our 
 social rights and correlative duties exclusively from principles of pure
 
 Section I. Essay 5. 129 
 
 reason, or unavoidable conclusions from such. My answer is ready. Of 
 these six foundations three are but different words for one and the same, 
 viz., the law of reason, the law of God, and first principles : and the 
 three that remain cannot be taken as different, inasmuch as they are 
 afterwards affirmed to be of no validity except as far as they are evidently 
 deduced from the former ; that is, from the principles implanted by God 
 in the universal reason of man. These three latter foundations are, the 
 general customs of the realm, particular customs, and acts of Parliament. 
 It might be supposed that the author had not used his terms in the pre- 
 cise and single sense in which they are defined in my former essay ; and 
 that self-evident principles may be meant to include the dictates of 
 manifest expedience, the inductions of the understanding as well as the 
 prescripts of the pure reason. But no ! Major Cartwright has guarded 
 against the possibility of this interpretation, and has expressed himself 
 as decisively, and with as much warmth, against founding governments 
 on grounds of expedience, as the Editor of The Friend has done against 
 founding morality on the same. Euclid himself could not have defined 
 his words more sternly within the limits of pure science : for instance, 
 see the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th primary rules. " A principle is a manifest 
 and simple proposition comprehending a certain truth. Principles are 
 the proof of everything : but are not susceptible of external proof, being 
 self-evident. If one principle be violated, all are shaken. Against him 
 who denies principles all dispute is useless, and reason unintelligible, 
 or disallowed, as far as he denies them. The laws of nature are immu- 
 table." Neither could Rousseau himself (or his predecessors, the Fifth- 
 monarchy men) have more nakedly or emphatically identified the foun- 
 dations of government in the concrete with those of religion and morality 
 in the abstract : see Major Cartwright's primary rules from 31 to 39, 
 and from 44 to 83. In these it is affirmed, that the legislative rights 
 of every citizen are inherent in his nature ; that being natural rights they 
 must be equal in all men ; that a natural right is that right which a 
 citizen claims as being a man, and that it hath no other foundation but 
 his personality or reason ; that property can neither increase nor modify 
 any legislative right ; that every one man shall have one vote however 
 poor, and for any one man, however rich, to have any more than one 
 vote, is against natural justice, and an evil measure ; that it is better for 
 a nation to endure all adversities, than to assent to one evil measure ; 
 that to be free is to be governed, by laws, to which we have ourselves 
 assented, either in person or by representatives, for whose election we 
 have actually voted ; that all not having a right of suffrage are slaves, 
 and that a vast majority of the people of Great Britain are slaves ! To 
 prove the total coincidence of Major Cartwright's theory with that which 
 I have stated (and I trust confuted) in the preceding number, it only 
 remains for me to prove, that the former, equally with the latter, con- 
 ic
 
 130 The Friend. 
 
 founds the sufficiency of the conscience to make every person a moral 
 and amenable being, with the sufficiency of judgment and experience 
 requisite to the exercise of political right. A single quotation will place 
 this oiit of all doubt, which from its length I shall insert in a note.* 
 
 Great stress, indeed, is laid on the authority of our ancient laws, both 
 in this and the other works of our patriotic author ; and whatever his 
 system may be, it is impossible not to feel, that the author himself pos- 
 sesses the heart of a genuine Englishman. But still his system can 
 neither be changed nor modified by these appeals ; for among the 
 primary maxims, which form the ground-work of it, we are informed 
 not only that law in the abstract is the perfection of reason, but that the 
 law of God and the law of the land are all one ! What ? The statutes 
 against witches ? Or those bloody statutes against Papists, the abolition 
 of which gave rise to the infamous riots in 1780 ? Or (in the author's 
 own opinion) the statutes of disfranchisement and for making parliaments 
 septennial ? Nay ! but (Principle 28) " an unjust law is no law ;" and 
 (P. 22) against the law of reason neither prescription, statute, nor 
 custom, may prevail ; and if any such be brought against it, they be not 
 prescriptions, statutes, nor customs, but things void ; and (P. 29) 
 " What the parliament doth shall be holden for nought, whensoever it 
 shall enact that which is contrary to a natural right !" We dare not 
 suspect a grave writer of such egregious trifling, as to mean no more by 
 these assertions than that what is wrong is not right ; and if more than 
 this be meant, it must be that the subject is not bound to obey any act 
 of parliament, which according to his conviction entrenches on a principle 
 
 * " But the equality (observe, that Major consisting of ' tradesmen, artificers, and 
 
 Cartwright. is here speaking of the natural labourers,' or any of them from voting iu 
 
 right to universal suffrage, and consequently elections of members to serve in parliament, 
 
 of the universal right of eligibility, as well as I must sincerely lament such a persuasion as 
 
 of election, independent of character or pro- a misfortune both to himself and his country, 
 
 perty) the equality and dignity of human And if any man (not having given himself 
 
 nature in all men, whether rich or poor, is the trouble to consider whether or not the 
 
 placed in the highest point of view by St. Scripture be an authority, but who, never- 
 
 Paul, when he reprehends the Corinthian Useless, is a friend to the rights of mankind), 
 
 believers for their litigations one with another, upon grounds of mere prudence, policy, or 
 
 in the courts of law where unbelievers pre- expediency, shall think it advisable to go 
 
 sided; and as an argument of the competency against the whole current of our constitu- 
 
 of all men to judge for themselves, he alludes tional and law maxims, by which it is self- 
 
 to that elevation in the kingdom of heaven evident that every man, as being a man, 
 
 which is promised to every man who shall created free, born to freedom, and without it, 
 
 be virtuous, or in the language of that time, a thing, a slave, a beast ; and shall contend 
 
 a saint. ' Do ye not know,' says he, ' that the for drawing a line of exclusion at freeholders 
 
 saints shall judge the world ? And it' the of forty pounds a year, or forty shillings a 
 
 world shall be judged by you, are ye un- year, or householders, or pot-boilers, so that 
 
 worthy to judge the smallest matters ? Know all who are below that line shall not have a 
 
 ye not that ye shall judge the angels? How vote in the election of a legislative guardian, 
 
 much more things that pertain to this life '(' which is taking from a citizen the power 
 
 If after such authorities, such manifestations even of self-preservation, such a man, I 
 
 of truth as these, any Christian through those venture to say, is bolder than he who wrestled 
 
 prejudices, which are the effects of long with the augel; for he wrestles with God 
 
 habits of injustice and oppression, and teach Himself, who establi.-hed those principles in 
 
 us to 'despise the poor,' shall still think it the eternal laws of nature, never to be violated 
 
 right to exclude that part of the commonalty, by any of His creatures." Pp 23, 24.
 
 Section 1. Essay 5. 131 
 
 of natural right ; which natural rights are, as we have seen, not confined 
 to the man in his individual capacity, but are made to confer universal 
 legislative privileges on every subject of every state, and of the extent of 
 which every man is competent to judge, who is competent to be the 
 object of law at all, i. e. every man who has not lost his reason. 
 
 In the statement of his principles .therefore, I have not misrepresented 
 Major Cartwright. Have I then endeavoured to connect public odium 
 with his honoured name, by arraigning his motives, or the tendency of 
 his writings? The tendency of his writings, in my inmost conscience J 
 believe to be perfectly harmless, and I dare cite them in confirmation of 
 the opinions which it was the object of my introductory essays to 
 establish, and as an additional proof, that no good man communicating 
 what he believes to be truth for the sake of truth, and according to the 
 rules of conscience, will be found to have acted injuriously to the peace 
 or interests of society. The venerable state-moralist (for this is his true 
 character, and in this title is conveyed the whole error of his system) is 
 incapable of aiding his arguments by the poignant condiment of personal 
 slander, incapable of appealing to the envy of the multitude by bitter 
 declamation against the follies and oppressions of the higher classes ! He 
 would shrink with horror from the thought of adding a false and un- 
 natural influence to the cause of truth and justice, by details of present 
 calamity or immediate suffering, fitted to excite the fury of the multitude, 
 or by promises of turning the current of the public revenue into the 
 channels * of individual distress and poverty, so as to bribe the populace 
 by selfish hopes ! It does not belong to men of his character to delude 
 the uninstructed into the belief that their shortest way of obtaining the 
 good things of this life is to commence busy politicians, instead of 
 remaining industrious labourers. He knows, and acts on the knowledge, 
 that it is the duty of the enlightened philanthropist to plead for the poor 
 and ignorant, not to them. 
 
 N ! From works written and published under the control of austere 
 principles, and at the impulse of a lofty and generous enthusiasm, from 
 works rendered attractive only by the fervour of sincerity, and imposing 
 only by the majesty of plain dealing, no danger will be apprehended by 
 a wise man, no offence received by a good man. I could almost venture 
 to warrant our patriot's publications innoxious, from the single circum- 
 stance of their perfect freedom from personal themes in this a^e of 
 personality, this age of literary and political gossiping, when the meanest 
 insects are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only the 
 
 * I must apiin remind the reader, Umt these the author's. If what 1 then believed and 
 
 essays were written October 1309. if Major avowed should now appear a severe satire 
 
 Cartwricht, however, has since then acttd in the shape of a false prophecy, any siiaun 
 
 in a different spirit, and tampered personally I might feel for my lack of pvnctratiou 
 
 with the distresses, and consequent irritability would be lost in the sincerity of my regret 
 of the ignorant, the inconsistency is bis, not
 
 132 The Friend. 
 
 brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the 
 tail ; when the most vapid satires have become the objects of a keen 
 public interest purely from the number of contemporary characters 
 named in the patch-work notes (which possess, however, the comparative 
 merit of being more poetical than the text), and because, to increase the 
 stimulus, the author has sagaciously left his own name for whispers and 
 conjectures ! In an age, when even sermons are published with a double 
 appendix stuffed with names iu a generation so transformed from the 
 characteristic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a 
 London newspaper to the everlasting Scotch professional quarto, almost 
 every publication exhibits or natters the epidemic distemper ; that the 
 very " Last year's rebuses " in the Lady's Diary are answered in a 
 serious elegy " On my father's death," with the name and habitat of the 
 elegiac CEdipus subscribed ; and " other ingenious solutions were like- 
 wise given " to the said rebuses not, as heretofore, by Crito, Philander, 
 A B, X Y, &c. but by fifty or sixty plain English surnames, at full length, 
 with their several places of abode ! In an age, when a bashful Philalethes 
 or Phileleutheros is as rare on the title-pages and among the signatures of 
 our magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of our shy and 
 notice-shunning grandfathers ! When (more exquisite than all) I see an 
 epic poem (spirits of Maro and Ma;onides, make ready to welcome your 
 new compeer !) advertised with the special recommendation, that the said 
 epic poem contains more than a hundred names of living persons ! Xo 
 if works as abhorrent as those of Major Cartwright, from all un- 
 worthy provocatives to the vanity, the envy, and the selfish passions of 
 mankind, could acquire a sufficient influence on the public mind to be 
 mischievous, the plans proposed in his pamphlets would cease to be alto- 
 gether visionary ; though even then they could not ground their claims 
 to actual adoption on self-evident principles of pure reason, but on the 
 happy accident of the virtue and good sense of that public, for whose 
 suffrages they were presented. (Indeed with Major Cartwright's plans 
 I have no present concern ; but with the principles, on which he grounds 
 the obligations to adopt them.) 
 
 But I must not sacrifice truth to my reverence for individual puritv 
 of intention. The tendency of one good man's writings is altogether a 
 different thing from the tendency of the system itself, when seasoned 
 and served up for the unreasoning multitude, as it has been by men 
 whose names I would not honour by writing them in the same sentence 
 with Major Cartwright's. For this system has two sides, and holds out 
 very different attractions to its admirers who advance towards it from 
 different points of the compass. It possesses qualities, that can scarcely 
 fail of winning over to its banners a numerous host of shallow heads and 
 restless tempers, men who without learning (or, as one of my friends has 
 forcibly expressed it, "strong book-mi ndedness") live as alms-folks on
 
 Section 1. Essay 5. 133 
 
 the opinions of their contemporaries, and who (well pleased to ex- 
 change the humility of regret for the self-complacent feelings of con- 
 tempt) reconcile themselves to the sans culotterie of their ignorance, by 
 scoffing at the useless fox-brush of pedantry.* The attachment of this 
 numerous class is owing neither to the solidity and depth of foundation 
 in this theory, or to the strict coherence of its arguments ; and still less 
 to any genuine reverence for Immanity in the abstract. The physiocratic 
 system promises to deduce all things, and everything relative to law 
 and government, with mathematical exactness and certainty, from a few 
 individual and self-evident principles. But who so dull, as not to be 
 capable of apprehending a simple self-evident principle, and of following 
 a short demonstration ? By this system " the system," as its admirers 
 were wont to call it, even as they named the writer who first applied it 
 in systematic detail to the whole constitution and administration of civil 
 policy, Du Quesnoy to wit, le Docteur, or the teacher ; by this system 
 the observation of times, places, relative bearings, history, national 
 customs and character, is rendered superfluous : all, in short, which 
 according to the common notion makes the attainment of legislative 
 prudence a work of difficulty and long-continued effort, even for the 
 acutest and most comprehensive minds. The cautious balancing of 
 comparative advantages, the painful calculation of forces and counter- 
 forces, the preparation of circumstances, the lynx-eyed watching for 
 opportunities, are all superseded ; and by the magic oracles of certain 
 axioms and definitions it is revealed how the world with all its concerns 
 should be mechanized, and then let go on of itself. All the positive 
 institutions and regulations, which the prudence of our ancestors had 
 provided, are declared to be erroneous or interested perversions of the 
 natural relations of man ; and the whole is delivered over to the faculty 
 which all men possess equally, i. e. the common sense or universal 
 reason. The science of politics, it is said, is but the application of the 
 common sense which every man possesses to a subject in which every 
 man is concerned. To be a musician, an orator, a painter, a poet, an 
 architect, or even to be a good mechanist, presupposes genius ; to be an 
 excellent artizan or mechanic, requires more than an average degree of 
 talent ; but to be a legislator requires nothing but common sense. The 
 commonest human intellect therefore suffices for a perfect'insight into 
 the whole science of civil polity, and qualifies the possessor to sit in judg- 
 ment on the constitution and administration of his own country, and of 
 
 * " We (Charles Rrandon, Duke of Suffolk) teach others; these he said were like gous 
 
 knowing thai learning hath no enemy but among men others who though they knew 
 
 ignorance, did suspect always the want of it not much yet were willing to learn ; these he 
 
 in those men who derided the habit of it In siid were like men among beasts and some 
 
 others ; like the fox in the fable, who being who knew not good and yet despised such 
 
 without a tail, would persuade others to cut as should teach them; these he esteemed as 
 
 off theirs as a burden. But he liked well the beasts among men." Llvyd's State H orrtits, 
 
 philosopher's division of men into three ranks p. 33. 
 some who knew good and were willing to
 
 134 The Friend. 
 
 all other nations. This must needs be agreeable tidings to the great 
 mass of mankind. There is no subject, which men in general like better 
 to harangue on than politics : none, the deciding on which more natters 
 the sense of self-importance. For as to what Doctor Johnson calls 
 plebeian envy, I do not believe that the mass of men are justly charge- 
 able with it in their political feelings ; not only because envy is seldom 
 excited except by definite and individual objects, but still more because 
 it is a painful passion, and not likely to coexist with the high delight 
 and self-complacency with which the harangues on states and statesmen, 
 princes, and generals, are made and listened to in ale-house circles or 
 promiscuous public meetings. A certain portion of this is not merely 
 desirable, but necessary in a free country. Heaven forbid that the 
 most ignorant of my countrymen should be deprived of a subject so well 
 fitted to 
 
 impart 
 An hour's importance to the poor man's heart ! 
 
 But a system which not only flatters the pride and vanity of men, but 
 which in so plausible and intelligible a manner persuades them, not that 
 this is wrong, and that that ought to have been managed otherwise ; or 
 that Mr. X. is worth a hundred of Mr. Y. as a minister or parliament 
 man, &c. &c. ; but that all is wrong and mistaken, nay almost unjust 
 and wicked, and that every man is competent, and in contempt of all 
 rank and property, on the mere title of his personality, possesses the right, 
 and is under the most solemn moral obligation, to give a helping hand 
 toward overthrowing it : this confusion of political with religious claims, 
 this transfer of the rights of religion disjoined from the austere duties of 
 self-denial, with which religious rights exercised in their proper sphere 
 cannot fail to be accompanied ; and not only disjoined from self-restraint, 
 but united with the indulgence of those passions (self-will, love of 
 power, &c.,) which it is the principal aim and hardest task of religion to 
 correct and restrain this, I say, is altogether different from the village 
 politics of yore, and may be pronounced alarming and of dangerous 
 tendency by the boldest advocates of reform, not less consistently than 
 by the most timid eschewers of popular disturbance. 
 
 Still, however, the system had its golden side for the noblest minds ; 
 and I should act the part of a coward if I disguised my convictions, 
 that the errors of the aristocratic party were full as gross and far less 
 excusable. Instead of contenting themselves with opposing the real 
 blessings of English law to the splendid promises of untried theory, too 
 large a part of those who call themselves Anti-jacobins did all in their 
 ]K)wer to suspend those blessings ; and thus furnished new arguments 
 to the advocates of innovation, when they should have been answering 
 the old ones. The most prudent as well as the most honest mode of 
 defending the existing arrangements would have been, to have can-
 
 Section 1. Essay 5. 135 
 
 didly admitted what could not with truth be denied, and then to have 
 shown that, though the things complained of were evils, they were ne- 
 cessary evils : or if they were removeable, yet that the consequences of 
 the heroic medicines recommended by the revolutionists would be far 
 more dreadful than the disease. Now either the one or the other point, 
 by the double aid of history and a sound philosophy, they might have 
 established with a certainty little short of demonstration, and with such 
 colours and illustrations as would have taken strong hold of the very 
 feelings which had attached to the democratic system all the good and 
 valuable men of the party. But instead of this they precluded the 
 possibility of being listened to even by the gentlest and most ingenuous 
 among the friends of the French revolution, denying or attempting to 
 palliate facts that were equally notorious and unjustifiable, and sup- 
 plying the lack of brain by an overflow of gall. While they lamented 
 with trade outcries the injured monarch and the exiled noble, they 
 displayed the most disgusting insensibility to the privations, sufferings, 
 and manifold oppressions of the great mass of the continental popula- 
 tion, and a blindness or callousness still more offensive to the crimes 
 and unutterable abominations of their oppressors.* Not only was the 
 Bastile justified, but the Spanish inquisition itself and this in a 
 pamphlet passionately extolled and industriously circulated by the ad- 
 herents of the then ministry. Thus, and by their infatuated panegyrics 
 on the former state of France, they played into the hands of their \vorst 
 and most dangerous antagonists. In confounding the conditions of the 
 English and the French peasantry, and in quoting the authorities of 
 Milton, Sidney, and their immortal compeers, as applicable to the 
 present times and the existing government, the demagogues appeared to 
 talk only the same language as the Anti-jacobins themselves employed. 
 For if the vilest calumnies of obsolete bigots were applied against these 
 great men by the one party, with equal plausibility might their au- 
 thorities be adduced, and their arguments for increasing the power of 
 the people be re-applied to the existing government, by the other. If 
 the most disgusting forms of despotism were spoken of by the one in 
 the same respectful language as the executive power of our own country, 
 what wonder if the irritated partizans of the other were able to impose 
 on the populace the converse of the proposition, and to confound the 
 executive branch of the English sovereignty with the despotisms of less 
 happy lands ? The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his 
 opponents, that he understands their arguments and sympathizes with 
 their just feelings. But instead of this, these pretended constitution- 
 alists recurred to the language of insult, and to measures of persecution. 
 
 * I do not mean the sovereigns, but the hierarchy, has always appeared to me the 
 
 old nobility of l>oth Germany and France, greatest defect of his, in so many respexts, 
 
 The extravagantly fa'.s^ ami flatterinp picture, invaluable work, 
 which Burke gave of the French nobility and
 
 136 The Friend. 
 
 in order to opjwse Jacobinism they imitated it in its worst features ; in 
 personal slander, in illegal violence, and even in the thirst for blood. 
 They justified the corruptions of the state in the same spirit of sophistry, 
 by the same va^aie arguments of general reason, and the same disregard 
 of ancient ordinances and established opinions, with which the state 
 itself had been attacked by the Jacobins. The wages of state-depen- 
 dence were represented as sacred as the property won by industry or 
 derived from a long line of ancestors. 
 
 It was, indeed, evident to thinking men, that both parties were 
 playing the same game with different counters. If the Jacobins ran 
 wild with the rights of man, and the abstract sovereignty of the people, 
 their antagonists flew off as extravagantly from the sober good sense of 
 our forefathers, and idolized as mere an abstraction in the rights of 
 sovereigns. Nor was this confined to sovereigns. They defended the 
 exemptions and privileges of all privileged orders on the presumption of 
 their inalienable right to them, however inexpedient they might have 
 been found, as universally and abstractly as if these privileges had been 
 decreed by the Supreme Wisdom, instead of being the offspring of 
 chance or violence, or the inventions of human prudence. Thus, while 
 they deemed themselves defending, they were in reality blackening and 
 degrading the uninjurious and useful privileges of our English nobility, 
 which (thank Heaven !) rest on nobler and securer grounds. Thus too, 
 the necessity of compensations for dethroned princes was affirmed as 
 familiarly as if kingdoms had been private estates ; and no more 
 disapprobation was expressed at the transfer of five or ten millions of 
 men from one proprietor to another than of as many score head of cattle. 
 This most degrading and superannuated superstition, or rather this 
 ghost of a defunct absurdity raised up by the necromancy of a violent 
 reaction (such as the extreme of one system is sure to occasion in the 
 adherents of its opposite), was more than once allowed to regulate our 
 measures in the conduct of a war on which the independence of the 
 British empire and the progressive civilization of all mankind depended. 
 I could mention possessions of paramount and indispensable importance 
 to first-rate national interests, the nominal sovereign of which had 
 delivered up all his sea-ports and strongholds to the French, and main- 
 tained a French army in his dominions, and had therefore, by the law 
 of nations, made his territories French dependencies which possessions 
 were not to be touched, though the natural inhabitants were eager to place 
 themselves under our permanent protection and why ? They were the 
 
 property of the king of ! All the grandeur and majesty of the law of 
 
 nations, which taught our ancestors to distinguish between a European 
 sovereign and the miserable despots of oriental barbarism, and to con- 
 sider the former as the representative of the nation which he governed, 
 and as inextricably connected with its fortunes as sovereign, were merged
 
 Section 1. Essay 5. 137 
 
 in the basest personality. Instead of the interests of mighty nations, it 
 seemed as if a mere lawsuit were carrying on between John Doe and 
 Richard Roe! The happiness of millions was light in the balance, 
 weighed against a theatric compassion for one individual and his family, 
 who (I speak from facts that I myself know) if they feared the French 
 more, hated us worse. Though the restoration of good sense commenced 
 during the interval of the peace of Amiens, yet it was not till the 
 Spanish insurrection that Englishmen of all parties recurred, in toto, to 
 the old English principles, and spoke of their Hampdens, Sidneys, and 
 Miltons, with the old enthusiasm. During the last war, an acquaintance 
 of mine (least of all men a political zealot) had christened a vessel 
 which he had just built The Liberty; and was seriously admonished 
 by his aristrocratic friends to change it for some other name. " What !" 
 replied the owner very innocently, "should I call it The Freedom?" 
 " That (it was replied) would be far better, as people might then think 
 only of freedom of trade ; whereas liberty has a Jacobinical sound with 
 it !" " Alas ! (and this is an observation of Sir J. Denham and of Burke) 
 is there then no medium between an ague-fit and a frenzy-fever ?" 
 
 I have said that to withstand the arguments of the lawless, the Anti - 
 jacobins proposed to suspend the law, and by the interposition of a 
 particular statute to eclipse the blessed light of the universal sun, that 
 spies and informers might tyrannize and escape in the ominous darkness. 
 Oh ! if these mistaken men, intoxicated with alarm and bewildered by 
 that panic of property which they themselves were the chief agents in 
 exciting, had ever lived in a country where there was indeed a general 
 disposition to change and rebellion ! Had they ever travelled through 
 Sicily, or through France at the first coming on of the revolution, or 
 even, alas! through too many of the provinces of a sister-land, they 
 could not but have shrunk from their own declarations concerning the 
 state of feeling and opinion at that time predominant throughout Great 
 Britain. There was a time (Heaven grant that that time may have passed 
 by) when by crossing a narrow strait they might have learnt the true 
 symptoms of approaching danger, and have secured themselves from 
 mistaking the meetings and idle rant of such sedition as shrank ap- 
 palled from the sight of a constable, for the dire murmuring and strange 
 consternation which precedes the storm, or earthquake of national dis- 
 cord. Not only in colTee-houses and public theatres, but even at the 
 tables of the wealthy, they would have heard the advocates of existing 
 government defend their cause in the language and with the tone of 
 men, who are conscious that they are in a minority. But in England, 
 when the alarm was at the highest, there was not a city, no, not a town 
 in which a man suspected of holding democratic principles could move 
 abroad without receiving some unpleasant proof of the hatred in which 
 his supposed opinions were held by the great majority of the people;
 
 138 The Friend. 
 
 and the only instances of popular excess and indignation were on the 
 side of the government and the Established Church. But why need I 
 appeal to these invidious facts? Turn over the pages of history, and 
 seek for a single instance of a revolution having been effected without 
 the concurrence of either the nobles, or the ecclesiastics, or the monied 
 classes, in any country in which the influences of property had ever 
 been predominant, and where the interests of the proprietors were in- 
 terlinked ! Examine the revolution of the Belgic provinces under 
 Philip II. ; the civil wars of France in the preceding generation, the 
 history of the American revolution, or the yet more recent events in 
 Sweden and in Spain ; and it will be scarcely possible not to perceive, 
 that in England, from 1791 to the peace of Amiens, there were neither 
 tendencies to confederacy nor actual confederacies, against which the 
 existing laws had not provided both sufficient safeguards and an ample 
 punishment. But alas ! the panic of property had been struck in the 
 first instance for party purposes ; and when it became general, its pro- 
 pagators caught it themselves, and ended in believing their own lie ; 
 even as our bulls in Borrodale sometimes run mad with the echo of their 
 own bellowing. The consequences were most injurious. Our attention 
 was concentrated on a monster which could not survive the convulsions 
 in which it had been brought forth, even the enlightened Burke himself 
 too often talking and reasoning as if a perpetual and organized anarchy 
 had been a possible thing ! Thus while we were warring against French 
 doctrines, we took little heed whether the means by which we attempted 
 to overthrow them, were not likely to aid and augment the far more 
 formidable evil of French ambition. Like children we ran away from 
 the yelping of a cur and took shelter at the heels of a vicious war-horse. 
 The conduct of the aristocratic party was equally unwise in private 
 life and to individuals, especially to the young and inexperienced, who 
 were surely to be forgiven for having had their imagination dazzled, and 
 their enthusiasm kindled, by a novelty so specious, that even an old and 
 tried statesman had pronounced it " a stupendous monument of human 
 wisdom and human happiness." This was indeed a gross delusion, but> 
 assuredly for young men at least, a very venial one. To hope too 
 boldly of human nature is a fault which all good men have an interest 
 in forgiving. Nor was it less removeable than venial, if the party had 
 taken the only way by which the error eould be, or even ought to have 
 been, removed. Having first sympathized with the warm benevolence 
 and the enthusiasm for liberty which had consecrated It, they should 
 have then shown the young enthusiasts that liberty was not the only 
 blessing of society ; that though desirable, even for its own sake, it yet 
 derived its main value as the means of calling forth and securing other 
 advantages and excellencies, the activities of industry, the security of 
 life and property, the peaceful energies of genius and manifold talent,
 
 Section 1. Essay 5. 139 
 
 the development of the moral virtues, and the independence and dignity 
 of the nation in its relations to foreign powers ; and that neither these 
 nor liberty itself could subsist in a country so various in its soils, so 
 long inhabited and so fully peopled as Great Britain, without difference 
 of ranks and without laws which recognized and protected the privileges 
 of each. But instead of thus winning them back from the snare, they 
 too often drove them into it by angry contumelies, which being in con- 
 tradiction with each other could only excite contempt for those that 
 uttered them. To prove the folly of the opinions, they were represented 
 as the crude fancies of unfledged wits and school-boy statesmen ; but 
 when abhorrence was to be expressed, the self-same unfledged school- 
 boys were invested with all the attributes of brooding conspiracy and 
 hoary-headed treason. Nay, a sentence of absolute reprobation was 
 passed on them ; and the speculative error of Jacobinism was equalized 
 to the mysterious sin in Scripture, which in some inexplicable manner 
 excludes not only mercy but even repentance. It became the watch- 
 word of the party, "ONCE A JACOBIN ALWAYS A JACOBIN." And 
 wherefore ?* (We will suppose this question asked by an individual, who 
 in his youth or earliest manhood had been enamoured of a system 
 which for him had combined at once the austere beauty of science with 
 all the light and colours of imagination, and with all the warmth of 
 wide religious charity, and who, overlooking its ideal essence, had dreamt 
 of. actually building a government on personal and natural rights alone.) 
 And wherefore? Is Jacobinism an absurdity, and have we no under- 
 standing to detect it with ? Is it productive of all misery and all 
 horrors, and have we no natural humanity to make us turn away with 
 indignation and loathing from it? Uproar and confusion, insecurity 
 of.person and of property, the tyranny of mobs or the domination of a 
 soldiery ; private houses changed to brothels, the ceremony of marriage 
 but an initiation to harlotry, and marriage itself degraded to mere con- 
 cubinage these, the wiser advocates of aristocracy have said, and truly 
 said, are the effects of Jacobinism ! In private life, an insufferable licen- 
 tiousness, and abroad an intolerable despotism ! " Once a Jacobin, 
 always a Jacobin " Oh wherefore ? Is it because the creed which we 
 have stated is dazzling at first sight to the young, the innocent, the dis- 
 interested, and to those who, judging of men in general from their own 
 uncorrupted hearts, judge erroneously, and expect unwisely ? Is it be- 
 cause it deceives the mind in its purest and most flexible period? Is it 
 
 * The passage which follows was first pub- Mr. Somhey's juvenile drama, Wat Tyler, 
 
 lishod in the Morning Pos-t, in the year 1^00, and the consequent assault on his character 
 
 and contained, if I mistake not, the first by an M. P. in his senatorial capacity, to 
 
 pUloaophJol appropriation of or precise whom the Publishers are doubtless knit by 
 
 iinpoit to the word Jacobin, as distinct from the twofold tie of sympathy and gratitude. 
 
 Republican, Democrat, and Demagogue. The The names of the publishers are Sherwood, 
 
 whole Kssay has a j> i-uliar interest to my- N.aly and Jones; their benefactor's name 
 
 M the present moment (l May 1817), is William Smith, 
 from the recent notorious publication of
 
 140 The Friend. 
 
 because it is an error, that every day's experience aids to detect ? An 
 error against which all history is full of warning examples ? Or is it 
 because the experiment has been tried before our eyes and the error 
 made palpable? 
 
 From what source are we to derive this strange phenomenon, that the 
 young and the enthusiastic, who, as our daily experience informs us, 
 are deceived in their religious antipathies, and grow wiser ; in their 
 friendships, and grow wiser ; in their modes of pleasure, and grow wiser ; 
 should, if once deceived in a question of abstract politics, cling to the 
 error for ever and ever? And this too, although in addition to the 
 natural growth of judgment and information with increase of years, they 
 live in the age in which the tenets have been acted upon ; and though 
 the consequences have been such, that every good man's heart sickens, 
 and his head turns giddy at the retrospect. 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 Truth I pursued, as fancy sketch'd the way, 
 
 And wiser men than I went worse astray. MS. 
 
 I WAS never myself, at any period of my life, a convert to the system. 
 From my earliest manhood, it was an axiom in politics with me, that 
 in every country where property prevailed, property must be the grand 
 basis of the government ; and that that government was the best, in 
 which the power or political influence of the individual was in propor- 
 tion to his property, provided that the free circulation of property was 
 not impeded by any positive laws or customs, nor the tendency of 
 wealth to accumulate in abiding masses unduly encouraged. I perceived, 
 that if the people at large were neither ignorant nor immoral, there 
 could be no motive for a sudden and violent change of government ; and 
 if they were, there could be no hope but of a change for the worse. 
 " The temple of despotism, like that of the Mexican god, would be 
 rebuilt with human skulls, and more firmly, though in a different archi- 
 tecture."* Thanks to the excellent education which I had received, my 
 reason was too clear not to draw this " circle of power " round me, and 
 my spirit too honest to attempt to break through it. My feelings, how- 
 ever, and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general confla- 
 gration ; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than 
 proud of myself, if they had : I was a sharer in the general vortex, 
 though my little world described the path of its revolution in an orbit 
 of its own. What I dared not expect from constitutions of government 
 and whole nations, I hoped from religion and a small company of chosen 
 individuals, and formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of 
 * To the best of my recollection, these were Mr. Southey's words in the year 1794.
 
 Section 1. Esay 6. 141 
 
 crying the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the Sus- 
 quehannah ; where our little society, iu its second generation was to 
 have combined the innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge 
 and genuine refinements of European culture ; and where I dreamt that 
 in the sober evening of my life, I should behold the cottages of inde- 
 pendence in the undivided dale of industry, 
 
 And oft, soothed sadly by some dirgeful wind, 
 Muse on the sore ills 1 had left behind ! 
 
 Strange fancies ! and as vain as strange ! yet to the intense interest and 
 impassioned zeal which called forth and strained every faculty of my 
 intellect for the organization and defence of this scheme, I owe much of 
 whatever I at present possess, my clearest insight into the nature of 
 individual man, and my most comprehensive views of his social rela- 
 tions, of the true uses of trade and commerce, and how far the wealth 
 and relative power of nations promote or impede their welfare and in- 
 herent strength. Nor were they less serviceable in securing myself, and 
 perhaps some others, from the pitfalls of sedition ; and when we 
 alighted on the firm ground of common sense from the gradually 
 exhausted balloon of youthful enthusiasm, though the air-built castles 
 which we had been pursuing had vanished with all their pageantry of 
 shifting forms and glowing colours, we were yet free from the stains and 
 impurities which might have remained upon us, had we been travelling 
 with the crowd of less imaginative malcontents through the dark lanes 
 and foul bye-roads? of ordinary fanaticism. 
 
 But oh ! there were thousands as young and as innocent as myself 
 who, not like me, sheltered in the tranquil nook or inland cove of a 
 particular fancy, were driven along with the general current ! Many 
 there were, young men of loftiest minds, yea, the prime stuff out of 
 which manly wisdom and practical greatness is to be formed, who had 
 appropriated their hopes and the ardour of their souls to mankind at 
 large, to the wide expanse of national interests, which then seemed 
 fermenting in the French republic as in the main outlet and chief crater 
 of the revolutionary torrents ; and who confidently believed, that these 
 torrents, like the lavas of Vesuvius, were to subside into a soil of inr 
 exhaustible fertility on the circumjacent lands, the old divisions and 
 mouldering edifices of which they had covered or swept away enthu- 
 >f kindliest temperament, who, to use the words of the poet (having 
 already borrowed the meaning and the metaphor) had approached 
 
 the shield 
 
 Of human nature from the golden side, 
 And would have fought even to the death to a 
 The quality of the metal which they saw. 
 
 My honoured friend has permitted me to give a value and relief to the 
 present essay ly a quotation from one of his unpublished poems, the
 
 142 The Friend. 
 
 length of which I regret only from its forbidding me to trespass on his 
 kindness by making it yet longer. I trust there are many of my readers 
 of the same age with myself, who will throw themselves back into the 
 state of thought and feeling in which they were when France was 
 reported to have solemnized her first sacrifice of error and prejudice on 
 the bloodless altar of freedom, by an oath of peace and good-will to all 
 mankind. 
 
 Oh ! pleasant, exercise of hope and Joy ! 
 
 For mighty were the auxiliars, which then stood 
 
 Upon our side, we who were strong in love ! 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 
 But to be young was very heaven ! oh ! times, 
 
 In which the meagre stale forbidding ways 
 
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 
 
 The attraction of a country in romance ! 
 
 When reason seem'd the most to assert her rights, 
 
 When most intent on making of herself 
 
 A prime enchanter to assist the work, 
 
 Which then was going forward in her name ! 
 
 Not favour'd spots alone, but the whole earth 
 
 The beauty wore of promise that which sets 
 
 (To take an image which was felt no doubt 
 
 Among the bowers of Paradise itself) 
 
 The budding rose above the rose full blown. 
 
 What temper at the prospect did not wake 
 
 To happiness unthought of? The inert 
 
 Were rous'd, and lively natures rapt away ! 
 
 They who had fed their childhood upon dreams, 
 
 The play-fellows of fancy, who had made 
 
 All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength 
 
 Their ministers, used to stir in lordly wise 
 
 Among the grandest objects of the sense. 
 
 And deal with whatsoever they found there 
 
 As if they had within some lurking right 
 
 To wield it; they too, who of gentle mood 
 
 Had watch'd all gentle motions, and to these 
 
 Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild 
 
 And in the region of their peaceful selves ; 
 
 Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty 
 
 Did both find helpers to their heart's desire 
 
 And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish ! 
 
 Were call'd upon to exercise their skill 
 
 Not iu Utopia, subterraneous fields, 
 
 Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where ! 
 
 But in the very world, which is the world 
 
 Of all of us, the place where in the end 
 
 We find our happiness, or not at all ! 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 The peace of Amiens deserved the name of peace, for it gave us una- 
 nimity at home, and reconciled Englishmen with each other. Yet it 
 would be as wild a fancy as any of which we have treated, to expect 
 that the violence of party spirit is never more to return. Sooner or 
 later the same causes, or their equivalents, will call forth the same 
 opposition of opinion, and bring the same passions into play. Ample
 
 Section 1. Unsay 6. 143 
 
 would be my recompense, could I foresee that this present essay would 
 be the means of preventing discord and unhappiness in a single family ; 
 if its words of warning, aided by its tones of sympathy, should arm a 
 single man of genius against the fascinations of his own ideal world, a 
 single philanthropist against the enthusiasm of his own heart! Not 
 less would be my satisfaction, dared I flatter myself that my lucubra- 
 tions would not be altogether without effect on those who deem them- 
 selves men of judgment, faithful to the light of practice, and not to be 
 led astray by the wandering fires of theory ! If I should aid in making 
 these aware, that in recoiling with too incautious an abhorrence from 
 the bugbears of innovation, they may sink all at once into the slough 
 of slavishness and corruption. Let such persons recollect that the 
 charms of hope and novelty furnish some palliation for the idolatry to 
 which they seduce the mind ; but that the apotheosis of familiar abuses 
 and of the errors of selfishness is the vilest of superstitions. Let them 
 recollect too, that nothing can be more incongruous than to combine the 
 pusillanimity, which despairs of human improvement, with the arro- 
 gance, supercilious contempt, and boisterous anger, which have no pre- 
 tensions to pardon except as the overflowings of ardent anticipation and 
 enthusiastic faith ! And finally, and above all, let it be remembered by 
 both parties, and indeed by controversialists on all subjects, that every 
 speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates, has its golden 
 as well as its dark side ; that there is always some truth connected with 
 it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the understanding, some 
 moral beauty which has given it charms for the heart. Let it be re- 
 membered, that no assailant of an error can reasonably hope to be 
 listened to by its advocates, who has not proved to them that he has 
 seen the disputed subject in the same point of view, and is capable of 
 contemplating it with the same feelings as themselves : (for why should 
 we abandon a cause at the persuasions of one who is ignorant of the 
 reasons which have attached us to it?) Let it be remembered that to 
 write, however ably, merely to convince those who are already con- 
 vinced, displays but the courage of a boaster ; and in any subject to 
 rail against the evil before we have inquired for the good, and to exas- 
 perate the passions of those who think with us, by caricaturing the 
 opinions and blackening the motives of our antagonists, is to make 
 the understanding the pander of the passions ; and even though we 
 should have defended the right cause, to gain for ourselves ultimately, 
 from the good and the wise, no other praise than the Supreme Judge 
 awarded to the friends of Job for their partial and uncharitable defence 
 of His justice : " My wrath is kindled against you, lor ye have not spoken 
 of Me rightfully."* 
 
 Job xlii. T.
 
 144 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 
 OX THE VULGAR ERRORS RESPECTING TAXES AND TAXATION.* 
 
 'Ojrep yap ol ras ey\t\cis 0T)p<ijUei'Oi TreVoi'fla? 1 
 
 "Orav JieyV) Aifin) Karaorfj, Aan/Bacovcri.i' bvSev 
 
 'Eav S'ava) re icai. KOLTOJ rbr /SopjSopov KVICWO-IV, 
 
 Aipovtri' cai <rv Aa^|8o'ei5, Jjv TTJI' TroAiJ' rapaTTTJS' 
 
 (ZVafls?<rtum.) It is '"'i'l 1 y n as with those tnat are hunting for eels. While the pond is 
 clear and settled, they take nothing ; but if they stir up the mud high and low, then ttey 
 bring up the fish : and you succeed only as far as you can set the state in tumult and con- 
 fusion. 
 
 IN a passage in the last essay, I referred to the second part of the 
 " Rights of Man," in which Paine assures his readers that their poverty 
 is the consequence of taxation : that taxes are rendered necessary only hy 
 wars and state-corruption ; that war and corruption are entirely owing 
 to monarchy and aristocracy ; that by a revolution and a brotherly 
 alliance with the French republic, our land and sea forces, our revenue 
 officers, and three-fourths of our pensioners, placemen, &c., &c., would 
 be rendered superfluous ; and that a small part of the expenses thus 
 saved would suffice for the maintenance of the poor, the infirm, and the 
 aged, throughout the kingdom. Would to Heaven that this infamous 
 mode of misleading and flattering the lower classes were confined to the 
 writings of Thomas Paine ! But how often do we hear, even from the 
 mouths of our parliamentary advocates for popularity, the taxes stated 
 as so much money actually lost to the people ; and a nation in debt 
 represented as the same both in kind and consequences, as an individual 
 tradesman on the brink of bankruptcy ? It is scarcely possible, that 
 these men should be themselves deceived ; that they should be so igno- 
 rant of history as not to know that the freest nations, being at the same 
 time commercial, have been at all times the most heavily taxed: or so 
 void of common sense as not to see that there is no analogy in the case 
 of a tradesman and his creditors, to a nation indebted to itself. Surely 
 a much fairer instance would be that of a husband and wife playing 
 cards at the same table against each other, where what the one loses 
 the other gains. Taxes may be indeed, and often are injurious to a 
 country : at no time, however, from their amount merely, but from the 
 time or injudicious mode in which they are raised. A great statesman, 
 lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial harangues against some 
 proposed impost, said : " the nation has been already bled in every vein, 
 and is faint with loss of blood." This blood, however, was circulating in 
 the mean time through the whole body of the state, and what was 
 received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out again at 
 
 * For the moral effects of our present from its wealth, tbe reader is referred to the 
 system of finance, and its consequences on author's Second Lay Sermon, and to the 
 the welfare of the nation, as distinguished Section of Morals in this work.
 
 Section I. Essay 7. 145 
 
 the other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible 
 injuries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the tact in 
 the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular 
 vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood in them, which 
 sometimes occurs when the circulation has been suddenly and violently 
 changed, and causes helplessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the 
 total quantity of blood remains the same in the system at large. 
 
 But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good 
 and evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the 
 surface of the planet. The sun may draw up the moisture from the 
 river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to 
 the garden, the pasture, and the corn-field ; but it may likewise force 
 away the moisture from the fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant 
 pool, the saturated swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens 
 in the south of Europe supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a 
 system of finance judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs 
 would represent the capital of a nation, and the hundred rills hourly 
 varying their channels and directions under the gardener's spade, 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 
 i.s a part of commerce, and the government may be fairly considered as 
 a great manufacturing house carrying on in different places, by means 
 of its partners and overseers, the trades of the ship-builder, the clothier, 
 the iron-founder, and the like. 
 
 There are so many real evils, so many just causes of complaint in the 
 constitution and administration of governments, our own not excepted, 
 that it becomes the imperious duty of every well-wisher of his country, 
 to prevent, as much as in him lies, the feelings and efforts of his com- 
 patriots from losing themselves on a wrong scent. Whether a system 
 of taxation is injurious or beneficial on the whole, is to be known, not by 
 the amount of the sum taken from each individual, but by that which 
 remains behind. A war will doubtless cause a stagnation of certain 
 branches of trade, and severe temporary distress in the places where those 
 branches are carried on ; but are not the same effects produced in time 
 of peace by prohibitory edicts and commercial regulations of foreign 
 powers, or by new rivals with superior advantages in other countries, or 
 in different parts of the same? Bristol has, doubtless, been injured by 
 the rapid prosperity of Liverpool and its superior spirit of enterprise ; 
 and the vast machines of Lancashire have overwhelmed and rendered 
 hopeless fhe domestic industry of the females in the cottages and small 
 farm-houses of Westmoreland and Cumberland. But if peace has its 
 stagnations as well as war, does not war create or re-enliven numerous 
 branches of industry as well as peace ? Is it not a fact, that not only 
 our own military and naval forces, but even a part of those of our enemy
 
 146 The Friend. 
 
 are armed and clothed by British manufacturers ? It cannot be 
 doubted, that the whole of our immense military force is better and more 
 expensively clothed, and both these and our sailors better fed, than the 
 same persons would be in their individual capacities ; and this forms 
 one of the real expenses of war. Not, I say, that so much more money 
 is raised, but that so much more of the means of comfortable existence 
 are consumed than would otherwise have been. But does not this, like 
 all other luxury, act as a stimulus on the producing classes, and this in 
 the most useful manner, and on the most important branches of pro- 
 duction, on the tiller, on the grazier, the clothier, and the maker of 
 arms? Had it been otherwise, is it possible that the receipts from the 
 property tax should have increased instead of decreased, notwithstanding 
 all the rage of our enemy ? 
 
 Surely, never from the beginning of the world was such a tribute of 
 admiration paid by one power to another, as Buonaparte within the last 
 few years has paid to the British empire ! With all the natural and arti- 
 ficial powers of almost the whole of continental Europe, with all the 
 fences and obstacles of all public and private morality broken down be- 
 fore him, with a mighty empire of fifty millions of men, nearly two- 
 thirds of whom speak the same language, and are as it were fused toge- 
 ther by the intensest nationality ; with this mighty and swarming 
 empire, organized in all its parts for war, and forming one huge camp, 
 and himself combining in his own person the twofold power of monarch 
 and commander-iu-chief ; with all these advantages, with all these stu- 
 pendous instruments and inexhaustible resources of offence, this mightv 
 being finds himself imprisoned by the enemy whom he most hates and 
 would fain despise, insulted by every wave that breaks upon his shores, 
 and condemned to behold his vast flotillas as worthless and idle as the 
 sea- weed that rots around their keels ! After years of haughty menace 
 and expensive preparations for the invasion of an island, the trees and 
 buildings of which are visible from the roofs of his naval store-houses, 
 he is at length compelled to make open confession, that he possesses one 
 mean only of ruining Great Britain. And what is it? The ruin of his 
 own enslaved subjects ! To undermine the resources of one enemy, he 
 reduces the continent of Europe to the wretched state in which it was 
 before the wide diffusion of trade and commerce, deprives its inhabit- 
 ants of comforts and advantages to which they and their fathers had 
 been for more than a century habituated, and thus destroys, as far as 
 his power extends, a principal source of civilization, the origin of a 
 middle class throughout Christendom, and with it the true balance of 
 society, the parent of international law, the foster-nurse of general 
 humanity, and (to sum up all in one) the main principle of attraction 
 and repulsion, by which the nations were rapidly though insensibly 
 drawing together into one system, and by which alone they could com-
 
 Section 1. Essay 7. 147 
 
 bine the manifold blessings of distinct character and national indepen- 
 dence with the needful stimulation and general influences of intercom- 
 munity, and be virtually united without being crushed together by 
 conquest, in order to waste away under the tabes and slow putrefaction 
 of a universal monarchy. This boasted pacificator of the world, this 
 earthly Providence,* as his Catholic Bishops blasphemously call him, 
 professes to entertain no hope of purchasing the destruction of Great 
 Britain at a less price than that of the barbarism of all Europe ! By 
 the ordinary war of government against government, fleets against fleets, 
 and armies against armies, he could effect nothing. His fleets might as 
 well have been built at his own expense in our dockyards, as tribute- 
 offeriugs to the masters of the ocean ; and his army of England lie en- 
 cami>ed on his coasts like wolves baying the moon ! 
 
 Delightful to humane and contemplative minds was the idea of count- 
 less individual efforts working together by a common instinct and to a 
 common' object, under the protection of an unwritten code of religion, 
 philosophy, and common interest, which made peace and brotherhood 
 co-exist with the most active hostility. Not in the untamed plains of 
 Tartary, but in the very bosom of civilization, and himself indebkd to 
 its fostering care for his own education and for all the means of his 
 elevation and power, did tins genuine offspring of the old serpent warm 
 himself into the fiend-like resolve of waging war against mankind and 
 the quiet growth of the world's improvement in an emphatic sense the 
 enemy of the human race ! By these means only he deems Great Britain 
 assailable, (a strong presumption that our prosperity is built on the 
 common interests of mankind!) this he acknowledges to be his only 
 hope and in this hope he has been utterly baffled ! 
 
 To what then do we owe our strength and our immunity ? The 
 iunty of law; the incorruptness of its administration ; the number 
 and political importance of our religious sects, which in an incalculable 
 have added to the dignity of the establishment ; the purity, or at 
 least the decorum of private morals, and the independence, activity, and 
 weight, of public opinion? These and similar advantages are doubtless 
 the materials of the fortress, but what has been the cement ? What has 
 bound them together? What has rendered Great Britain, from the 
 Orkneys to the rocks of Scilly, indeed and with more than metaphorical 
 propriety a body politic, our roads, rivers, and canals being so truly the 
 veins, arteries, and nerves of the state, that every pulse in the metro- 
 polis produces a correspondent pulsation in the remotest village on its 
 
 * It has been well remarked, that there is strated with him on the inhumanity of his 
 
 omethins &r more shocking in the tyrant's deva.-tatii>ns: < tir m<> luiHiitnin j-ntiis. tt i>o* 
 
 pretensions t<> the cnicinus attributes of the ;*>fi. train Ihi in terris agei,tem db per- 
 
 Supreme Kuler, than in his most remorseless tiiciem humani i/cneris f Why do you deem 
 
 cruelties. Tli'-re i> a sort of wild grandeur, me a man. ami not rather the incarnate 
 
 not mip-atifyiii": to the imagination, in the wrath of God acting on the earth for the 
 
 iiiswer of Timor Khan to oue who remon- ruin of mankind f
 
 148 The Friend. 
 
 extreme shores? What made the stoppage of the national bank the 
 conversation of a day without causing one irregular throb, or the stag- 
 nation of the commercial current in the minutest vessel? I answer 
 without hesitation, that the cause and mother principle of this unex- 
 ampled confidence, of this system of credit, which is as much stronger 
 than mere positive possessions, as the soul of man is than his lody, or 
 as the force of a mighty mass in free motion, than the pressure of its 
 separate component parts would be in a state of rest the main cause 
 of this, I say, has been our national debt. What its injurious effects 
 on the literature, the morals, and religious principles, have been, I shall 
 hereafter develop with the same boldness. But as to our political 
 strength and circumstantial prosperity, it is the national debt which 
 has wedded in indissoluble union all the interests of the state, the landed 
 with the commercial, and the man of independent fortune with the 
 stirring tradesman and reposing annuitant. It is the national debt, 
 which, by the rapid nominal rise in the value of things, has made it 
 impossible for any considerable number of men to retain their own 
 former comforts without joining in the common industry, and adding to 
 the stock of national produce ; which thus first necessitates a general 
 activity, and then by the immediate and ample credit, which is never 
 wanting to him who has any object on which his activity can employ 
 itself, gives each man the means not only of preserving but of increas- 
 ing and multiplying all his former enjoyments, and all the symbols of 
 the rank in which he was born. It is this which has planted the naked 
 hills and enclosed the bleak wastes in the Lowlands of Scotland not less 
 than in the wealthier districts of South Britain; it is this, which leaving 
 all the other causes of patriotism and national fervour undiminished and 
 uninjured, has added to our public duties the same feeling of necessity, 
 the same sense of immediate self-interest, which in other countries 
 actuates the members of a single family in their conduct towards each 
 other. 
 
 Somewhat more than a year ago, I happened to be on a visit with a 
 friend, in a small market town in the south-west of England, when 
 one of the company turned the conversation to the weight of taxes and 
 the consequent hardness of the times. I answered, that if the taxes 
 were a real weight, and that in proportion to their amount, we must 
 have been ruined long ago ; for Mr. Hume, who had proceeded, as on a 
 self-evident axiom, on the hypothesis, that a debt of a nation was the 
 same as a debt of an individual, had declared our ruin arithmetically 
 demonstrable, if the national debt increased beyond a certain sum. 
 Since his time it has more than quintupled that sum, and yet True, 
 answered my friend, but the principle might be right though he might 
 have been mistaken in the time. But still, I rejoined, if the principle 
 were right, the nearer we came to that given point, and the greater and
 
 Section 1. Essay 7. 149 
 
 the more active the pernicious cause became, the more manifest would 
 its effects bo. We might not be absolutely ruined, but our embarrass- 
 ments would increase in some proportion to their cause. Whereas in- 
 stead of being poorer and poorer, we are richer and richer. Will any 
 man in his senses contend, that the actual labour and produce of the 
 country has not only been decupled within half a century, but increased 
 so prodigiously beyond that decuple as to make six hundred millions a 
 less weight to us than fifty millions were in the days of our grand- 
 fathers ? But if it really be so, to what can we attribute this stupen- 
 dous progression of national improvement, but to that system of credit 
 and paper currency, of which the national debt is both the reservoir and 
 the water-works ? A constant cause should have constant effects ; but 
 if you deem that this is some anomaly, some strange exception to the 
 general rule, explain its mode of operation, make it comprehensible, how 
 a cause acting on a whole nation can produce a regular and rapid in- 
 crease of prosperity to a certain point, and then all at once pass from an 
 Angel of Light into a demon of destruction ? That an individual house 
 may live more and more luxuriously upon borrowed funds, and that 
 when the suspicions of the creditors are awakened, and their patience 
 exhausted, the luxurious spendthrift may all at once exchange his 
 palace for a prison this I can understand perfectly ; for I understand, 
 whence the luxuries could be produced for the consumption of the in- 
 dividual house, and who the creditors might be, and that it might be 
 both their inclination and their interests to demand the debt, and to 
 punish the insolvent debtor. But who are a nation's creditors ? The 
 answer is, every man to every man. Whose possible interest could it 
 be either to demand the principal, or to refuse his share toward the 
 means of paying the interest ? Not the merchant's ; for he would but 
 provoke a crash of bankruptcy, in which his own house would as neces- 
 sarily be included, as a single card in a house of cards ! Not the land- 
 holder's ; for in the general destruction of all credit, how could he obtain 
 payment for the produce of his estates ? Not to mention the impro- 
 bability that he would remain the undisturbed possessor in so direful 
 a concussion not to mention that on him must fall the whole weight 
 of the public necessities not to mention, that from the merchant's 
 credit depends the ever-increasing value of his land and the readiest 
 means of improving it. Neither could it be the labourer's interest ; for 
 he must be either thrown out of employ, and lie like the fish in the bed 
 of a river from which the water has been diverted, or have the value of 
 his labour reduced to nothing by the inruptiou of eager competitors. 
 But least of all could it be the wish of the lovers of liberty, which 
 must needs perish or be suspended, either by the horrors of anarchy, or 
 by the absolute power, with which the government must be invested 
 in order to prevent them. In short, with the exception of men despe-
 
 150 The Friend. 
 
 rate from guilt or debt, or mad with the blackest ambition, there is 
 no class or description of men who can have the least interest in pro- 
 ducing or permitting a bankruptcy. If, then, neither experience has 
 acquainted us with any national impoverishment or embarrassment 
 from the increase of national debt, nor theory renders such efforts com- 
 prehensible (for the predictions of Hume went on the false assumption, 
 that a part only of the nation was interested in the preservation of the 
 public credit), on what authority are we to ground our apprehensions? 
 Does history record a single nation, in which relatively to taxation 
 there were no privileged or exempted classes, in which there were no 
 compulsory prices of labour, and in which the interests of all the dif- 
 ferent classes and all the different districts, were mutually dependent 
 and vitally co-organized, as in Great Britain has history, I say, re- 
 corded a single instance of such a nation ruined or dissolved by the 
 weight of taxation ? In France there was no public credit, no commu- 
 nion of interests ; its unprincipled government and the productive and 
 taxable classes Avere as two individuals with separate interests. Its 
 bankruptcy and the consequences of it are sufficiently comprehensible. 
 Yet the Cahiers, or the instructions and complaints sent to the national 
 assembly, from the towns and provinces of France (an immense mass 
 of documents indeed, but without examination and patient perusal of 
 which no man is entitled to write a history of the French revolution), 
 these proved, beyond contradiction, that the amount of the taxes was 
 one only, and that a subordinate cause of the revolutionary movement. 
 Indeed, if the amount of the taxes could be disjoined from the mode of 
 raising them, it might be fairly denied to have been a cause at all. 
 Holland was taxed as heavily and as equally as ourselves ; but was it 
 by taxation that Holland was reduced to its present miseries ? 
 
 The mode in which taxes are supposed to act on the marketableness 
 of our manufactures in foreign marts I shall examine on some future 
 occasion, when I shall endeavour to explain in a more satisfactory way 
 than has been hitherto done, to my apprehension at least, the real 
 mode in which taxes act, and how and why and to what extent they 
 affect the wealth, and what is of more consequence, the well-being of a 
 nation. But in the present exigency, when the safety of the nation 
 depends, on the one hand, on the sense which the people at large have of 
 the comparative excellences of the laws and government, and on the 
 firmness and wisdom of the legislators and enlightened classes in de- 
 tecting, exposing, and removing its many particular abuses and cor- 
 ruptions on the other, right views on this subject of taxation are of 
 such especial importance ; and I have besides in my inmost nature such 
 a loathing of factious falsehoods and mob sycophancy, i. e. the flattering 
 of the multitude by informing against their betters ; that I cannot but 
 .revert to that point of the subject from which I began, namely, that the
 
 Section 1. Essay 1. 151 
 
 weight of taxes is to be calculated not by what is paid, but by what is 
 left. What matters it to a man, that he pays six times more taxes 
 than his father did, if, notwithstanding, he with the same portion of 
 exertion enjoys twice the comforts which his father did ? Now this I 
 solemnly affirm to be the case in general, throughout England, accord- 
 ing to all the facts which I have collected during an examination of 
 years, wherever I have travelled, and wherever I have been resident. 
 (I do not sjieak of Ireland or the Lowlands of Scotland ; and if I may 
 trust to what I myself saw and heard there, I must even except the 
 Highlands.) In the conversation which I have spoken of as taking , 
 place in the south-west of England, by the assistance of one or other of 
 the company, we went through every family in the town and neigh- 
 bourhood, and my assertion was found completely accurate, though the 
 place had no one advantage over others, and many disadvantages, that 
 heavy one in particular, the non-residence and frequent change of its 
 Rectors, the living being always given to one of the Canons of Windsor, 
 and resigned on the acceptance of better prefer ment. It was even 
 asserted, and not only asserted but proved, by my friend (who has from 
 his earliest youth devoted a strong, original understanding, and a heart 
 warm and benevolent even to enthusiasm, to the service of the poor 
 and the labouring class), that every sober labourer, in that part of 
 England at least, who should not marry till thirty, might, without 
 any hardship or extreme self-denial, commence housekeeping at the 
 flge of thirty, with from a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds 
 belonging to him. I have no doubt, that on seeing this essay, my 
 friend will communicate to me the proof in detail. But the price of 
 labour in the south-west of England is full one-third less than in the 
 greater number, if not all, of the northern counties. What then is want- 
 ing ? Not the repeal of taxes ; but the increased activity both of the 
 gentry and clergy of the land, in securing the instruction of the lower 
 classes. A system of education is wanting, such a system as that dis- 
 covered, and to the blessings of thousands realized, by Dr. Bell, which 
 I never am nor can be weary of praising, while my heart retains any 
 spark of regard for human nature, or of reverence for human virtue a 
 system, by which in the very act of receiving knowledge, the best 
 virtues and most useful qualities of the moral character are awakened, 
 developed, and formed into habits. Were there a Bishop of Durham 
 (no odds whether a temporal or a spiritual lord) in every county or 
 half county, and a clergyman enlightened with the views and animated 
 with the spirit of Dr. Bell in every parish, we might bid defiance to 
 the present weight of taxes, and boldly challenge the whole world to 
 show a peasantry as well fed and clothed as the English, or with equal 
 chances of improving their situation, and of securing an old age of repose 
 and comfort to a life of cheerful industry.
 
 152 Tlie Friend. 
 
 I will add one other anecdote, as it demonstrates, incontrovertibly, 
 the error of the vulgar opinion, that taxes make things really dear, 
 taking in the whole of a man's expenditure. A friend of mine, who 
 has passed some years in America, was questioned by an American 
 tradesman, in one of their cities of the second class, concerning the 
 names and number of our taxes and rates. The answer seemed per- 
 fectly to astound him ; and he exclaimed, " How is it possible that men 
 can live in such a country ? In this land of liberty we never see the 
 face of a tax-gatherer, nor hear of a duty except in our sea-ports." My 
 liiend, who was perfect master of the question, made semblance of turn- 
 ing off the conversation to another subject : and then, without any 
 apparent reference to the former topic, asked the American, for what 
 sum he thought a man could live in such and such a style, with so many 
 servants, in a house of such dimensions and such a situation (still 
 keeping in his mind the situation of a thriving and respectable shop- 
 keeper and householder in different parts of England), first supposing 
 him to reside in Philadelphia or New York, and then in some town of 
 secondary importance. Having received a detailed answer to these 
 questions, he proceeded to convince the American, that notwithstanding 
 all our taxes, a man might live in the same style, but with incom- 
 parably greater comforts, on the same income in London as in New 
 York, and on a considerably less income in Exeter or Bristol, than in 
 any American provincial town of the same relative importance. It 
 would be insulting my readers to discuss on how much less a person 
 may vegetate or brutalize in the back settlements of the republic, than 
 he could live as a man, as a rational and social being, in an English 
 village ; and it would be wasting time to inform him, that where men 
 are comparatively few, and unoccupied land is in inexhaustible abun- 
 dance, the labourer and common mechanic must needs receive (not 
 only nominally but really) higher wages than in a populous and fully 
 occupied country. But that the American labourer is therefore hap- 
 pier, or even in possession of more comforts and conveniences of life 
 than a sober or industrious English labourer or mechanic, remains to be 
 proved. In conducting the comparison we must not however exclude 
 the operation of moral causes, when these causes are not accidental, but 
 arise out of the nature of the country and the constitution of the 
 government and society. This being the case, take away from the 
 American's wages all the taxes which his insolence, sloth, and attach- 
 ment to spirituous liquors impose on him, and judge of the remainder 
 by his house, his household furniture, and utensils ; and if I have not 
 been grievously deceived by those whose veracity and good sense I 
 have found unquestionable in all other respects, the cottage of an honest 
 English husbandman, in the service of an enlightened and liberal farmer, 
 who is paid for his labour at the price usual in Yorkshire orNorthum-
 
 Section 1. Essay 7. 153 
 
 berland, wcmld in the mind of a man in the same rank of life, who had 
 seen a true account of America, excite no ideas favourable to emigra- 
 tion. This, however, I confess, is a balance of morals rather than of 
 circumstances : it proves, however, that where foresight and good 
 morals exist, the taxes do not stand in the way of an industrious man's 
 comforts. 
 
 Dr. Price almost succeeded in persuading the English nation (for it is 
 a curious fact that the fancy of our calamitous situation is a sort of 
 necessary sauce without which our real prosperity would become insipid 
 to us) Dr. Price, I say, alarmed the country with pretended proofs that 
 the island was in a rapid state of depopulation, that England at the 
 Eevolution had been, Heaven knows how much more populous ; and 
 that in Queen Elizabeth's time, or about the Reformation (! ! !), the num- 
 ber of inhabitants in England might have been greater than even at 
 the Revolution. My old mathematical master, a man of an uncom- 
 monly clear head, answered this blundering book of the worthy doctor's, 
 and left not a stone unturned of the pompous cenotaph in which the 
 effigy of the still living and bustling English prosperity lay interred. 
 And yet so much more suitable was the doctor's book to the purposes of 
 faction, and to the November mood of (what is called) the public, that 
 Mr. Wales's pamphlet, though a masterpiece of perspicacity as well as 
 perspicuity, was scarcely heard of. This tendency to political night- 
 mares in our countrymen reminds me of a superstition, or rather 
 nervous disease, not uncommon in the Highlands of Scotland, in which 
 men, though broad awake, imagine they see themselves lying dead at 
 a small distance from them. The act of parliament for ascertaining 
 the population of the empire has laid for ever this uneasy ghost ; and 
 now, forsooth ! we are on the brink of ruin from the excess of popula- 
 tion, and he who would prevent the poor from rotting away in disease, 
 misery, and wickedness, is an enemy to his country ! A lately de- 
 ceased miser, of immense wealth, is reported to have been so delighted 
 with this splendid discovery, as to have offered a handsome annuity to 
 the author, in part of payment, for this new and welcome piece of heart- 
 armour. This, however, we may deduce from the fact of our increased 
 population, that if clothing and food had actually become dearer in 
 proportion to the means of procuring them, it would be as absurd to 
 ascribe this effect to increased taxation, as to attribute the scantiness of 
 fare, at a public ordinary, to the landlord's bill, when twice the usual 
 number of guests had sat down to the same number of dishes. But 
 the fact is notoriously otherwise, and every man has the means of 
 discovering it in his own house and in that of his neighbours, pro- 
 vided that he makes the proper allowances for the disturbing forces of 
 individual vice and imprudence. If this be the case, I put it to the 
 consciences of our literary demagogues, whether a lie, for the purposes
 
 154 The Friend. 
 
 of creating public disunion and dejection, is not as much a lie, as one 
 for the purpose of exciting discord among individuals. I intreat my 
 readers to recollect that the present question does not concern the effects 
 of taxation on the public independence and on the supposed balance of 
 the three constitutional powers (from which said balance, as well as 
 from the balance of trade, I own, I have never been able to elicit one 
 ray of common sense). That the nature of our constitution has been 
 greatly modified by the funding system, I do not deny ; whether for 
 good or for evil, on the whole, will form part of my Essay on the British 
 constitution as it actually exists. 
 
 There are many and great public evils, all of which are to be la- 
 mented, some of which may be and ought to be removed, and none of 
 which can consistently with wisdom or honesty be kept concealed from 
 the public. As far as these originate in false principles, or in the con- 
 tempt or neglect of right ones (and as such belonging to the plan of The 
 Friend), I shall not hesitate to make known my opinions concerning 
 them with the same fearless simplicity with which I have endeavoured 
 to expose the errors of discontent and the artifices of faction. But for 
 the very reason that there are great evils, the more does it behove us not 
 to open out on a false scent. 
 
 I will conclude this essay with the examination of an article in a pro- 
 vincial paper of a recent date, which is now lying before me ; the acci- 
 dental perusal of which, occasioned the whole of the preceding remarks. 
 In order to guard against a possible mistake, I must premise, that I have 
 not the most distant intention of defending the plan or conduct of our 
 late expeditions, and should be grossly calumniated if I were represented 
 as an advocate for carelessness or prodigality in the management of the 
 public purse. The public money may or may not have been culpably 
 wasted. I confine myself entirely to the general falsehood of the prin- 
 ciple in the article here cited ; for I am convinced, that any hopes of 
 reform originating in such notions, must end in disappointment and 
 public mockery. 
 
 " ONLY A FEW MILLIONS'. 
 
 We have unfortunately of late been so much accustomed to read of millions being spent 
 In one expedition, and millions being spent in another, that a comparative insignificance is 
 attached to an immense sum of money, by calling it only a few millions. Perhaps some of 
 our readers may have their judgment a little improved by making a few calculations, like 
 those below, on the millions which it has been estimated will be lost to the nation by the 
 late expedition to Holland ; and then perhaps, they will be led to reflect on the many millions 
 which are annually expended in expeditions, which have almost invariably ended in abso- 
 lute loss. 
 
 In the first place, with less money than it cost the nation to take Walcheren, &c., with 
 the view of taking or destroying the French fleet at Antwerp, consisting of nine sail of the 
 line, we could have completely built and equipped, ready for sea, a fleet of upwards of one 
 hundred fail of the line. 
 
 Or, secondly, a new town could be built in every county of England, and each town consist 
 of upwards of 1,000 substantial houses for a less sum.
 
 Section 1. Essay 7. 155 
 
 Or, thirdly, it would have been enough to give 100J. to 2.COO poor families in every county 
 in England ami . 
 
 Or, fourthly, it would be more than sufficient to give a handsome marriage portion to 
 200,000 young women, who probably, if they had even less than 50/. would not long remain 
 unsolicited to enter the happy state. 
 
 Or, fifthly, a much le*s sum would enable the legislature to establish a life-boat in every 
 port in the United Kingdom, and provide for 10 or 12 nn-n to be kept in constant attendance 
 on each ; and 100.0007. could be funded, the interest of which to be applied in premiums to 
 lie should prove to be particularly active in saving lives from wrecks, &e., and to 
 provide for the widows and children of those men who may accidentally lose their lives in the 
 cause of humanity. 
 
 This interesting appropriation of 10 millions sterling may lead our readers to think of the 
 great good that can be done by only a few millions." 
 
 The exposure of this calculation will require but a few sentences. 
 These ten millions were expended, I presume, in arms, artillery, ammu- 
 nition, clothing, provision, &c., &c., for about one hundred and twenty 
 thousand British subjects : and I presume that all these consumables 
 were produced by, and purchased from, other British subjects. Now 
 during the building of these new towns for a thousand inhabitants each 
 in every county, or the distribution of the hundred pound bank notes to 
 the two thousand poor families, were the industrious ship-builders, 
 clothiers, charcoal-burners, gunpowder-makers, gunsmiths, cutlers, 
 cannon-founders, tailors, and shoemakers, to be left unemployed and 
 starving ? or our brave soldiers and sailors to have remained without 
 food and raiment ? And where is the proof, that these ten millions, 
 which (observe) all remain in the kingdom, do not circulate as bene- 
 ficially in the one way as they would in the other ? Which is better ? 
 To give money to the idle, the houses to those who do not ask for them, 
 and towns to counties which have already perhaps too many ? Or to 
 afford opportunity to the industrious to earn their bread, and to the en- 
 terprising to better their circumstances, and perhaps found new families 
 of independent proprietors ? The only mode, not absolutely absurd, of 
 considering the subject, would be, not by the calculation of the money 
 expended, but of the labour of which the money is a symbol. But then 
 the question would be removed altogether from the expedition ; for as- 
 suredly, neither the armies were raised, nor the fleets built or manned for 
 the sake of conquering the Isle of Walcheren, nor would a single regi- 
 ment have been disbanded, or a single sloop paid otf, though the Isle of 
 Walcheren had never existed. The whole dispute, therefore, resolves 
 itself to this one question ; whether our soldiers and sailors would not 
 be better employed in making canals for instance, or cultivating waste 
 lauds, than in fighting or in learning to fight; and the tradesman, &c., 
 in making grey coats instead of red or blue, and ploughshares, &c., in- 
 stead oF arms. When I reflect on the state of China and the moral 
 character of the Chinese, I dare not positively affirm that it would be 
 better. When the fifteen millions, which form our present population, 
 shall have attained to the same purity of morals and of primitive Chris-
 
 156 The Friend. 
 
 tianity, and shall be capable of being governed by the same admirable 
 discipline, as the Society of the Friends, I doubt not that we should be 
 all Quakers in this as in the other points of their moral doctrine. But 
 were this transfer of employment desirable, is it practicable at present, is 
 it in our power ? These men know, that it is not. What then does all 
 their reasoning amount to? Nonsense ! 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 I have not intentionally either hidden or disguised the Truth, like an advocate ashamed of 
 His client, or a bribed accountant who falsifies the quotient to make the bankrupt's ledgers 
 square with the creditor's inventory. My conscience forbids the use of falsehood and the 
 arts of concealment ; and were it otherwise, yet I am persuaded, that a system which has 
 produced and protected so great prosperity, cannot stand in need of them. If therefore 
 honesty and the knowledge of the whole truth be the things you aim at, you will find my 
 principles suited to your ends ; and as yike not the democratic forms, so am I not fond of any 
 others above the rest. That a succession of wise and godly men may be secured to the nation 
 in the highest power, is that to which 1 have directed your attention in thia essay, which if you 
 will read, perhaps you may see the error of those principles which have led you into errors of 
 practice. I wrote it purposely for the use of the multitude of well-meaning people, that are 
 tempted in these times to usurp authority and meddle with government before they have 
 any call from duty or tolerable understanding of its principles. I never intended it for 
 learned men versed in politics, but for such as will be practitioners before they have been 
 students. BAXTEE'S Holy Commonwealth, or Political Aplwrisms. 
 
 THE metaphysical (or as I have proposed to call them, metapoliticai; 
 reasonings hitherto discussed, belong to government in the abstract. 
 But there is a second class of reasoners, \vhe argue for a change in our 
 government from former usage, and from statutes still in force, or which 
 have been repealed (so these writers affirm), either through a corrupt 
 influence, or to ward off temporary hazard or inconvenience. This 
 class, which is rendered illustrious by the names of many intelligent 
 and virtuous patriots, are advocates for reform in the literal sense of the 
 word. They wish to bring back the government of Great Britain to a 
 certain form, which they affirm it to have once possessed, and would 
 melt the bullion anew in order to recast it in the original mould. 
 
 The answer to all arguments of this nature is obvious, and to my un- 
 derstanding appears decisive. These reformers assume the character of 
 legislators or of advisers of the legislature, not that of law judges or of 
 appellants to courts of law. Sundry statutes concerning the rights of 
 electors (we will suppose) still exist ; so likewise do sundry statutes on 
 other subjects (on witchcraft for instance) which change of circumstances 
 have rendered obsolete, or increased information shown to be absurd. It 
 is evident, therefore, that the expediency of the regulations prescribed by 
 them, and their suitableness to the existing circumstances of the king- 
 dom, must first be proved ; and on this proof must be rested all rational 
 claims for the enforcement of the statutes that have not, no less than for
 
 Section I. Essay 8. 157 
 
 the re-enacting of those that have been, repealed. If the authority of 
 the men, who first enacted the laws in question, is to weigh with us, it 
 must be on the presumption that they were wise men. But the wisdom 
 of legislation consists in the adaptation of laws to circumstances. If 
 then it can be proved, that the circumstances, under which those laws 
 were enacted, no longer exist ; and that other circumstances altogether 
 different, and in some instances opposite, have taken their place ; we 
 have the best grounds for supposing, that if the men were now alive, 
 they would not pass the same statutes. In other words, the spirit of 
 the statute interpreted by the intention of the legislator would annul 
 the letter of it. It is not indeed impossible, that by a rare felicity of 
 accident the same law may apply to two sets of circumstances. But 
 surely the presumption is, that regulations well adapted for the manners, 
 the social distinctions, and the state of property, of opinion, and of 
 external relations of England in the reign of Alfred, or even in that of 
 Edward I., will not be well suited to Great Britain at the close of the 
 reign of George III. For instance; at the time when the greater part 
 of the cottagers and inferior farmers were in a state of villenage, when 
 Sussex alone contained seven thousand, and the Isle of Wight twelve 
 hundred families of bondsmen, it was the law of the land that every 
 freeman should vote in the assembly of the nation personally or by his 
 representative. An act of parliament in the year 1660 confirmed what 
 a concurrence of causes had previously effected ; every Englishman is 
 now bora free, the laws of the land are the birth-right of every native, 
 and with the exception of a few honorary privileges all classes obey the 
 same laws. Now, argues one of our political writers, it being made the 
 constitution of t e land by our Saxon ancestors, that every freeman 
 should have a vote, and all Englishmen being now born free, therefore 
 by the constitution of the land, every Englishman has now a right to a 
 vote. How shall we reply to this without breach of that respect, to 
 which the reasoner at least, if not the reasoning, is entitled ? If it be the 
 definition of a pun, that it is the confusion of two different meanings 
 tinder the same or some similar sound, we might almost characterize 
 this argument as being grounded on a grave pun. Our ancestors esta- 
 blished the right of voting in a particular class of meu, forming at that 
 time the middle rank of society, and known to be all of them, or almost 
 all, legal proprietors and these were then called the freemen of Eng- 
 land : therefore they established it in the lowest classes of society, in 
 those who possess no property, because these too are now called by the 
 same name ! ! Under a similar pretext, grounded on the same precious 
 logic, a Mameluke Bey extorted a large contribution from the Egyptian 
 Jews : "These books (the Pentateuch) are authentic?" Yes! "Well, 
 the debt then is acknowledged : and now the receipt, or the money, or 
 your heads ! The Jews borrowed a large treasure from the Egyptians ;
 
 158 TJie Friend. 
 
 but you are the Jews, and on you, therefore, I call for the repayment." 
 Besides, if a law is to be interpreted by the known intention of its 
 makers, the parliament in 1660, which declared all natives of England 
 freemen, but neither altered nor meant thereby to alter the limitations of 
 the right of election, did to all intents and purposes except that right 
 from the common privileges of Englishmen, as Englishmen. 
 
 A moment's reflection may convince us, that every single statute is 
 made under the knowledge of all the other laws, with which it is meant 
 to co-exist, and by which its action is to be modified and determined. 
 In the legislative as in the religious code, the text must not be taken 
 without the context. Now, I think, we may safely leave it to the 
 reformers themselves to make choice between the civil and political 
 privileges of Englishmen at present, considered as one sum total, and 
 those of our ancestors in any former period of our history, considered as 
 another, on the old principle, " Take one and leave the other ; but which- 
 ever you take, take it all or none." Laws seldom become obsolete as long 
 as they are both useful and practicable ; but should there be an excep- 
 tion, there is no other way of reviving its validity but by convincing the 
 existing legislature of its undiminished practicability and expedience : 
 which in all essential points is the same as the recommending of a new 
 law. And this leads me to the third class of the advocates of reform, 
 those, namely, who leaving ancient statutes to lawyers and historians, 
 and universal principles with the demonstrable deductions from them to 
 the schools of logic, mathematics, theology, and ethics, rest all their 
 measures, which they wish to see adopted, wholly on their expediency. 
 Consequently, they must hold themselves prepared to give such proof 
 as the nature of comparative expediency admits, and to bring forward 
 such evidence, as experience and the logic of probability can supply, 
 that the plans which they recommend for adoption, are : first, prac- 
 ticable ; secondly, suited to the existing circumstances; and lastlv, 
 necessary or at least requisite, and such as will enable the government 
 to accomplish more perfectly the ends for which it was instituted. These 
 are the three indispensable conditions of all prudent change, the creden- 
 tials with which Wisdom never fails to furnish her public envoys. Who- 
 ever brings forward a measure that combines this threefold excellence, 
 whether in the cabinet, the senate, or by means of the press, merits em- 
 phatically the title of a patriotic statesman. Neither are they without a 
 fair claim to respectful attention as state-counsellors, who fully aware of 
 these conditions, and with a due sense of the difficulty of fulfilling them, 
 employ their time and talents in making the attempt. An imperfect 
 plan is not necessarily a useless plan ; and in a complex enigma the 
 greatest ingenuity is not always shown by him who first gives the com- 
 plete solution. The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the 
 giant' shoulders to mount on.
 
 Section 1. Essay 8. 169 
 
 Thus, as perspicuously as I could, I have exposed the erroneous prin- 
 ciples of political philosophy, and pointed out the one only ground on 
 which the constitution of governments can be either condemned or 
 juMilied by wise men. 
 
 If I interpret aright the signs of the times, that branch of politics 
 which relates to the necessity and practicability of infusing new life into 
 our legislature, as the best means of securing talent and wisdom in the 
 cabinet, will shortly occupy the public attention with a paramount 
 interest.* I would gladly therefore suggest the proper state of feeling 
 and the right preparatory notions with which this disquisition should be 
 entered upon ; and I do not know how I can effect this more naturally, 
 than by relating the facts and circumstances which influenced my own 
 mind. I can scarcely be accused of egotism, as in the communications 
 and conversations which I am about to mention as having occurred to 
 me during my residence abroad, I am no otherwise the hero of the tale, 
 than as being the passive receiver or auditor. But above all, let it not 
 be forgotten, that in the following paragraphs I speak as a Christian 
 moralist, not as a statesman. 
 
 To examine anything wisely, two conditions are requisite : first, a 
 distinct notion of the desirable ends, in the complete accomplishment of 
 which would consist the perfection of such a thing, or its ideal excellence ; 
 and, secondly, a calm and kindly mode of feeling, without which we 
 shall hardly fail either to overlook, or not to make due allowances for, 
 the circumstances which prevent these ends from being all perfectly 
 realized in the particular thing which we are to examine. For instance, 
 we must have a general notion what a man can be and ought to be, be- 
 fore we can fitly proceed to determine on the merits or demerits of any 
 one individual. For the examination of our own government, I pre- 
 pared my mind, therefore, by a short catechism, which I shall commu- 
 nicate in the next essay, and on which the letter and anecdotes that 
 follow, will, I flatter myself, be found an amusing if not an instructive 
 commentary. 
 
 * I am in doubt whether the five hundred filment of this prophecy. I have heiird the 
 
 petitions presented at the same time t<> the rrlim^ of a simile blunderbuss, on one of our 
 
 ROOM ol Commons by tin' Mi-mber tor Cumberland lakes, imitate the volley from a 
 
 \V estminster, are to be considered as a ful- whole regiment
 
 160 Tiit Friend. 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 Hoc potissimum pacto felicem ac magnum regem se fore j udicans : nan si quam plurimis 
 ted si quam optimis imperet. I'roinde parum esse putat justis prcesidiis regnum suum 
 muniisse, nisi idem viris eruditions juxta ac vitce integritate prcecellentibus ditet atque 
 honestet. Nimirum intelligit JICEC demum esse vera regni decora, has veras opes: hanc 
 veram et nullis unquam soecidis ccssuram gloriam. Erasmi Rot. R. S. Poncherio, Episc. 
 Parisien. Epistola. 
 
 (Translation) Judging that he will have employed the most effectual means of being a happy 
 and powerful king, not by governing the most numerous but the most moral people. He 
 deemed of small sufficiency to have protected the country by fleets and garrison, unless he 
 should at the same time enrich and ornament it with men of eminent learning and sanctity. 
 
 IN what do all states agree ? A number of men exert powers in 
 union. Wherein do they differ ? 1st. In the quality and quantity of 
 the powers. One state possesses chemists, mechanists, mechanics of all 
 kinds, men of science ; and the arts of war and peace ; and its citizens 
 naturally strong and of habitual courage. Another state may possess 
 none or a few only of these, or the same more imperfectly. Or of two 
 states possessing the same in equal perfection, the one is more numerous 
 than the other, as France and Switzerland. 2nd. In the more or less 
 perfect union of these powers. Compare Mr. Leckie's valuable and au- 
 thentic documents respecting the state of Sicily with the preceding 
 essay on taxation. 3rdly. In the greater or less activity of exertion. 
 Think of the ecclesiastical state and its silent metropolis, and then of the 
 county of Lancaster and the towns of Manchester and Liverpool. What 
 is the condition of powers exerted in union by a number of men ? A 
 government. What are the ends of government? They are of two 
 kinds, negative and positive. The negative ends of government are the 
 protection of life, of personal freedom, of property, of reputation, and of 
 religion, from foreign and from domestic attacks. The positive ends are, 
 1st. to make the means of subsistence more easy to each individual : 
 2nd. that in addition to the necessaries of life he should derive from the 
 union and division of labour a share of the comforts and conveniences 
 which humanize and ennoble his nature ; and at the same time the 
 power of perfecting himself in his own branch of industry by having 
 those things which he needs provided for him by others among his fel- 
 low-citizens ; including the tools and raw or manufactured materials 
 necessary for his own employment. 1 knew a profound mathematician 
 in Sicily, who had devoted a full third of his life to the perfecting the 
 discovery of the longitude, and who had convinced not only himself but 
 the principal mathematicians of Messina and Palermo that he had suc- 
 ceeded ; but neither throughout Sicily or .Naples could he find a single 
 artist capable of constructing the instrument which he had invented.* 
 
 * The good old man, who is poor, old, and and austerity of his life not less than for his 
 blind, universally esteemed for the innocence learning, and yet universally neglected, ex-
 
 Section 1. Essay 9. 161 
 
 3rdly. The hope of bettering his own condition and that of his children. 
 The civilized man gives up those stimulants of hope and fear which 
 constitute the chief charm of the savage life ; and yet his Maker has dis- 
 tinguished 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 bound to the soil (addicti glebre), 
 and incapable by law of altering their condition from that of their 
 parents, as bondsmen or villeins, however advantageously they might 
 otherwise be situated. Reflect on the direful effects of caste in Hindos- 
 taii, and then transfer yourself in fancy to an English cottage, 
 
 Where o'er the cradled infant bending 
 Hope has fixed her wishful gaze, 
 
 and the fond mother dreams of her child's future fortunes who knows 
 but he may come home a rich merchant, like such a one ? or be a bishop 
 or a judge ? The prizes are indeed few and rare ; but still they are pos- 
 sible ; and the hope is universal, and perhaps occasions more happiness 
 than even its fulfilment. Lastly, the development of those faculties 
 which are essential to his human nature by the knowledge of his moral 
 and religious duties, and the increase of his intellectual powers in as 
 great a degree as is compatible with the other ends of social union, and 
 does not involve a contradiction. The poorest Briton possesses much 
 and important knowledge, which he would not have had, if Luther, 
 Calvin, Newton, and their compeers, had not existed ; but it is evident 
 that the means of science and learning could not exist, if all men had a 
 right to be made profound mathematicians or men of extensive erudition. 
 Still instruction is one of the ends of government, for it is that only 
 which makes the abandonment of the savage state an absolute duty ; 
 and that constitution is the best, under which the average sum of useful 
 knowledge is the greatest, and the causes that awaken and encourage 
 talent and genius, the most powerful and various. 
 
 These were my preparatory notions. The influences under which I 
 proceeded to re-examine our own constitution were the following, which 
 I give, not exactly as they occurred, but in the order in which they will 
 be illustrative of the different articles of the preceding paragraph. That 
 we are better and happier than others is indeed no reason for our not 
 becoming still better especially as with states, as well as individuals, 
 
 cept by persons almost as poor as himself, The good old man presented me with tlie 
 strongly reminded me of a German epigram book in which he has described and demoti- 
 on Kep'ler, which may be tints translated : strated his invention ; and I should with great 
 No mortal spirit yot had climbed so high pleasure transmit it to any mathematician 
 As Kepler yet his country saw him die who would feel an interest in examining it 
 For very want ! the minds alone he fed, and communicating his opinion on its merits. 
 And so the bodies left him without bread.
 
 162 The Friend. 
 
 not to be progressive is to be retrograde. Yet the comparison will use- 
 fully temper the desire of improvement with love and a sense of grati- 
 tude for what we already are. 
 
 I. A Letter received, at Malta, from an American officer of high rank, 
 who has since received the thanks and rewards of Congress for his 
 services in the Mediterranean. 
 
 SIR, GBAND CAIRO, Dec. 13, 1804. 
 
 The same reason, which induced me to request letters of intro- 
 duction to his Britannic Majesty's agents here, suggested the propriety of 
 showing an English jack at the main top-gallant mast head, on entering 
 the port of Alexandria on the 26th ult. The signal was recognized ; 
 and Mr. B was immediately on board. 
 
 We found in port a Turkish "Vice- Admiral, with a ship of the line, 
 and six frigates ; a part of which squadron is stationed there to preserve 
 the tranquillity of the country ; with just as much influence as the same 
 number of pelicans would have on the same station. 
 
 On entering and passing the streets of Alexandria, I could not but 
 notice the very marked satisfaction which every expression and every 
 countenance of all denominations of people, Turks and Frenchmen only 
 excepted, manifested under an impression that we were the avant-cou- 
 riers of an English army. They had conceived this from observing the 
 English jack at our main, taking our flag perhaps for that of a saint, and 
 because, as is common enough everywhere, they were ready to believe 
 what they wished. It would have been cruel to have undeceived them ; 
 consequently without positively assuming it, we passed in the character 
 of Englishmen among the middle and lower orders of society, and as 
 their allies among those of better information. Wherever we entered or 
 wherever halted, we were surrounded by the wretched inhabitants ; and 
 stunned with their benedictions and prayers for blessings on us. "Will 
 the English come ? Are they coming? God grant the English may 
 come ! we have no commerce we have no money we have no bread ! 
 When will the English arrive !" My answer was uniformly, Patience .' 
 The same tone was heard at Rosetta as among the Alexandrians, indi- 
 cative of the same dispositions ; only it was not so loud, because the 
 inhabitants are less miserable, although without any traits of happiness. 
 On the fourth we left that village for Cairo, and for our security as well 
 as to facilitate our procurement of accommodations during our voyage, 
 as well as our stay there, the resident directed his secretary, Capt. 
 
 V , to accompany us, and to give us lodgings in his house. We 
 
 ascended the Nile leisurely, and calling at several villages, it was plainly 
 perceivable that the national partiality, the strong and open expression 
 of which proclaimed so loudly the feelings of the Egyptians of the sea-
 
 Section 1. Essay 9. 163 
 
 coast, was general throughout the country ; and the prayers for the 
 return of the English as earnest as universal. 
 
 On the morning of the sixth we went on shore at the village of Sabour. 
 The villagers expressed an enthusiastic gladness at seeing red and blue 
 uniforms and round hats (the French, I believe, wear three-cornered 
 ones). Two days before, five hundred Albanian deserters from the 
 Viceroy's army had pillaged and left this village ; at which they had 
 lived at free quarters about four weeks. The famishing inhabitants 
 were now distressed with apprehensions from another quarter. A com- 
 pany of wild Arabs were encamped in sight. They dreaded their 
 ravages, and apprized us of danger from them. We were eighteen in the 
 party, well armed ; and a pretty brisk fire which we raised among the 
 numerous flocks of pigeons and other small fowl in the environs, must 
 have deterred them from mischief, if, as is most probable, they had me- 
 ditated any against us. Scarcely, however, were we on board and under 
 weigh, when we saw these mounted marauders of the desert fall furiously 
 upon the herds of camels, buffaloes, and cattle of the village, and drive 
 many of them oft' wholly unannoyed on the part of the unresisting in- 
 habitants, unless their shrieks could be deemed an annoyance. They 
 afterwards attacked and robbed several unarmed boats, which were a 
 few hours astern of us. The most insensible must surely have been 
 moved by the situation of the peasants of that village. The while wu 
 were listening to their complaints they kissed our hands, and with pros- 
 trations to the ground, rendered more affecting by the inflamed state of 
 the eyes almost universal amongst them, and which the new traveller 
 might venially imagine to have been the immediate effect of weeping 
 and anguish, they all implored English succour. Their shrieks at the 
 assault of the wild Arabs seemed to implore the same still more forcibly, 
 while it testified what multiplied reasons they had to implore it. I con- 
 fess I felt an almost insurmountable impulse to bring our little party to 
 their relief, and might perhaps have done a rash act, had it not been for 
 
 the calm and just observation of Captain V , that "these were 
 
 common occurrences, and that any relief which we could afford, would 
 not merely be only temporary, but would exasperate the plunderers to 
 still more atrocious outrages after our departure." 
 
 On the morning of the seventh we landed near a village. At our ap- 
 proach the villagers fled : signals of friendship brought some of them to 
 us. When they were told that we were Englishmen, they flocked 
 around us with demonstrations of joy, offered their services, and raised 
 loud ejaculations for our establishment in the country. Here we could 
 not procure a pint of milk for our coffee. The inhabitants had been 
 plundered and chased from their habitations by the Albanians and 
 Desert Arabs, and it was but the preceding day they had returned to 
 their naked cottages.
 
 164 The Friend. 
 
 Grand Cairo differs from the places already passed, only as the pre- 
 sence of the tyrant stamps silence on the lips of misery with the seal of 
 terror. Wretchedness here assumes the form of melancholy ; but the 
 few whispers that are hazarded, convey the same feelings and the same 
 wishes. And wherein does this misery and consequent spirit of revo- 
 lution consist? Not in any form of government, but in a formless des- 
 potism, an anarchy indeed ! for it amounts literally to an annihilation 
 of everything that can merit the name of government or justify the 
 use of the word even in the laxest sense. Egypt is under the most 
 frightful despotism, yet has no master ! The Turkish soldiery, re- 
 strained by no discipline, seize everything by violence, not only all 
 that their necessities dictate, but whatever their caprices suggest. The 
 Mamelukes, who dispute with these the right of domination, procure 
 themselves subsistence by means as lawless though less insupportably 
 oppressive. And the wild Arabs, availing themselves of the occasion, 
 plunder the defenceless wherever they find plunder. To finish the 
 whole, the talons of the Viceroy fix on everything which can be 
 changed into currency, in order to find the means of supporting an un- ' 
 governed, disorganized banditti of foreign troops, who receive the har- 
 vest of his oppression, desert and betray him. Of all this rapine, rob- 
 bery, and extortion, the wretched cultivators of the soil are the perpetual 
 victims. A spirit of revolution is the natural consequence. 
 
 The reason the inhabitants of this country give for preferring the 
 English to the French, whether true or false, is as natural as it is 
 simple, and as influential as natural. " The English," say they, " pay 
 for everything the French pay nothing, and take everything." They 
 do not like this kind of deliverers. 
 
 Well, thought I, after the perusal of this letter, the slave trade (which 
 had not then been abolished) is a dreadful crime, an English iniquity ; 
 and to sanction its continuance under full conviction and parliamentary 
 confession of its injustice and inhumanity, is, if possible, still blacker 
 guilt. Would that our discontents were for a while confined to our 
 moral wants ! whatever may be the defects of our constitution, we have 
 at least an effective government, and that too composed of men who 
 were born with us and are to die among us. We are at least preserved 
 from the incursions of foreign enemies ; the intercommunion of inte- 
 rests precludes a civil war, and the volunteer spirit of the nation 
 equally with its laws, gives to the darkest lanes of our crowded metro- 
 polis that quiet and security which the remotest villager at the cata- 
 racts of the Nile prays for in vain, in his mud hovel ! 
 
 Not yet enslaved nor wholly vile, 
 O Albion, my mother isle ! 
 Thy valleys fair, as Eden's bowers, 
 Glitter green with sunny showers;
 
 Sec/ton I. Essay 9. 165 
 
 Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells 
 
 ) the bleat of flocks ; 
 (Those grassy hills, those glittering dells 
 Proudly ramparted with rocks), 
 And ocean mid his uproar wild 
 Speaks safety to his island chili 
 Hence for many a fearless age 
 Has social quiet loved thy shore ; 
 Nor ever sworded warrior's rage 
 Or sacked thy towers or stained thy fields with gore. 
 
 COLEBIDGE'S Ode to The Departing Tear. 
 
 II. Anecdote of Buonaparte. 
 
 Buonaparte, during his short stay at Malta, called out the Maltese 
 regiments raised by the Knights, amounting to fifteen hundred of the 
 stoutest young men of the islands. As they were drawn up on the 
 parade, he informed them, in a bombastic harangue, that he had re- 
 stored them to liberty ; but in proof that his attachment to them was 
 not bounded by this benefaction, he would now give them an opportu- 
 nity of adding glory to freedom and concluding by asking who of them 
 would march forward to be his fellow-soldiers on the banks of the Nile, 
 and contribute a flower of Maltese heroism to the immortal wreaths of 
 fame with which he meant to crown the Pyramids of Egypt! Not a 
 man stirred : all gave a silent refusal. They were instantly surrounded 
 by a regiment of French soldiers, marched to the Marino, forced on 
 board the transports, and threatened with death if any one of them at- 
 tempted his escape, or should be discovered in any part of the islands 
 of Malta or Gozo. At Alexandria they were always put in the front, 
 both to save the French soldiery, and to prevent their running away : 
 and of the whole number, fifty only survived to revisit their native 
 country. From one of these survivors I first learnt this fact, which 
 was afterwards confirmed to me by several of his remaining comrades, 
 as well as by the most respectable inhabitants of Yaletta. 
 
 This anecdote recalled to my mind an accidental conversation with 
 an old countryman in a central district of Germany. I purposely omit 
 names because the day of retribution has come and gone by. I was 
 looking at a strong fortress in the distance, which formed a highly inte- 
 resting object in a rich and varied landscape, and asked the old man, 
 who had stopped to gaze at me, its name, &c., adding, " How beautiful 
 it looks !" " It may be well enough to look at," answered he, "but God 
 keep all Christians from being taken thither !" He then proceeded to 
 gratify the curiosity which he had thus excited, by informing Lie that 
 
 the Baron had been taken out of his bed at midnight and carried 
 
 to that fortress that he was not heard of for nearly two years, when a 
 soldier who had fled over the boundaries sent information to his family 
 of the place and mode of his imprisonment. As I have no design to
 
 166 The Friend. 
 
 work on the feelings of my readers, 1 pass over the shocking detail : 
 had not the language and countenance of my informant precluded such 
 a suspicion, I might have supposed that he had been repeating some tale 
 of horror from a romance of the dark ages. " What was his crime ?" I 
 asked. " The report is," said the old man, " that in his capacity as minister 
 he had remonstrated with the - concerning the extravagance of his 
 mistress, an outlandish countess ; and that she in revenge persuaded 
 the sovereign, that it was the Baron who had communicated to a pro- 
 fessor at Gottingen the particulars of the infamous sale of some thou- 
 sand of his subjects as soldiers." On the same day I discovered in the 
 landlord of a small public-house one of the men who had been thus sold. 
 He seemed highly delighted in entertaining an English gentleman, and 
 in once more talking English after a lapse of so many years. He was 
 far from regretting this incident in his life ; but his account of the 
 manner in which they were forced away accorded in so many particu- 
 lars with Schiller's impassioned description of the same, or a similar 
 scene, in his tragedy of Cabal and Love, as to leave a perfect conviction 
 on my mind, that the dramatic pathos of that description was not 
 greater than its historic fidelity. 
 
 As I was thus reflecting, I glanced my eye on the leading paragraph 
 of a London newspaper, containing much angry declamation, and some 
 bitter truths, respecting our military arrangements. It were in vain, 
 thought I, to deny that the influence of parliamentary interest, which 
 prevents the immense patronage of the crown from becoming a despotic 
 power, is not the most likely to secure the ablest commanders or the 
 fittest persons for the management of our foreign empire. However, 
 thank Heaven ! if we fight, we fight for our own King and country ; and 
 grievances which may be publicly complained of, there is some chance 
 of seeing remedied. 
 
 III. A celebrated professor in a German University showed me a 
 very pleasing print, entitled " Toleration." A Catholic priest, a Luthe- 
 ran divine, a Calvinist minister, a Quaker, a Jew, and a philosopher, 
 were represented sitting round the same table, over which a winged 
 figure hovered in the attitude of protection. " For this harmless print," 
 said my friend, " the artist was imprisoned, and having attempted to 
 escape, was sentenced to draw the boats on the banks of the Danube, 
 with robbers and murderers ; and there died in less than two months, 
 from exhaustion and exposure. In your happy country, sir, this print 
 would be considered as a pleasing scene from real life ; for in every 
 great town throughout your empire you may meet with the original." 
 " Yes," I replied, " as far as the negative ends of government are concerned, 
 we have no reason to complain. Our government protects us from 
 foreign enemies, and our laws secure our lives, our personal freedom,
 
 Section 1. Essay 9. 167 
 
 our property, reputation, and religious rights, from domestic attacks. 
 Our taxes, indeed, are enormous." "Oh! talk not of taxes," said my 
 friend, " till you have resided in a country where the boor disposes of 
 his produce to strangers for a foreign mart, not to bring back to his 
 family the comforts and conveniences of foreign manufactures, but to 
 procure that coin which his lord is to squander away in a distant laud. 
 Neither can I with patience hear it said, that your laws act only to the 
 negative ends of government. They have a manifold positive influ- 
 ence, and their incorrupt administration gives a colour to all your 
 modes of thinking, and is one of the chief causes of your superior mora- 
 lity iu private as well as public life."* 
 
 My limits compel me to strike out the different incidents which I had 
 written as a commentary on the former three of the positive ends of 
 government. To the moral feelings of my readers they might have 
 been serviceable, but for their understandings they are superfluous. It 
 is surely impossible to peruse them, and not admit that all three are 
 realized under our government to a degree unexampled in any other 
 old and long-peopled country. The defects of our constitution (in 
 which word I include the laws and customs of the land as well as its 
 scheme of legislative and executive power) must exist, therefore, in the 
 fourth, namely, the production of the highest average of general infor- 
 mation, of general moral and religious principles, and the excitements 
 and opportunities which it affords to paramount genius and heroic 
 power in a sufficient number of its citizens. These are points in which 
 it would be immorality to rest content with the presumption, however 
 well founded, that we are better than others, if we are not what we 
 ought to be ourselves, and not using the means of improvement. The 
 first question then is, What is the fact ? The second, supposing a defect 
 or deficiency in one or all of these points, and that to a degree which 
 may affect our power and prosperity, if not our absolute safety, Are the 
 j ilons of legislative reform that have hitherto been proposed fit or likely 
 to remove such defect, and supply such deficiency ? The third and last 
 question is Should there appear reason to deny or doubt this, are there 
 then any other means, and what are they ? Of these points in the 
 concluding essay of this section. 
 
 % " The administration of justice through- has no means of conciliating favour, either 
 
 out the continent is partial, venal, and in- by the beauty of a handsome wife, or by 
 
 famous. 1 have, in conversation with many other methods." This quotation is confined 
 
 sensible men, met with something of content in the original to France under the monarchy ; 
 
 with their governments in all other respects I have extended the application, and adopted 
 
 than this ; but upon the question of expect- the words as comprising the result of my 
 
 ing justice to be really and fairly administered own experience : and I take this opportunity 
 
 every one confessed there was no such thing of declaring, that the most important parts 
 
 to be looked for. The conduct of the judges of Mr. Leckie's statement concerning Sicily I 
 
 is profligate and atrocious. Upon almost myself know to be accurate, and am author- 
 
 every cause thai comes before them interesl ized by what I myself saw there, to rely on 
 
 is openly made with the judges; and woe the whole as a fair and unexaggerated repre- 
 
 betiue the man, who, with a cause to support, sentation.
 
 168 The Friend. 
 
 A French gentleman in the reign of Louis XTV., was comparing 
 the French and English writers with all the boastfulness of national 
 prepossession. " Sir ! (replied an Englishman better versed in the prin- 
 ciples of freedom than the canons of criticism) there are but two sub- 
 jects worthy the human intellect, politics and religion, our state here 
 and our state hereafter ; and on neither of these dare you write." Long 
 rimy the envied privilege be preserved to my countrymen of writing 
 and talking concerning both ! Nevertheless, it behoves us all to consider 
 that to write or talk concerning any subject, without having previously 
 taken the pains to understand it, is a breach of duty which we owe to 
 ourselves, though it may be no offence against the laws of the land. 
 The privilege of talking and even publishing nonsense is necessary in a 
 free state, but the more sparingly we make use of it the better. 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 Then we may thank ourselves, 
 Who spell-bound by the magic name of peace 
 Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Britain, go, 
 For the grey olive-branch change thy green laurels : 
 Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee 
 May have a hive, or spider find a loom ! 
 Instead of doubling drum and thrilling fife 
 Be lulled in lady's lap with amorous flutes. 
 But for Napoleon, know, he'll scoru this calm : 
 The ruddy planet at his birth bore sway, 
 Sanguine, a dust his humour, and wild fire 
 His ruling element Rage, revenge, and cunning 
 Make up the temper of this captain's valour. 
 
 Adapted from an old Play. 
 
 LITTLE prospective wisdom can that man obtain, who hurrying onward 
 with the current, or rather torrent, of events, feels no interest in their 
 importance, except as far as his curiosity is excited by their novelty, 
 and to whom all reflection and retrospect are wearisome. If ever there 
 were a time when the formation of just public principles becomes a duty 
 of private morality ; when the principles of morality in general ought to 
 be made to bear on our public suffrages, and to affect every great national 
 determination ; when, in short, his country should have a place by every 
 Englishman's fireside ; and when the feelings and truths which give 
 dignity to the fireside and tranquillity to the death-bed, ought to be 
 present and influensive in the cabinet and in the senate that time is 
 now with us. As an introduction to, and at the same time as a com- 
 mentary on, the subject of international law, I have taken a review of 
 the circumstances that led to the treaty of Amiens, and the re-commence- 
 ment of the war, more especially with regard to the occupation of 
 Malta.
 
 Section I. Essay 10. 169 
 
 In a rich commercial state, a war seldom fails to become unpopular by 
 length of continuance. The first, or revolution war, which, towards its 
 close, had become just and necessary, perhaps beyond any former 
 example, had yet causes of unpopularity peculiar to itself : exhaustion is 
 the natural consequence of excessive stimulation, in the feelings of nations 
 equally as in those of individuals. Wearied out by overwhelming 
 novelties ; stunned, as it were, by a series of strange explosions ; sick 
 too of hope long delayed ; and uncertain as to the real object and motive 
 of the war, from the rapid change and general failure of its ostensible 
 objects and motives ; the public mind for many months preceding the 
 signing of the preliminaries, had lost all its tone and elasticity. The 
 consciousness of mutual errors and mutual disappointments disposed the 
 great majority of all parties to a spirit of diffidence and toleration, which, 
 amiable as it may be in individuals, yet in a nation, and above all in an 
 opulent and luxurious nation, is always too nearly akin to apathy and 
 selfish indulgence. An unmanly impatience for peace became only not 
 universal. After as long a resistance as the nature of our constitution 
 and national character permitted or even endured, the government applied 
 at length the only remedy adequate to the greatness of the evil, a remedy 
 which the magnitude of the evil justified, and which nothing but an 
 evil of that magnitude could justify. At a high price they purchased for 
 us the name of peace, at a time when the views of France became daily 
 more and more incompatible with our vital interests. Considering the 
 peace as a mere truce of experiment, wise and temperate men regarded 
 with complacency the treaty of Amiens, for the very reasons that would 
 have insured the condemnation of any other treaty under any other cir- 
 cumstances. Its palpable deficiencies were its antidote ; or rather they 
 formed its very essence, and declared at first sight what alone it was, 
 or was meant to be. Any attempt at that time and in this treaty to 
 have secured Italy, Holland, and the German empire, would have been, 
 in the literal sense of the word, preposterous. The nation would have 
 withdrawn all faith in the pacific intentions of the ministers, if the ne- 
 gotiation had been broken off on a plea of this kind ; for it had taken for 
 granted the. extreme desirableness, nay, the necessity of a peace, and, this 
 once admitted, there would, no doubt, have been an absurdity in con- 
 tinuing the war fur objects which the war furnished no means of realizing. 
 If tiie First Consul had entered into stipulations with us respecting the 
 continent, they would have been observed only as long as his interest from 
 other causes might have dictated ; they would have been signed with as 
 much sincerity, and observed with as much good faith, as the article actu- 
 ally inserted in the treaty of Amiens respecting the integrity of the Turkish 
 empire. This article indeed was wisely insisted on by us, because it affected 
 both our national honour, and the interests of our Indian empire imme- 
 diately ; and still more, perhaps, because this of all others was the most
 
 170 The Friend. 
 
 likely to furnish an early proof of the First Consul's real dispositions. But 
 deeply interested in the fate of the continent as we are thought to be, it 
 would nevertheless have been most idle to have abandoned a peace, suppos- 
 ing it at all desirable, on the ground that the French government had re- 
 fused that which would have been of no value had it been granted. 
 
 Indeed there results one serious disadvantage from insisting on the 
 rights and interests of Austria, the Empire, Switzerland, &c. in a treaty 
 between England and France ; and, as it should seem, no advantage to 
 counterbalance it. For so, any attack on those rights instantly pledges 
 our character and national dignity to commence a war, however inexpe- 
 dient it might happen to be, and however hopeless ; while if a war were 
 expedient, any attack on these countries by France furnishes a justifiable 
 cause of war in its essential nature, and independently of all positive 
 treaty. Seen in this light, the defects of the treaty of Amiens become 
 its real merits. If the government of France made peace in the spirit of 
 peace, then a friendly intercourse and the humanizing influences of com- 
 merce and reciprocal hospitality would gradually bring about in both 
 countries the dispositions necessary for the calm discussion and sincere 
 conclusion of a genuine, efficient, and comprehensive treaty. If the 
 contrary proved the fact, the treaty of Amiens contained in itself the 
 principles of its own dissolution. It was what it ought to be. If the 
 First Consul had both meant and dealt fairly by us, the treaty would 
 have led to a true settlement; but he acting as all prudent men expected 
 that he would act, it supplied just reasons for the commencement of war 
 and at its decease left us, as a legacy, blessings that assuredly far out- 
 weighed our losses by the peace. It left us popular enthusiasm, national 
 unanimity, and simplicity of object ; and removed one inconvenience 
 which cleaved to the last war, by attaching to the right objects, and 
 enlisting under their proper banners, the scorn and hatred of slavery, the 
 passion for freedom, all the high thoughts and high feelings that connect 
 us with the honoured names of past ages ; and inspire sentiments and 
 language, to which our Hampdens, Sidneys, arid Russe.lls, might listen 
 without jealousy. 
 
 The late peace then was negotiated by the government, ratified by the 
 legislature, and received by the nation, as an experiment ; as the only 
 means of exhibiting such proof as would be satisfactory to the people in 
 their then temper ; whether Buonaparte devoting his ambition and 
 activity to the re-establishment of trade, colonial tranquillity, and social 
 morals, in France, would abstain from insulting, alarming and endanger- 
 ing the British empire. And these thanks at least were due to the First 
 Consul, that he did not long delay the proof. With more than papal 
 insolence he issued edicts of anathema against us, and excommunicated 
 113 from all interference in the affairs of the continent. He insulted us 
 still more indecently by pertinacious demands respecting our constitutional
 
 Section I. Essay 10. 171 
 
 laws and rights of hospitality ; by the official publication of Sebastiani's 
 report} and by a direct personal outrage offered in the presence of all the 
 foreign ministers to the King, in the person of his ambassador. He both 
 insulted and alarmed us by a display of the most perfidious ambition in 
 the subversion of the independence of Switzerland, in the avowal of 
 designs against Egypt, Syria, and the Greek Islands, and in the mission 
 of military spies to Great Britain itself. And by forcibly maintaining a 
 French army in Holland, he at once insulted, alarmed, and endangered 
 us. What can render a war just (presupposing its expedience) if insult, 
 repeated alarm, and danger do not? And how can it be expedient for a 
 rich, united, and powerful island-empire to remain in nominal peace and 
 unresenting passiveness with an insolent neighbour, who has proved that 
 to wage against it an unmitigated war of insult, alarm, and endangerment 
 is both his temper and his system ? 
 
 Many attempts were made by Mr. Fox to explain away the force of 
 the greater number of the facts here enumerated ; but the great fact, for 
 which alone they have either force or meaning, the great ultimate fact, 
 that Great Britain had been insulted, alarmed, and endangered by France, 
 Mr. Fox himself expressly admitted. But the opposers of the present 
 war concentre the strength of their cause in the following brief argument. 
 Supposing, say they, the grievances set forth in our manifesto to be as 
 notorious as they are asserted to be, yet more notorious they cannot be 
 than that other fact which utterly annuls them as reasons for a war 
 the fact, that ministers themselves regard them only as the pompous 
 garnish of the dish. It stands on record, that Buonaparte might have 
 purchased our silence for ever, respecting these insults and injuries, by a 
 mere acquiescence on his part in our retention of Malta. The whole 
 treaty of Amiens is little more than a perplexed bond of compromise 
 respecting Malta. On Malta we rested the peace : for Malta we renewed 
 the war. So say the opposers of the present war. As its advocates we 
 do not deny the fact as stated by them ; but we hope to achieve all, and 
 more than all the purposes of such denial, by an explanation of the fact. 
 The difficulty then resolves itself into two questions : first, in what sense 
 of the AA'ords can we be said to have gone to war for Malta alone ? 
 Secondly, wherein does the importance of Malta consist? The ans\ver 
 to the second will be found towards the end of the volume,* in the life of 
 the liberator and political father of the Maltese (Sir Alexander Ball) ; 
 Avhile the attempt to settle the first question, and at the same time to 
 elucidate the law of nations and its identity with the law of conscience, 
 will occupy the remainder of the present essay. 
 
 * See Essays 3, 4, 5, 6, of the Third Landing-PIaoe.
 
 17:2 The Friend. 
 
 I. In ivhat sense can we be affirmed to have renewed the war for 
 Malta alone * 
 
 If \ve had known, or could reasonably have believed, that the views of 
 France were and would continue to be friendly or negative toward Great 
 Britain, neither the subversion of the independence of Switzerland, nor 
 the maintenance of a French army in Holland, would have furnished 
 any prudent ground for war. For the only way by which we could 
 have injured France, namely, the destruction of her commerce and navy, 
 would increase her means of continental conquests, by concentrating all 
 the resources and energies of the French empire in her military powers ; 
 while the losses and miseries which the French people would suffer in 
 consequence, and their magnitude, compared with any advantages that 
 might accrue to them from the extension of the name France, were facts 
 which, we knew by experience, would weigh as nothing with the exist- 
 ing government. Its attacks on the independence of its continental 
 neighbours became motives to us for the recommencement of hostility, 
 only as far as they gave proofs of a hostile intention toward ourselves, 
 and facilitated the realizing of such intention. If any events had taken 
 place, increasing the means of injuring this country, even though these 
 events furnished no moral ground of complaint against France, (such for 
 instance, might be the great extension of her population and revenue, 
 from freedom and a wise government,) much more, if they were the 
 fruits of iniquitous ambition, and therefore in themselves involved the 
 probabili ty of an hostile intention to us then, I say, every after occur- 
 rence becomes important, and both a just and expedient ground of war, 
 in proportion, not to the importance of the thing in itself, but to the 
 quantity of evident proof afforded by it of an hostile design in the 
 government, by whose power our interests are endangered. If by de- 
 manding the immediate evacuation of Malta, when he had himself done 
 away the security of its actual independence (on his promise of pre- 
 serving which our pacific promises rested as on their sole foundation), and 
 this too, after he had openly avowed such designs on Egypt, as not only 
 in the opinion of our ministers, but in his own opinion, made it of the 
 greatest importance to this country, that Malta should not be under 
 French influence ; if by this conduct the First Consul exhibited a de- 
 cisive proof of his intention to violate our rights and to undermine our 
 national interests ; then all his preceding actions on the continent became 
 proofs likewise of the same intention ; and any one * of these aggressions 
 
 * A hundred cases might be imagined enumerated in a specific statute. Caius, by a 
 which would place this assertion in its true series of vicious actions, has so nearly con- 
 light. Suppose, for instance, a country ac- vinced his father of his utter worthlessness, 
 cording to the laws of which a parent might that the father resolves on the next provoca- 
 not disinherit a son without having first con- tion to use the very first opportunity of 
 victed him of some one of sundry crimes legally disinheriting this son. The provoca-
 
 Section 1. Essay 10. 173 
 
 involves the meaning of the whole. Which of them is to determine us 
 to war must be decided by other and prudential considerations. Had 
 the First Consul acquiesced in our detention of Malta, he would thereby 
 have furnished such proof of pacific intentions as would have led to 
 further hoi>es, as would have lessened our alarm from his former acts 
 of ambition, and relatively to us have altered in some degree their 
 nature. 
 
 It should never be forgotten, that a parliament or national council is 
 essentially different from a court of justice, alike in its objects and its 
 duties. In the latter, the juror lays aside his private knowledge and 
 his private connections, and judges exclusively according to the evidence 
 adduced in the court ; in the former, the senator acts upon his own in- 
 ternal convictions, and oftentimes upon private information, which it 
 would be imprudent or criminal to disclose. Though his ostensible 
 reason ought to be a true and just one, it is by no means necessary that 
 it should be his sole or even his chief reason. In a court of justice, the 
 juror attends to the character and general intentions of the accused party 
 exclusively, as adding to the probability of his having or not having 
 committed the one particular action then in question. The senator, on 
 the contrary, when he is to determine on the conduct of a foreign power, 
 attends to particular actions, chiefly in proof of character and existing 
 intentions. Now there were many and very powerful reasons why, 
 though appealing to the former actions of Buonaparte, as confirmations 
 of his hostile spirit and alarming ambition, we should nevertheless make 
 Malta the direct object and final determinant of the war. Had we gone 
 to war avowedly for the independence of Holland and Switzerland, we 
 should have furnished Buonaparte with a colourable pretext for annex- 
 ing both countries immediately to the French empire,* which, if he 
 should do (as if his power continues he most assuredly will sooner or 
 later) by a mere act of violence and undisguised tyranny, there will 
 follow a moral weakening of his power in the minds of men, which may 
 prove of incalculable advantage to the independence and well-being of 
 Europe ; but which, unfortunately, for this very reason, that it is not 
 to be calculated, is too often disregarded by ordinary statesmen. At all 
 
 tion occurs, and In itself furnishes this oppor- injuries which I have suffered, as for the dis- 
 tunity, and Caius is disinherited, though for positions which these actions evinced ; for 
 an action much less glaring and intolerable the insolent and alarming intentions of which 
 than most of his preceding delinquencies had they are proofs. Now of this habitual tem- 
 been. The advocates of Culus complain that per, of these dangerous purposes, his last 
 he should be thus punished for a comparative action is as true and complete a manifestation 
 trifle, so many worse misdemeanours having as any or all of his preceding offences ; and 
 been passed over. The father replies : " This, It therefore may and must be taken as their 
 his last action, is not the cause of the disin- common representative." 
 heritauce ; but the means of disinheriting * This disquisition was written in the year 
 htm. I punished him by it rather than for 1804, in Malta, at the request of Sir Alex- 
 it. In truth, it was not for any of his ander Ball [with the exception of the latter 
 actions that I have thu; punished him, but paragraphs, which I have therefore included 
 for his vices ; that is, not so much for the in crotchets].
 
 174 The Friend. 
 
 events, it would have been made the plea for banishing, plundering, and 
 perhaps murdering numbers of virtuous and patriotic individuals, as 
 being the partizans of " the enemy of the continent." Add to this, that 
 we should have appeared to have rushed into a war for objects which by 
 war we could not hope to realize ; we should have exacerbated the mis- 
 fortunes of the countries of which we had elected ourselves the cham- 
 pions ; and the war would have appeared a mere war of revenge and 
 reprisal, a circumstance always to be avoided where it is possible. The 
 ablest and best men in the Batavian republic, those who felt the insults 
 of France most acutely, and were suffering from her oppressions the 
 most severely, entreated our government, through their minister, that it 
 would not make the state of Holland the great ostensible reason of the 
 war. The Swiss patriots too believed, that we could do nothing to assist 
 them at that time, and attributed to our forbearance the comparatively 
 timid use which France has made hitherto of her absolute power over 
 that country. Besides Austria, whom the changes on the continent 
 much more nearly concerned than England, having refused all co-opera- 
 tion with us, there is reason to fear that an opinion (destructive of the 
 one great blessing purchased by the peace, our national unanimity) 
 would have taken root in the popular mind, that these changes were 
 mere pretexts. Neither should we forget, that the last war had left a 
 dislike in our countrymen to continental interference, and a not un- 
 plausible persuasion, that where a nation has not sufficient sensibility as 
 to its wrongs to commence a war against the aggressor, unbribed and un- 
 goaded by Great Britain, a war begun by the government of such a 
 nation, at the instance of our government, has little chance of other 
 than a disastrous result, considering the character and revolutionary 
 resources of the enemy. Whatever may be the strength or weakness of 
 this argument, it is however certain, that there was a strong predilection 
 in the British people for a cause indisputably and peculiarly British. 
 And this feeling is not altogether ungrounded. In practical politics and 
 the great expenditures of national power, we must not pretend to be too 
 far-sighted : otherwise even a transient peace would be impossible 
 among the European nations. To future and distant evils we may 
 always oppose the various unforeseen events that are ripening in the 
 womb of the future. Lastly, it is chiefly to immediate and unequivocal 
 attacks on our own interests and honour, that we attach the notion of 
 right with a full and efficient feeling. Now, though we may be first 
 stimulated to action by probabilities and prospects of advantage, and 
 though there is a perverse restlessness in human nature, which renders 
 almost all wars popular at their commencement, yet a nation always 
 needs a sense of positive right to steady its spirit. There is always 
 needed some one reason, short, simple, and independent of complicated 
 calculation, in order to give a sort of muscular strength to the public
 
 Section I. Essay 10. 175 
 
 mind, when the power that results from enthusiasm, animal spirits, and 
 the charm of novelty, has evaporated. 
 
 There is no feeling more honourable to our nature, and few that strike 
 deeper root when our nature is happily circumstanced, than the jealousy 
 concerning a positive right, independent of an immediate interest. To 
 surrender, in our national character, the merest trifle that is strictly our 
 right, the merest rock on which the waves will scarcely permit the sea- 
 fowl to lay its eggs, at the demand of an insolent and powerful rival, on 
 a shopkeei>er's calculation of loss and gain, is in its final, and assuredly 
 not very distant consequences, a loss of everything of national spirit, 
 of national independence, and with these, of the very wealth for which 
 the low calculation was made. This feeling in individuals, indeed, and 
 in private life, is to be sacrificed to religion. Say rather, that by reli- 
 gion it is transmuted into a higher virtue, growing on a higher and en- 
 grafted branch, yet nourished from the same root ; that it remains in its 
 essence the same spirit, but 
 
 Made pure by thought, and naturalized in heaven ; 
 
 and he who cannot perceive the moral differences of national and indi- 
 vidual duties, comprehends neither the one or the other, and is not a 
 whit the better Christian for being a bad patriot. Considered nationally, 
 it is as if the captain of a man-of-war should strike and surrender his 
 colours under the pretence, that it would be folly to risk the lives of so 
 many good Christian sailors for the sake of a fe\v yards of coarse canvas ! 
 Of such reasoners we take an indignant leave in the words of an obscure 
 poet: 
 
 Fear never wanted arguments : you do 
 Reason yourselves into a careful bondage, 
 Circumspect only to your misery. 
 I could urge freedom, charters, country, laws, 
 Gods, and religion, and such precious names 
 Nay, what you value higher, wealth ! But that 
 You sue for bondage, yielding to demands 
 As impious as they're insolent, and have 
 Only this sluggish aim to perish full ! 
 
 CABTWRIGHT. 
 
 And here we find it necessary to animadvert on a principle asserted 
 by Lord Minto (in his speech, June 6th, 1803, and afterwards published 
 at full length), that France had an undoubted right to insist on our 
 abandonment of Malta, a right not given, but likewise not abrogated, by 
 the treaty of Amiens. Surely in this effort of candour, his Lordship 
 must have forgotten the circumstances on which he exerted it. The 
 case is simply thus : the British government was convinced, and the 
 French government admitted the justice of the conviction, that it was of 
 the utmost importance to our interests that Malta should remain unin- 
 fluenced by France. The French government binds itself down by a
 
 176 The Friend. 
 
 solemn treaty, that it will use its best endeavours in conjunction with 
 us, to secure this independence. This promise was no act of liberality, 
 no generous, free gift on the part of France No ! we purchased it at a 
 high price. We disbanded our forces, we dismissed our sailors, and we 
 gave up the best part of the fruits of our naval victories. Can it there- 
 fore with a shadow of plausibility be affirmed, that the right to insist 
 on our evacuation of the island was unaltered by the treaty of Amiens, 
 when this demand is strictly tantamount to our surrender of all the ad- 
 vantages which we had bought of France at so high a price ? Tanta- 
 mount to a direct breach on her part, not merely of a solemn treaty, but 
 of an absolute bargain ? It was not only the perfidy of unprincipled 
 ambition-w-the demand was the fraudulent trick of a sharper. For what 
 did France ? She sol'd us the independence of Malta ; then exerted her 
 power, and annihilated the very possibility of that independence ; and 
 lastly, demanded of us that we should leave it bound hand and foot for 
 her to seize without trouble, whenever her ambitious projects led her to 
 regard such seizure as expedient. We bound ourselves to surrender it 
 to the Knights of Malta not surely to Joseph, Robert, or Nicolas, but 
 to a known order, clothed with certain powers, and capable of exerting 
 them in consequence of certain revenues. We found no such order. 
 The men indeed and the name we found ; and even so, if we had pur- 
 chased Sardinia of its sovereign for so many millions of money, which 
 through our national credit, and from the equivalence of our national 
 paper to gold and silver, he had agreed to receive in bank notes, and if he 
 had received them, doubtless, he would have the bank notes, even 
 though immediately after our payment of them we had for this very 
 purpose forced the Bank company to break. But would he have received 
 the debt due to him ? It is nothing more or less than a practical pun, 
 as wicked though not quite so ludicrous, as the (in all senses) execrable 
 pun of Earl Godwin, who requesting basium (i. e. a kiss) from the 
 archbishop, thereupon seized on the archbishop's manor of Baseham. 
 
 A treaty is a writ of mutual promise between two independent states, 
 and the law of promise is the same to nations as to individuals. It is to 
 be sacredly performed by each party in that sense in which it knew and 
 permitted the other party to understand it, at the time of the contract. 
 Anything short of this is criminal deceit in individuals, and in govern- 
 ments impious perfidy. After the conduct of France in the affair of 
 the guarantees, and of the revenues of the order, we had the same right 
 to preserve the island independent of France by a British garrison, as a 
 lawful creditor has to the household goods of a fugitive and dishonest 
 debtor. 
 
 One other assertion of his Lordship's, in the same speech, bears so 
 immediately on the plan of The Friend, as far as it proposed to investi- 
 gate the principle of international, no less than of private morality, that
 
 Section I. Essay 10. 177 
 
 I feel myself in some degree under an obligation to notice it. A treaty 
 (says his Lordship) ought to be strictly observed by a nation in its 
 literal sense, even though the utter ruin of that nation should be the 
 certain and foreknown consequence of that observance. Previous to 
 any remarks of my own on this high flight of diplomatic virtue, we will 
 hear what Harrington has said on this subject. " A man may devote 
 himself to death or destruction to save a nation ; but no nation will 
 devote itself to death or destruction to save mankind. Machiavel is 
 decried for saying, ' that no consideration is to be had of what is just or 
 unjust, of what is merciful or cruel, of what is honourable or ignomi- 
 nious, in case it be to save a state or to preserve liberty :' which as to the 
 manner of expression may perhaps be crudely spoken. But to imagine 
 that a nation will devote itself to death or destruction any more after 
 laith given, or an engagement thereto tending, than if there had been 
 
 no engagement made or faith given, were not piety but folly." 
 
 Crudely spoken indeed ! and not less crudely thought : nor is the matter 
 much mended by the commentator. Yet every man, who is at all 
 acquainted with the world and its past history, knows that the fact 
 itself is truly stated ; and what is more important in the present argu- 
 ment, he cannot find in his heart a full, deep, and downright verdict 
 that it should be otherwise. The consequences of this perplexity in the 
 moral feelings are not seldom extensively injurious. For men hearing 
 the duties which would be binding on two individuals living under the 
 same laws, insisted on as equally obligatory on two independent states, 
 in extreme cases, where they see clearly the impracticability of realizing 
 such a notion ; and having at the same time a dim half-consciousness, 
 that two states can never be placed exactly on the same ground as two 
 individuals*, relieve themselves from their perplexity by cutting what 
 they cannot untie, and assert that national policy cannot in all cases be 
 subordinated to the laws of morality : in other words, that a govern- 
 ment may act with injustice, and yet remain blameless. This assertion 
 was hazarded (I record it with unfeigned regret) by a minister of state, 
 on the affair of Copenhagen. Tremendous assertion ! that would render 
 every complaint which we make of the abominations of the French 
 tyrant, hypocrisy, or mere incendiary declamation for the simple-headed 
 multitude ! But, thank Heaven ! it is as unnecessary and unfounded as 
 it is tremendous. For what is a treaty ? a voluntary contract between 
 two nations. So we will state it in the first instance. Now it is an 
 impossible case, that any nation can be supposed by any other to have 
 intended its own absolute destruction in a treaty, which its interests 
 alone could have prompted it to make. The very thought is self-con- 
 tradictory. Not only Athens (we will say) could not have intended 
 this to have been understood in any specific promise made to Sparta ; 
 but Sparta could never have imagined that Athens had so intended it. 
 
 N
 
 178 The Friend. 
 
 And Athens itself must have known, that had she even affirmed the 
 contrary, Sparta could not have believed nay, would have been under 
 a moral obligation not to have believed her. Were it possible to sup- 
 pose such a case for instance, such a treaty made by a single besieged 
 town, under an independent government as that of Numantium it 
 becomes no longer a state, but the act of a certain number of individuals 
 voluntarily sacrificing themselves, each to preserve his separate honour. 
 For the state was already destroyed by the circumstances which alone 
 could make such an engagement conceivable. But we have said, 
 nations. Applied to England and France, relatively to treaties, this is 
 but a form of speaking. The treaty is really made by some half dozen, 
 or perhaps half a hundred individuals, possessing the government of 
 these countries. Now it is a universally admitted part of the law of 
 nations, that an engagement entered into by a minister with a foreign 
 power, when it was known to this power that the minister in so doing 
 had exceeded and contravened his instructions, is altogether nugatory. 
 And is it to be supposed for a moment, that a whole nation, consisting 
 of perhaps twenty millions of human souls, could ever have invested a few 
 individuals, whom, altogether for the promotion of its welfare it had 
 intrusted with its government, with the right of signing away its 
 existence ? 
 
 ESSAY XI. 
 
 Arnicas reprehensiones gratisiime accipiamus, oportet: etiam si reprehendi non merw't 
 apinio nostra, vel hanc propter causam, quod recte defendi potest. Si verb infirmitas tvJ 
 humana vel propria, etiam cum veraciter arguitur, non potest non aliquantulum contristari, 
 melius tumor dolet dum curatur, quam dum ei parcitur et non sanatur. Hoc enim est quod 
 acute vidit, qui dixit : utiliores esse hand ro.ro inimicos objurgantes, quam amicos objurgare 
 nwtuentes. Illi enim dum. rixantur, dicunt aliquando vera quoz corrigamus : isti avttia 
 minorem, quam oportet, exhibent justitice libertatem, dum amicitia timent exasperare dulcedi- 
 ne-m. AUGCSTINUS HIERONTMO : Epist. xciii. Hierou. Opera. Tom. ii. p. 233. 
 
 ( Translation.) Censures, offered in friendliness, we ought to receive with gratitude: yea, 
 though our opinions did not merit censure, we should still be thankful for the attack on 
 them, were it only that it gives us an opportunity of successfully defending the same. (For 
 never doth an important truth spread its roots so wide, or clasp the soil so stubbornly, as 
 inhen it lias braved the winds of controversy. There is a stirring and a far-heard music 
 gent forth from the tree of sound knowledge, when its branches are fighting with the stvrm, 
 which passing onward thrills out at once truth's triumph, and its own defeat.) But if the 
 infirmity of human nature, or of our own constitutional temperament, cannot, even when we 
 have been fairly convicted of erroi, but suffer some small mortification, yet better suffer 
 pain from its extirpation than from the consequences of its continuance, and of the fake 
 tenderness that had withheld the remedy. This is what the acute observer had in his min.l 
 who said, that upbraiding enemies was not seldom more profitable than friends afraid to find 
 fault. For the former amidst their quarrelsome invectives may chance on some home truth.s 
 which we may amend in consequence ; while the tatter from an over-delicate apprehension of 
 ruffling the smooth surface of friendship .shrink from its duties, and from the manly freedom 
 which truth and justice demand.
 
 Section I. Essay 11. 179 
 
 /"\NLY a few privileged individuals are authorized to pass into the theatre 
 \J without stopping at the door-keeper's box ; but every man of dm'i.t 
 appearance may put down the play-price there, and thenceforward has as 
 good a right as the managers themselves not only to see and hear, as far 
 as his place in the house, and his own ears and eyes permit him, but 
 likewise to express audibly his approbation or disapprobation of what 
 may be going forward on the stage. If his feelings happen to be in 
 unison with those of the audience in general, he may without breach of 
 decorum persevere in his notices of applause or dislike, till the wish of 
 the house is complied with. If he finds himself unsupported, he rest^ 
 contented with having once exerted his common right, and on that 
 occasion at least gives no further interruption to the amusement of those 
 who feel differently from him. So it is, or so it should be, in literatim . 
 A few extraordinary minds may be allowed to pass a mere opinioi. ; 
 though, in point of fact, those who alone are entitled to this privilege 
 are ever the last to avail themselves of it. Add too, that even the mere 
 opinions of such men may in general be regarded either as promissory 
 notes, or as receipts referring to a former payment. But every man : s 
 opinion has a right to pass into the common auditory, if his reason for 
 the opinion is paid down at the same time : for arguments are the sole 
 current coin of intellect. The degree of influence to which the opiniou 
 is entitled, should be proportioned to the weight and value of the 
 reasons for it ; and whether these are shillings or pounds sterling, the 
 man who has given them remains blameless, provided he contents him- 
 self with the place to which they have entitled him, and does not 
 attempt by strength of lungs to counterbalance its disadvantages, or 
 expect to exert as immediate an influence in the back seats of the 
 upper gallery as if he had paid in gold and been seated in the stage 
 box. 
 
 But unfortunately (and here commence the points of difference 
 between the theatric and the literary public) in the great theatre 1 1 
 literature there are no authorized door-keepers ; for our anonymous 
 critics are self-elected. I shall not fear the charge of calumny if I a..*.. 
 that they have lost all credit with wise men by unfair dealing : such as 
 their refusal to receive an honest man's money (that is, his argument), 
 because they anticipate and dislike his opinion, while others of sus- 
 picious character and the most unseemly appearance are suffered to 
 pass without payment, or by virtue of orders which they have them- 
 selves distributed to known purtizans. Sometimes the honest man's 
 intellectual coin is refused under pretence that it is light or counterfeit, 
 without any proof given either by the money scales, or by sounding the 
 coin in dispute together with one of known goodness. We may 
 the metaphor stiil further. It is by no means a rare case, that tl- 
 money is returned because it had a different sound from that of a conn-
 
 ISO Tlie Friend. 
 
 terfeit, the brassy blotches on which seemed to blush for the impudence 
 of the silver wash ia which they were misled, and rendered the mock 
 coin a lively emblem of a lie self-detected. Still oftener does the rejec- 
 tion take place by a mere act of insolence, and the blank assertion that 
 the candidate's money is light or bad, is justified by a second assertion, 
 that he is a fool or knave for offering it. 
 
 The second point of difference explains the preceding, and accounts 
 both for the want of established door-keepers in the auditory of litera- 
 ture, and for the practices of those, who under the name of reviewers 
 volunteer this office. There is no royal mintage for arguments, no 
 ready means by which all men alike, who possess common sense, may 
 determine their value and intrinsic worth at the first sight or sound. 
 Certain forma of natural logic indeed there are, the iuobservance ot 
 which is decisive against an argument ; but the strictest adherence to 
 them is uo proof of its actual (though an indispensable condition of its 
 possible) validity : in tjie arguer's own conscience there is, no doubt, a 
 certain value, and an infallible criterion of it, which applies to all 
 arguments equally ; and this is the sincere conviction of the mind itself. 
 But for those to whom it is offered, there are only conjectural marks ; 
 yet such as will seldom mislead any man of plain sense, who is both 
 honest and observant. These characteristics The Friend attempted to 
 comprise in the concluding paragraph of the fourth essay of this section, 
 and has described them more at large in the essays that follow, " On 
 the communicating of truth." If the honest warmth, which results 
 from the strength of the particular conviction, be tempered by the 
 modesty which belongs to the sense of general fallibility ; if the emo- 
 tions, which accompany all vivid perceptions, are preserved distinct from 
 the expression of personal passions, and from appeals to them in the 
 heart of others ; if the reasoner asks no respect for the opinion, as his 
 opinion, but. only in proportion as it is acknowledged by that reason 
 which is common to all men ; and 1 , lastly, if he supports an opinion on 
 no subject which he has not previously examined, and furnishes proof 
 both that he possesses the means of inquiry by his education or the 
 nature of his pursuits, and that he has endeavoured to avail himself of 
 those means; then, and with these conditions, every human beam is 
 authorized to make public the grounds of any opinion which he holds, 
 and of course the opinion itself, as the object of them. Consequently, 
 it is the duty of all men, not always indeed to attend to him, but, if 
 they do, to attend to him with respect, and with a sincere as well as 
 apparent toleration. I should offend against my own laws if I dis- 
 closed at present the nature of my convictions concerning the degree in 
 which this virtue of toleration is possessed and practised by the majority 
 of my contemporaries and countrymen. But if the contrary temper is 
 felt aud shown in instances where all the conditions have been observed,
 
 Section 1. Essay 11. 181 
 
 which have been stated at full in the preliminary numbers that form the 
 Introduction to this Work, and the chief of which I have just now 
 recapitulated; I have no hesitation in declaring that whatever the 
 opinion maybe, and however opposite to the hearer's or reader's previous 
 persuasions, one or other or all of the following defects must be taken 
 for granted. Either the intolerant person is not master of the grounds 
 on which his own faith is built ; which therefore neither is or can be 
 his own faith, though it may very easily be his imagined interest, and 
 his habit of thought. In this case he is angry, not at the opposition to 
 truth, but at the interruption of his own indolence and intellectual 
 slumber, or possibly at the apprehension that his temporal advantages 
 are threatened, or at least the ease of mind in which he had been 
 accustomed to enjoy them. Or, secondly, he has no love of truth for 
 its own sake ; no reverence for the Divine command to seek earnestly 
 after it, which command, if it had not been so often and solemnly given 
 by revelation, is yet involved and expressed in the gift of reason, and in 
 the dependence of all our virtues on its development. He has no 
 moral and religious awe for freedom of thought, though accompanied both 
 by sincerity and humility ; nor for the right of free communication which 
 is ordained by God, together with that freedom, if it be true that God 
 has ordained us to live in society, and has made the progressive im- 
 provement of all and each of us depend on the reciprocal aids which 
 directly or indirectly each supplies to all, and all to each. But if his 
 alarm and his consequent intolerance are occasioned by his eternal 
 rather than temporal interests, and if, as is most commonly the case, he 
 does not deceive himself on this point, gloomy indeed, and erroneous 
 beyond idolatry, must have been his notions of the Supreme Being ! 
 For surely the poor Heathen who represents to himself the divine 
 attributes of wisdom, justice, and mercy, under multiplied and forbidden 
 symbols in the powers of Nature or the souls of extraordinary men, 
 practises a superstition which (though at once the cause and effect of 
 blindness and sensuality) is less incompatible with inward piety and 
 true religious feeling, than the creed of that man who, in the spirit 
 of his practice, though not in direct words, loses sight of all these attri- 
 butes, and substitutes " servile and thrall-like fear, instead of the 
 adoptive and cheerful boldness, which our new alliance with God re- 
 quires of us as Christians."* Such fear-ridden and thence anpry 
 believers, or rather acquiescents, would do well to reperuse the book of 
 
 * Milton's Reformation in Kngland. "For all the inward acts of worship issuing from 
 
 in very deed, the superstitious man bv his the native strength of vue soul run out 
 
 good will is an Atheist; but being scared lavishly to the upper skin, and there harden 
 
 from thence by the pings of conscience, into a crust of formality. Hence men came 
 
 shuffles up to himself such a God and such a to scan the Scriptures by the letter, and in 
 
 worship as is most accordant to his frar : the covenant of our redemption magnified 
 
 which fear of his, as also his hope, being fixed the external signs more than the quickening 
 
 only upon the fle>h, renders likewise the power of the Spirit." 
 irnole faculty of his apprehension carnal, and
 
 182 TJie Friend. 
 
 Job, and observe the sentence passed by the All-just on the friends of the 
 sufferer, who had hoped, like venal advocates, to purchase the favour of 
 Deity by uttering truths of which in their own hearts they had neither 
 conviction nor comprehension. The truth from the lips did not atone 
 for the lie in the heart, while the rashness of agony in the searching 
 and bewildered complaint was forgiven in consideration of his sincerity 
 and integrity in not disguising the true dictates of his reason and 
 conscience, but avowing his incapability of solving a problem by his 
 reason, which before the Christian dispensation the Almighty was 
 pleased to solve only by declaring it to be beyond the limits of human 
 reason. Having insensibly passed into a higher and more serious style 
 than I had first intended, I will venture to appeal to these self- 
 obacurants, whose faith dwells in the land of the shadow of darkness* 
 these Papists without a Pope, and Protestants who protest only against 
 all protesting ; and will appeal to them in words which yet more 
 immediately concern them as Christians, in the hope that they will lend 
 a fearless ear to the learned apostle, when he both assures and labours 
 to persuade them that they " were called in Christ to all perfectness in 
 spiritual knowledge and full assurance of understanding in the mystery 
 of God." There can be no end without means ; and God furnishes no 
 means that exempt us from the task and duty of joining our own best 
 endeavours. The original stock, or wild olive tree of our natural 
 ]X)wers, was not given us to be burnt or blighted, but to be grafted on. 
 We are not only not forbidden to examine and propose our doubts, so it 
 be done with humility and proceed from a real desire to know the truth ; 
 but we are repeatedly commanded so to do : and with a most unchristian 
 spirit must that man have read the preceding passages, if he can inter- 
 pret any one sentence as having for its object to excuse a too numerous 
 class, who, to use the words of St. Augustine, quoerunt non ut fidem sed 
 tit inftdelitatem inveniant : i. e. such as examine not to find reasons for 
 faith, but pretexts for infidelity. 
 
 ESSAY XII. 
 
 Such is the iniquity of men, that they suck in opinions as wild asses do the wind, without 
 distinguishing the wholesome from the corrupted air, and then live upon it at a venture : and 
 when all their confidence ig built upon zeal and mistake, yet therefore because they are 
 zealous and mistaken, they are impatient of contradiction. TAYLOK'S Ejnst. Dedic. to the 
 Liberty of Prophesying. 
 
 it TF " (observes the eloquent Bishop in the 13th section of the work 
 A from which my motto is selected) " an opinion plainly and directly 
 brings in a crime, as if a man preaches treason or sedition, his opinion 
 is not his excuse. A man is nevertheless a traitor because he believes 
 it lawful to commit treason ; and a man is a murderer if he kills Lis
 
 Section I. Essay 12. 183 
 
 brother unjustly, although he should think that he was doing God good 
 service thereby. Matters of fact are equally judicable, whether the 
 principle of them be from within or from without." 
 
 To dogmatize a crime, that is, to teach it as a doctrine, is itself a 
 crime, great or small as the crime dogmatized is more or less palpably 
 so. You say (said Sir John Cheke, addressing himself to the Papists 
 of his day) that you rebel for your religion. First tell me, what reli- 
 gion is that which teaches you to rebel. As my object in the present 
 section is to treat of tolerance and intolerance in the public bearings of 
 opinions and their propagation, I shall embrace this opportunity of 
 selecting the two passages, which I have been long inclined to consider 
 as the most eloquent in our English literature, though each in a very 
 different style of eloquence, as indeed the authors were as dissimilar in 
 their bias, if not in their faith, as two bishops of the same church can 
 well be supposed to have been. I think too, I may venture to add, that 
 both the extracts will be new to a very great majority of my readers. 
 For the length I make no apology. It was part of my plan to allot 
 two numbers of The Friend, the one to a selection from our prose 
 writers, and the other from our poets ; but in both cases from works 
 that do not occur in our ordinary reading. 
 
 The following passages are both on the same subject : the first from 
 Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery ; the second from a Letter of Bishop 
 Ik-dell's to an unhappy friend who had deserted the Church of England 
 for that of Rome. 
 
 1. The rise and progress of a controversy, from the speculative 
 opinion of an individual to the revolution or intestine war of a nation. 
 
 " This is one of the inseparable characters of an heretic ; he sets his 
 whole communion and all his charity upon his article ; for to be zealous 
 in the schism, that is the characteristic of a good man, that is his note 
 of Christianity ; in all the rest he excuses you or tolerates you, pro- 
 vided you be a true believer ; then you are one of the faithful, a good 
 man and a precious, you are of the congregation of the saints, and one 
 of the godly. All Solifidians do thiis ; and all that do thus are Soli- 
 fidians, the Church of Rome herself not excepted ; for though in words 
 she proclaims the possibility of keeping all the commandments ; yet 
 she dispenses easier with him that breaks them all, than with him 
 that speaks one word against any of her articles, though but the least ; 
 even the eating of fish and forbidding flesh in Lent. So that it is 
 faith the\' regard more than charity, a right belief more than a holy 
 life; and for this you shall be with them upon terms easy enough, pro- 
 vided you go not a hair's breadth from anything of her belief. For 
 if you do, they have provided for you two deaths and two fires, both 
 inevitable and one eternal And" this certainly is one of the greatest 
 evils, of which the Church of Rome is guilty ; for this in itaelf is the
 
 18-i The Friend. 
 
 greatest and unworthiest uncharitableness. But the procedure is of 
 great use to their ends. For the greatest part of Christians are those 
 that cannot consider things leisurely and wisely, searching their bottoms 
 and discovering their causes, or foreseeing events which are to come 
 after ; but are carried away by fear and hope, by affection and prepos- 
 session :. and therefore the Roman doctors are careful to govern them as 
 they will be governed. If you dispute, you gain, it may be, one, and 
 lose five ; but if you threaten them with damnation, you keep them in 
 fetters; for they that are 'in fear of death are all their life-time in 
 bondage '* (saith the apostle) ; and there is in the world nothing so 
 potent as fear of the two deaths, which are the two arms and grapples 
 of iron by which the Church of Rome takes and keeps her timorous or 
 conscientious proselytes. The easy Protestant calls upon you from 
 Scripture to do your duty, to build a holy life upon a holy faith, the 
 faith of the apostles and first disciples of our Lord ; he tells you if you 
 err, and teaches ye the truth ; and if ye will obey it is well, if not, he 
 tells you of your sin, and that all sin deserves the wrath of God ; but 
 judges no man's person, much less any states of men. He knows that 
 God's judgments are righteous and true ; but he knows also, that His 
 mercy absolves many persons, who, in His just judgment, were con- 
 demned : and if he had a warrant from God to say, that he should de- 
 stroy all the Papists, as Jonah had concerning the Ninevites ; yet he 
 remembers that every repentance, if it be sincere, will do more, and 
 prevail greater, and last longer than God's anger will. Besides these 
 things, there is a strange spring and secret principle in every man's 
 understanding, that it is oftentimes turned about by such impulses, of 
 which no man can give an account. But we all remember a most 
 wonderful instance of it in the disputation between the two Reynoldses, 
 John and William ; the former of which being a Papist, and the latter 
 a Protestant, met and disputed, with a purpose to confute, and to con- 
 vert each other. And so they did : for those arguments, which were 
 used, prevailed fully against their adversary and yet did not prevail with 
 themselves. The Papist turned Protestant, and the Protestant became 
 a Papist, and so remained to their dying day. Of which some inge- 
 nious person gave a most handsome account in the following excellent 
 epigram : 
 
 Bella, inter geminos, plusquam civilia, fratres 
 Traxerat ambiguus religionia apex. 
 
 Ille reformats fldei pro partibus instat : 
 Iste reformandam denegat esse (idem. 
 
 Propositis causa; rationibns ; alter ntrinqoe 
 Concarrere pares, et cecidere pares. 
 
 Quod fuit in votis, fratrem capit alter uterqne ; 
 Quod fuit in fatis, perdit uterqne fidem. 
 
 Heb. II. 15.
 
 Section I. Essay 12. 185 
 
 Captivi gemini sine captivante fuemnt, 
 
 Et victor victl transfuga castra petit. 
 Quod genus boc pugnaj est, ubi victus gaudet uterque ; 
 
 Et tamen alteruter ge superasse dolet ? 
 
 " But further yet, he considers the natural and regular infirmities of 
 mankind, and God considers them much more ; he knows that in man 
 there is nothing admirable but his ignorance and weakness ; his preju- 
 dice, and the infallible certainty of being deceived in many things : he 
 sees that wicked men oftentimes know much more than many very 
 good men ; and that the understanding is not of itself considerable in 
 morality, and effects nothing in rewards and punishments : it is the will 
 only that rules man, and can obey God. He sees and deplores it, that 
 many men study hard, and understand little ; that they dispute earnestly, 
 and understand not one another at all ; that affections creep so certainly, 
 and mingle with their arguing, that the argument is lost, and nothing re- 
 mains but the conflict of two adversaries' affections ; that a man is so 
 willing, so easy, so ready to believe what makes for his opinion, so hard 
 to understand an argument against himself, that it is plain it is the 
 principle within, not the argument without, that determines him. He 
 observes also that all the world (a few individuals excepted) are un- 
 alterably determined to the religion of their country, of their family, of 
 their society ; that there is never any considerable change made, but 
 what is made by war and empire, by fear and hope. He remembers that 
 it is a rare thing to see a Jesuit of the Dominican opinion, or a Domi- 
 nican (until of late) of the Jesuit ; but every order gives laws to the 
 understanding of their novices, and they never change. He considers 
 there is such ambiguity in words, by which all lawgivers express their 
 meaning ; that there is such abstruseness in mysteries of religion, that 
 some things are so much too high for us, that we cannot understand 
 them rightly ; and yet they are so sacred, and concerning, that men 
 will think they are bound to look into them as far as they can ; that it 
 is no wonder if they quickly go too far, where no understanding, if it 
 were fitted for it, could go far enough ; but in these things it will be 
 hard not to be deceived, since our words cannot rightly express those 
 things. That there is such variety of human understandings, that 
 men's faces differ not so much as their souls ; and that if there were not 
 so much difficulty in things, yet they could not but be variously appre- 
 hended by several men. And hereto he considers, that in twenty 
 opinions, it may be that not one of them is true ; nay, whereas Varro 
 reckoned, that among the old philosophers there were eight hundred 
 opinions concerning the summitm bonum, that yet not one of them hit 
 the right. He sees also that in all religions, in all societies, in all 
 families, and in all things, opinions differ ; and since opinions are too 
 often begot by passion, by passions and violence they are kept ; and 
 every man is too apt to overvalue his own opinion ; and out of a desire
 
 186 The Friend. 
 
 that every man should conform his judgment to his that teaches, men 
 are apt to be earnest in their persuasion, and overact the proposition ; 
 and from being true as he supposes, he will think it profitable ; and if 
 you warm him either with confidence or opposition, he quickly tells you 
 it is necessary ; and as he loves those that think as he does, so he is 
 ready to hate them that do not ; and then secretly from wishing evil to 
 him, he is apt to believe evil will come to him, and that it is just it 
 should ; and by this time the opinion is troublesome, and puts other 
 men upon their guard against it ; and then while passion reigns, and 
 reason is modest and patient, and talks not loud like a storm, victory is 
 more regarded than truth, and men call God into the party, and His 
 judgments are used for arguments, and the threatenings of the Scrip- 
 ture are snatched up in haste, and men throw arrows, firebrands, and 
 death, and by this time all the world is in an uproar. All this, and a 
 thousand things more the English Protestants considering deny not their 
 communion to any Christian who desires it, and believes the Apostles' 
 Creed, and is of the religion of the four first general councils ; they hope 
 well of all that live well ; they receive into their bosom all true be- 
 lievers of what church soever ; and for them that err, they instruct 
 them, and then leave them to their liberty, to stand or fall before their 
 own Master." 
 
 2. A doctrine not the less safe for being the more charitable. 
 
 " Christ our Lord hath given us, amongst others, two infallible notes 
 to know the Church." " My sheep," saith He, " hear My voice :" and 
 again, " By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if ye 
 love one another." What ! shall we stand upon conjectural arguments 
 from that which men say ? We are partial to ourselves, malignant to 
 our ppposites. Let Christ be heard who be His, who not. And for the 
 hearing of His voice Oh that it might be the issue ! But I see you de- 
 cline it, therefore I leave it also for the present. That other is that 
 which now I stand upon : " the badge of Christ's sheep." Not a like- 
 lihood, but a certain token whereby every man may know them : " by 
 this," saith He, " shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have 
 charity one towards another." Thanks be to God, this mark of our 
 Saviour is in us which you with our schismatics and other enemies 
 want. As Solomon found the true mother by her natural affection, 
 that chose rather to yield to her adversary's plea, claiming her child, 
 than endure that it should be cut in pieces ; so may it soon be found at 
 this day whether is the true mother. Ours, that saith, Give her the 
 living child and kill him not ; or yours, that if she may not have it, is 
 content it be killed rather than want of her will. Alas ! (saith ours 
 even of those that leave her) these be my children ! I have borne them 
 to Christ in baptism : I have nourished them as I could with mine own 
 breasts, His testaments. I would have brought them up to man's
 
 Section l.Eatay 13. 187 
 
 estate, as their free birth and parentage deserves. Whether it be their 
 lightness or discontent, or her enticing words and gay shows, they leave 
 me ; they have found a better mother. Let them live yet, though in 
 bondage. I shall have patience ; I commit the care of them to their 
 Father, I beseech Him to keep them that they do no evil. If they make 
 their peace with Him, I am satisfied ; they have not hurt me at all. 
 Kay, but saith yours, I sit alone as queen and mistress of Christ's 
 family, he that hath not me for his mother, cannot have God for his 
 Father. Mine therefore are these, either born or adopted ; and if they 
 will not be mine they shall be none. So without expecting Christ's sen- 
 tence she cuts with the temporal sword, hangs, burns, draws, those that 
 she perceives inclined to leave her, or have left her already. So she 
 kills with the spiritual sword those that are subject not to her, yea thou- 
 sands of souls that not only have no means so to do, but many which 
 never so much as have heard whether there be a Pope of Rome or no. 
 Let our Solomon be judge between them, yea, judge you, Mr. Waddes- 
 worth ! more seriously and maturely, not by guesses, but by the very 
 mark of Christ, which wanting yourselves you have unawares discovered 
 in us : judge, I s&y, without passion and partiality, according to Christ's 
 Word : which is His flock, which is His church." 
 
 ESSAY XIII. 
 
 ON THE LAW OF NATIONS. 
 
 ITpb? iroXe'ojj ivSai/iovCav Ka.1 $<.Kaio<rvi*r)V Trdirra. iSitarov iiiirpoirOtv rrroiCTOi cu<rei' Tovrtav 
 Se TO. fj-ev avOpuiriva. ei? rd Ofia, ra 6 0eia TOP rfytnova. Now fv^iiraira Sei f}\firtiv, bv\ 
 OK irpo* ape'njs T! /uiopiov, aAAa irpos openjv iv aperai; aet vnofitvovvav, <is jrpbs vonov TtVa 
 voiLodtrovvra.. Tl\artav irepi Norton" 
 
 (TVatwZatfon.) For all things that regard the well-being and justice of a state are pre- 
 ordained and established in the nature of the individual. Of these it behoves that the merely 
 human (the temporal and fluxional) should be referred and subordinated to the Divine in 
 man, and the Divine in like manner to the Supreme Mind, so however that the state is not 
 to regulate its actions by reference to any particular form and fragment of virtue, but must 
 fix its eye on that virtue, which is the abiding spirit and (as it were) substratum in all the 
 virtues, as on a law that is itself legislative 
 
 IT were absurd to suppose that individuals should be under a law of 
 moral obligation, and yet that a million of the same individuals acting 
 collectively or through representatives should be exempt from all law ; 
 for morality is no accident of human nature, but its essential charac- 
 teristic. A being absolutely without morality is either a beast or a 
 fiend, according as we conceive this want of conscience to be natural or 
 self- produced ; or (to come nearer to the common notion, though with 
 the sacrifice of austere accuracy) according as the being is conceived 
 without the law, or in unceasing aud irretrievable rebellion to it. Yet
 
 188 TJte Friend. 
 
 were it possible to conceive a man wholly immoral, it would remain im- 
 possible to conceive him without a moral obligation to be otherwise ; and 
 none, but a madman, will imagine that the essential qualities of any- 
 thing can be altered by its becoming part of an aggregate ; that a grain 
 of corn, for instance, shall cease to contain flour, as soon as it is part of a 
 peck or bushel. It is therefore grounded in the nature of the thing, and 
 not by a mere fiction of the mind, that wise men, who have written on 
 the law of nations, have always considered the several states of the civi- 
 lized world as so many individuals, and equally with the latter under a 
 moral obligation to exercise their free agency within such bounds as 
 render it compatible with the existence of free agency in others. We 
 may represent to ourselves this original free agency as a right of com- 
 monage, the formation of separate states as an enclosure of this common, 
 the allotments awarded severally to the co-proprietors as constituting 
 national rights, and the law of nations as the common register office of 
 their title deeds. But in all morality, though the principle, which is 
 the abiding spirit of the law, remains perpetual and unaltered, even as 
 that Supreme Reason in whom and from whom it has its being, yet the 
 letter of the law, that is, the application of it to particular instances, 
 and the mode of realizing it in actual practice, must be modified by the 
 existing circumstances. What we should desire to do, the conscience 
 alone will inform us ; but how and when we are to make the attempt, 
 and to what extent it is in our power to accomplish it, are questions for 
 the judgment, and require an acquaintance with facts and their bear- 
 ings on each other. Thence the improvement of our judgment, and the 
 increase of our knowledge, on all subjects included within our sphere of 
 action, are not merely advantages recommended by prudence, but abso- 
 lute duties imposed on us by conscience. 
 
 As the circumstances then, under which men act as statesmen, are 
 different from those under which they act as individuals, a proportionate 
 difference must be expected in the practical rules by which their public 
 conduct is to be determined. Let me not be misunderstood : I speak of 
 a difference in the practical rules, not in the moral law itself which these 
 rules point out, the means of administering in particular cases, and under 
 given circumstances. The spirit continues one and the same, though it 
 may vary its form according to the element into which it is transported. 
 This difference, with its grounds and consequences, it is the province 
 of the philosophical juspublicist to discover and display ; and exactly 
 in this point (I speak with unfeigned diffidence) it appears to me that 
 the writers on the law of nations,* whose works I have had the oppor-
 
 Section I. Essay 13. 189 
 
 tunity of studying, have been least successful. In what does the law of 
 nations differ from the laws enacted by a particular state for its own sub- 
 jects? The solution is evident. The law of nations, considered apart 
 from the common principle of all morality, is not fixed or positive in 
 itself, nor supplied with any regular means of being enforced. Like 
 duties in private life which, for the same reasons, moralists have 
 entitled imperfect duties (though the most atrocious guilt may be 
 involved in the omission or violation of them), the law of nations appeals 
 only to the conscience and prudence of the parties concerned. Wherein 
 then does it differ from the moral laws which the reason, considered as 
 conscience, dictates for the conduct of individuals ? This is a more 
 difficult question ; but my answer would be determined by, and 
 grounded on, the obvious differences of the circumstances in the two 
 cases. Remember then, that we are now reasoning, not as sophists or 
 system-mongers, but as men anxious to discover what is right in order 
 that we may practise it, or at least, give our suffrage and the influence 
 of our opinion in recommending its practice. We must therefore con- 
 fine the question to those cases, in which honest men and real patriots 
 can suppose any controversy to exist between real patriotism and common 
 honesty. The objects of the patriot are, that his countrymen should, 
 as far as circumstances permit, enjoy what the Creator designed for 
 the enjoyment of animals endowed with reason, and of course develop 
 those faculties which were given them to be developed. He would do 
 his best that every one of his countrymen should possess whatever all 
 men may and should possess, and that a sufficient number should be 
 enabled and encouraged to acquire those excellences which, though not 
 necessary or possible for all men, are yet to all men useful and honour- 
 able. He knows that patriotism itself is a necessary link in the golden 
 chain of our affections and virtues, and turns away with indignant 
 scorn from the false philosophy or mistaken rerigion which would 
 persuade him that cosmopolitism is nobler than nationality, and the 
 human race a sublimer object of love than a people ; that Plato, 
 Luther, Newton, and their equals, formed themselves neither in the 
 market nor the senate, but in the world, and lor all men of all ages. 
 True! But where, and among whom are these giant exceptions pro- 
 duced? In the wide empires of Asia, where millions of human beings 
 acknowledge no other bond but that of a common slavery, and are dis- 
 tinguished on the map but by a name which themselves perhaps never 
 heard, or hearing abhor? No ! In a circle denned by human affections, 
 the first firm sod within which becomes sacred beneath the quickened step 
 or the returning citizen here, where the powers and interests of men 
 
 SI..M, nor cither by myself or my connections may think my opinion rrroneous, I i-hall at 
 i-njy the honour of ihe remote.-t acquaint- least not be suspected of intentional fiat- 
 iincu with him, 1 trust that even by thobe who tery.
 
 190 The Friend. 
 
 spread without confusion through a common sphere, like the vibrations 
 propagated in the air by a single voice, distinct yet coherent, and all 
 uniting to express one thought and the same feeling! Here, where 
 even the common soldier dares force a passage for his comrades by 
 gathering up the bayonets of the enemy into his own breast ; because 
 his country " expected every man to do his duty !" and this not after he 
 has been hardened by habit, but, as probably, in his first battle ; not 
 reckless or hopeless, but braving death from a keener sensibility to 
 those blessings which make life dear, to those qualities which render 
 himself worthy to enjoy them ! Here, where the royal crown is loved 
 and worshipped as a glory around the sainted head of Freedom ! where 
 the rustic at his plough whistles with equal enthusiasm, " God save 
 the King," and " Britons never shall be slaves ;" or, perhaps, leaves one 
 thistle unweeded in his garden, because it is the symbol of his dear 
 native land ! * Here, from within this circle defined, as light by shade, 
 or rather as light within light, by its intensity, here alone, and only 
 within these magic circles, rise up the awful spirits, whose words are 
 oracles for mankind, whose love embraces all countries, and whose 
 voice sounds through all ages ! Here, and here only, may we con- 
 fidently expect those mighty minds to be reared and ripened, whose 
 names are naturalized in foreign lands, the sure fellow-travellers of 
 civilization ! and yet render their own country dearer and more proudly 
 dear to their own countrymen. This is indeed cosmopolitism, at once 
 the nursling and the nurse of patriotic affection ! This, and this alone, 
 is genuine philanthropy, which, like the olive tree, sacred to concord 
 and to wisdom, fattens not exhausts the soil from which it sprang, 
 and in which it remains rooted. It is feebleness only which cannot be 
 generous without injustice, or just without ceasing to be generous. Is 
 the morning star less brilliant, or does a ray less fall on the golden 
 fruitage of the earth, because the moons of Saturn too feed their lamps 
 from the same sun ? Even Germany, though cursed with a base and 
 hateful brood of nobles and princelings, cowardly and ravenous jackals to 
 the very flocks entrusted to them as to shepherds, who hunt for the tiger 
 and whine and wag their tails for his bloody offal even Germany, whose 
 ever-changing boundaries superannuate the last year's map, and are 
 altered as easily as the hurdles of a temporary sheepfold, is still remem- 
 bered with filial love and a patriot's pride, when the thoughtful German 
 
 * I cannot here refuse myself the pleasure The rough bur-thistle spreading wide 
 
 of recording a speech of the poet Bums, re- Amann the bearded bear, 
 
 lated to me by the lady to whom it was I turned the weeder-clips aside 
 
 addressed. Having been asked by her, why An' spared the symbol dear." 
 in his more serious poems he had not changed 
 
 the two or three Scotch words which seemed An author may be allowed to quote from 
 
 only to disturb the purity of the style? the his own poems, when he does it with as much 
 
 poet with great sweetness, anil his usual modesiy and felicity as Burns did in this in- 
 
 happiness in reply, answered, Why in truth stance, 
 it would have been better, but
 
 Section I. Essay 13. 191 
 
 hears the names of Luther and Leibnitz. " Ah ! why," he sighs, " why 
 for herself in vain should my country have produced such a host of 
 immortal minds !" Yea, even the poor enslaved, degraded, and bar- 
 barized Greek, can still point to the harbour of Tenedos, and say 
 " There lay our fleet when we were besieging Troy." Reflect a moment 
 OQ the past history of this wonderful people ! What were they while 
 they remained free and independent ? when Greece resembled a collec- 
 tion of mirrors set in a single frame, each having its own focus of 
 patriotism, yet all capable, as at Marathon and Platea, of converging 
 to one point and of consuming a common foe ? What were they then ? 
 The fountains of light and civilization, of truth and of beauty, to all 
 mankind ! they were the thinking head, the beating heart, of the whole 
 world! They lost their independence, and with their independence 
 their patriotism ; and became the cosmopolites of antiquity. It has 
 been truly observed (by ihe author of the work for which Palm was 
 murdered) that, after the first acts of severity, the Romans treated the 
 Greeks not only more mildly than theit other slaves and dependants, 
 they behaved to them even affectionately and with munificence. The 
 victor nation felt reverentially the presence of the visible and invisible 
 deities that Live sanctity to every grove, every fountain, and every 
 forum. " Think (writes Pliny to one of his friends) that you are sent 
 into the province of Achaia, that true and genuine Greece, where 
 civilization, letters, even corn, are believed to have been discovered ; 
 that you are sent to administer the affairs of free states, that is, to 
 men eminently free, who have retained their natural right by valour, 
 by services, by friendship, lastly by treaty and by religion. Revere the 
 Gods, their founders, the sacred influences represented in those Gods, 
 revere their ancient glory and this very old age which in man is 
 venerable, in cities sacred. Cherish in thyself a reverence of antiquity, 
 a reverence for their great exploits, a reverence even for their fables. 
 Detract nothing from the proud pretensions of any state ; keep before 
 thine eyes that this is the land which sent us our institutions, which 
 gave us our laws, not after it was subjugated, but in compliance with 
 our petition."* And what came out of these men, who were eminently 
 free without patriotism, because without national independence? (which 
 eminent freedom, however, Pliny himself, in the very next sentence, 
 styles the shadow and residuum of liberty.) While they were intense 
 patriots, they were the benefactors of all mankind, legislators for the 
 very nation that afterwards subdued and enslaved them. When, 
 therefore, they became pure cosmopolites, and no partial affections inter- 
 rupted their philanthropy, and when yet they retained their country, 
 their language, and their arts, what noble works, what mighty discoveries, 
 may we not expect from them ? If the applause of a little city (a first- 
 * Plin. Eptet. Lib. VIII.
 
 192 Hie Friend. 
 
 rate town of a country not much larger than Yorkshire) aud the 
 encouragement of a Pericles, produced a Phidias, a Sophocies, and a 
 constellation of other stars scarcely inferior in glory, what will not the 
 applause of the world effect, and the boundless munificence of the 
 world's imperial masters ? Alas ! no Sophocles appeared, no Phidias 
 was born 1 individual genius fled with national independence, and the 
 best products were cold and laborious copies of what their fathers had 
 thought and invented in grandeur and majesty. At length nothing 
 remained but dastardly and cunning slaves, who avenged their own 
 ruin and degradation by assisting to degrade and ruin their conquerors ; 
 and the golden harp of their divine language remained only as the 
 frame on which priests and monks spun their dirty cobwebs of sophistry 
 and superstition ! 
 
 If then in order to be men we must be patriots, and patriotism cannot 
 exist without national independence, we need no new or particular code 
 of morals to justify us in placing and preserving our country in that 
 relative situation which is most favourable to its independence. But the 
 true patriot is aware that this object is not to be accomplished by a 
 system of general conquest, such as was pursued by Philip of Macedon 
 and his son, nor yet by the political annihilation of the one state, which 
 happens to be its most formidable rival ; the unwise measure recom- 
 mended by Cato, and carried into effect by tho Romans, in the instance 
 of Carthage. Not by the latter ; for rivalry between two nations con- 
 duces to the independence of both, calls forth or fosters all the virtues by 
 which national security is maintained. Still less by the former ; for the 
 victor nation itself must at length, by the very extension of its own con- 
 quests, sink into a mere province ; nay, it will most probably become 
 the most abject portion of the empire, and the most cruelly oppressed, 
 both because it will be more feared and suspected by the common 
 tyrant, and because it will be the sink and centre of his luxury and cor- 
 ruption. Even in cases of actual injury and just alarm the patriot sets 
 bounds to the reprisal of national vengeance, and contents himself with 
 such securities as are compatible with the welfare, though not with the 
 ambitious projects of the nation, whose aggressions had given the provo- 
 cation : for as patriotism inspires no superhuman faculties, neither can 
 it dictate any conduct which would require such. He is too conscious 
 of his own ignorance of the future, to dare extend his calculations into 
 remote periods ; nor, because he is a statesman, arrogates to himself the 
 cares of Providence and the government of the world. How does he 
 know, but that the very independence and consequent virtues of the 
 nation, which in the anger of cowardice he would fain reduce to absolute 
 insignificance, and rob even of its ancient name, may in some future 
 emergency be the destined guardians of his own country ; and that the 
 power which now alarms, may hereafter protect and preserve it ? The
 
 Section 1. Essay 14. 193 
 
 experience of history authorizes not only the possibility, but even the 
 probability of such an event. An American commander, who- has de- 
 served and received the highest honours which his grateful country, 
 through her assembled representatives, could bestow upon him, once 
 said to me with a sigh : " In an evil hour for my country did the French 
 and Spaniards abandon Louisiana to the United States. We were not 
 sufficiently a country before ; and should we ever be mad enough to 
 drive the English from Canada and her other North American provinces, 
 we shall soon cease to be a country at all. Without local attachment, 
 without national honour, we shall resemble a swarm of insects that 
 settle on the fruits of the earth to corrupt and consume them, rather 
 than men who love and cleave to the land of their forefathers. After a 
 shapeless anarchy, and a series of civil wars, we shall at last be formed 
 into many countries ; unless the vices engendered in the process should 
 demand further punishment, and we should previously fall beneath the 
 despotism of some military adventurer, like a lion, consumed by an 
 inward disease, prostrate and helpless, beneath the beak and talons of a 
 vulture, or yet meaner bird of prey." 
 
 ESSAY XIV. 
 
 *O, Tl flCI* TTpO? TOV TOU 5AOV Tt\OVTOV, /UuAAoi' S WpOS Tt (/XIVTatTJiO ITOAe'cUS OTTaOTJS, 6 TTO.V- 
 
 Ta.\ri Kai ovfiafijj e<rrt, i^e'pei /iaOr)/aa Kai erriT>jSev/aa, TOVTO xprjaifiov Kai aofyov Tt 6oacrdiq- 
 avrai* Ttov 8e a\\tai> KaTayeAa 6 IToAlTUeOf' TaUTTjv nivalriav xpi) (/xxvai TOU f*^T dAAo KaAbi' 
 fJT ra Trpbs rov iroAejioy /ue-yaAoirpeVus aaicelv Ta? irdAeis, T<OV iroAiTcoi/ jiaA' tvtorf OVK 
 a<f>vuiv ovrav, &V<TTWXOVVTU>V ye fiT\v. Hois Ae'yei? ; Hois fiev ovv OVTOUS ov Aeyoi/u.' a.v TO 
 iraparrai' JucrruxWi "'S Y oi/aymj Sia jStou irtivOiO'L rrfv i/fux'7'' aei TIJV a\n!av SiefeASeiv. 
 
 IIAaTwv. 
 
 ( TratiflatiaH.} Whatever study or doctrine bears upon the wealth of the whole, say rather 
 on a certain phantom of a state in tato, which Is everywhere and nowhere, this shall he 
 deemed most useful and wise; and all else is the state-craftsman's scorn. This we dare pro- 
 nounce the cause why nations torpid on their dignity in general, conduct their wars so tittle in 
 a grand and magnanimous spirit, while the citizens are too often wretched, though endowed 
 wiih high capabilities by nature. How say you ? Nay, how should I not call them wretched, 
 who are under the unrelenting necessity of wasting away their life in the mere search after 
 the means of supporting it ? PLATO, de Leglbus, vlii. 
 
 IN the preceding essay we treated of what may be wisely desired in 
 respect to our foreign relations. The same sanity of mind will the true 
 patriot display, in all that regards the internal prosperity of his country. 
 He will reverence not only whatever tends to make the component indi- 
 viduals more happy, and more worthy of happiness ; but likewise what- 
 ever tends to bind them more closely together as a people ; that as a 
 multitude of parts and functions make up one human body, so the whole 
 multitude of his countrymen may, by the visible and invisible influences 
 of religion, language, laws, customs, and the reciprocal dependence and 
 reaction of trade and agriculture, be organized into one body politic. 
 But much as he desires to see oil become a whole, he places limits even 
 
 o
 
 194 TJie 
 
 to this wish, and abhors that system of policy which would blend run 
 into a sfate by the dissolution of all those virtues which make them 
 h:ippy and estimable as individuals. Sir James Steuart (Polit. Econ. 
 V f ol. I. p. 88) after stating the case of the vine-dresser, who is proprietor 
 of a bit of land, on which grain (enough, and no more) is raised for him- 
 self and family, and who provides for their other wants of clothing, 
 salt, &c. by his extra labour as a vine-dresser, observes " From this 
 example we discover the difference between agriculture exercised as a 
 trade, and as a direct means of subsistence. We have the two species in 
 the vine-dresser : he labours the vineyard as a trade, and his spot of 
 ground for subsistence. "We may farther conclude, that as to the last 
 part he is only useful to himself ; but as to the first, he is useful to the 
 society and becomes a member of it ; consequently were it not for his 
 trade the state would lose nothing, although the vine-dresser and his 
 land were both swallowed up by an earthquake." 
 
 Now this contains the sublime philosophy of the sect of economists. 
 They worship a kind of nonentity under the different words, the state, 
 the whole, the society, &c., and to this idol they make bloodier sacrifices 
 than ever the Mexicans did to Tescalipoca. All, that is, each and every 
 sentient being in a given tract, are made diseased and vicious, in order 
 that each may become useful to all, or the state, or the society, that is, 
 to the word all, the word state, or the word society. The absurdity 
 may be easily perceived by omitting the words relating to this idol, as 
 for instance, in a former paragraph of the same (in most respects) 
 excellent work : " If it therefore happens that an additional number pro- 
 duced do no more than feed themselves, then I perceive no advantage 
 gained from their production." What! no advantage gained by, for 
 instance, ten thousand happy, intelligent, and immortal beings having 
 been produced? Oh yes ! but no advantage " to this society." What is 
 this " society?" this " whole?" this " state?" Is it anything else but a 
 word of convenience to express at once the aggregate of confederated in- 
 dividuals living in a certain district ? Let the sum total of each man's 
 happiness be supposed = 1000 ; and suppose ten thousand men prod r.n d, 
 who neither made swords nor poison, or found corn or clothes for those 
 who did, but who procured by their labour food and raiment for them- 
 selves, and for their children ; would not that society be richer by 
 10,000,000 parts of happiness? And think you it possible, that ten 
 thousand happy human beings can exist together without increasing 
 each other's happiness, or that it will not overflow into countless chan- 
 nels,* and diffuse itself through the rest of the society? 
 
 * Well, and in the spirit of genuine philoso- Providence, by the ceaseless activity which 
 
 phy, does the poet describe such beings as men it has implanted in our nature, has suffi- 
 
 " Who being innocent do for that cause ciently guarded against an innocence without 
 
 Bestir them in good deeds.'' virtue. 
 WORDSWORTH.
 
 Section I. Essay 14. 195 
 
 The poor vine-dresser rises from sweet sleep, worships his Maker, goes 
 with his wife and children into his little plot, returns to his hut at 
 noon, and eats the produce of the similar labour of a former day. Is he 
 useful ? No ! not yet. Suppose, then, that during the remaining hours 
 of the day he endeavoured to provide for his moral and intellectual 
 appetites, by physical experiments and philosophical research, by ac- 
 quiring knowledge for bimself, and communicating it to his wife and 
 children. Would, he be useful then ? " He useful ! The state would 
 lose nothing although the vine-dresser and his land were both swal- 
 lowed up by an earthquake !" Well then, instead of devoting the latter 
 half of each day to his closet, his laboratory, or to neighbourly conversa- 
 tion, suppose he goes to the vineyard, and from the ground which would 
 maintain in health, virtue, and wisdom, twenty of his fellow-creatures, 
 helps to raise a quantity of liquor that will disease the bodies and 
 debauch the souls of a hundred Is he useful now ? Oh yes ! a very 
 useful man, and a most excellent citizen ! ! 
 
 In what then does the law between state and state differ from that 
 between man and man ? For hitherto we seem to have discovered no 
 variation. The law of nations is the law of common honesty, modified 
 by the circumstances in which states differ from individuals. According 
 to The Friend's best understanding, the differences may be reduced to 
 this one point ; that the influence of example in any extraordinary case, 
 as the possible occasion of an action apparently like, though in reality 
 very different, is of considerable importance in the moral calculations of 
 an individual ; but of little, if any, in those of a nation. The reasons 
 are evident. In the first place, in cases concerning which there can be 
 any dispute between an honest man and a true patriot, the circumstances, 
 which at once authorize and discriminate the measure, are so marked 
 and peculiar and notorious, that it is incapable of being drawn into a 
 precedent by any other state under dissimilar circumstances ; except 
 perhaps as a mere pretext for an action, which had been predetermined 
 without reference to this authority, and which would have taken place, 
 though it had never existed. But if so strange a thing should happen 
 as a second coincidence of the same circumstances, or of circumstances 
 sufficiently similar to render the prior measure a fair precedent ; then, if 
 the one action was justifiable, so will the other be ; and without any 
 reference to the former, which in this case may be useful as a light, but 
 cannot be requisite as an authority. Secondly, in extraordinary cases it 
 is ridiculous to suppose that the conduct of states will be determined by 
 example. We know that they neither will, nor in the nature of things 
 can be determined by any other consideration but that of the imperious 
 circumstances, which render a particular measure advisable. But lastly, 
 and more important than all, individuals are and must be under positive 
 laws : and so very great is the advantage which results from the regu-
 
 196 The Friend. 
 
 larity of legal decisions, and their consequent capability of being fore- 
 known and relied upon, that equity itself must sometimes be sacrificed 
 to it. For the very letter of a positive law is part of its spirit. But 
 states neither are, nor can be, under positive laws. The only fixed part 
 of the law of nations is the spirit ; the letter of the law consists wholly 
 in the circumstances to which the spirit of the law is applied. It is mere 
 puerile declamation to rail against a country, as having imitated the 
 very measures for which it had most blamed its ambitions enemy, if 
 that enemy had previously changed all the relative circumstances which 
 had existed for him, and therefore rendered his conduct iniquitous ; but 
 which, having been removed, however iniquitously, cannot without 
 absurdity be supposed any longer to control the measures of an innocent 
 nation, necessitated to struggle for its own safety ; especially when the 
 measures in question were adopted for the very purpose of restoring 
 those circumstances. 
 
 There are times when it would be wise to regard patriotism as a light 
 that is in danger of being blown out, rather than as a fire which needs 
 to be fanned by the winds of party spirit. There are times when party 
 spirit, without any unwonted excess, may yet become faction ; and 
 though in general not less useful than natural in a free government, 
 may under particular emergencies prove fatal to freedom itself. I trust 
 1 am writing to those who think with me, that to have blackened a 
 ministry, however strong or rational our dislike may be of the persons 
 who compose it, is a poor excuse and a miserable compensation for the 
 crime of unnecessarily blackening the character of our country. Under 
 this conviction, I request my reader to cast his eye back on my last 
 argument, and then to favour me with his patient attention while I 
 attempt at once to explain its purport and to show its cogency. 
 
 Let us transport ourselves in fancy to the age and country of the 
 Patriarchs, or, if the reader prefers it, to some small colony uninfluenced 
 by the mother country, which has not organized itself into a state, or 
 agreed to acknowledge any one particular governor. We will suppose 
 this colony to consist of from twenty to thirty households or separate 
 establishments, differing greatly from each other in the number of 
 retainers and in extent of possessions. Each household, however, pos- 
 sesses its own domain, the least equally with the greatest, in full right ; 
 and its master is an independent sovereign within his own boundaries. 
 This mutual understanding and tacit agreement we may well suppose to 
 have been the gradual result of many feuds, which had produced misery 
 to all and real advantage to none ; and that the same sober and reflect- 
 ing persons, dispersed through the different establishments, who had 
 brought about this state of things, had likewise coincided in the pro- 
 priety of some other prudent and humane regulations, which from the 
 authority of these wise men on points in which they were unanimous
 
 Section I. Essay 14. 197 
 
 and from the evident good sense of the rules themselves, were acknow- 
 ledged throughout the whole colony, though they were never voted into 
 a formal law, though the determination of the cases, to which these rules 
 were applicable, had not been intrusted to any recognized judge, nor 
 their enforcement delegated to any particular magistrate. Of these 
 virtual laws this, we may safely conclude, would be the chief ; that as 
 no man ought to interfere in the affairs of another against his will, so if 
 any master of a household, instead of occupying himself with the im- 
 provement of his own fields and flocks, or with the better regulation of 
 his own establishment, should be foolish and wicked enough to employ 
 his children and servants in breaking down the fences and taking pos- 
 session of the lands and property of a fellow-colonist, or in turning the 
 head of the family out of his house, and forcing those that remained to 
 acknowledge himself as their governor instead, and to obey whomever 
 he might please to appoint as his deputy that it then became the 
 duty and interest of the other colonists to join against the aggressor, and 
 to do all in their power to prevent him from accomplishing his bad pur- 
 poses, or to compel him to make restitution and compensation. The 
 mightier the aggressor, and the weaker the injured party, the more 
 cogent would the motive become for restraining the one and protecting 
 the other. For it was plain that he who was suffered to overpower, one 
 by one, the weaker proprietors, and render the members of their esta- 
 blishment subservient to his will, must soon become an overmatch for 
 those who were formerly his equals ; and the mightiest would differ 
 from the meanest only by being the last victim. 
 
 This allegoric fable faithfully portrays the law of nations and the 
 balance of power among the European states. Let us proceed with 
 it in the form of history. In the second or third generation the pro- 
 prietors too generally disregarded the good old opinion, that what in- 
 jured any could be of real advantage to none; and treated those, who 
 still professed it, as fit only to instruct children in their catechism. 
 By the avarice of some, the cowardice of others, and by the corruption 
 and want of foresight in the greater part, the former state of things had 
 been completely changed, and the tacit compact set at nought^ the 
 general acknowledgment of which had been so instrumental in producing 
 this state, and in preserving it as long as it lasted. The stronger had 
 preyed on the weaker, whose wrongs, however, did not remain long 
 unavenged. For the same selfishness and blindness to the future, which 
 had induced the wealthy to trample on the rights of the poorer pro- 
 prietors, prevented them from assisting each other effectually when they 
 were themselves attacked, one after the other, by the most powerful of 
 all ; and from a concurrence of circumstances attacked so successfully, 
 that of the whole colony few remained, that were not, directly or indi- 
 rectly, the creatures and dependents of one overgrown establishment.
 
 198 The Friend. 
 
 Say rather, of its new master, an adventurer whom chance and poverty 
 had brought thither, and who in better times would have been employed 
 in the swine-yard, or the slaughter-house, from his moody temper and 
 his aversion to all the arts that tended to improve either the land or 
 those that were to be maintained by its produce. He was however 
 eminent for other qualities, which were still better suited to promote 
 his power among those degenerate colonists ; for he feared neither God 
 nor his own conscience. The most solemn oaths could not bind him ; 
 the most deplorable calamities could not awaken his pity ; and when 
 others were asleep, he was either brooding over some scheme of robbery 
 and murder, or with a part of his banditti actually employed in laying 
 waste his neighbours' fences, or in undermining the walls of their houses. 
 His natural cunning, undistracted by any honest avocations, and meet- 
 ing with no obstacle either in his head or heart, and above all, having 
 been quickened and strengthened by constant practice and favoured by 
 the times with all conceivable opportunities, ripened at last into a sur- 
 prising genius for oppression and tyranny : and, as we must distinguish 
 him by some name, we will call him Misetes. The only estate, which 
 remained able to bid defiance to this common enemy, was that of Pam- 
 philus, superior to Misetes in wealth, and his equal in strength ; though 
 not in the power of doing mischief, and still less in the wish. Their 
 characters were indeed perfectly contrasted ; for it may be truly said, 
 that throughout the whole cojony there was not a single establishment 
 which did not owe some of its best buildings, the increased produce of 
 its fields, its improved implements of industry, and the general more 
 decent appearance of its members, to the information given and the 
 encouragements afforded by Pamphilus and those of his household. 
 Whoever raised more than they wanted for their own establishment 
 were sure to find a ready purchaser in Pamphilus, and oftentimes for 
 articles which they had themselves been before accustomed to regard as 
 worthless, or even as nuisances ; and they received in return things 
 necessary or agreeable, and always in one respect at least useful, that 
 they roused the purchaser to industry and its accompanying virtues. 
 In this intercommunion all were benefited ; for the wealth of Pamphilus 
 was increased by the increasing industry of his fellow-colonists, and 
 their industry needed the support and encouraging influences of Pam- 
 philus's capital. To this good man and his estimable household Misetes 
 bore the most implacable hatred, and had publicly sworn that he would 
 root him out ; the only sort of oath which he was not likely to break by 
 any want of will or effort on his own part. But fortunately for Pam- 
 philus, his main property consisted of one compact estate divided from 
 Misetes and the rest of the colony by a wide and dangerous river, with 
 the exception of one small plantation which belonged to an independent 
 proprietor whom we will name Lathrodacnus ; a man of no influence in
 
 Section I. Essay 14. 199 
 
 the colony, but much respected by Pamphilus. They were indeed rela- 
 tions by blood originally, and afterwards by intermarriages; and it was 
 to the power and protection of Pamphilus that Lathrodacnus owed his 
 independence and prosperity, amid the general distress and slavery of 
 the other proprietors. Not less fortunately did it happen, that the 
 means of passing the river were possessed exclusively by Pamphilus and 
 his above-mentioned kinsman ; and not only the boats themselves, but 
 all the means of constructing and navigating them. As the very exist- 
 ence of Lathrodacnus, as an independent colonist, had no solid ground, 
 but in the strength and prosperity of Pamphilus ; and as the interests 
 of the one in no respect interfered with those of the other ; Pamphilus 
 fora considerable time remained without any anxiety, and looked on the 
 river-craft of Latlmxlncnus with as little alarm as on those of his own 
 establishment. It did not disquiet him, that Lathrodacnus had re- 
 mained neutral in the quarrel. Nay, though many advantages, which 
 iceful times would have belonged to Pamphilus, were now trans- 
 ferred to his neighbour, and had more than doubled the extent and 
 profit of his concern, Pamphilus, instead of repining at this, was glad that 
 some good at least to some one came out of the general evil. Great then 
 was his surprise when he discovered, that without any conceivable 
 reason Lathrodacnus had employed himself in building and collecting 
 a very unusual number of such boats as were of no use to him in his 
 traffic, but designed exclusively as ferry-boats; and what was still 
 stranger and more alarming, that he chose to keep these in a bay on the 
 other side of the river, opposite to the one small plantation, alongside 
 of Pamphilus' estate, from which plantation Lathrodacnus derived the 
 materials for building them. Willing to believe this conduct a transient 
 whim of his neighbour's, occasioned partly by his vanity, and partly by 
 envy (to which latter passion the want of a liberal education, and the 
 not sufficiently comprehending the grounds of his own prosperity, had 
 tendered him subject), Pam-philus contented himself for a while with 
 urgent yet friendly remonstrances. The only answer which Lathro- 
 dacnus vouchsafed to return was, that by the law of the colony, which 
 Pamphilus had made so many professions of revering, every proprietor 
 was an independent sovereign within his own boundaries; that the 
 boats were his own, and the opposite shore, to which they were fastened, 
 part of a field which belonged to him ; and, in short, that Pamphilus 
 had no right to interfere with the management of his property, which, 
 trifling as it might be, compared with that of Pamphilus, was no less 
 sacred by the law of the colony. To this uncourteous rebuff, Pamphilus 
 replied with a fervent wish, that Lathrodacnus could with more pro- 
 priety have appealed to a law, as still subsisting, which, he well knew, 
 had been effectually annulled by the unexampled tyranny and success 
 of Misetes, together with the circumstances which had given occasion to
 
 200 Tiie Friend. 
 
 the law, and made it wise and practicable. He further urged, that thir 
 law was not made for the benefit of any one man, but for the common 
 safety and advantage of all ; that it was absurd to suppose that either 
 he (Pamphilus) or that Lathrodacnus himself, or any other proprietor, 
 ever did or could acknowledge this law in the sense that it was to sur- 
 vive the very circumstances of which it was the mere reflex. Much 
 less could they have even tacitly assented to it, if they had ever under- 
 stood it as authorizing one neighbour to endanger the absolute ruin of 
 another, who had perhaps fifty times the property to lose, and perhaps 
 ten times the number of souls to answer for, and yet forbidding the 
 injured person to take any steps in his own defence ; and lastly, that 
 this law gave no right without imposing a corresponding duty. There- 
 fore, if Lathrodacnus insisted on the rights given him by the law, he 
 ought at the same time to perform the duties which it required, and 
 join heart and hand with Pamphilus in his endeavours to defend his 
 independence, to restore the former state of the colony, and with this 
 to re-enforce the old law in opposition to Misetes, who had enslaved 
 the one and set at naught the other. So ardently was Pamphilus 
 attached to the law, that excepting his own safety and independence 
 there was no price which he would not pay, no sacrifice which he would 
 not make, for its restoration. His reverence for the very memory of the 
 law was such, that the mere appearance of transgressing it would be a 
 heavy affliction to him. In the hope therefore of gaining from the 
 avarice of Lathrodacnus that consent which he could not obtain from 
 his justice or neighbourly kindness, he offered to give him in full right 
 a plantation ten times the value of all his boats, and yet, whenever the 
 colony should once more be settled, to restore the boats ; if he would 
 only permit Pamphilus to secure them during the present state o 
 things, on his side of the river, retaining whatever he really wanted for 
 the passage of his own household. To all these persuasions and en- 
 treaties Lathrodacnus turned a deaf ear ; and Pamphilus remained 
 agitated and undetermined, till at length he received certain intelligence 
 that Lathrodacnus had called a council of the chief members of his esta- 
 blishment, in consequence of the threats of Misetes, that he would treat 
 him as the friend and ally of Pamphilus, if he did not declare himself 
 his enemy. Partly for the sake of a large meadow belonging to him on 
 the other side of the river which it was not easy to secure from the 
 tyrant, but still more from envy and the irritable temper of a proud 
 inferior, Lathrodacnus, and with him the majority of his advisers (though 
 to the great discontent of the few wise heads among them), settled it 
 finally that if he should be again pressed on this point by Misetes, he 
 would join him and commence hostilities against his old neighbour and 
 kinsman. It is indeed but too probable that he had long brooded over 
 this scheme ; for to what other end could he have strained his income,
 
 Section 1. Essay 14. 201 
 
 and overworked his servants in building and fitting up such a number 
 of passage-boats? As soon as this information was received by Pam- 
 philus, and this from a quarter which it was impossible for him to dis- 
 credit, he oK-yed the dictates of self-preservation, took possession of the 
 
 e-boats by force, and brought them over to his own grounds; but 
 without any further injury to Lathrodacnus, and still urging him to 
 accept a cumjiensation and continue in that amity which was so mani- 
 
 t heir common interest. Instantly a great outcry was raised against 
 Pamphilus, who was charged in the bitterest terms with having first 
 abused Misetes, and then imitated him in his worst acts of violence. 
 In the calmness of a good conscience Pamphilus contented himself with 
 the following reply ; " Kven so, if i were out on a shooting party with a 
 Quaker for n;y companion, and saw coming on towards us an old footpad 
 and murderer, who had made known his intention of killing me wherever 
 he might meet me: and if my companion the Quaker would neither 
 give me up his gun, nor even discharge it as (we will suppose) I had 
 just before unfortunately discharged my own ; if he would neither pro- 
 mise to assist me nor even promise to make the least resistance to the 
 robber's attempt to disarm himself; you might call me a robber for 
 wresting this gun from my companion, though for no other purpose but 
 that I might at least do for myself what he ought to have done, 
 but would not do either for or with me! Even so, and as plausibly, 
 you might exclaim, the hypocrite Pamphilus ! Who has not been 
 deafened with his complaints against robbers and footpads? and lo! he 
 himself has turned footpad, and commenced by robbing his peaceful 
 and unsuspecting companion of his double-barrelled gun !" It is the 
 business of The Friend to lay down principles, nottomake the applications 
 of them to particular, much less to recent cases. If any such there be 
 to which these principles are fairly applicable, the reader is no less 
 master of the facts than the writer of the present essay. If not, the 
 principles remain ; and The Friend has finished the task which the plan 
 of this work imposed on him, of proving the identity of international 
 law and the law of morality in spirit, and the reasons of their difference 
 in practice, in those extreme cases in which alone they have been 
 allowed to differ. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 THE preceding essay has more than its natural interest for the author 
 from the abuse which it brought down on him as the defender 
 of the attack on Copenhagen, and the seizure of the Danish fleet. The 
 odium of the measure rested wholly on the commencement of hostilities 
 without a previous proclamation of war. Now it is remarkable, that in 
 a work published many years before this event, Professor Beck had made 
 this very point the subject of a particular chapter in his admirable
 
 202 The Friend. 
 
 comments on the law of nations ; and every one of the circumstances 
 stated by him as forming an exception to the moral necessity of previous 
 proclamation of war, concurred in the Copenhagen expedition. I need 
 mention two only. First, by the act or acts, which provoked the ex- 
 pedition, the party attacked had knowingly placed himself in a state of 
 war. Let A stand for the Danish, B for the British, government. A 
 had done that which he himself was fully aware would produce imme- 
 diate hostilities on the part of B, the moment it came to the knowledge 
 of the latter. The act itself was a waging of war against B on the part 
 of A. B therefore was the party attacked ; and common sense dictates, 
 that to resist and baffle an aggression requires no proclamation to justify 
 it. I perceive a dagger aimed at my back, in consequence of a warning 
 given me, just time enough to prevent the blow, knock the assassin 
 down, and disarm him ; and he reproaches me with treachery, because 
 forsooth I had not sent him a challenge ! Secondly, when the object 
 which justifies and necessitates the war would be frustrated by the 
 proclamation. For neither state or individual can be presumed to have 
 given either a formal or a tacit assent to any such modification of a 
 positive right, as would suspend and virtually annul the right itself ; 
 the right of self-preservation, for instance. This second exception will 
 often depend on the existence of the first, and must always receive 
 additional strength and clearness from it. That both of these exceptions 
 appertain to the case in question, is now notorious. But at the time 
 I found it necessary to publish the following comment, which I adapt 
 to the present rifacciamento of The Friend, as illustrative of the funda- 
 mental principle of public justice ; viz. that personal and national 
 morality, ever one and the same, dictate the same measures under the 
 same circumstances, and different measures only as far as the circum- 
 stances are different. 
 
 As my limits will not allow me to do more in the second, or ethical, 
 section of The Friend, than to propose and develope my own system, 
 without controverting the systems of others, I shall therefore devote 
 the essay, which follows this postscript, to the consideration of the 
 problem : How far is the moral nature of an action constituted by its 
 individual circumstances? 
 
 It was once said to me, when the Copenhagen affair was in dispute, 
 " You do not see the enormity, because it is an affair between state and 
 state : conceive a similar case between man and man, and you would 
 both see and abhor it." Now, I was neither defending or attacking 1 the 
 measure itself. My arguments were confined to the grounds which had 
 been taken both in the arraigning of that measure and in its defence, 
 because I thought both equally untenable. I was not enough master of 
 facts to form a decisive opinion on the enterprise, even for my own mind ; 
 but I had no hesitation in affirming, that the principles, on which it
 
 Section 1. Essay 14. 203 
 
 was defended in the legislature, appeared to me fitter objects of indig- 
 nant reprobation than the act itself. This having been premised, I 
 replied to the assertion above stated, by asserting the direct contrary : 
 namely, that were a similar case conceived between man and man, the 
 st arraigners of the measure, would, on their grounds, find nothing 
 to blame in it. How was I to prove this assertion? Clearly, by 
 imagining some case between individuals living in the same relations 
 toward each other, in which the several states of Europe exist or existed. 
 My allegory, therefore, so far from being a disguise, was a necessary part 
 of the main argument, a case in point, to prove the identity of the law of 
 nations with the law of conscience. We have only to conceive in- 
 dividuals in the same relations as states, in order to learn that the rules 
 emanating from international law differ from those of private honesty, 
 solely through the difference of the circumstances. 
 
 But why did not The Friend avow the application of the principle to 
 the seizure of the Danish fleet ? Because I did not possess sufficient 
 evidence to prove to others, or even to decide for myself, that my 
 principle ivas applicable to this particular act. In the case of Pam- 
 philus and Lathrodacnus, the prudence and necessity of the measure 
 were certain ; and, this taken for granted, I showed its perfect rightful- 
 ness. In the affair of Copenhagen I had no doubt of our right to do as 
 we did, supposing the necessity, or at least the extreme prudence of the 
 measure ; taking for granted that there existed a motive adequate to 
 the action, and that the action was an adequate means of realizing the 
 motive. 
 
 But this I was not authorized to take for granted in the real, as I had 
 been in the imaginary case. I saw many reasons for the affirmative, 
 and many for the negative. For the former, the certainty of an hostile 
 design on the part of the Danes, the alarming state of Ireland, that 
 vulnerable heel of the British Achilles ! and the immense difference 
 between military and naval superiority. Our naval power collectively 
 might have defied that of the whole world ; but it was widely scattered, 
 and a combined operation from the Baltic, Holland, Brest, and Lisbon, 
 might easily bring together a fleet double to that which we could have 
 brought against it during the short time that might be necessary to 
 convey thirty or forty thousand men to Ireland. On the other hand, it 
 seemed equally clear that Buonaparte needed sailors rather than ships; 
 and that we took the ships and left him the Danish sailors, whose 
 presence in the fleet at Antwerp turned the scale, perhaps, in favour of 
 the worse than disastrous expedition to Walcheren. 
 
 But I repeat, that The Friend had no concern with the measure 
 itself, but only with the grounds or principles on which it had been 
 attacked or defended. Those who attacked it declared that a right had 
 been violated by us, and that no motive could justify such violation,
 
 204 The Friend. 
 
 however imperious that motive might be. In opposition to such 
 reasoners, I proved that no such right existed, or is deducible either 
 from international law or the law of private morality. Those again who 
 defended the seizure of the Danish fleet, conceded that it was a violation of 
 right ; but affirmed, that such violation was justified by the urgency of the 
 motive. It was asserted (as I have before noticed in the introduction to 
 the subject) that national policy cannot in all cases be subordinated to 
 the laws of morality ; in other words, that a government may act with 
 injustice, and yet remain blameless. To prove this assertion as ground- 
 less and unnecessary as it is tremendous, formed the chief object of the 
 whole disquisition. I trust then, that my candid judges will rest 
 satisfied that it is not only the profession and pretext of The Friend, but 
 his constant plan and actual intention to establish principles ; that he 
 refers to particular facts for no other purpose than that of giving illus- 
 tration and interest to those principles ; and that to invent principles 
 with a view to particular cases, whether with the motive of attacking 
 or arraigning a transitory cabinet, is a baseness which will scarcely be 
 attributed to The Friend by any one who understands the work, even 
 though the suspicion should not have been precluded by a knowledge of 
 the author. 
 
 ESSAY XV. 
 
 Ja, ich bin der Atheist und Gottlose, der einer imaginaren Berechnungslehre, einer blossen 
 Einbildung von allgemeinen Folgen, die nie folgen konnen, zuwider liigen will, wie Desde- 
 mona sterbend log ; liigen und betriigen will, wie der fur Orest sich darstellende Pylades ; 
 Tempelraub unternehmen, wie David ; ja, Aehren ausraufen am Sabbath, auch nur darom, 
 weil mich hungert, und das Gesetz um dee menschen wllen gemacht ist, nicht der Mensch um 
 des Gesetzes willen. 
 
 ( Translation.) Yes, I am that Atheist, that godless person, who in opposition to an imagin- 
 ary doctrine of calculation, to a mere ideal fabric of general consequences, that can never be 
 realized, would lie, as the dying Desdemona lied ;* lie and deceive as Pylades when he per- 
 sonated Orestes ; would commit sacrilege with David ; yea, and pluck ears of corn on the 
 Sabbath, for no other reason than that I was fainting from lack of food, and that the law was 
 made for man and not man for the law. JACOBI'S LETTER TO FICHTE. 
 
 IF there be no better doctrine, I would add ! Much and often have I 
 suffered from having ventured to avow my doubts concerning the 
 truth of certain opinions, which had been sanctified in the minds of my 
 hearers, by the authority of some reigning great name ; even though in 
 
 * Emilia. Oh who hath done Emilia. She said so. I must needs re- 
 
 This,deed? port the truth. 
 
 Desd. Nobody. I myself. Farewell. Othello. She's like a liar gone to burning 
 
 Commend me to my kind Lord fare- hell ! 
 
 well 'Twas I that killed her ! 
 
 Othello. You heard her say yourself, it Emilia. The more angel she ! 
 
 was not I. OTHELLO, ACT 5, Sc. 1.
 
 Section 1. Essay 15. 205 
 
 addition to my own reasons, I had all the greatest names from the 
 Reformation to the Revolution on my side. I could not, therefore, 
 summon courage, without some previous pioneering, to declare publicly, 
 that the principles of morality taught in the present work will be in 
 direct opposition to the system of the late Dr. Paley. This confession 
 I should have deferred to a future time, if my opinions on the grounds 
 of international morality had not been contradictory to a fundamental 
 point in Paley's System of moral and political philosophy. I mean that 
 chapter which treats of general consequences, as the chief and best 
 criterion of the right or wrong of particular actions. Now this doctrine 
 I conceive to be neither tenable in reason nor safe in practice ; and the 
 following are the grounds of my opinion. 
 
 First : this criterion is purely ideal, and so far possesses no advantages 
 over the former systems of morality ; while it labours under defects 
 with which those are not justly chargeable. It is ideal ; for it depends 
 on, and must vary with, the notions of the individual, who in order to 
 determine the nature of an action is to make the calculation of its 
 general consequences. Here, as in all other calculation, the result 
 depends on that faculty of the soul in the degrees of which men most 
 vary from each other, and which is itself most affected by accidental 
 advantages or disadvantages of education, natural talent, and acquired 
 knowledge the faculty, I mean, of foresight and systematic compre- 
 hension. But surely morality, which is of equal importance to all men, 
 ought to be grounded, if possible, in that part of our nature which in 
 all men may and ought to be the same : in the conscience and the 
 common sense. Secondly : this criterion confounds morality with law ; 
 and when the author adds, that in all probability the Divine justice 
 will be regulated in the final judgment by a similar rule, he draws 
 away the attention from the will, that is, from the inward motives and 
 impulses which constitute the essence of morality, to the outward act ; 
 and thus changes the virtue commanded by the gospel into the mere 
 legality which was to be enlivened by it. One of the most persuasive, 
 if not one of the strongest, arguments for a future state, rests on the 
 belief, that although by the necessity of things our outward and tem- 
 poral welfare must be regulated by our outward actions, which alone 
 can be the objects and guides of human law, there must yet needs come 
 a juster and more appropriate sentence hereafter, in which our inten- 
 tions will be considered, and our happiness and misery made to accord 
 with the grounds of our actions. Our fellow-creatures can only judge 
 what we are by what we do ; but in the eye of our Maker what we do is 
 of no worth, except as it flows from what we are. Though the fig-tree 
 should produce no visible fruit, yet if the living sap is in it, and if it has 
 struggled to put forth buds and blossoms which have been prevented from 
 maturing by inevitable contingencies of tempests or untimely frosts, the
 
 206 The Friend. 
 
 virtuous sap will be accounted as fruit : and the curse of barrenness 
 will light on many a tree, from the boughs of which hundreds have 
 been satisfied, because the omniscient Judge knows that the fruits 
 were threaded to the boughs artificially by the outward working of base 
 fear and selfish hopes, and were neither nourished by the love of God or 
 of man, nor grew out of the graces engrafted on the stock by religion. 
 This is not, indeed, all that is meant in the Apostle's use of the word, 
 faith, as the sole principle of justification, but it is included in his 
 meaning and forms an essential part of it ; and I can conceive nothing 
 more groundless, than the alarm, that this doctrine may be prejudicial 
 to outward utility and active well-doing. To suppose that a man 
 should cease to be beneficent by becoming benevolent, seems to me 
 scarcely less absurd than to fear that a fire may prevent heat, or that a 
 perennial fountain may prove the occasion of drought. Just and 
 generous actions may proceed from bad motives, and both may, and 
 often do, originate in parts and as it were fragments of our nature. A 
 lascivious man may sacrifice half his estate to rescue his friend from 
 prison, for he is constitutionally sympathetic, and the better part of his 
 nature happened to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards 
 exert the same disregard of money in an attempt to seduce that friend's 
 wife or daughter. But faith is a total act of the soul ; it is the whole 
 state of the mind, or it is not at all ; and in this consists its power as 
 well as its exclusive worth. 
 
 This subject is of such immense importance to the welfare of all men, 
 and the understanding of it to the present tranquillity of many thousands 
 at this time and in this country, that should there be one only of all my 
 readers who should receive conviction or an additional light from what 
 is here written, I dare hope that a great majority of the rest would in 
 consideration of that solitary effect think these paragraphs neither wholly 
 uninteresting or altogether without value. For this cause I will 
 endeavour so to explain this principle that it may be intelligible to the 
 simplest capacity. The Apostle tells those who would substitute obedi- 
 ence for faith (addressing the man as obedience personified) Know that 
 thou bearest not the root, but the root thee * a sentence which, me- 
 thinks, should have rendered all disputes concerning faith and good works 
 impossible among those who profess to take the Scriptures for their guide. 
 It would appear incredible, if the fact were not notorious, that two sects 
 should ground and justify their opposition to each other, the one on the 
 words of the Apostle, that we are justified by faith, i. e. the inward and 
 absolute ground of our actions ; and the other on the declaration of 
 Christ, that. He will judge us according to our actions. As if an action 
 could be either good or bad disjointed from its principle ! as if it could 
 be, in the Christian and only proper sense of the word, an action at all 
 * Rom. xi. 18.
 
 Section I. Essay 15. 207 
 
 and not rather a mechanic series of lucky or unlucky motions ! Yet it 
 may be well worth the while to show the beauty and harmony of these 
 twin truths, or rather of this one great truth considered in its two prin- 
 cipal bearings. God will judge each man before all men ; consequently 
 He will judge us relatively to man. But man knows not the heart of 
 man ; scarcely does any one know his own. There must therefore be 
 outward and visible signs, by which men may be able to judge of the 
 inward state ; and thereby justify the ways of God to their own spirits, 
 in the reward or punishment of themselves and their fellow-men . Now 
 good works are these signs, and as such become necessary. In short 
 there are two parties, God and the human race ; and both are to be 
 satisfied ! first, God, who seeth the root and knoweth the heart : therefore 
 there must be faith, or the entire and absolute principle. Then man, 
 who can judge only by the fruits : therefore that faith must bear fruits 
 of righteousness, that principle must manifest itself by actions. But 
 that which God sees, that alone justifies ! What man sees, does in this 
 life show that the justifying principle may be the root of the thing seen ; 
 but in the final judgment the acceptance of these actions will show, that 
 this principle actually was the root. In this world a good life is a pre- 
 sumption of a good man ; his virtuous actions are the only possible, 
 though still ambiguous, manifestations of his virtue ; but the absence of 
 a good life is not only a presumption, but a proof of the contrary as long 
 as it continues. Good works may exist without saving principles, and 
 therefore cannot contain in themselves the principle of salvation ; but 
 saving principles never did, never can, exist without good works. On a 
 subject of such infinite importance, I have feared prolixity less than 
 obscurity. Men often talk against faith, and make strange monsters in 
 their imagination of those who profess to abide by the words of the 
 Apostle interpreted literally ; and yet in their ordinary feelings they 
 themselves judge and act by a similar principle. For what is love 
 without kind offices, wherever they are possible ? (and they are always 
 jiossible, if not by actions commonly so called, yet by kind words, by 
 kind looks ; and, where even these are out of our power, by kind thoughts 
 and fervent prayers !) yet what noble mind would not be offended, if he 
 were supposed to value the serviceable offices equally with the love that 
 produced them ; or if he were thought to value the love for the sake of 
 the services, and not the services for the sake of the love? 
 
 I return to the question of general consequences, considered as the 
 criterion of moral actions. The admirer of Paley's system is required to 
 suspend for a short time the objection which, I doubt not, he lias 
 already made, that general consequences are stated by Faley as the 
 criterion of the action, not of the agent. I will endeavour to satisfy him 
 on this point, when I have completed my present chain of argument. It 
 has been shown, that this criterion is no less ideal than that of any
 
 208 TJte Friend. 
 
 former system ; that is, it is no less incapable of receiving any external 
 experimental proof, compulsory on the understandings of all men, such 
 as the criteria exhibited in chemistry. Yet, unlike the elder systems of 
 morality, it remains in the world of the senses, without deriving any 
 evidence therefrom. The agent's mind is compelled to go out of itself 
 in order to bring back conjectures, the probability of which will vary 
 with the shrewdness of the individual. But this criterion is not only 
 ideal, it is likewise imaginary. If we believe in a scheme of Providence, 
 all actions alike work for good. There is not the least ground for 
 supposing that the crimes of Xero were less instrumental in bringing 
 about our present advantages than the virtues of the Antonines. Lastly; 
 the criterion is either nugatory or false. It is demonstrated, that the 
 only real consequences cannot be meant. The individual is to imagine 
 what the general consequences would be, all other things remaining the 
 same, if all men were to act as he is about to act. I scarcely need 
 remind the reader, what a source of self-delusion and sophistry is here 
 open to a mind in a state of temptation. Will it not say to itself, I 
 know that all men will not act so ; and the immediate good consequences, 
 which I shall obtain, are real, while the bad consequences are imaginary 
 and improbable? When the foundations of morality have once been 
 laid in outward consequences, it will be in vain to recall to the mind 
 what the consequences would be, were all men to reason in the same 
 way ; for the very excuse of this mind to itself is, that neither its action 
 nor its reasoning is likely to have any consequences at all, its immediate 
 object excepted. But suppose the mind in its sanest state. How can it 
 possibly form a notion of the nature of an action considered as indefinitely 
 multiplied, unless it has previously a distinct notion of the nature 
 of the single action itself, which is the multiplicand ? If I conceive a 
 crown multiplied a hundred fold, the single crown enables me to under- 
 stand what a hundred crowns are ; but how can the notion hundred teach 
 me what a crown is ? For the crown substitute X. Y. or abracadabra, 
 ana my imagination may multiply it to infinity, yet remain as much at 
 a loss as before. But if there be any means of ascertaining the action in 
 and for itself, what further do we want ? Would we give light to the 
 sun, or look at our own fingers through a telescope ? The nature of every 
 action is determined by all its circumstances ; alter the circumstances 
 and a similar set of motions may be repeated, but they are no longer the 
 same or a similar action. What would a surgeon say if he were advised 
 not to cut off a limb, because if all men were to do the same the conse- 
 quences would be dreadful? Would not his answer be " Whoever 
 does the same under the same circumstances, and with the same motives, 
 will do right ; but if the circumstances and motives are different, what 
 have I to do with it ?" I confess myself unable to divine any possible 
 use, or even meaning, in this doctrine of general consequences, unless it
 
 Section I. Essay 15. 209 
 
 be, that in all our actions we are bound to consider the effect of our 
 example, and to guard as much as possible against the hazard of their 
 being misunderstood. I will not slaughter a lamb, or drown a litter of 
 kittens in the presence of my child of four years old, because the child 
 cannot understand my action, but will understand that his father has 
 inflicted pain upon, and taken away life from, beings that had never 
 offended him. All this is true, and no man in his senses ever thought 
 otherwise. But methinks it is strange to state that as a criterion of mora- 
 lity which is no more than an accessary aggravation of an action bad in its 
 own nature, or a ground of caution as to the mode and time in which we 
 are to do or suspend what is in itself good or innocent. 
 
 The duty of setting a good example is no doubt a most important 
 duty ; but the example is good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, accord- 
 the action may be which has a chance of being imitated. I once 
 knew a small, but (in outward circumstances at least) respectable con- 
 gregation, four-fifths of whom professed that they went to church entirely 
 for the example's sake ; in other words, to cheat each other and act a 
 common lie ! These rational Christians had not considered that example 
 may increase the good or evil of an action, but can never constitute 
 either. If it was a foolish thing to kneel when they were not inwardly 
 praying, or to sit and listen to a discourse of which they believed little 
 aud cared nothing, they were setting a foolish example. Persons in their 
 respectable circumstances do not think it necessary to clean shoes, that 
 by their example they may encourage the shoe-black in continuing his 
 occupation ; aud Christianity does not think so meanly of herself as to 
 fear that the poor and afflicted will be a whit the less pious, though they 
 should see reason to believe that those who possessed the good things of 
 the present life, were determined to leave all the blessings of the future 
 for their more humble inferiors. If I have spoken with bitterness let it 
 be recollected that my subject is hypocrisy. 
 
 It is likewise tit, that in all our actions we should have considered 
 how far they are likely to be misunderstood, and from superficial resem- 
 blances to be confounded with, and so appear to authorize, actions of a , 
 very different character. But if this caution be intended for a moral 
 rule, the misunderstanding must be such as might be made by persons 
 who are neither very weak nor very wicked. The apparent resemblances 
 between the good actiuii we were about to du and the bad one which 
 might possibly be done in mistaken imitation of it, must be obvious ; or 
 that which makes them essentially different, must be subtle or recondite. 
 Fur what is there which a wicked man blinded by his passions may not, 
 ;uid which a madman will not, misunderstand? It is ridiculous to frame 
 rules of morality with a view to those who are lit objects only for the 
 physician or the magistrate. 
 
 The question may be thus illustrated. At Florence there is an un- 
 
 P
 
 210 The Friend. 
 
 finished bust of Brutus, by Michael Angelo, under which a Cardinal 
 wrote the following distich : 
 
 Dum Bruti effigiem sculptor de mannore finsit, 
 
 In mentem sceleris venit, et abstinuit 
 
 As the sculptor was forming the effigy of Brutus in marble, he recollected his act of guilt 
 and refrained. 
 
 An English Nobleman, indignant at this distich, wrote immediately 
 under it the following : 
 
 Brutum effinxisset sculptor, sed mente recursat 
 
 Multa vlri virtus ; sistit et obstupuit 
 
 The sculptor u-otdd have framed a Brtttus, but Vie vast and manifold virtue of the man 
 flashed upon his thought : he stopped and remained in astonished admiration. 
 
 Now which is the nobler and more moral sentiment, the Italian Car- 
 dinal's or the English Nobleman's ? The Cardinal would appeal to the 
 doctrine of general consequences, and pronounce the death of Czesar a 
 murder, and Brutus an assassin. For (he would say) if one man may be 
 allowed to kill another because he thinks him a tyrant, religious or poli- 
 tical frenzy may stamp the name of tyrant on the best of kings ; regi- 
 cide will be justified under the pretence of tyrannicide, and Brutus be 
 quoted as authority for the Clements and Kavaillacs. From kings it 
 may pass to generals and statesmen, and from these to any man whom 
 an enemy or enthusiast may pronounce unfit to live. Thus we may 
 have a cobbler of Messina in every city, and bravos in our streets as 
 common as in those of Naples, with the name Brutus on their stilettos. 
 
 The Englishman would commence his answer by commenting on the 
 words " because he thinks him a tyrant." No ! he would reply, not 
 because the patriot thinks him a tyrant ; but because he knows him to 
 be so, and knows likewise that the vilest of his slaves cannot deny the 
 fact, that he has by violence raised himself above the laws of his 
 country, because he knows that all good and wise men equally with 
 himself abhor the fact ! If there be no such state as that of being broad 
 awake, or no means of distinguishing it when it exists ; if because men 
 sometimes dream that they are awake, it must follow that no man, when 
 awake, can be sure that he is not dreaming ; if because an hypochon- 
 driac is positive that his legs are cylinders of glass, all other men are to 
 learn modesty, and cease to be so positive that their legs are legs ; what 
 possible advantage can your criterion of general consequences jossess 
 over any other rule of direction ? If. no man can be sure that what he 
 thinks a robber with a pistol at his breast demanding his purse, may 
 not be a good friend inquiring after his health ; or that a tyrant (the 
 son of a cobbler perhaps, who at the head of a regiment of perjured 
 traitors, has driven the representatives of his country out of the senate 
 at the point of the bayonet, subverted the constitution which had 
 trusted, enriched, and honoured him, trampled on the laws which before
 
 Section 1. Essay 15. 211 
 
 God and man he had sworn to obey, and finally raised himself above 
 all law) may not, in spite of his own and his neighbours' knowledge of 
 the contrary be a lawful king, who has received his power, however des- 
 potic it may be, from the kings his ancestors, who exercises no other 
 power than what had been -submitted to for centuries, and been acknow- 
 ledged as the law of the country ; on what ground can you possibly ex- 
 pect less fallibility, or a result more to be relied upon in the same man's 
 calculation of your general consequences? Would he, at least, find any 
 difficulty in converting your criterion into an authority for his act? 
 What should prevent a man, whose perceptions and judgments are so 
 strangely distorted, from arguing, that nothing is more devoutly to be 
 wished for, as a general consequence, than that every man, who by vio- 
 lence places himself above the laws of his country, should in all ages 
 and nations be considered by mankind as placed by his own act out of 
 the protection of law, and be treated by them as any other noxious wild 
 beast would be ? Do you think it necessary to try adders by a jury ? 
 Do you hesitate to shoot a mad dog, because it is not in your power to 
 have him first tried and condemned at the Old Bailey ? On the other 
 hand, what consequence can be conceived more detestable, than one 
 which would set a bounty on the most enormous crime in human 
 nature, and establish it as a law of religion and morality that the accom- 
 plishment of the most atrocious guilt invests the perpetrator with im^ 
 punity, and renders his person for ever sacred and inviolable ? For 
 madmen and enthusiasts what avail your moral criterions ? But as to 
 your Neapolitan bravos, if the act of Brutus who 
 
 In pity to the general wrong of Rome, 
 Slew his best lover for the good of Rome, 
 
 authorized by the laws of his country, in manifest opposition to all 
 selfish interests, in the face of the Senate, and instantly presenting him- 
 self and his cause first to that Senate, and then to the assembled Com- 
 mons, by them to stand acquitted or condemned if such an act as this, 
 with all its vast out-jutting circumstances of distinction, can be con- 
 founded by any mind, not frantic, with the crime of a cowardly skulking 
 assassin who hires out his dagger for a few crowns to gratify a hatred 
 not his own, or even with the deed of that man who makes a compro- 
 mise between his revenge and his cowardice, and stabs in the dark the 
 enemy whom he dared not meet in the open field, or summon before 
 the laws of his country what actions can be so different, that they may 
 not be equally confounded ? The ambushed soldier must not fire his 
 musket, lost his example should be quoted by the villain who, to make 
 sure of his booty, discharges his piece at the imsuspicious passenger from 
 behind a hedge. The physician must not administer a solution of 
 arsenic to the leprous, lost his example should be quoted by professional 
 poisoners. If no distinction, full and satisfactory to the conscience and
 
 212 T!te Friend. 
 
 common sense of mankind be afforded by the detestation and horror ex- 
 cited in all men (even in the meanest and most vicious, if they are not 
 wholly monsters), by the act of the assassin, contrasted with the fervent 
 admiration felt by the good and wise in all ages when they mention the 
 name of Brutus ; contrasted with the fact that the honour or disrespect 
 with which that name was spoken of, became an historic criterion of a 
 noble or a base age ; and if it is in vain that our own hearts answer to 
 the question of the Poet 
 
 is there among the adamantine spheres 
 
 Wheeling unshaken through the boundless void, 
 
 Aught that with half such majesty can fill 
 
 The human bosom, as when Urutus rose 
 
 Refulgent from the stroke of Ca>sar's fate 
 
 Amid the crowd of patriots ; and his arm 
 
 Aloft extending, like eternal Jove, 
 
 When guilt brings down the thunder, called aloud 
 
 On Tully's name, and shook his crimson sword, 
 
 And bade the father of his country hail ! 
 
 For lo the Tyrant prostrate on the dust, 
 
 And Rome again is free ! AKEKSIDE. 
 
 If, I say, all this be fallacious and insufficient, can we have any firmer 
 reliance on a cold ideal calculation of imaginary general consequences, 
 which, if they were general, could not be consequences at all ; for they 
 would be effects of the frenzy or frenzied wickedness, which alone could 
 confound actions so utterly dissimilar ? No ! (would the ennobled de- 
 scendant of our Russells or Sidneys conclude) No ! Calumnious bigot ! 
 never yet did a human being become an assassin from his own or the 
 general admiration of the hero Brutus ; but I dare not warrant, that 
 villains might not be encouraged in their trade of secret murder, by 
 finding their own guilt attributed to the Roman patriot, and might not 
 conclude, that if Brutus be no better than an assassin, an assassin can be 
 no worse than Brutus. 
 
 I request, that the preceding be not interpreted as my own judgment 
 on tyrannicide. I think with Machiavel and with Spinosa, for many 
 and weighty reasons assigned by those philosophers, that it is difficult 
 to conceive a case in which a good man would attempt tyrannicide, be- 
 cause it is difficult to conceive one in which a wise man would recom- 
 mend it. In a small state, included within the walls of a single city, 
 and where the tyranny is maintained by foreign guards, it may be 
 otherwise ; but in a nation or empire it is perhaps inconceivable, that 
 the circumstances which made a tyranny possible should not likewise 
 render the removal of the tyrant useless. The patriot's sword may cut 
 off the Hydra's head ; but he possesses no brand to stanch the active 
 corruption of the body, which is sure to reproduce a successor. 
 
 I must now in a few words answer the objection to the former part 
 of my argument (for to that part only the objection applies), namely,
 
 Section I. Essay 16. 213 
 
 that the doctrine of general consequences was stated as the criterion of 
 the action, not of the agent. I might answer, that the author himself 
 had in some measure justified me in not noticing this distinction, by 
 holding forth the probability that the Supreme Judge will proceed by 
 the same rule. The agent may then safely be included in the action, if 
 both here and hereafter the action only and its general consequences will 
 be attended to. But my main ground of justification is, that the dis- 
 tinction itself is merely logical, not real and vital. The character of the 
 a'_'ent is determined by his view of the action ; and that system of mora- 
 lity is alone true and suited to human nature which unites the intention 
 and the motive, the warmth and the light, in one and the same act of 
 mind. This alone is worthy to be called a moral principle. Such a 
 principle may be extracted, though not without difficulty and danger, 
 from the ore of the stoic philosophy ; but it is to be found unalloyed and 
 entire in the Christian system, and is there called Faith. 
 
 ESSAY XVI. 
 
 THE following Address was delivered at Bristol, in the year 1795. 
 The only omissions regard the names of persons ; and I insert them here 
 in support of the assertion made by me at the beginning of Essay VI. 
 of this section, and because this very lecture has been referred to in an 
 infamous libel in proof of the author's former Jacobinism. Different as 
 my present convictions are on the subject of philosophical necessity, I 
 have for this reason left the last page unaltered. 
 
 'Aei yap TT/S eXtuflepias e<f>i(fiai- iroAAa Se tv xal TOIS (J>iAeAev0e'pois jLU<T7)TO, ai/reAcuOepa. 
 (Tmnflatum.) For I am always a lover of liberty ; but in those who would appropriate 
 the title. 1 find too many points destructive of liberty and hateful to her genuine advocates. 
 
 /COMPANIES resembling the present will, from a variety of circum- 
 \J stances, consist chiefly of the zealous advocates for freedom. It will 
 therefore be our endeavour, not so much to excite the torpid, as to regu- 
 late the feelings of the ardent ; and above all, to evince the necessity of 
 bottoming on fixed principles, that so we may not be the unstable 
 patriots of passion or accident, nor hurried away by names of which we 
 have not sifted the meaning, and by tenets of which we have not exa- 
 mined the consequences. The times are trying ; and in order to be 
 prepared against their difficulties, we should have acquired a prompt 
 facility of adverting in all our doubts to some grand and comprehensive 
 truth. In a deep and strong soil must that tree fix its roots, the height of 
 which is to " reach to heaven, and the sight of it to the ends of all the 
 earth."
 
 214 The Friend. 
 
 The example of France is indeed a warning to Britain. A nation 
 wading to their rights through blood, and marking the track of freedom 
 by devastation ! Yet let us not embattle our feelings against our reason. 
 Let us not indulge our malignant passions iinder the mask of humanity. 
 Instead of railing with infuriate declamation against these excesses, we 
 shall be more profitably employed in developing the sources of them. 
 French freedom is the beacon which if it guides to equality should show 
 us likewise the dangers that throng the road. 
 
 The annals of the French Revolution have recorded in letters of blood, 
 that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the 
 many ; that the light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small 
 minority, points out the possessors as the victims, rather than the illu- 
 minators, of the multitude. The patriots of France either hastened 
 into the dangerous and gigantic error of making certain evil the means 
 of contingent good, or were sacrificed by the mob, with whose prejudices 
 and ferocity their unbending virtue forbade them to assimilate. Like 
 Samson, the people were strong like Samson, the people were blind. 
 Those two massy pillars of the temple of oppression, their monarchy and 
 aristocracy 
 
 With horrible convulsion to and fro 
 
 They tugged, they shook till down they came and drew 
 
 The whole roof after them with burst of thunder 
 
 Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, 
 
 Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests, 
 
 Their choice nobility ! MILTON, SAM. AGOX. 
 
 The Girondists, who were the first republicans in power, were men of 
 enlarged views and great literary attainments ; but they seem to have 
 been deficient in that vigour and daring activity which circumstances 
 made necessary. Men of genius are rarely either prompt in action or 
 consistent in general conduct. Their early habits have been those of 
 contemplative indolence ; and the day-dreams, with which they have 
 been accustomed to amuse their solitude, adapt them for splendid specu- 
 lation, not temperate and practicable counsels. Brissot, the leader of 
 the Gironde party, is entitled to the character of a virtuous man, and 
 an eloquent speaker; but he was rather a sublime visionary than a 
 quick-eyed politician ; and his excellences equally with his faults 
 rendered him unfit for the helm in the stormy hour of Revolution. 
 Robespierre, who displaced him, possessed a glowing ardour that still 
 remembered the end, and a cool ferocity that never either overlooked or 
 scrupled the means. What that end was, is not known ; that it was a 
 wicked one, has by no means been proved. I rather think, that the 
 distant prospect, to which he was travelling, appeared to him grand and 
 beautiful ; but that he fixed his eye on it with such intense eagerness as 
 to neglect the foulness of the road, if however his first intentions were
 
 Section 1. Essay 1C. 215 
 
 pure, his subsequent enormities yield us a melancholy proof, that it is 
 not the character of the possessor which directs the power, but the 
 power which shapes and depraves the character of the possessor. 
 In Robespierre, its influence was assisted by the properties of his 
 disposition. Enthusiasm, even in the gentlest temper, will fre- 
 quently generate sensations of an unkindly order. If we clearly 
 perceive any one thins; to be of vast and infinite importance to our- 
 selves and all mankind, our first feelings impel us to turn with 
 angry contempt from those who doubt and oppose it. The ardour 
 of undisciplined benevolence seduces us into malignity ; and when- 
 ever our hearts are warm, and our objects great and excellent, intolerance 
 is the sin that does most easily beset us. But this enthusiasm in Robes- 
 pierre was blended with gloom, and suspiciousness, and inordinate vanity. 
 His dark imagination was still brooding over supposed plots against 
 freedom to prevent tyranny he became a tyrant ; and having realized 
 the evils which he suspected, a wild and dreadful tyrant. Those loud- 
 tongued adulators, the mob, overpowered the lone-whispered denuncia- 
 tions of conscience ; he despotized in all the pomp of patriotism, and 
 masqueraded on the bloody stage of revolution, a Caligula with the cap 
 of liberty on his head. 
 
 It has been affirmed, and I believe with truth, that the system of 
 terrorism, by suspending the struggles of contrariant factions, communi- 
 cated an energy to the operations of the republic which had been 
 hitherto unknown, and without which it could not have been preserved. 
 The system depended for its existence on the general sense of its neces- 
 sity, and when it had answered its end, it was soon destroyed by the 
 same power that had given it birth popular opinion. It must not 
 however be disguised, that at. all times, but more especially when the 
 public feelings are wavy and tumultuous, artful demagogues may create 
 this opinion ; and they, who are inclined to tolerate evil as the means of 
 contingent good, should reflect, that if the excesses of terrorism gave to 
 the republic that efficiency and repulsive force which its circumstances 
 made necessary, they likewise afforded to the hostile courts the most 
 powerful support, and excited that indignation and horror which every- 
 where precipitated the subject into the designs of the ruler. Nor let it 
 be forgotten that these excesses perpetuated the war in La Vendee and 
 made it more terrible, both by the accession of numerous partizans, who 
 had fled from the persecution of Robespierre, and by inspiring the 
 Chouans with fresh fury, and an unsubmitting spirit of revenge and 
 desperation. 
 
 Revolutions are sudden to the unthinking only. Political disturbances 
 happen not without their warning harbingers. Strange rumblings and 
 confused noises still precede these earthquakes and hurricanes of the
 
 216 The Friend. 
 
 moral world. The process of revolution in France has been dreadful, 
 and should incite us to examine with an anxious eye the motives and 
 manners of those whose conduct and opinions seem calculated to for- 
 ward a similar event in our own country. The oppositionists to " things 
 as they are" are divided into many and different classes. To delineate 
 them with an unflattering accuracy may be a delicate but it is a neces- 
 sary task, in order that we may enlighten, or at least be aware of the 
 misguided men who have enlisted under the banners of liberty, from no 
 principles or with bad ones ; whether they be those, who 
 
 admire they know not what, 
 And know not whom, but as one leads to the other : 
 
 or whether those 
 
 Whose end is private hate, not help to freedom, 
 Adverse and turbulent when she would lead 
 To virtue. 
 
 The majority of democrats appear to me to have attained that portion 
 of knowledge in politics which infidels possess in religion. I would by 
 no means be supposed to imply that the objections of both are equally 
 unfounded, but that they both attribute to the system which they reject 
 all the evils existing under it ; and that both contemplating truth and 
 justice " in the nakedness of abstraction," condemn constitutions and 
 dispensations without having sufficiently examined the natures, circum- 
 stances, and capacities of their recipients. 
 
 The first class among the professed friends of liberty is composed of 
 men, who unaccustomed to the labour of thorough investigation, and 
 not particularly oppressed by the burdens of state, are yet impelled by 
 their feelings to disapprove of its grosser depravities, and prepared to 
 give an indolent vote in favour of reform. Their sensibilities unbraced 
 by the co-operation of fixed principles, they offer no sacrifices to the 
 divinity of active virtue. Their political opinions depend with weather- 
 cock uncertainty on the winds of rumour that blow from France. On 
 the report of French victories they blaze into republicanism, at a tale of 
 French excesses they darken into aristocrats. These dough-baked 
 patriots are not however useless. This oscillation of political opinion 
 will retard the day of revolution, and it will operate as a preventive to 
 its excesses. Indecisiveness of character, though the effect of timidity, 
 is almost always associated with benevolence. 
 
 Wilder features characterize the second class. Sufficiently possessed 
 of natural sense to despise the priest, and of natural feeling to hate the 
 oppressor, they listen only to the inflammatory harangues of some mad- 
 headed enthusiast, and imbibe from them poison, not food ; rage, not 
 liberty. Unillumined by philosophy, and stimulated to a lust of re- 
 venge by aggravated wrongs, they would make the altar of freedom
 
 Section 1. Essay 16. 217 
 
 stream with blood, while the grass grew in the desolated halls of 
 justice. 
 
 We contemplate those principles with horror. Yet they possess a 
 kind of wild justice well calculated to spread them among the grossly 
 ignorant. To unenlightened minds there are terrible charms in the 
 idea of retribution, however savagely it be inculcated. The groans of 
 the oppressors make fearful yet pleasant music to the ear of him whose 
 mind is darkness, and into whose soul the iron has entered. 
 
 This class, at present, is comparatively small ; yet soon to form an 
 overwhelming majority, unless great and immediate efforts are used to 
 lessen the intolerable grievances of our poor brethren, and infuse into 
 their sorely wounded hearts the healing qualities of knowledge. For 
 can we wonder that men should want humanity, who want all the cir- 
 cumstances of life that humanize? Can we wonder that with the 
 ignorance of brutes they should unite their ferocity ? Peace and com- 
 fort be with these ! But let us shudder to hear from men of dissimilar 
 opportunities sentiments of similar revengefulness. The purifying 
 alchemy of education may transmute the fierceness of an ignorant man 
 into virtuous energy ; but what remedy shall we apply to him, whom 
 plenty has not softened, whom knowledge has not taught benevolence ? 
 This is one among the many fatal effects which result from the want of 
 fixed principles. 
 
 There is a third class among the friends of freedom who possess not 
 the wavering character of the first description, nor the ferocity last de- 
 lineated. They pursue the interests of freedom steadily, but with narrow 
 and self-cent ring views : they anticipate with exultation the abolition 
 of privileged orders, and of acts that perseciite by exclusion from the 
 right of citizenship. They are prepared to join in digging up the rub- 
 bish of mouldering establishments, and stripping off the tawdry pageantry 
 of governments. Whatever is above them they are most willing to drag 
 down ; but every proposed alteration that would elevate the ranks of 
 our poorer brethren they regard with suspicious jealousy, as the dreams 
 of the visionary ; as if there were anything in the superiority of lord to 
 gentleman, so mortifying in the barrier, so fatal to happiness in the 
 consequences, as the more real distinction of master and servant, of rich 
 man and of poor. Wherein am I made worse by my ennobled neighbour ? 
 Do the childish titles of aristocracy detract from my domestic comforts, 
 or prevent my intellectual acquisitions? But those institutions of 
 society which should condemn me to the necessity of twelve hours' daily 
 toil, would make my soul a slave, and sink the rational being in the 
 mere animal. It is a mockery of our fellow-creatures' wrongs to call 
 them equal in rights, when, by the bitter compulsion of their wants, we 
 make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart or dignify the
 
 218 T)ie Friend. 
 
 understanding. Let us not say that this is the work of time, that it is 
 impracticable at present, unless we each in our individual capacities do 
 strenuously and perseveringly endeavour to diffuse among our domestics 
 those comforts and that illumination which far beyond all political ordi- 
 nances are the true equalizers of men. 
 
 We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious 
 band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of thinking and 
 disinterested patriots. These are the men who have encouraged the 
 sympathetic passions till they have become irresistible habits, and made 
 their duty a necessary part of their self-interest, by the long-continued 
 cultivation of that moral taste which derives our most exquisite pleasures 
 from the contemplation of possible perfection, and proportionate pain 
 from the perception of existing depravity. Accustomed to regard all 
 the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause. 
 Theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just 
 light enough to place one foot before the other ; as they advance the 
 scene still opens upon them, and they press right onward with a vast and 
 various landscape of existence around them. Calmness and energy mark 
 all their actions. Convinced that vice originates not in the man, but in 
 the surrounding circumstances ; not in the heart, but in the understand- 
 ing ; he is hopeless concerning no one ; to correct a vice or generate a 
 virtuous conduct he pollutes not his hands with the scourge of coercion ; 
 but by endeavouring to alter the circumstances would remove, or by 
 strengthening the intellect disarm, the temptation. The unhappv 
 children of vice and folly, whose tempers are adverse to their own happi- 
 ness as well as to the happiness of others, will at times awaken a natural 
 pang ; but he looks forward with gladdened heart to that glorious period 
 when justice shall have established the universal fraternity of love. 
 These soul-ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. 
 He whose mind is habitually impressed with them soars above the present 
 state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of 
 the Most High. 
 
 Would the forms 
 
 Of servile custom cramp the patriot's power? 
 Would sordid policies, the barbarous growth 
 Of ignorance and rapine, bow him down 
 To tame pursuits, lo indolence and fear? 
 Lo ! he appeals to nature, to the winds 
 And rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course, 
 The elements and seasons all declare 
 For what the Eternal Maker has ordained 
 The powers of man : we feel within ourselves 
 His energy divine : He tells the heart 
 He meant, He made us to behold and love 
 What He beholds and loves, the general orb 
 Of life and being to be great like Hun, 
 Beneficent and active. AKENSIDK.
 
 Section I. Essay 16. 219 
 
 That general illumination should precede revolution is a truth as 
 obvious, as that the vessel should be cleansed before we fill it with a 
 pure liquor. But the mode of diffusing it is not discoverable with equal 
 facility. We certainly should never attempt to make proselytes by ap- 
 peals to the selfish feelings ; and consequently, should plead for the 
 oppressed, not to them. The author of an essay on political justice con- 
 siders private societies as the sphere of real utility that (each one illu- 
 minating those immediately beneath him) truth, by a gradual descent, 
 may at last reach the lowest order. But this is rather plausible than 
 just or practicable. Society as at present constituted does not resemble 
 a chain that ascends in a continuity of links. Alas ! between the \&r- 
 lour and the kitchen, the coffee-room and the tap, there is a gulf that 
 may not be passed. He would appear to me to have adopted the best 
 as well as the most benevolent mode of diffusing truth, who uniting 
 the zeal of the methodist with the views of the philosopher, should be 
 personally among the poor, and teach them their duties in order that he 
 may render them susceptible of their rights. 
 
 Yet by what means can the lower classes be made to learn their 
 duties, and urged to practise them ? The human race may perhaps pos- 
 sess the capability of all excellence ; and truth, I doubt not, is omnipo- 
 tent to a mind already disciplined for its reception ; but assuredly the 
 overworked labourer, skulking into an alehouse, is not likely to exem- 
 plify the one, or prove the other. In that barbarous tumult of inimical 
 interests which the present state of society exhibits, religion appears to 
 offer the only means universally efficient. The perfectness of future 
 men is indeed a benevolent tenet, and may operate on a few vision- 
 aries, whose studious habits supply them with employment, and seclude 
 them from temptation. But a distant prospect, which we are never 
 to reach, will seldom quicken oiir footsteps, however lovely it may 
 appear ; and a blessing, which not ourselves but posterity are destined 
 to enjoy, will scarcely influence the actions of any still less of the 
 ignorant, the prejudiced, and the selfish. 
 
 " Go preach the Gospel to the poor." By its simplicity it will meet 
 their comprehension, by its benevolence soften their affections, by its 
 precepts it will direct their conduct, by the vastness of its motives insure 
 their obedience. The situation of the poor is perilous ; they are indeed both 
 
 from within and from without 
 Unarmed to all temptations. 
 
 Prudential reasonings will in general be powerless with them. For the 
 incitements of this world are weak in proportion as we are wretched 
 
 The world is not my friend, nor the world's law. 
 The world has got no law to make me rich. 
 
 They too, who live from hand to mouth, will most frequently become
 
 220 The Friend. 
 
 improvident. Possessing no stock of happiness they eagerly seize the 
 gratifications of the moment, and snatch the froth from the wave as it 
 passes by them. Nor is the desolate state of their families a restraining 
 motive, unsoftened as they are by education, and benumbed into selfish- 
 ness by the torpedo touch of extreme want. Domestic affections depend 
 on association. We love an object if, as often as we see or recollect it, 
 an agreeable sensation arises in our minds. But alas ! how should he 
 glow with the charities of father and husband, who gaining scarcely 
 more than his own necessities demand, must have been accustomed to 
 regard his wife and children, not as the soothers of finished labour, but 
 as rivals for the insufficient meal ! In a man so circumstanced the 
 tyranny of the present can be overpowered only by the ten-fold mighti- 
 ness of the future. Religion will cheer his gloom with her promises, 
 and by habituating his mind to anticipate an infinitely great revolu- 
 tion hereafter, may prepare it even for the sudden reception of a less 
 degree of amelioration in this world. 
 
 But if we hope to instruct others, we should familiarize our own 
 minds to some fixed and determinate principles of action. The world is a 
 vast labyrinth, in which almost every one is running a different way, and 
 almost every one manifesting hatred to those who do not run the same 
 way. A few indeed stand motionless, and not seeking to lead them- 
 selves or others out of the maze, laugh at the failures of their brethren. 
 Yet with little reason ; for more grossly than the most bewildered wan- 
 derer does he err, who never aims to go right. It is more honourable 
 to the head, as well as to the heart, to be misled by our eagerness in the 
 pursuit of truth, than to be safe from blundering by contempt of it. 
 The happiness of mankind is the end of virtue, and truth is the know- 
 ledge of the means ; which he will never seriously attempt to discover, 
 who has not habitually interested himself in the welfare of others. The 
 searcher after truth must love and be beloved ; for general benevolence 
 is a necessary motive to constancy of pursuit ; and this general benevo- 
 lence is begotten and rendered permanent by social and domestic affec- 
 tions. Let us beware of that proud philosophy, which affects to incul- 
 cate philanthropy while it denounces every home-born feeling by which 
 it is produced and nurtured. The paternal and filial duties discipline 
 the heart and prepare it for the love of all mankind. The intensity of 
 private attachments encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence. 
 The nearer we approach to the sun, the more intense his heat ; yet what 
 corner of the system does he not cheer and vivify ? 
 
 The man who would find truth must likewise seek it with an humble 
 and simple heart, otherwise he will be precipitant and overlook it ; or 
 he will be prejudiced, and refuse to see it. To emancipate itself from 
 the tyranny of association is the most arduous effort of the mind, par-
 
 Section 1. Essay 16. 221 
 
 ticularly in religious and political disquisitions. The assertors of the 
 >ciated with it the preservation of order and public 
 virtue ; the oppugners, of ini}X)sture and wars and rapine. Hence, when 
 they dispute, each trembles at the consequences of the other's opinions 
 instead of attending to his train of arguments. Of this however we may 
 be certain, whether we be Christians or infidels, aristocrats or republi- 
 cans, that our minds are in a state unsusceptible of knowledge, when 
 we feel an eu_vrnr>s to detect the falsehood of an adversary's reason- 
 ings, not a sincere wish to discover if there be truth in them ; when 
 we examine an argument in order that we may answer it, instead of 
 answering because we have examined it. 
 
 Our opponents are chiefly successful in confuting the theory of 
 freedom by the practices of its advocates : from our lives they 
 draw the most forcible arguments against our doctrines. Nor have 
 they adopted an unfair mode of reasoning. In a science the evi- 
 dence suffers neither diminution or increase from the actions of its pro- 
 - ; but the comparative wisdom of political systems depends neces- 
 sarily on the manners and capacities of the recipients. Why should all 
 things be thrown into confusion to acquire that liberty which a faction 
 of sensualists and gamblers will neither be able or willing to preserve ? 
 
 A system of fundamental reform will scarcely be effected by massa- 
 cres mechanized into revolution. We cannot therefore inculcate on the 
 minds of each other too often or with too great earnestness the necessity 
 of cultivating benevolent affections. We should be cautious how we 
 indulge the feelings even of virtuous indignation. Indignation is the 
 handsome brother of anger and hatred. The temple of despotism, like 
 that of Tescalipoca, the Mexican deity, is built of human skulls, and 
 cemented with human blood ; let us beware that we be not transported 
 into revenge while we are levelling the loathsome pile; lest when we 
 erect the edifice of freedom we but vary the style of architecture, not 
 change the materials. Let us not wantonly offend even the prejudices 
 of our weaker brethren, nor by ill-timed and vehement declarations of 
 opinion excite in them malignant feelings towards us. The energies of 
 mind are wasted in these intemperate effusions. Those materials of pro- 
 jectile force, which now carelessly scattered explode with an offensive 
 and useless noise, directed by wisdom and union might heave- rocks from 
 their base, or perhaps (dismissing the metaphor) might produce the 
 desired effect without the convulsion. 
 
 For this " subdued sobriety " of temper a practical faith in the doc- 
 trine of philosophical necessity seems the only preparative. That vice 
 is the effect of error and the offspring of surrounding circumstances, tin- 
 object therefore of condolence not of anger, is a proposition easily under- 
 stood, and as easily demonstrated. But to make it spread from the
 
 222 The Friend. 
 
 understanding to the affections, to call it into action, not only in 
 the great exertions of patriotism, but in the daily and hourly occur- 
 rences of social life, requires the most watchful attentions of the most 
 energetic mind. It is not enough that we have once swallowed these 
 truths we must feed on them, as insects on a leaf, till the whole heart 
 be coloured by their qualities, and show its food in every the minutest 
 fibre. 
 
 Finally, in the words of the Apostle, 
 
 Watch ye ! Stand fast in the principles of which ye have been con- 
 vinced ! Quit yourselves like men ! Be strong ! Yet let all things be 
 done in the spirit of love !
 
 THE SECOND 
 
 L AN D IX G- PL ACE; 
 
 OR 
 
 ESSA YS INTERPOSED FOR AMUSEMENT, RETROSPECT, 
 AND PREPARATION. 
 
 MISCELLANY THE SECOND. 
 
 Ktiani a Musis si quando animum paulisper abducamus, apud Musas nihilominns feriamur : 
 at reclines quidem, at otiosas, at de bis et illis inter se libcre colloquente*.
 
 224 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 It were a wantonness and would demand 
 
 Severe reproof, if we were men whose hearts 
 
 Could hold vain dalliance with the misery 
 
 Even of the dead ; contented thence to draw 
 
 A momentary pleasure, never mark'd 
 
 By reason, barren of all future good. 
 
 But we have known that there is often found 
 
 In mournful thoughts, and alwa3's might be found 
 
 A power to virtue friendly. WORDSWORTH, MS. 
 
 I KNOW not how I can better commence my second Lauding- Place, 
 as joining on to the section of politics, than by the following proof 
 of the severe miseries which misgovernment may occasion in a country 
 nominally free. In the homely ballad of the Three Graves (published 
 in my Sibylline Leaves), I have attempted to exemplify the effect which 
 one painful idea, vividly impressed on the mind under unusual circum- 
 stances, might have in producing an alienation of the understanding ; 
 and in the parts hitherto published, I have endeavoured to trace the 
 progress to madness, step by step. But though the main incidents are 
 facts, the detail of the circumstances is of my own invention ; that is, 
 not what I knew, but what I conceived likely to have been the case, 
 or at least equivalent to it. In the tale that follows, 1 present an in- 
 stance of the same causes acting upon the mind to the production of 
 conduct as wild as that of madness, but without any positive or perma- 
 nent loss of the reason or the understanding ; and this in a real occur- 
 rence, real in all its parts and particulars. But in truth this tale over- 
 flows with a human interest, and needs no philosophical deduction to 
 make it impressive. The account was published in the city in which 
 the event took place, and in the same year I read it, when I was in 
 Germany, and the impression made on my memory was so deep that 
 though I relate it in my own language, and with my own feelings, and 
 in reliance on the fidelity of my recollection, I dare vouch for the accu- 
 racy of the narration in all important particulars. 
 
 The imperial free towns of Germany are, with only two or three ex- 
 ceptions, enviably distinguished by the virtuous and primitive manners 
 of the citizens, and by the parental character of their several govern- 
 ments. As exceptions, however, we must mention Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 ]\>isoned by French manners, and the concourse of gamesters and 
 sharpers ; and Nuremberg, whose industrious and honest inhabitants 
 deserve a better fate than to have their lives and properties under the 
 guardianship of a wolfish and merciless oligarchy, proud from ignorance, 
 and remaining ignorant through pride. It is from the small states of 
 Germany, that our writers on political economy might draw their most 
 forcible instances of actually oppressive, and even mortal, taxation, and
 
 Essay 1. 225 
 
 gain the clearest insight into the causes and circumstances of the injury. 
 One other remark, and I proceed to the story. I well remember, that 
 the event I am aboutto narrate, called forth, in several of the German 
 periodical publications, the most passionate (and in more than one 
 instance, blasphemous) declamations, concerning the incomprehensibility 
 of the moral government ot the world, and the seeming injustice and 
 cruelty of the dispensations of Providence. But, assuredly, every one 
 of my readers, however deeply he may sympathize with the poor 
 sufferers, will at once answer all such declamations by the simple reflec- 
 tion, that no one of these awful events could possibly have taken place 
 under a wise police and humane government, and that men have no 
 right to complain of Providence for evils which they themselves are 
 competent to remedy by mere common sense, joined with mere common 
 humanity. 
 
 Maria Eleonora Schoning was the daughter of a Nuremberg wire- 
 drawer. She received her unhappy existence at the price of her mother's 
 life, and at the age of seventeen she followed, as the sole mourner, the 
 bier of her remaining parent. From her thirteenth year she had passed her 
 life at her father's sick-bed, the gout having deprived him of the use of 
 his limbs ; and beheld the arch of heaven only when she went to fetch 
 food or medicines. The discharge of her filial duties occupied the whole 
 of her time and all her thoughts. She was his only nurse, and for the 
 last two years they lived without a servant. She prepared his scant}' 
 meal, she bathed his aching limbs, and though weak and delicate from 
 constant confinement and the poison of melancholy thoughts, she had 
 acquired an unusual power in her arms, from the habit of lifting her old 
 and suffering father out of and into his bed of pain. Thus passed away 
 her early youth in sorrow : she grew up in tears, a stranger to the 
 amusements of youth, and its more delightful schemes and imaginations. 
 She was not, however, unhappy; she attributed, indeed, no merit to 
 herself for her virtues, but for that reason were they the more her 
 reward. The peace which passeth all understanding disclosed itself in 
 all her looks and movements. It lay on her countenance, like a steady 
 unshadowed moonlight ; and her voice, which was naturally at once 
 sweet and subtle, came from her, like the fine flute-tones of a masterly 
 performer, which still floating at some uncertain distance, seem to be 
 created by the player rather than to proceed from the instrument. If 
 you had listened to it in one of those brief sabbaths of the soul, when 
 the activity and discursiveness of the thoughts are suspended, and the 
 mind quietly eddies round, instead of flowing onward (as at late 
 evening in the spring I have seen a bat wheel in silent circles round and 
 round a fruit-tree in full blossom, in the midst of which, as within a 
 close tent of the purest white, an unseen nightingale was piping its 
 
 Q
 
 226 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 sweetest notes) in such a mood you might have half fancied, half felt, 
 that her voice had a separate being of its own ; that it was a living 
 something, whose mode of existence was for the ear only : so deep was 
 her resignation, so entirely had it become the unconscious habit of her 
 nature, and in all she did or said, so perfectly were both her movements 
 and her utterance without effort, and without the appearance of effort ! 
 Her dying father's last words, addressed to the clergyman who attended 
 him, were his grateful testimony, that during his long and sore trial his 
 good Maria had behaved to him like an angel ; that the most disagreeable 
 offices, and the least suited to her age and sex, had never drawn an un- 
 willing look from her, and that whenever his eye had met hers he had 
 been sure to see in it either the tear of pity or the sudden smile ex- 
 pressive of her affection and wish to cheer him. " God," said he, " will 
 reward the good girl for all her long dutifulness to me !" He departed 
 during the inward prayer which followed these his last words. His 
 wish will be fulfilled in eternity ; but for this world the prayer of the 
 dying man was not heard ! 
 
 Maria sat and wept by the grave which now contained her father, 
 her friend, the only bond by which she was linked to life. But while 
 yet the last sound of his death-bell was murmuring away in the air, she 
 was obliged to return with two revenue officers, who demanded entrance 
 into the house, in order to take possession of the papers of the deceased, 
 and from them to discover whether he had always given in his income, 
 and paid the yearly income-tax according to his oath, and in proportion 
 to his property.* After the few documents had been looked through 
 and collated with the registers, the officers found, or pretended to find, 
 sufficient proofs that the deceased had not paid his tax proportionably, 
 which imposed on them the duty to put all the effects under lock and 
 seal. They therefore desired the maiden to retire to an empty room, till 
 the ransom office had decided on the affair. Bred up in suffering, and 
 habituated to immediate compliance, the affrighted and weeping maiden 
 obeyed. She hastened to the empty garret, while the revenue officers 
 placed the lock and seal upon the other doors, and finally took away the 
 papers to the ransom office. 
 
 Not before evening did the poor faint Maria, exhausted with weeping, 
 
 * This tax, called the losung or ransom, in On the death of any citizen, the ransom 
 
 Nuremberg, was at first a voluntary contri- office, or commissioners for this income or 
 
 button: every one gave according to his property tax, possess the right to examine 
 
 liking or circumstances. But in the begiu- his books and papers, and to compare his 
 
 ning of the 15th century the heavy contri- yearly payment as found in their registers 
 
 butions levied for the service of the Empire, with the property he appears to have pos- 
 
 forced the magistrates to determine the sessed during that time. Jf any disprcpor- 
 
 proportions and make the payment compul- tion appeared, if the yearly declarations of 
 
 Bory. At the time in which this event took the deceased should have been inaccurate in 
 
 place, 1787, every citizen must yearly take the least degree, his whole effects are con- 
 
 what was called his ransom oath (losungseid) fiscated, and though he should have left wife 
 
 that the sum paid by him has been in the and child, the state treasury becomes his 
 
 strict determinate proportion to bis property, heir.
 
 Essay 1. 227 
 
 rouse herself with the intention of going to her bed ; but she found the door 
 of her chamber sealed up, and that she must pass the night on the floor of 
 the garret. The officers had had the humanity to place at the door the 
 small portion of food that happened to be in the house. Thus passed 
 several days, till the officers returned with an order that Maria Eleonora 
 Schoning should leave the house without delay, the commission court 
 having confiscated the whole property to the city treasury. The father 
 before he was bedridden had never possessed any considerable property ; 
 but yet, by his industry, had been able not only to keep himself free 
 from debt, but to lay up a small sum for the evil day. Three years of 
 evil days, three whole years of sickness, had consumed the greatest part 
 of this ; yet still enough remained not only to defend his daughter from 
 immediate want, but likewise to maintain her till she could get into some 
 service or employment, and should have recovered her spirits sufficiently 
 to bear up against the hardships of life. With this thought her dying 
 father comforted himself, and this hope too proved vain ! 
 
 A timid girl, whose past life had been made up of sorrow and priva- 
 tion, she went indeed to solicit the commissioners in her own behalf ; 
 but these were, as is mostly the case on the continent, advocates the 
 most hateful class, perhaps, of human society, hardened by the frequent 
 sight of misery, and seldom superior in moral character to English petti- 
 foggers or Old Bailey attorneys. She went to them, indeed, but not a 
 word could she say for herself. Her tears and inarticulate sounds for 
 these her judges had no ears or eyes. Mute and confounded, like an 
 unfledged dove fallen out from its mother's nest, Maria betook herself to 
 her home, and found the house door too now shut upon her. Her 
 whole wealth consisted in the clothes she wore. She had no relations 
 to whom she could apply, for those of her mother had disclaimed all 
 acquaintance with her, and her father was a Nether Saxon by birth. 
 She had no acquaintance, for all the friends of old Schoning had for- 
 saken him in the first year of his sickness. She had no playfellow, for 
 who was likely to have been the companion of a nurse in the room of a sick 
 man ? Surely, since the creation never was a human being more solitary 
 and forsaken than this innocent poor creature, that now roamed about 
 friendless in a populous city, to the whole of whose inhabitants 'her filial 
 tenderness, her patient domestic goodness, and all her soft yet difficult 
 virtues, might well have been the model. 
 
 But homeless near a thousand homes she stood, 
 And near a thousand tables pined, and wanted food ! 
 
 The night came, and Maria knew not where to find a shelter. She 
 tottered to the churchyard of the St. James' church in Nuremberg, 
 where the body of her father rested. Upon the yet grassless grave she 
 threw herself down j and could anguish have prevailed over youth, that
 
 228 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 night she had been in heaven. The day came, and like a guilty thing, 
 this guiltless, this good being, stole away from the crowd that began to 
 pass through the churchyard, and hastening through the streets to the 
 city gate, she hid herself behind a garden hedge just beyond it, and 
 there wept away the second day of her desolation. The evening closed 
 in : the pang of hunger made itself felt amid the dull aching of self- 
 wearied anguish, and drove the sufferer back again into the city. Yet 
 what could she gain there ? She had not the courage to bee, and the 
 very thought of stealing never occurred to her innocent mind. Scarce 
 conscious whither she was going, or why she went, she found herself once 
 more by her father's grave, as the last relic of evening faded away in 
 the horizon. I have sat for some minutes with my pen resting ; I can 
 scarce summon the courage to tell, what I scarce know whether I ought 
 to tell. Were I composing a tale of fiction the reader might justly 
 suspect the purity of my own heart, and most certainly would have 
 abundant right to resent such an incident, as an outrage wantonly 
 offered to his imagination. As 1 think of the circumstance, it seems 
 more like a distempered dream ; but alas ! what is guilt so detestable 
 other than a dream of madness, that worst madness, the madness of the 
 heart ? I cannot but believe that the dark and restless passions must 
 first have drawn the mind in upon themselves, and as with the confusion 
 of imperfect sleep, have in some strange manner taken away the sense of 
 reality, in order to render it possible for a human being to perpetrate 
 what it is too certain that human beings have perpetrated. The church- 
 yards in most of the German cities, and too often, I fear, in those of our 
 own country, are not more injurious to health than to morality. Their 
 former venerable character is no more. The religion of the place has 
 followed its superstitions, and their darkness and loneliness tempt 
 worse spirits to roam in them than those whose nightly wanderings 
 appalled the believing hearts of our brave forefathers ! It was close by 
 the new-made grave of her father, that the meek and spotless daughter 
 became the victim to brutal violence, which weeping and watching and 
 cold and hunger had rendered her utterly unable to resist. The 
 monster left her in a trance of stupefaction, and into her right hand, 
 which she had clenched convulsively, he had forced a half-dollar. 
 
 It was one of the darkest nights of autumn : in the deep and dead 
 silence the only sounds audible were the slow blunt ticking of the 
 church clock, and now and then the sinking down of bones in the nigh 
 charnel house. Maria, when she had in some degree recovered her 
 senses, sat upon the grave near which not her innocence had been 
 sacrificed, but that which, from the frequent admonitions and almost the 
 dying words of her father, she had been accustomed to consider as such. 
 Guiltless, she felt the pangs of guilt, and still continued to grasp the 
 coin which the monster had left in her hand, with an anguish as sore as
 
 Essay 1. 229 
 
 if it had been indeed the wages of voluntary prostitution. Giddy and 
 faint from want o: food, her brain becoming feverish from sleeplessness, 
 and this unexampled concurrence of calamities, this complication and 
 entanglement of misery in misery! she imagined that she heard her 
 father's voice bidding her leave his sight. His last blessings had been 
 conditional, for in his last hours he had told her that the loss of her 
 innocence would not let him rest quiet in his grave. His last blessings 
 now sounded in her ears like curses, and she fled from the churchyard 
 as if a demon had been chasing her ; and hurrying along the streets, 
 through which it is probable her accursed violator had walked with 
 quiet and orderly step * to his place of rest and security, she was seized 
 by the watchmen of the night a welcome prey, as they receive in 
 Nuremberg half a gulden from the police chest, for every woman that 
 they find in the streets after ten o'clock at night. It was midnight, and 
 she was taken to the next watch-house. 
 
 The sitting magistrate, before whom she was carried the next morning 
 prefaced his first question with the most opprobrious title that ever be- 
 longed to the most hardened street-walkers, and which man born of 
 woman should not address even to these, were it but for his own sake. 
 The frightful name awakened the poor orphan from her dream of guilt, 
 it brought back the consciousness of her innocence, but with it the 
 sense likewise of her wrongs and of her helplessness. The cold hand of 
 death seemed to grasp her, she fainted dead away at his feet, and was 
 not without difficulty recovered. The magistrate was so far softened, 
 and only so far, as to dismiss her for the present ; but with a menace of 
 sending her to the House of Correction if she were brought before him a 
 second time. The idea of her own innocence now became uppermost in 
 her mind ; but mingling with the thought of her utter forlornness, and 
 the image of her angry father, and doubtless still in a state of bewilder- 
 ment, she formed the resolution of drowning herself in the river Pegnitz 
 
 * It must surely have been after hearing one of the battlements of Heaven espy, how 
 
 of or witnessing some similar event or scene many men and women at this time lie taint- 
 
 of wretchedness, that the most eloquent of ing and dying for want of bread, how many 
 
 our writers (I had almost said of our poets), young men are hewn down by the sword of 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, wrote the following para- war ; how many poor orphans are now weep- 
 
 graph, which, at least in Longinus's sense of ing over the graves of their father, by whose 
 
 the word, we may place among the most life they were enabled to eat ; if we could 
 
 sublime passages in Knglish literature. " He but hear how many mariners and passengers 
 
 that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he are at this present in a storm, and shriek out 
 
 be in love with this world we need riot because their keel dashes against a rock, or 
 
 despair but that a witty man might reconcile bulges under them ; how many people there 
 
 him with tortures, and make him think are that weep with want, and are mad with 
 
 charitably of the rack, and be brought to ad- oppression, or are desperate by a too quick 
 
 mire the harmony that is made by a herd of sense of a constant infelicity; in all reason 
 
 evening wolves when they miss their draught we should be glad to be out of the noise and 
 
 of blood in their midnight revels. The participation of so many evils. This is a 
 
 groans of a man in a fit of the stone are place of sorrows and tears, of great evils and 
 
 worse than all these; and the distractions of constant calamities : let us remove hence, at 
 
 a troubled conscience are worse than those least in affections and preparations of mind." 
 groans : and yet a careless merry sinner lluly Uying, t'kap. 1, Sect. 5. 
 
 is worse fiau all that. But if we could from
 
 230 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 in order (for this was the shape which her fancy had taken) to throw 
 herself at her father's feet, and to justify her innocence to him in the 
 world of spirits. She hoped that her father would speak for her to the 
 Saviour, and that she should be forgiven. But as she was passing 
 through the suburb she was met by a soldier's wife, who during the 
 lifetime of her father had been occasionally employed in the house as a 
 charwoman. This poor woman was startled at the disordered apparel 
 and more disordered looks of her young mistress, and questioned her 
 with such an anxious and heartfelt tenderness, as at once brought back 
 the poor orphan to her natural feelings and the obligations of religion. 
 As a frightened child throws itself into the arms of its mother, and 
 hiding its head on her breast, half tells amid sobs what has happened to 
 it, so did she throw herself on the neck of the woman who had uttered 
 the first words of kindness to her since her father's death, and with loud 
 weeping she related what she had endured and what she was about to 
 have done, told her all her affliction and her misery, the wormwood and 
 the gall ! Her kind-hearted friend mingled tears with tears, pressed the 
 poor forsaken one to her heart ; comforted her with sentences out of the 
 hymn-book ; and with the most affectionate entreaties conjured her to 
 give up her horrid purpose, for that life was short, and heaven was for 
 ever. 
 
 Maria had been bred up in the fear of God ; she now trembled at the 
 thought of her former purpose, and followed her friend Harlin, for that 
 was the name of her guardian angel, to her home hard by. The moment 
 she entered the door she sank down and lay at her full length, as if only 
 to be motionless in a place of shelter had been the fulness of delight. 
 As when a withered leaf, that has been long whirled about by the gusts 
 of autumn, is blown into a cave or hollow tree, it stops suddenly, and all 
 at once looks the very image of quiet such might this poor orphan ap- 
 pear to the eye of a meditative imagination. 
 
 A place of shelter she had attained, and a friend willing to comfort 
 her in all that she could ; but the noble-hearted Harlin was herself a 
 daughter of calamity, one who from year to year must lie down in 
 weariness and rise up to labour ; for whom this world provides no other 
 comfort but the sleep which enables them to forget it ; no other physi- 
 cian but death, which takes them out of it ! She was married to one of 
 the city guards, who, like Maria's father, had been long sick and bedridden. 
 Him, herself, and two little children, she had to maintain by washing and 
 charing ;* and some time after Maria had been domesticated with them, 
 Harlin told her that she herself had been once driven to a desperate 
 thought by the cry of her hungry children, during a want of employ- 
 ment, and that she had been on the point of killing one of the little ones, 
 
 * I am ignorant whether there be any no other word that expresses occasional day- 
 classical authority for this word, bat I know labour in the houses of others.
 
 Essay 1. 231 
 
 and of then surrendering herself into the hands of justice. lu this 
 manner, she had conceived, all would be well provided for ; the surviving 
 child would lie admitted, as a matter of course, into the Orphan House, 
 and her husband into the Hospital ; while she herself would have atoned 
 for her act by a public execution, and, together with the child that she 
 had destroyed, would have passed into a state of bliss. All this she 
 related to Maria, and those tragic ideas left but too deep and lasting im- 
 pression on her mind. Weeks after, she herself renewed the conversa- 
 tion, by expressing to her benefactress her inability to conceive how it 
 was possible for one human being to take away the life of another, es- 
 pecially that of an innocent little child. " For that reason," replied Harlin, 
 " because it was so innocent and so good, I wished to put it out of this 
 wicked world. Thinkest thou, then, that I would have my head cut off 
 for the sake of a wicked child ? Therefore it was little Nan that 1 
 meant to have taken with me, who, as you see, is always so sweet and 
 patient ; little Frank has already his humours and naughty tricks, and 
 suits better for this world." This was the answer. Maria brooded a while 
 over it in silence, then passionately snatched the children up in her 
 arms, as if she would protect them against their own mother. 
 
 For one whole year the orphan lived with the soldier's wife, and by 
 their joint labours barely kept off absolute want. As a little boy (al- 
 most a child in size, though in his thirteenth year) once told me of him- 
 self, as he was guiding me up the Brocken, in the Hartz Forest, they 
 had but " little of that, of which a great deal tells but for little." But 
 now came the second winter, and with it came bad times, a season of 
 trouble for this poor and- meritorious household. The wife now fell 
 sick : too constant and too hard labour, too scanty and too innutritions 
 food, had gradually wasted away her strength. Maria redoubled her 
 efforts in order to provide bread and fuel for their washing which they 
 took in ; but the task was above her powers. Besides, she was so timid 
 and BO agitated at the sight of strangers, that sometimes, with the best 
 good-will, she was left without employment. One by one, every article 
 of the least value which they possessed was sold off, except the bed on 
 which the husband lay. He died just before the approach of spring ; 
 but about the same time the wife gave signs of convalescence. The 
 physician, though almost as poor as his patients, had been kind to them : 
 silver and gold had he none, but he occasionally brought a little wine, 
 and often assured them that nothing was wanting to her perfect recovery 
 but better nourishment and a little wine every day. This, however, 
 could not be regularly procured, and Harlin's spirits sank, and as her 
 bodily pain left her she became more melancholy, silent, and self-in- 
 volved. And now it was that Maria's mind was incessantly racked by 
 the frightful apprehension, that her friend might be again meditating 
 the accomplishment of her former purpose. She had grown as passion-
 
 232 The Second Landing-Place, 
 
 ately fond of the two children as if she had borne them under her own 
 heart ; but the jeopardy in which she conceived her friend's salvation to 
 stand this was her predominant thought. For all the hopes and fears, 
 which under a happier lot would have been associated with the objects 
 of the senses, were transferred, by Maria, to her notions and images of a 
 future state. 
 
 In the beginning of March, one bitter cold evening, Maria started up 
 and suddenly left the house. The last morsel of food had been divided 
 between the two children for their breakfast ; and for the last hour or 
 more the little boy had been crying for hunger, while his gentler sister 
 had been hiding her face in Maria's lap, and pressing her little body 
 against her knees, in order by that mechanic pressure to dull the aching 
 from emptiness. The tender-hearted and visionary maiden had watched 
 the mother's eye, and had interpreted several of her sad and steady looks 
 according to her preconceived apprehensions. She had conceived all at 
 once the strange and enthusiastic thought, that she would in some way 
 or other offer her own soul for the salvation of the soul of her friend. 
 The money, which had been left in her hand, flashed upon the eye of 
 her mind, as a single unconnected image ; and faint with hunger and 
 shivering with cold, she sallied forth in search of guilt! Awful are 
 the dispensations of the Supreme, and in His severest judgments the 
 hand of mercy is visible. It was a night so wild with wind and rain, or 
 rather rain and snow mixed together, that a famished wolf would have 
 stayed in his cave, and listened to a howl more fearful than his own. 
 Forlorn Maria ! thou wert kneeling in pious simplicity at the grave of 
 thy father, and thou becamest the prey of a monster ! Innocent thou 
 wert, and without guilt didst thou remain. Now thou goest forth of 
 thy own accord but God will have pity on thee ! Poor bewildered in- 
 nocent ! in thy spotless imagination dwelt no distinct conception of the 
 evil which thou wentest forth to brave ! To save the soul of thy friend 
 was the dream of thy feverish brain, and thou wert again apprehended 
 as an outcast of shameless sensuality, at the moment when thy too 
 spiritualized fancy was busied with the glorified forms of thy friend and 
 of her little ones interceding for thee at the throne of the Redeemer ! 
 
 At this moment her perturbed fancy suddenly suggested to her a new 
 mean for the accomplishment of her purpose ; and she replied to the 
 night-watch, who with a brutal laugh bade her expect on the morrow 
 the unmanly punishment, which to the disgrace of human nature the 
 laws of Protstant states (alas ! even those of our own country) inflict 
 on female vagrants, that she came to deliver herself up as an infanticide. 
 She was instantly taken before the magistrate, through as wild and 
 pitiless a storm as ever pelted on a houseless head ! through as black 
 and tyrannous a night as ever aided the workings of a heated brain ! 
 Here she confessed that she had been delivered of an infant by the
 
 Essay 1. 233 
 
 soldier's wife, Harlin, that she deprived it of life in the presence of Har- 
 lin, and according to a plan preconcerted with her, and that Harlin had 
 buried it somewhere in the wood, but where she knew not. During this 
 strange tale she appeared to listen, with a mixture of fear and satisfac- 
 tion, to the howling of the wind ; and never sure could a confession of 
 real guilt have been accompanied by a more dreadfully appropriate 
 music ! At the moment of her apprehension she had formed the scheme 
 of helping her friend out of the world in a state of innocence. When 
 the soldier's widow was confronted with the orphan, and the latter had 
 repeated her confession to her face, Harlin answered in these words, 
 " For God's sake, Maria ! how have I deserved this of thee ?" Then 
 turning to the magistrate, said, " I know nothing of this." This was 
 the sole answer which she gave, and not another word could they extort 
 from her. The instruments of torture were brought, and Harlin was 
 warned, that if she did not confess of her own accord, the truth would 
 be immediately forced from her. This menace convulsed Maria Schon- 
 ing with affright: her intention had been to emancipate herself and her 
 friend from a life of unmixed suffering, without the crime of suicide in 
 either, and with no guilt at all on the part of her friend. The thought 
 of her friend's being put to the torture had not occurred to her. Wildly 
 and eagerly she pressed her friend's hands, already bound ill preparation 
 for the torture she pressed them in agony between her own, and said to 
 her, " Anna ! confess it ! Anna, dear Anna ! it will then be well with all of 
 us ! all, all of us ! and Frank and little Nan will be put into the Orphan 
 House!" Maria's scheme now passed, like a flash of lightning, through 
 the widow's mind ; she acceded to it at once, kissed Maria repeatedly, 
 and then serenely turning her face to the judge, acknowledged that she 
 had added to the guilt by so obstinate a denial, that all her friend had 
 said was true, save only that she had thrown the dead infant into the 
 river, and not buried it in the wood. 
 
 They were both committed to prison, and as they both persevered in 
 their common confession, the process was soon made out and the 
 condemnation followed the trial : and the sentence, by which they were 
 both to be beheaded with the sword, was ordered to be put in force on the 
 next day but one. On the morning of the execution the delinquents 
 were brought together, in order that they might be reconciled with each 
 other, and join in common prayer for forgiveness of their common 
 guilt. 
 
 But now Maria's thoughts took another turn. The idea that her 
 benefactress, that so very good a woman, should be violently put out of 
 life, and this with an infamy on her name which would cling for ever 
 to the little orphans, overpowered her. Her own excessive desire to die 
 scarcely prevented her from discovering the whole plan ; and when 
 Harliu was left alone with her, and she saw her friend's calm and affec-
 
 234 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 tionate look, her fortitude was dissolved ; she burst into loud and 
 passionate weeping, and throwing herself into her friend's arms, with 
 convulsive sobs she entreated her forgiveness. Harlin pressed the poor 
 agonized girl to her arms ; like a tender mother, she kissed and fondled 
 her wet cheeks, and in the most solemn and emphatic tones assured her 
 that there was nothing to forgive. On the contrary, she washer greatest 
 benefactress, and the instrument of God's goodness to remove her at once 
 from a miserable world and from the temptation of committing a heavy 
 crime. In vain ! Her repeated promises, that she would answer before 
 God for them both, could not pacify the tortured conscience of Maria, till 
 at length the presence of the clergyman and the preparations for receiving 
 the sacrament occasioned the widow to address her thus " See, Maria ! 
 this is the Body and Blood of Christ, which takes away all sin ! Let us 
 partake together of this holy repast with full trust in God and joyful 
 hope of our approaching happiness." These words of comfort, uttered 
 with cheering tones, and accompanied with a look of inexpressible ten- 
 derness and serenity, brought back peace for a while to her troubled 
 spirit. They communicated together, and on parting, the magnanimous 
 woman once more embraced her young friend ; then stretching her hand 
 toward heaven, said, " Be tranquil, Maria ! by to-morrow morning we 
 are there, and all our sorrows stay here behind us." 
 
 I hasten to the scene of the execution ; for I anticipate my reader's 
 feelings in the exhaustion of my own heart. Serene and with unaltered 
 countenance the lofty-minded Harlin heard the strokes of the death-bell, 
 stood before the scaffold while the staff was broken over her, and at 
 length ascended the steps, all with a steadiness and tranquillity of manner 
 which was not more distant from fear than from defiance and bravado. 
 Altogether different was the state of poor Maria : with shattered nerves 
 and an agonizing conscience that incessantly accused her as the murderess 
 of her friend, she did not walk but staggered towards the scaffold and 
 stumbled up the steps. While Harlin, who went first, at every step 
 turned her head round and still whispered to her, raising her eyes to 
 heaven, " But a few minutes, Maria ! and we are there !" On the scaffold 
 she again bade her farewell, again repeating, " Dear Maria ! but one 
 minute now, and we are together with God." But when she knelt down 
 and her neck was bared for the stroke, the unhappy girl lost all self- 
 command, and with a loud and piercing shriek she bade them hold and 
 uot murder the innocent. " She is innocent ! I have borne false witness* 
 I alone am the murderess !" She rolled herself now at the feet of the 
 executioner, and now at those of the clergymen, and conjured them to stop 
 the execution : declaring that the whole story had been invented by her- 
 self ; that she had never brought forth, much less destroyed, an infant ; that 
 for her friend's sake she made this discovery ; that for herself she wished 
 to die, and would die gladly, if they would take away her friend, and
 
 Essay 1. 235 
 
 promise to free her soul from the dreadful agony of having murdered her 
 friend by false witness. The executioner asked Harlin, if there were any 
 truth in what Maria Schoning had said. The heroine answered with 
 manifest reluctance : " Most assuredly she hath said the truth ; I con- 
 fessed myself guilty, because I wished to die and thought it best for both 
 of us ; and now that my hope is on the moment of its accomplishment, 
 1 cannot be supposed to declare myself innocent for the sake of saving 
 my life but any wretchedness is to be endured rather than that poor 
 creature should be hurried out of the world in a state of despair." 
 
 The outcry of the attending populace prevailed to suspend the execu- 
 tion : a report was sent to the assembled magistrates, and in the mean 
 time one of the priests reproached the widow in bitter words for her 
 former false confession. " What," she replied sternly but without anger, 
 "what would the truth have availed ? Before I perceived my friend's 
 purpose I did deny it : my assurance was pronounced an impudent lie ; 
 I was already bound for the torture, and so bound that the sinews of my 
 hands started, and one of their worships in the large white peruke, 
 threatened that he would have me stretched till the sun shone through 
 me ! and that then I should cry out, Yes, when it was too late." The 
 priest was hard-hearted or superstitious enough to continue his reproofs, 
 to which the noble woman condescended no further answer. The other 
 clergyman, however, was both more rational and more humane. He 
 succeeded in silencing his colleague, and the former half of the long hour, 
 which the magistrates took in making speeches on the improbability of 
 the tale instead of re-examining the culprits in person, he employed in 
 gaining from the widow a connected account of all the circumstances, 
 and in listening occasionally to Maria's passionate descriptions of all her 
 friend's goodness and magnanimity. For she had gained an influx of 
 life and spirit from the assurance in her mind, both that she had now 
 rescued Harlin from death and was about to expiate the guilt of her 
 purpose by her own execution. For the latter half of the time the 
 clergyman remained in silence, lost in thought, and momentarily expect- 
 ing the return of the messenger. All that during the deep silence of 
 this interval could be heard was one exclamation of Harlin to her 
 unhappy friend " Oh ! Maria ! Maria ! couldst thou but have kept up 
 thy courage but for another minute, we should have been now in 
 heaven !" The messenger came back with an order from the magistrates 
 to proceed with the execution ! With reanimated countenance Harlin 
 placed her neck on the block, and her head was severed from her body 
 amid a general shriek from the crowd. The executioner fainted after 
 the blow, and the under hangman was ordered to take his place. He 
 was not wanted. Maria was already gone : her body was found as cold 
 as if she had been dead for some hours. The flower had been snapt in 
 the storm, before the scythe of violence could come near it.
 
 236 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 The history of times represented the magnitude of actions and the public faces or deport- 
 ment of persons, and passeth over in silence the smaller passages and motions of men and 
 matters. But such being the workmanship of God, that he doth hang the greatest weight 
 upon the smallest wires, maxima e minimis suspendens; it comes therefore to pas.-, that 
 histories do rather set forth the pomp of business than the true and inward resorts thereof. 
 But lives, if they be well written, propounding to themselves a person to represent in whom 
 actions both greater and smaller, public and private, have a commixture, must of necessity 
 contain a more true, native, and lively representation. LORD BACON. 
 
 MANKIND in general are so little in the habit of looking steadily at 
 their own meaning, or of weighing the words by which they express 
 it, that the writer, who is careful to do both, will sometimes mislead 
 his readers through the very excellence which qualifies him to be their 
 instructor ; and this with no other fault on his part than the modest 
 mistake of supposing in those, to whom he addresses himself, an intellect 
 as watchful as his own. The inattentive reader adopts as unconditional! y 
 true, or perhaps rails at his author for having stated as such, what upon 
 examination would be found to have been duly limited, and would so 
 have been understood, if opaque spots and false refractions were as rare 
 in the mental as in the bodily eye. The motto, for instance, to this 
 paper has more than once served as an excuse and authority for huge 
 volumes of biographical minutiae, which render the real character almost 
 invisible, like clouds of dust on a portrait, or the counterfeit frankincense 
 which smoke-blacks the favourite idol of a Catholic village. Yet Lord 
 Bacon, by the words which I have marked in italics, evidently confines 
 the biographer to such facts as are either susceptible of some useful 
 general inference, or tend to illustrate those qualities which distinguished 
 the subject of them from ordinary men ; while the passage in general 
 was meant to guard the historian against considering as trifles, all that 
 might appear so to those who recognize no greatness in the mind, and 
 can conceive no dignity in any incident which does not act on their 
 senses by its external accompaniments, or on their curiosity by its im- 
 mediate consequences. Things apparently insignificant are recommended 
 to our notice, not for their own sakcs, but for their bearings or influences 
 on things of importance ; in other words, when they are insignificant in 
 appearance only. 
 
 An inquisitiveness into the minutest circumstances, and casual 
 sayings of eminent contemporaries, is indeed quite natural ; but so 
 are all our follies, and the more natural they are, the more caution 
 should we exert in guarding against them. To scribble trifles even on 
 the perishable glass of an inn window, is the mark of an idler ; but to 
 engrave them on the marble monument, sacred to the memory of the 
 departed great, is something worse than idleness. The spirit of genuine 
 biography is in nothing more conspicuous than in the firmness with which
 
 Essay 2. 237 
 
 it withstands the cravings of worthless curiosity, as distinguished from 
 the thirst utter useful knowledge. For, in the first place, such anec- 
 dotes as derive their whole and sole interest from the great name of the 
 person concerning whom they are related, and neither illustrate his 
 general character nor his particular actions, would scarcely have been 
 noticed or remembered except by men of weak minds : it is not un- 
 likely, therefore, that they were misapprehended at the time, and it is 
 most probable that they have been related as incorrectly as they were 
 noticed injudiciously. Nor are the consequences of such garrulous 
 biography merely negative. For as insignificant stories can derive no 
 real respectability from the eminence of the person who happens to be 
 the subject of them, but rather an additional deformity of dispro- 
 portion, they are apt to have their insipidity seasoned by the same bad 
 passions that accompany the habit of gossiping in general ; and the 
 misapprehensions of weak men meeting with the misinterpretations of 
 malignant men, have not seldom formed the groundwork of the most 
 grievous calumnies. In the second place, these trifles are subversive of 
 the great end of biography, which is to fix the attention, and to interest 
 the feelings, of men on those qualities and actions which have made 
 a particular life worthy of being recorded. It is, no doubt, the duty of 
 an honest biographer, to jiertray the prominent imperfections as well 
 as excellencies of his hero ; but I am at a loss to conceive how this can 
 be deemed an excuse for heaping together a multitude of particulars, 
 which can prove nothing of any man that might not have been safely 
 taken for granted of all men. In the present age (emphatically the age of 
 personality !) there are more than ordinary motives for withholding all 
 encouragement from this mania of busying ourselves with the names of 
 others, which is still more alarming as a symptom than it is trouble- 
 some as a disease. The reader must be still less acquainted with con- 
 temporary literature than myself a case not likely to occur if he 
 needs me to inform him, that there are men, who trading in the silliest 
 anecdotes, in unprovoked abuse and senseless eulogy, think themselves 
 nevertheless employed both worthily and honourably, if only all this 
 be done " in good set terms," and from the press, and of public charac- 
 :i class which has increased so rapidly of late, that it becomes 
 difficult to discover what characters are to be considered as private. 
 Alas ! if these wretched misusers of language, and the means of giving 
 wings to thought the means of multiplying the presence, of an indi- 
 vidual mind, had ever known how great a thing the possession of any 
 one simple truth is, and how mean a thing a mere fact is, except as 
 seen in the light of some comprehensive truth ; if they had but once 
 experienced the unborrowed complacency, the inwanl indeixnidence, 
 the home-bred strength, with which every clear conception of the 
 reason is accompanied ; they would shrink from their own pages as at
 
 238 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 the remembrance of a crime. For a crime it is (and the man who 
 hesitates in pronouncing it such, must be ignorant of what mankind 
 owe to books, what he himself owes to them in spite of his ignorance), 
 thus to introduce the spirit of vulgar scandal and personal inquietudo 
 into the closet and the library, environing with evil passions the very 
 sanctuaries, to which we should flee for refuge from them ! For to 
 what do these publications appeal, whether the^ present themselves as 
 biography or as anonymous criticism, but to the same feelings which the 
 scandal-bearers and time-killers of ordinary life seek to gratify in them- 
 selves and their listeners ? And both the authors and admirers of such 
 publications, in what respect are they less truants and deserters from 
 their own hearts, and from their appointed task of understanding and 
 amending them, than the most garrulous female chronicler of the 
 goings-on of yesterday in the families of her neighbours and towns- 
 folk? 
 
 The Friend has reprinted the following biographical sketch, partly 
 indeed in the hope that it may be the means of introducing to the 
 reader's knowledge, in case he should not have formed an acquaintance 
 with them already, two of the most interesting biographical works in 
 our language, both for the weight of the matter, and the tVicuriosa 
 felicitas of the style. I refer to Roger North's Exarnen, and the Life of 
 his brother, the Lord Chancellor North. The pages are all alive with 
 the genuine idioms of our mother-tongue. 
 
 A fastidious taste, it is true, will find offence in the occasional vul- 
 garisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers, 
 shortly after the restoration of Charles II., seem to have affected as a 
 mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are but a trifling draw- 
 back. They are not sought for, as is too often and too plainly done by 
 L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and their imitations. North never 
 goes out of his way either to seek them or to avoid them ; and in the 
 main his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, 
 healthy, conversational English. 
 
 This is The Friend's first reason for the insertion of this extract. 
 His other and principal motive may be found in the kindly good- 
 tempered spirit of the passage. But instead of troubling the reader with 
 the painful contrast which so many recollections force on my own 
 feelings, I will refer the character-makers of the present day to the 
 Letters of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More to Martin Dorpius, that are 
 commonly annexed to the Encomium Moris ; and then for a practical 
 comment on the just and affecting sentiments of these two great men, 
 to the works of Roger North, as proofs how alone an English scholar 
 and gentleman will permit himself to delineate his contemporaries even 
 under the strongest prejudices of party spirit, and though employed on 
 the coarsest subjects. A coarser subject than L. C. J. Saunders cannot
 
 Essay 2. 239 
 
 well be imagined ; nor does North use his colours with a sparing or 
 very delicate hand. And yet the final impression is that of kindness. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM NORTH'S EXAMEN. 
 
 THE Lord Chief Justice Saunders succeeded in the room of Pemberton. 
 His character, and his beginning were equally strange. He was at first 
 no better than a poor boy, if not a parish foundling, without knowing 
 parents or relations. He had found a way to live by obsequiousness in, 
 Clement's Inn, as I remember, and courting the attorneys' clerks for 
 scraps. The extraordinary observance and diligence of the boy made 
 the society willing to do him good. He appeared very ambitious to 
 learn to write, and one of the attorneys got a board knocked up at a 
 window on the top of a staircase ; and that was his desk, where he sat 
 and wrote after copies of court, and other hands the clerks gave him. 
 He made himself so expert a writer that he took in business, and earned 
 some pence by hackney-writing. And thus by degrees he pushed his 
 faculties and fell to fo.ms, and by books that were lent him became an 
 exquisite entering clerk; and by the same course of improvement 
 of himself, an able counsel, first in special pleading, then at large ; and 
 after he was called to the Bar, had practice in the King's Bench Court 
 equal with any there. As to his person he was very corpulent and 
 beastly, a mere lump of morbid flesh. He used to say, by his troggs 
 (such an humorous way of talking he affected), none could say he 
 wanted issue of his body, for he had nine in his back. He was a fetid 
 mass, that offended his neighbours at the bar in the sharpest degree. 
 Those whose ill fortune it was to stand near him were confessors, and 
 in summer time almost martyrs. This hateful decay of his carcase 
 came upon him by continual sottishness; for to say nothing of brandy, 
 he was seldom without a pot of ale at his nose, or near him. That 
 exercise was all he used ; the rest of his life was sitting at his desk or 
 piping at home; and that home was a tailor's house in Butcher Row, 
 called his lodging, and the man's wife was his nurse or worse ; but by 
 virtue of his money, of which he made little account, though he got a 
 great deal, he soon became master of the family ; and being no changeling 
 he never removed, but was true to his friends, and they to him, to the 
 last hour of his life. So much for his person and education. As for 
 his parts none had them more lively than he ; wit and repartee in an 
 affected rusticity were natural to him. He was ever ready and never 
 at a loss ; and none came so near as he to be a match for Sergeant 
 Maynard. His great dexterity was in the art of special pleading, and 
 he would lay snares that often caught his superiors who were not aware 
 of his traps. And he was so fond of success for his clients, that rather 
 than fail, he would set the court hard with a trick ; for which he met, 
 sometimes, with a reprimand which he would ward off, so that no one
 
 240 The Second Loading-Place. 
 
 was much offended with him. But Hale could not bear his irregu- 
 larity of life ; and lor that, and suspicion of his tricks, used to bear hard 
 upon him in the court. But no ill usage from the bench was too hard 
 for his hold of business, being such as scarce any could do but himself. 
 With all this he had a goodness of nature and disposition in so great a 
 degree, that he may be deservedly styled a Philanthro[>e. He was a 
 very Silenus to the boys, as in this place I may term the students of 
 the law, to make them merry whenever they had a mind to it. He 
 had nothing of rigid or austere in him. If any near him at the bar 
 grumbled at his stench, he ever converted the complaint into content 
 and laughing with the abundance of his wit. As to his ordinary deal- 
 ing, he was as honest as the driven snow was white ; and why not, having 
 no regard for money, or desire to be rich ? And for good-nature and 
 condescension there was not his fellow. I have seen him for hours and 
 half-hours together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, with an 
 audience of students over against him, putting of cases, and debating so 
 as suited their capacities, and encouraged their industry. And so in the 
 Temple, he seldom moved without a parcel of youths hanging about 
 him, and he merry and jesting with them. 
 
 It will be readily conceived that this man was never cut out to lie a 
 presbyter, or anything that is severe and crabbed. In no time did he 
 lean to faction, but did his business without offence to any. He put off 
 officious talk of government or politics with jests, and so made his wit a 
 catholicon or shield to cover all his weak places or infirmities. When 
 the court fell into a steady course of using the law against all kinds of 
 offenders, this man was taken into the king's business ; and had the 
 part of drawing, and perusal of almost all indictments and informations 
 that were then to be prosecuted, with the pleadings thereon, if any were 
 special ; and he had the settling of the large pleadings in the quo war- 
 ranto against London. His Lordship had no sort of conversation with 
 him but in the way of business and at the bar ; but once, after he was 
 in the king's business, he dined with his Lordship, and no more. And 
 there he showed another qualification he had acquired, and that was to 
 play jigs upon a harpsichord ; having taught himself with the oppor- 
 tunity of an old virginal of his landlady's ; but in such a manner, not 
 for defect, but figure, as to see him were a jest. The king observing him 
 to be of a free disposition, loyal, friendly, and without greediness or 
 guile, thought of him to be the Chief Justice of the Kind's Bench at that 
 nice time. And the ministry could not but approve of it So great a 
 weight was then at stake as could not be trusted to men of doubtful 
 principles, or such as anything might tempt to desert tnem. While he 
 sat in the Court of King's Bench, he gave the rule to the general satis- 
 faction of the lawyers. But his course of life was so different from what 
 it had been, his business incessant and withal crabbed; and his diet and
 
 Essay 3. 241 
 
 exercise changed, that the constitution of his body, or head rather, could 
 not sustain it, and he fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which numbed his 
 parts ; and he never recovered the strength of them. He outlived the 
 judgment in the quo warranto; but was not present otherwise than by 
 sending his opinion by one of the judges, to be for the king, who at the 
 pronouncing of the judgment, declared it *o the court accordingly, which 
 is frequently done in like cases. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 l*roinde si videbitur, fngant irfi me latrunculis interim aninU causa lusifte, aut si malint, 
 tquit:.ffe in arundine longa. Xam qua' tandem est iniquitat, cum omni vita institute suos 
 lusus concedamus, studiis nullum omnino lusum permittere : maxime ti ita tractentur 
 ludicra, ut ex his aliquanto plus frugis referat lector non omnino naris obesce quam ex 
 quvrundtiiii tftricis ac splendidis argumentis. EBASMI Praef. ad. JHor. inc. 
 
 (Translation.) They may pretend, if they like, that I amuse myself with playing at fox 
 and goose, or, if they prefer it, equitasse in arundine longa, that I ride the cockhorse on my 
 Kiandam's crutch. But wherein. I pray, consists the unfairness or impropriety, when every 
 trade and profession is allowed its own sport and travesty, in extending the same permission 
 to literature ; especially if trifles are so bandied, that a reader of tolerable quickness may 
 occasionally derive more food for profitable reflection than from many a work of grand or 
 gloomy argument ? 
 
 IRUS, the forlorn Irus, whose nourishment consisted in bread and 
 water, whose clothing of one tattered mantle, and whose bed of an 
 armful of straw, this same Irus, by a rapid transition of fortune, be- 
 came the most prosperous mortal under the sun. It pleased the gods to 
 snatch him at once out of the dust, and to place him by the side of 
 princes. He beheld himself in the possession of incalculable treasures. 
 His palace excelled even the temple of the gods in the pomp of its orna- 
 ments ; his least sumptuous clothing was of purple and gold, and his 
 table might well have been named the compendium of luxury, the sum- 
 mary of all that the voluptuous ingenuity of men had invented for the 
 gratification of the palate. A numerous train of admiring dependants 
 followed him at every step ; those to whom he vouchsafed a gracious 
 look were esteemed already in the high road of fortune, and the favoured 
 individual who was permitted to kiss his hand appeared to be the ob- 
 ject of common envy. The name of Irus sounding in his ears an un 
 welcome memento and perpetual reproach of his former poverty ; he for 
 this reason named himself Cevaunius, or the Lightning-flasher, and the 
 whole people celebrated this splendid change of title by public rejoicings. 
 The poet, wim a few years ago had personified jioverty itself under his 
 former name of Irus, now made a discovery which had till that moment 
 remained a profound secret, but was now received by all with implicit 
 faith and warmest approbation. Jupiter, forsooth, had become enam- 
 oured of the mother of Ceraunius, and assumed the form of a mortal in 
 order to enjoy her love. Henceforward they erected altars to him, they 
 
 R
 
 242 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 swore by his name, and the priests discovered in the entrails of the sacri- 
 ficial victim, that the great Ceraimius, this worthy son of Jupiter, was 
 the sole pillar of the Western world. Toxaris, his former neighbour, a 
 man whom good fortune, unwearied industry, and rational frugality, 
 had placed among the richest citizens, became the first victim of the 
 pride of this new demi-god. Ju the time of his poverty Irus had re- 
 pined at his luck and prosperity, and irritable from distress and envy, 
 hail conceived that Toxaris had looked contemptuously on him ; and 
 now was the time that Ceraunius would make him feel the power of 
 him, whose father grasped the thunder-bolt. Three advocates, newly 
 admitted into the recently established order of the Cygnet, gave evidence 
 that Toxaris had denied the gods, committed peculations on the sacred 
 treasury, and increased his treasures by acts of sacrilege. He was hur- 
 ried off to prison and sentenced to an ignominious death, and his wealth 
 confiscated to the use of Ceraunius, the earthly representative of the 
 deities. Ceraunius now found nothing wanting to his felicity but a 
 brii'e worthy of his rank and blooming honours. The most illustrious of 
 the laud were candidates for his alliance. Euphorbia, the daughter of 
 the noble Austrius, was honoured with his final choice. To nobility of 
 birth nature had added for Euphorbia a rich dowry of beauty, a nobleness 
 both of look and stature. The flowing ringlets of her hair, her lofty fore- 
 head, her brilliant eyes, her stately figure, her majestic gait, had enchanted 
 the haughty Ceraunius : and all the bards told what the inspiring Muses 
 had revealed to them, that Venus more than once had pined with jealousy 
 at the sight of her superior charms. The day of espousal arrived, and the 
 illustrious son of Jove was proceeding in pomp to the temple, when the 
 anguish-stricken wife of Toxaris, with his innocent children, suddenly 
 threw themselves at his feet, and with loud lamentations entreated him to 
 spare the life of her husband. Enraged by this interruption, Cerauuius 
 spurned her from him with his feet and Irus awoke, and found him- 
 self Iving on the same straw on which he had lain down, and with his old 
 tattered mantle spread over him. With his returning reason, conscience 
 too returned. He praised the gods, and resigned himself to his lot. 
 Ceraunius indeed had vanished, but the innocent Toxaris was still alive, 
 and Irus poor yet guiltless. 
 
 Can my reader recollect no character now on earth, who sometime or 
 other will awake from his dream of empire, poor as Irus, with all the 
 guilt and impiety of Ceraunius ? 
 
 P.S. The reader will bear in mind, that this fable was written and 
 first published, at the close of 1809 : 
 
 be re njirios eyvw.
 
 Essay 3. 243 
 
 CHRISTMAS WITHIN DOORS IN THE NORTH OF GERMANY. 
 
 Extracted from tiatyrane's Letters. 
 
 Ratzeburg. 
 
 There is a Christmas custom here which pleased and interested me. 
 The children make little presents to their parents, and to each other ; 
 and the parents to the children. For three or four months before Christ- 
 mas the girls are all busy, and the boys save up their pocket-money, to 
 make or purchase these presents. What the present is to be is cautiously 
 kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it 
 such as working when they are out on visits and the others are not with 
 them : getting up in the morning before day- light, &c. Then on the 
 evening before Christmas-day one of the parlours is lighted up by the 
 children, into which the parents must not go. A great yew bough is 
 fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a multitude of 
 little tapers are fastened in the bough, but so as not to catch it till they 
 are nearly burnt out, and coloured paper, &c., hangs and flutters from 
 the twigs. Under this bough the children lay out in great order the 
 presents they mean for tlu-ir parents, still concealing in their pockets 
 what they -intend for each other. Then the parents are introduced, and 
 each presents his little gift, and then bring out the rest one by one from 
 their pockets, and present them with kisses and embraces. Where I 
 witnessed this scene there were eight or nine children, and the eldest 
 daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the 
 tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped all his children so 
 tight to his breast, it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was 
 rising within him. I was very much affected. The shadow of the 
 bough and its appendages on the wall, and arching over on the ceilinn, 
 made a pretty picture and then the raptures of the very little ones, 
 when at last the twigs and their needles began to take fire and snap < Hi 
 it was a delight for them ! On the next day, in the great parlour, the 
 parents lay out on the table the presents for the children : a scene of 
 more sober joy succeeds, as on this day, after an old custom, the mother 
 : rivately to each of her daughters, and the father to his sons, that 
 which he has observed most praiseworthy and that which was most 
 faulty in their conduct. Formerly, and still in all the smaller towns 
 and villages throughout North Germany, these presents were sent by all 
 the parents to some one fellow who in high buskins, a white robe, a 
 mask, and an enormous flax wig, personates Knecht Rupert, i. e. the 
 servant Rupert. On Christmas night he goes round to every house and 
 says, that Jesus Christ his Master sent him thither ; the parents and elder 
 children receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones 
 are most terribly frightened. He then inquires for the children, and ac- 
 cording to the character which he hears from the parent he gives them
 
 244 The Second Landing-Place. 
 
 the intended present, as if they came out of heaven from Jesus 
 Christ. Or, if they should have been bad children, he gives the parents 
 a rod, and in the name of his Master recommends them to use it fre- 
 quently. About seven or eight years old the children are let into the 
 secret, and it is curious how faithfully they keep it ! 
 
 CHRISTMAS OUT OF DOORS. 
 
 The whole lake of Eatzeburg is one mass of thick transparent ice a 
 spotless mirror of nine miles in extent ! The lowness of the hills, which 
 rise from the shores of the lake, precludes the awful sublimity of Alpine 
 scenery, yet compensates for the want of it by beauties of which this 
 very lowness is a necessary condition. Tester-morning I saw the lesser 
 lake completely hidden by mist ; but the moment the sun peeped over 
 the hill, the mist broke in the middle, and in a few seconds stood 
 divided, leaving a broad road all across the lake ; and between these two 
 walls of mist the sunlight burnt upon the ice, forming a road of golden 
 fire, intolerably bright ! and the mist-walls themselves partook of the 
 blaze in a multitude of shining colours. This is our second frost. 
 About a month ago, before the thaw came on, there was a storm of 
 wind ; during the whole night, such were the thunders and bowlings of 
 the breaking ice, that they have left a conviction on my mind, that there 
 are sounds more sublime than any sight can be, more absolutely 
 suspending the power of comparison, and more utterly absorbing the 
 mind's self-consciousness in its total attention to the object working 
 upon it. Part of the ice, which the vehemence of the wind had shattered, 
 was driven shoreward and froze anew. On the evening of the next day, 
 at sunset, the shattered ice thus frozen, appeared of a deep blue and in 
 shape like an agitated sea ; beyond this, the water, that ran up between 
 the great islands of ice which had preserved their masses entire and 
 smooth, shone of a yellow green ; but all these scattered ice-islands 
 themselves, were of an intensely bright blood colour they seemed 
 blood and light in union ! On some of the largest of these islands, the 
 fishermen stood pulling out their immense nets through the holes made 
 in the ice for this purpose, and the men, their net-poles, and their huge 
 nets, were a part of the glory ; say rather, it appeared as if the rich 
 crimson light had shaped itself into these forms, figures, and attitudes, 
 to make a glorious vision in mockery of earthly things. 
 
 The lower lake is now all alive with skaters, and with ladies driven 
 onward by them in their ice cars. Mercury, surely, was the first 
 maker of skates, and the wings at his feet are symbols of the in- 
 vention. In skating there are three pleasing circumstances : the 
 infinitely subtle particles of ice which the skate cuts up, and which 
 creep and run before the skate like a low mist, and in sunrise or sunset
 
 3. 245 
 
 become coloured ; second, the shadow of the skater in the water, seen 
 through the transparent ice ; and third, the melancholy undulating 
 sound from the skate, not without variety ; and when very many are 
 skating together, the sounds and the noises give an impulse to the icy 
 trees, and the woods all round the lake tinkle. 
 
 Here I stop, having in truth transcribed the preceding in great mea- 
 sure, in order to present the lovers of poetry with a descriptive passage, 
 extracted, with the author's permission, from an xmpublished poem oil 
 the growth and revolutions of an individual inind, by Wordsworth : 
 
 an Orphic tale indeed, 
 
 A tale divine of high and passionate thoughts 
 To their own music cbaunted ! S. T. C. 
 
 GROWTH OF GENIUS FROM THE INFLUENCES OF NATURAL OBJECTS ON 
 THE IMAGINATION', IN BOYHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 
 
 Wisdom and spirit of the universe! 
 
 Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought ! 
 
 And giv'st to forms and images a breath 
 
 And everlasting motion ! not in vain, 
 
 By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn 
 
 Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me 
 
 The passions that build up our human soul. 
 
 Nor with the mean and vulgar works of man, 
 
 But with high objects, with enduring things. 
 
 With life and nature : purifying thus 
 
 The elements of feeling and of thought, 
 
 And sanctifying by such discipline 
 
 Both pain and fear, until we recognize 
 
 A grandeur iu the beatings of the heart. 
 
 Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 
 With stintfd kindness. In November days 
 When vapours rolling down the valleys made 
 A lonely scene more lonesome ; among woods 
 At noon, and mid the calm of summer nights, 
 When by the margin of the trembling lake, 
 Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went 
 In solitude, such intercourse was mine ; 
 'Twas mine among the fields both day and night, 
 And by the waters all the summer long. 
 
 And in the frosty season when the sun 
 Was set, and, visible for many a mile 
 The cottage windows through the twilight blazed, 
 I heeded not the summons : happy time 
 It was indeed for all of us, to me 
 It was a time of rapture ! clear and loud 
 The village clock toll'd six ! I whei'l'd about, 
 Proud and exulting, like an untir'd horse 
 That car'd not for its home. All shod with steel 
 Wo hiss'd along the polish'd ice, in games 
 Confederate, imitative of the chase 
 And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn. 
 The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare. 
 So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
 
 246 The Second Landing -Place 
 
 And not a voice was idle : with the din 
 Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud, 
 The leafless trees and every icy crag 
 Tinkled like iron, %vhile the distant hills 
 Into the tumult sent an alien sound 
 Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stare, 
 Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west 
 The orange sky of evening died away. 
 
 Not seldom from the uproar 1 retired 
 Into a silent bay, or sportively 
 Glanc'd sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng 
 To cut across the image of a star 
 That gleam'd upon the ice : and oftentimes 
 When we had given our bodies to the wind, 
 And all the shadowy banks on either side 
 Came sweeping through the darkness spinning still 
 The rapid line of motion, then at once 
 Have 1 reclining back upon my heels 
 Stopp'd short: yet still the solitary cliffs 
 Wheel'd by me even as if the earth had roll'd 
 With visible motion her diurnal round ! 
 Behind me did they stretch in solemn train 
 Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watch'd 
 Till all was tranquil as a summer sea. 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 Es istfast traurig zu sehen, wiemcm von der Hebraischen Quellen FO gam sfch abgemndet 
 hat. In JEgyptens selbst dunkeln unentrathselbaren Hieroglapfien hat man den ^ 
 alter Weisheit suchen wollen ; jetzt ist von nichts als Indiens Spraclie und Weisheit die Jierie ; 
 aber die Rabbinische Schriften liegen unerforscht. SCHELLING. 
 
 (Translation.) It is mournful to observe, how entirely we have turned our backs on the 
 Hebrew sources. In the obscure insolvable riddles of the Egyptian hieroglyphics the learned 
 nave been hoping to find the key of ancient doctrine, and now we hear of nothing but the 
 language and wisdom of India, while the writings and traditions of the Rabbins are consigned 
 to neglect without examination. 
 
 THE LORD HELPETH MAN AND BEAST. 
 
 DURING his march to conquer the world, Alexander the Macedonian 
 came to a people in Africa, who dwelt in a remote and secluded corner 
 in peaceful huts, and knew neither war nor conqueror. They led him 
 to the hut of their chief, who received him hospitably and placed before 
 him golden dates, golden figs, and bread of gold. Do you eat gold in 
 this country ? said Alexander. I take it for granted (replied the chief) 
 that thou wert able to find eatable food in thine own country. For 
 what reason then art thou come among us? Your gold has not tempted 
 me hither, said Alexander, but I would willingly become acquainted 
 with your manners and customs. So be it, rejoined the other, sojourn 
 among us as long as it pleaseth thee. At the close of this conversation 
 two citizens entered as into their court of justice. The plaintiff said, I 
 bought of this man a piece of land, and as I was making a deep drain 
 through it I found a treasure. This is not mine, for I only bargained
 
 Essay 4. 247 
 
 for the land, and not for any treasure that might be concealed beneath 
 it: and yet the former owner of the land will not receive it. The 
 defendant answered : 1 hope I have a conscience as well as my fellow- 
 citizen. I sold him the land with all its contingent, as well as existing 
 advantages, and consequently the treasure inclusively. 
 
 The chief, who was at the same time their supreme judge, reca- 
 pitulated their words, in order that the parties might see whether or no 
 he understood them aright. Then after some reflection said : Thou hast 
 a sou, friend, I believe? Yes! And thou (addressing the other) a 
 daughter? Yes! Well then, let thy son marry thy daughter, and 
 bestow the treasure on the young couple for their marriage portion. 
 Alexander seemed surprised and perplexed. Think you my sentence 
 unjust ? the chief asked him. () no, replied Alexander, but it astonishes 
 me. And how, then, rejoined the chief, would the case have been 
 decided in your country V To confess the truth, said Alexander, we 
 should have taken both parties into custody and have seized the treasure 
 for the king's use. For the king's use ! exclaimed the chief, now in his 
 turn astonished. Does the sun shine on that country? O yes ! Does 
 it rain there ? Assuredly. Wonderful ! but are there tame animals in 
 the country that live on the grass and green herbs? Very many, and of 
 many kinds. Aye, that must be the cause, said the chief: for the sake 
 of those innocent animals the All-gracious Being continues to let the 
 sun shine and the rain drop down on your country. 
 
 WHOSO HATH FOUND A VIRTUOUS WIFE HATH A GREATER TREASURE 
 THAN COSTLY PEARLS. 
 
 Such a treasure had the celebrated teacher Rabbi Meir found. He 
 sat during the whole of one Sabbath day in the public school, and in- 
 structed the people. During his absence from his house his two sons 
 died, both of them of uncommon beauty and enlightened in the law. 
 His wife bore them to her bed-chamber, laid them them m>on the 
 marriage-bed, and spread a white covering over their bodies. In the 
 evening Rabbi Meir came home. Where are my two sons, he asked, 
 that I may give them my blessing? They are irone to the school, was 
 the answer. I repeatedly looked round the school, he replied, and I 
 did not see them there. She reached to him a goblet, he praised the Lord 
 at the going out of the Sabbath, drank, and again asked : Where are my 
 sous that they too may drink of the cup of blessing? They will not be 
 far off, she said, and placed food before him that he might eat. He 
 was in a gladsome and genial mood, and when he had said grace after 
 the meal, she thus addressed him : Rabbi, with thy permission I would 
 fain propose to thee one question. Ask it then, my love ! he replied. 
 A few days ago, a person entrusted some jewels to my ct.
 
 248 TJte Second Landing-Place. 
 
 and now he demands them again : should 1 give them back ? This 
 is a question, said Eabbi Meir, winch my wife should not have 
 thought it necessary to ask. What, wouldst thou hesitate, or be 
 reluctant to restore to every one his own ? No, she replied ; but yet I 
 thought it best not to restore them without acquainting thee therewith. 
 She then led him to their chamber, and stepping to the bed, took the 
 white covering from the dead bodies. Ah, my sons, my sons, thus 
 loudly lamented the father, my sons, the light of mine eyes and the 
 light of my understanding, I was your father, but ye were my teachers 
 in the law. The mother turned away and wept bitterly. At length 
 she took her husband by the hand and said, Rabbi, didst thou not teach 
 me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was entrusted 
 to our keeping ? See, the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, and 
 blessed be the name of the Lord ! Blessed be the name of the Lord ! 
 echoed Rabbi Meir, and blessed be His name for thy sake too 1 for well 
 is it written, Whoso hath found a virtuous wife hath a greater treasure 
 than costly pearls : she openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her 
 tongue is the law of kindness. 
 
 CONVERSATION OF A PHILOSOPHER WITH A RABBI. 
 
 Your God in His book calls Himself a jealous God, who can endure 
 no other God beside Himself, and on all occasions makes manifest His 
 abhorrence of idolatry. How comes it then that He threatens and 
 seems to hate the worshippers of false gods more than the false gods 
 themselves. A certain king, replied the Rabbi, had a disobedient son. 
 Among other worthless tricks of various kinds, he had the baseness to 
 give his dogs his father's names and titles. Should the king show 
 his anger on the prince or the dogs ? Well turned, rejoined the philo- 
 sopher : but if your God destroyed the objects of idolatry He would take 
 away the temptation to it. Yea, retorted the Rabbi, if the fools wor- 
 shipped such things only as were of no further use than that to which 
 their folly applied them, if the idol were always as worthless as the 
 idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the sun, the moon, the host 
 of heaven, the rivers, the sea, fire, air, and what not ? Would you 
 that the Creator, for the sake of these fools, should ruin His own works, 
 and disturb the laws appointed to nature by His own wisdom ? If a 
 man steals grain and sows it, should the seed not shoot up out of the 
 earth, because it was stolen ? no ! the wise Creator lets nature run 
 her own course ; for her course is His own appointment. And what if 
 the children of folly abuse it to evil ? The day of reckoning is not far 
 off, and men will then learn that human actions likewise reappear in 
 their consequences by as certain a law as the green blade rises up out of 
 the buried corn-seed.
 
 Introduction. 249 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO 
 
 VOLUME III. OF FORMER EDITIONS. 
 
 Ilapa Se'frou rijv ivvoiav TOV Kara $v<n.v rjV icai TO <rcnvov aTrXaorws, ware 
 ic Trairr)? TrpfHrrfvecrTepav elva.1 TTjv^ftiAuu' aurov, dt6'e<Tt/tu)T<xToi' 8e irap' aurbi/ e 
 
 i' - icai TO i&clv 
 
 M. ANTON- |3i/3. a. 
 
 (JVawZafion.) From Sextus, and from the contemplation of his character, I learnt what 
 it was to live a life in harmony with nature ; and that seemliness and dignity of deportment 
 which insured the profouudest reverence at the very same time that his company was more 
 winning than all the flattery in the world. To him I owe likewise that I have known a man 
 at once the most dispassionate and the most affectionate, and who of all his attractions set 
 the least value on the multiplicity of his literary acquisitions. M. Anton. Book I. 
 
 To the Editor of the Friend. 
 SIR, 
 
 I HOPE you will not ascribe to presumption the liberty I take in 
 addressing you on the subject of your work. I feel deeply in- 
 terested in the cause you have undertaken to support ; and my object 
 in writing this letter is to describe to you, in part from my own feelings, 
 what I conceive to be the state of many minds, which may derive im- 
 portant advantage from your instructions. 
 
 I speak, Sir, of those who, though bred up under our unfavourable 
 system of education, have yet held at times some intercourse with 
 nature, and with those great minds whose works have been moulded by 
 the spirit of nature : who, therefore, when they pass from the seclusion 
 and constraint of early study, bring with them into the new scene of the 
 world much of the pure sensibility which is the spring of all that is 
 greatly good in thought and action. To such the season of that entrance 
 into the world is a season of fearful importance ; not for the seduction 
 of its passions, but of its opinions. Whatever be their intellectual 
 powers, unless extraordinary circumstances in their lives have been so 
 favourable to the growth of meditative genius that their speculative 
 opinions must spring out of their early feelings, their minds are still at 
 the mercy of fortune ; they have no inward impulse steadily to propel 
 them, and must trust to the chances of the world for a guide. And 
 such is our present moral and intellectual state that these chances are 
 little else than variety of danger. There will be a thousand causes con- 
 spiring to complete the work of a false education, and by enclosing the
 
 250 Introduction. 
 
 mind on every side from the influences of natural feeling, to degrade its 
 inborn dignity, and finally bring the heart itself under subjection to a 
 corrupted understanding. I am anxious to describe to you what I have 
 experienced or seen of the dispositions and feelings that will aid every 
 other cause of danger, and tend to lay the mind open to the infection of 
 all those falsehoods in opinion and sentiment, which constitute the de- 
 generacy of the age. 
 
 Though it would not be difficult to prove that the mind of the country 
 is much enervated since the days of her strength, and brought down 
 from its moral dignity, it is not yet so forlorn of all good there is 
 nothing in the face of the times so dark, and saddening, and repulsive 
 as to shock the first feelings of a generous spirit, and drive it at once to 
 seek refuge in the elder ages of our greatness. There yet survives so 
 much of the character bred up through long years of liberty, danger, and 
 glory, that even what this age produces bears traces of those that are 
 past, and it still yields enough of beautiful, and splendid, and bold, to 
 captivate an ardent but untutored imagination. And in this real excel- 
 lence is the beginning of danger ; for it is the first spring of that exces- 
 sive admiration of the age which at last brings down to its own level a 
 mind born above it. If there existed only the general disposition of all 
 who are formed with a high capacity for good, to be rather credulous of 
 excellence than suspiciously and severely just, the error would not be 
 carried far ; but there are, to a young mind, in this country and at this 
 time, numerous powerful causes concurring to inflame this disposition, 
 till the excess of the affection above the worth of its object is beyond 
 all computation. To trace these causes it will be necessary to follow 
 the history of a pure and noble mind from the first moment of that 
 critical passage from seclusion to the world, which changes all the cir- 
 cumstances of its intellectual existence, shows it for the first time the 
 real scene of living men, and calls up the new feeling of numerous rela- 
 tions by which it is to be connected with them. 
 
 To the young adventurer in life, who enters upon his course with such 
 a mind, everything seems made for delusion. He comes with a spirit 
 whose dearest feelings and highest thoughts have sprung up under the 
 influences of nature ; he transfers to the realities of life the high wild 
 fancies of visionary boyhood ; he brings with him into the world the 
 passions of solitary and untamed imagination, and hopes which he has 
 learned from dreams. Those dreams have been of the great, and wonderful, 
 and lovely, of all which in these has yet been disclosed to him : his thoughts 
 have dwelt among the wonders of nature, and among the loftiest spirits 
 of men heroes, and sages, and saints ; those whose deeds, and thoughts, 
 and hopes, were high above ordinary mortality, have been the familiar 
 companions of his soul. To love and to admire has been the joy of his 
 existence. Love and admiration are the pleasures he will demand of the
 
 Introduction. 251 
 
 world. For these he has searched eagerly into the ages that are gone ; 
 but with more ardent and peremptory expectation he requires them of 
 that in which his own lot is cast : for to look on lite with hopes of hap- 
 piness is a necessity of his nature, and to him there is no happiness but 
 such as is surrounded with excellence. 
 
 See first how this spirit will affect his judgment of moral character, in 
 those with whom chance may connect him in the common relations of 
 life. It is of those with whom he is to live that his soul first demands 
 this food of her desires. From their conversation, their looks, their 
 actions, their lives, she asks for excellence. To ask from all and to ask 
 iu vain would be too dismal to bear ; it would disturb him too deeply 
 with doubt, and perplexity, and fear. In this hope, and in the revolting 
 of his thoughts from the possibility of disappointment, there is a pre- 
 paration for self-delusion; there is an unconscious determination that his 
 soul shall be satisfied ; an obstinate will to find good everywhere. And 
 thus his first study of mankind is a continued effort to read in them the 
 expression of his own feelings. He catches at every uncertain show and 
 shadowy resemblance of what he seeks ; and unsuspicious in innocence, 
 he is first won with those appearances of good which arc in fact only 
 false pretensions. But this error is not carried far ; for there is a sort 
 of instinct of rectitude, which like the pressure of a talisman given to 
 baffle the illusions of enchantment, warns a pure mind against hypocrisy. 
 There is another delusion more difficult to resist and more slowly dis- 
 sipated. It is when he finds, as he often will, some of the real features 
 of excellence in the purity of their native form. For then his rapid 
 imagination will gather round them all the kindred features that are 
 wanting to perfect beauty ; and make for him, where he could not find, 
 the moral creature of his expectation ; peopling, even from this human 
 world, his little circle of affection, with forms as fair as his heart desired 
 for its love. 
 
 But when, from the eminence of life which he has reached, he lifts up 
 his eyes, and sends out his spirit to range over the great scene that is 
 opening before him and around him the whole prospect of civilized 
 life so wide and so magnificent ; when he begins to contemplate, in 
 their various stations of power or splendour, the leaders of mankind ; 
 those men on whose wisdom are hung the fortunes of nations ; those 
 whose genius and valour wield the heroism of a people ; or those, in no 
 inferior " pride of place," whose sway is over the mind of society, chiefs 
 in the realm of imagination, interpreters of the secrets of nature, 
 rulers of human opinion ; what wonder, when he looks on all this 
 living scene, that his heart should burn with strong affection, that he 
 should feel that his own happiness will be for ever interwoven with the 
 interests of mankind ? Here then the sanguine hope with which he 
 looks on life will again be blended with his passionate desire of excel-
 
 252 Introduction. 
 
 lence ; and he will still be impelled to single out some, on whom his 
 imagination and his hopes may repose. To whatever department of 
 human thought or action his mind is turned with interest, either by the 
 sway of public passion or by its own impulse, among statesmen, and 
 warriors, and philosophers, and poets, he will distinguish some favoured 
 names on which he may satisfy his admiration. And there, just as in 
 the little circle of his own acquaintance, seizing eagerly on every merit 
 they possess, he will supply more from his own credulous hope, com- 
 pleting real with imagined excellence, till living men, with all their 
 imperfections, become to him the representatives of his perfect ideal 
 creation ; till, multiplying his objects of reverence, as he enlarges his 
 prospect of life, he will have surrounded himself with idols of his own 
 hands, and his imagination will seem to discern a glory in the counte- 
 nance of the age, which is but the reflection of its own effulgence. 
 
 He will possess, therefore, in the creative power of generous hope, a 
 preparation for illusory and exaggerated admiration of the age in which 
 he lives ; and this predisposition will meet with many favouring cir- 
 cumstances, when he has grown up under a system of education like 
 ours, which (as perhaps all education must that is placed in the hands o* 
 a distinct and embodied class, who therefore bring to it the peculiar and 
 hereditary prejudices of their order) has controlled his imagination to a 
 reverence of former times, with an unjust contempt of his own. For no 
 sooner does he break loose from this control, and begin to feel, as he 
 contemplates the world for himself, how much there is surrounding him 
 on all sides that gratifies his noblest desires, than there springs up in 
 him an indignant sense of injustice, both to the age and to his own 
 mind ; and he is impelled warmly and eagerly to give loose to the feel- 
 ings that have bt en held in bondage, to seek out and to delight in finding 
 excellence that will vindicate the insulted world, while it justifies too 
 his resentment of his own undue subjection, and exalts the value of his 
 new-found liberty. 
 
 Add to this, that secluded as he has been from knowledge, and, in the 
 imprisoning circle of one system of ideas, cut off from his share in the 
 thoughts and feelings that are stirring among men, he finds himself, at 
 the first steps of his liberty, in a new intellectual world. Passions and 
 powers which he knew not of start up in his soul. The human mind, 
 which he had seen but under one aspect, now presents to him a thousand 
 unknown and beautiful forms. He sees it, in its varying powers, 
 glancing over nature with restless curiosity, and with impetuous energy 
 striving for ever against the barriers which she has placed around it ; 
 sees it with divine power creating from dark materials living beauty, and 
 fixing all its high and transported fancies in imperishable forms. In the 
 world of knowledge, and science, and art, and genius, he treads as a 
 stranger ; in the confusion of new sensations, bewildered in delights, all
 
 Introduction. 253 
 
 seems beautiful, all seems admirable. And therefore he engages eagerly 
 in the pursuit of false or insufficient philosophy ; he is won by the 
 allurements of licentious art ; he follows with wonder the irregular 
 transports of undisciplined imagination. Nor, where the objects of his 
 admiration are worthy, is he yet skilful to distinguish between the ac- 
 quisitions which the age has made for itself, and that large proportion 
 of its wealth which it has only inherited ; but in his delight of discovery 
 and growing knowledge, all that is new to his own mind seems to him 
 new born to the world. To himself every fresh idea appears instruction ; 
 every new exertion, acquisition of power : he seems just called to the 
 consciousness of himself, and to his true place in the intellectual world ; 
 and gratitude and reverence towards those to whom he owes this recovery 
 of his dignity, tend much to subject him to the dominion of minds that 
 were not formed by nature to be the leaders of opinion. 
 
 All the tumult and glow of thought and imagination, which seize on 
 a mind of power in such a scene, tend irresistibly to bind it by stronger 
 attachment of love and admiration to its own age. And there is one 
 among the new emotions which belong to its entrance on the world, 
 one almost the noblest of all in which this exaltation of the age is 
 essentially mingled. The faith in the perpetual progression of human 
 nature towards perfection, gives birth to such lofty dreams as secure to 
 it the devout assent of imagination ; and it will be yet more grateful to 
 a In-art just opening to hope, flushed with the consciousness of new 
 strength, and exulting in the prospect of destined achievements. There 
 is, therefore, almost a compulsion on generous and enthusiastic spirits, 
 as they trust that the future shall transcend the present, to believe that 
 the present transcends the past. It is only on an undue love and 
 admiration of their own age, that they can build their confidence in the 
 amelioration of the human race. Nor is this faith which, in some 
 shape, will always be the creed of virtue without apparent reason, even 
 in the erroneous form in which the young adopt it. For there is a per- 
 petual acquisition of knowledge and art, an unceasing progress in many 
 of the modes of exertion of the human mind, a perpetual unfolding of 
 virtues with the changing manners of society ; and it is not for a young 
 mind to compare what is gained with what has passed away ; to discern 
 that amidst the incessant intellectual activity of the race, the intellectual 
 power of individual minds may be falling off, and that amidst accumu- 
 lating knowledge lofty science may disappear; and still less to judge, 
 in the more complicated moral character of a people, what is progression 
 and what is decline. 
 
 Into a mind possessed with this persuasion of the perpetual progress 
 of man, there may even imperceptibly steal, both from the belief itself 
 and from many of the views on which it rests, something like a dis- 
 trust of the wisdom of great men of former ages, and with the reverence
 
 254 Intfodudwn. 
 
 which no delusion will ever overpower in a pure mind for their 
 greatness, a fancied discernment of imperfection ; of incomplete excel- 
 lence, which wanted for its accomplishment the advantages of later 
 improvements : there will be a surprise, that so much should have 
 been possible in times so ill prepared ; and even the study of their 
 works ma}' be sometimes rather the curious research of a speculative 
 inquirer than the devout contemplation of an enthusiast, the watchful 
 and obedient heart of a disciple listening to the inspiration of his 
 master. 
 
 Here then is the power of delusion that will gather round the 6rst 
 steps of a youthful spirit, and throw enchantment over the world in 
 which it is to dwell : hope realizing its own dreams, ignorance 
 dazzled and ravished with sudden sunshine, power awakened and 
 rejoicing in its own consciousness, enthusiasm kindling among mul- 
 tiplying images of greatness and beauty; and enamoured, above all, 
 of one splendid error ; and springing from all these, such a rapture of 
 life, and hope, and joy, that the soul, in the power of its happiness, 
 transmutes things essentially repugnant to it into the excellence of its 
 own nature : these are the spells that cheat the eye of the mind with 
 illusion. It is under these influences that a young man of ardent 
 spirit gives all his love, and reverence, and zeal, to productions of art, 
 to theories of science, to opinions, to systems of feeling, and to cha- 
 racters distinguished in the world, that are far beneath his own original 
 dignity. 
 
 Now as this delusion springs not from his worse but his better 
 nature, it seems ;is if there could be no warning to him from within of 
 his danger ; for even the impassioned joy which he draws at times from 
 the works of Nature, and from those of her mightier sons, and which 
 would startle him from a dream of unworthy passion, serves only to 
 fix the infatuation : for those deep emotions, proving to him that his 
 heart is uncorrupted, justify to him all its workings, and his mind con- 
 fiding and delighting in itself, yields to the guidance of its own blind 
 impulses of pleasure. His chance, therefore, of security is, the chance 
 that the greater number of objects occurring to attract his honourable 
 passions may be worthy of them. But we have seen that the whole 
 power of circumstances is collected to gather round him such objects 
 and influences as will bend his high passions to unworthy enjoyment. 
 He engages in it with a heart and understanding unspoiled ; but they 
 cannot long be misapplied with impunity. They are drawn gradually 
 into closer sympathy with the falsehoods they have adopted, till his 
 very nature seeming to change under the corruption, there disappears 
 from it the capacity of those higher perceptions and pleasures to which 
 he was born, and he is cast off from the communion of exalted minds, 
 to live and to perish with the age to which he has surrendered hhmelf.
 
 Introduction. 255 
 
 If minds under these circumstances of danger are preserved from 
 decay and overthrow, it can seldom, I think, be to themselves that they 
 owe their deliverance. It must be to a fortunate chance which places 
 them under the influence of some more enlightened mind, from which 
 they may first gain suspicion and afterwards wisdom. There is a phi- 
 losophy, which, leading them by the light of their best emotions to the 
 principles which should give life to thought and law to genius, will 
 discover to them, in clear and perfect evidence, the falsehood of the 
 errors that have misled them, and restore them to themselves. And 
 this philosophy they will be willing to hear and wise to understand ; 
 but they must be led into its mysteries by some guiding hand, for 
 they want the impulse or the power to penetrate of themselves the 
 recesses. 
 
 If a superior mind should assume the protection of others just begin- 
 ning to move among the dangers I have described, it would probably 
 be found, that delusions springing from their own virtuous activity 
 were not the only difficulties to be encountered. Even after suspicion 
 is awakened, the subjection to falsehood may be prolonged and deepened 
 by many weaknesses both of the intellectual and moral nature ; weak- 
 that will sometimes shake the authority of acknowledged truth. 
 There may be intellectual indolence, an indisposition in the mind to 
 the effort of combining the ideas it actually possesses, and bringing into 
 distinct form the knowledge which in its elements is already its own ; 
 there may be, where the heart resists the sway of opinion, misgivings and 
 modest self-mistrust, in him \\ho sees, that if he trusts his heart, he 
 must slight the judgment of all around him ; there may be too habitual 
 yielding to authority, consisting, more than in indolence or diffidence, 
 in a conscious helplessness, and incapacity of the mind to maintain 
 itself in its own place against the weight of general opinion ; and there 
 may be too indiscriminate, too undisciplined a sympathy with others, 
 which by the mere infection of feeling will subdue the reason. There 
 must be a weakness in dejection to him who thinks, with sadness, if 
 his faith be pure, how gross is the error of the multitude, and that 
 multitude how vast ; a reluctance to embrace a creed that excludes so 
 many whom he loves, so many whom his youth has revered ; a difficulty 
 to his undertanding to believe that those whom he knows to be, in 
 much that is good and honourable, his superiors, can be beneath him in 
 this which is the most important of all ; a sympathy pleading impor- 
 tunately at his heart to descend to the fellowship of his brothers, and 
 to take their faith and wisdom for his own. How often, when under the 
 impulses of those solemn hours, in which he has felt with clearer insight 
 and deeper faith his sacred truths, he labours to win to his own belief 
 those whom he loves, will he be checked by their indifference or their 
 laughter ! and will he not bear back to his meditations a painful and dis-
 
 256 Introduction. 
 
 heartening sorrow, a gloomy discontent in that faith which takes in but 
 a portion of those whom he wishes to include in all his blessings ? "\Vil 
 he not be enfeebled by a distraction of inconsistent desires, when he 
 feels so strongly that the faith which fills his heart, the circles within 
 which he would embrace all he loves would repose all his wishes and 
 hopes, and enjoyments, is yet incommensurate with his affections? 
 
 Even when the mind, strong in reason and just feeling united, and 
 relying on its strength, has attached itself to truth, how much is there 
 in the course and accidents of life that is for ever silently at work for 
 its degradation ! There are pleasures, deemed harmless, that lay asleep 
 the recollections of innocence ; there are pursuits held honourable, or 
 imposed by duty, that oppress the moral spirit; above all, there is 
 that perpetual connection with ordinary minds in the common inter- 
 course of society ; that restless activity of frivolous conversation, where 
 men of all characters and all pursuits mixing together, nothing may be 
 talked of that is not of common interest to all nothing, therefore, but 
 those obvious thoughts and feelings that float over the surface of things, 
 and all which is drawn from the depth of Nature, all which im- 
 passioned feeling has made original in thought, would be misplaced 
 and obtrusive. The talent that is allowed to show itself is that which 
 can repay admiration by furnishing entertainment ; and the display to 
 which it is invited is that which flatters the vulgar pride of society, by 
 abasing what is too high in excellence for its sympathy ; a dangerous 
 seduction to talents, which would make language that was given to 
 exalt the soul by the fervid expression of its pure emotions the instru- 
 ment of its degradation. And even when there is, as in the instance I 
 have supposed, too much uprightness to choose so dishonourable a 
 triumph, there is a necessity of manners by which every one must be 
 controlled who mixes much in society, not to offend those with whom 
 he converses by his superiority ; and whatever be the native spirit of a 
 mind, it is evident that this perpetual adaptation of itself to others 
 this watchfulness against its own rising feelings, this studied sympathy 
 with mediocrity must pollute and impoverish the sources of its 
 strength. 
 
 From much of its own weakness, and from all the errors of its mis- 
 leading activities, may generous youth be rescued by the interposition 
 of an enlightened mind ; and in some degree it may be guarded by 
 instruction against the injuries to which it is exposed in the world. 
 His lot is happy who owes this protection to friendship, who has found 
 in a friend the watchful guardian of his mind. He will not be deluded, 
 having that light to guide ; he will not slumber, with that voice to 
 inspire ; he will not be desponding or dejected, with that bosom to lean 
 on. But how many must there be whom HcRven has left unprovided, 
 except in their own strength ; who must maintain themselves, uuas-
 
 Introduction. 257 
 
 sisted and solitary, against their own infirmities and the opposition of 
 the world! For such there may be yet a protector. If a teacher should 
 stand up in their generation, conspicuous above the multitude in 
 superior power, and yet more in the assertion and proclamation of dis- 
 regarded truth ; to him to his cheering or summoning voice all hearts 
 would turn, whose deep sensibility has been oppressed by the indif- 
 ference, or misled by the seduction of the times. Of one such teacher 
 who has been given to our own age you have described the power when 
 you said, that in his annunciation of truths he seemed to speak in thun- 
 ders. I believe that mighty voice has not been poured out in vain; that 
 there are hearts that have received into their inmost depths all its vary- 
 ing tones ; and that even now, there are many to whom the name of 
 -worth calls up the recollection of their weakness and the con- 
 sciousness of their strength. 
 
 To give to the reason and eloquence of one man, this complete con- 
 trol over the minds of others, it is necessary, I think, that he should 
 be born in their own times. For thus whatever false opinion of pre- 
 eminence is attached to the age, becomes at once a title of reverence to 
 him ; and when with distinguished powers he sets himself apart from 
 <>, and above it as the teacher of high but ill-understood truths, 
 he will appear at once to a generous imagination in the dignity of one 
 whose superior mind outsteps the rapid progress of society, and will de- 
 rive from illusion itself the power to disperse illusions. It is probable 
 too, that he who labours under the errors I have described might feel 
 the power of truth in a writer of another age, yet fail in applying the 
 full force of his principles to his own times ; but when he receives them 
 from a living teacher, there is no room for doubt or misapplication. It 
 is the errors of his own generation that are denounced ; and whatever 
 authority he may acknowledge in the instructions of his master, strikes, 
 with inevitable force, at his veneration for the opinions and characters 
 of his own times. And finally there will be gathered round a living 
 teacher, who speaks to the deeper soul many feelings of human love, 
 that will place the infirmities of the heart peculiarly under his control, 
 at the same time that they blend with and animate the attachment to 
 his cause. So that there will flow from him something of the peculiar 
 influence of a friend ; while his doctrines will be embraced and asserted 
 and vindicated with the ardent zeal of a disciple, such as can scarcely be 
 carried back to distant times, or connected with voices that speak only 
 from the grave. 
 
 I have done what I proposed. I have related to you as much as I 
 have had opportunities of knowing of the difficulties from within and 
 from without, which may oppose the natural developement of true 
 feeling and right opinion, in a mind formed with some capacity for good ; 
 and the resources which such a mind may derive from an enlightened con-
 
 258 Introduction, 
 
 temporary writer. If what I have said be just, it is certain that this 
 influence will be felt more particularly in a work adapted by its mode 
 of publication to address the feelings of the time, and to bring to its 
 readers repeated admonition and repeated consolation. 
 
 I have perhaps presumed too far in trespassing on your attention, and 
 in giving way to my own thoughts ; but I was unwilling to leave any- 
 thing unsaid which might induce you to consider with favour the request 
 I was anxious to make, in the name of all whose state of mind I have 
 described, that you would at times regard us more particularly in your 
 instructions. I cannot judge to what degree it may be in your power 
 to give the truth you teach a control over understandings that have 
 matured their strength in error, but in our class I am sure you will 
 have docile learners. MATHETES. 
 
 The Friend might rest satisfied that his exertions thus far have not 
 been wholly unprofitable, if no other proof had been given of their in- 
 fluence than that of having called forth the foregoing letter, with which 
 he has been so much interested that he could not deny himself the 
 pleasure of communicating it to his readers. In answer to his corre- 
 spondent, it need scarcely here be repeated, that one of the main purposes 
 of this work is to weigh, honestly and thoughtfully, the moral worth and 
 intellectual power of the age in which we live ; to ascertain our gain and 
 our loss ; to determine what we are in ourselves positively, and what 
 we are compared with our ancestors ; and thus, and by every other 
 means within his power, to discover what may be hoped for future 
 times, what and how lamentable are the evils to be feared, and how 
 far there is cause for fear. If this attempt should not be made wholly 
 in vain, my ingenuous correspondent, and all who are in a state of mind 
 resembling that of which he gives so lively a picture, will be enabled 
 more readily and surely to distinguish false from legitimate objects of 
 admiration ; and thus may the personal errors which he would guard 
 against be more effectually prevented or removed, by the developement 
 of general truth for a general purpose, than by instructions spec; 
 adapted to himself or to the class of which he is the able representative. 
 There is a life and spirit in knowledge which we extract from truths 
 scattered for the benefit of all, and which the mind, Toy its own activity, 
 has appropriated to itself a life and spirit, which is seldom found in 
 knowledge communicated by formal and direct precepts, even when 
 they are exalted and endeared by reverence and love for the teacher. 
 
 Nevertheless, though I trust that the assistance which my correspon- 
 dent has done me the honour to request, will in course of time flow 
 naturally from my labours, in a manner that will best serve him, I can- 
 not resist the inclination to connect, at present, with his letter a few re- 
 marks of direct application to the subject of it remarks, I say, for to
 
 Introduction. 259 
 
 such I shall confine myself, independent of the main point out of which 
 his complaint and request both proceed, I mean the assumed inferiority 
 of the present age in moral dignity and intellectual power to those 
 which have preceded it. For if the fact were true that we had even 
 surpassed our ancestors in the best of what is good, the main part of the 
 dangers and impediments which my correspondent has feelingly por- 
 trayed could not cease to exist for minds like his, nor indeed would they 
 be much diminished ; as they arise out of the constitution of things, 
 from the nature of youth, from the laws that govern the growth of the 
 faculties, and from the necessary condition of the great body of mankind. 
 Let us throw ourselves back to the age of Elizabeth, and call up to mind 
 the heroes, the warriors, the statesmen, the poets, the divines, and the 
 moral philosophers, with which the reign of the virgin queen was illus- 
 trated. Or if we be more strongly attracted by the moral purity and 
 greatness, and that sanctity of civil and religious duty with which the 
 tyranny of Charles I. was struggled against, let us cast our eyes, in the 
 hurry of admiration, round that circle of glorious patriots ; but do not 
 let us be persuaded, that each of these, in his course of discipline, was 
 uniformly helped forward by those with whom he associated, or by 
 those whose care it was to direct him. Then, as now, existed objects to 
 which the wisest attached undue importance; then, as now, judgment 
 was misled by factions and parties time wasted in controversies fruitless, 
 except as far as they quickened the faculties ; then, as now, minds were 
 venerated or idolized, which owed their influence to the weakness of 
 their contemporaries rather than to their own power. Then, though 
 great actions were wrought, and great works in literature and science 
 produced, yet the general taste was capricious, fantastical, or grovelling : 
 and in this point, as in all others, was youth subject to delusion, frequent 
 in proportion to the liveliness of the sensibility, and strong as the strength 
 of the imagination. Every age hath abounded in instances of parents, 
 kindred, and friends, who, by indirect influence of example, or by posi- 
 tive injunction and exhortation, have diverted or discouraged the youth 
 who, in the simplicity and purity of nature, had determined to follow 
 his intellectual genius through good and through evil, and had devoted 
 himself to knowledge, to the practice of virtue and the preservation of 
 integrity, in slight of temporal rewards. Above all, have not the com- 
 mon duties and cares of common life at all times exposed men to injury, 
 from causes whose action is the more fatal from being silent and unre- 
 mitting, and which, wherever it was not jealously watched and steadily 
 
 i, must have pressed upon and consumed the diviner spirit? 
 
 There are two errors into which we easily slip when thinking of past 
 
 times. One lies in forgetting in the excellence of what remains, the 
 
 large overbalance of worthlessness that has been swept away. Ranging 
 
 over the wide tracts of antiquity, the situation of the mind may be
 
 260 Introduction. 
 
 likened to that of a traveller* in some unpeopled part of America, who is 
 attracted to the burial-place of one of the primitive inhabitants. It is 
 conspicuous upon an eminence, " a mount upon a mount !" He digs 
 into it, and finds that it contains the bones of a man of mighty stature ; 
 and he is tempted to give way to a belief, that as there were giants in 
 those days, so all men were giants. But a second and wiser thought 
 may suggest to him, that this tomb would never have forced itself upon 
 his notice if it had not contained a body that was distinguished from 
 o.thers, that of a man who had been selected as a chieftain or ruler for 
 the very reason that he surpassed the rest of his tribe in stature, and 
 who now lies thus conspicuously inhumed upon the mountain-top, 
 while the bones of his followers are laid unobtrusively together in their 
 burrows upon the plain below. The second habitual error is, that in 
 this comparison of ages we divide time merely into past and present, 
 and place these in the balance to be weighed against each other, not 
 considering that the present is in our estimation not more than a 
 period of thirty years, or half a century at most, and that the past is a 
 mighty accumulation of many such periods, perhaps the whole of recorded 
 time, or at least the whole of that portion of it in which our own coun- 
 try has been distinguished. We may illustrate this by the familiar use 
 of the words ancient and modern, when applied to poetry : what can be 
 more inconsiderate or unjust than to compare a few existing writers with 
 the whole succession of their progenitors ? The delusion, from the mo- 
 ment that our thoughts are directed to it, seems too gross to deserve 
 mention ; yet men will talk for hours upon poetry, balancing against 
 each other the words ancient and modern, and be unconscious that they 
 have fallen into it. 
 
 These observations are not made as implying a dissent from the belief 
 of my correspondent, that the moral spirit and intellectual powers of this 
 country are declining ; but to guard against unqualified admiration, even 
 in cases where admiration has been rightly fixed, and to prevent that 
 depression which must necessarily follow, where the notion of the pecu- 
 liar unfavourableness of the present times to dignity of mind has been 
 carried too far. For in proportion as we imagine obstacles to exist out 
 of ourselves to retard our progress, will, in fact, our progress be retarded. 
 Deeming then, that in all ages an ardent mind will be baffled and 
 led astray in the manner under contemplation, though in various degrees, 
 I shall at present content myself with a few practical and desultory com- 
 ments upon some of those general causes, to which my correspondent 
 justly attributes the errors in opinion, and the lowering or deadening of 
 sentiment to which ingenuous and aspiring youth is exposed. And first, 
 for the heart-cheering belief in the perpetual progress of the species to- 
 wards a point of unattainable perfection. If the present age do indeed 
 * Vide Ashe's Trarels in America.
 
 Introduction. 261 
 
 transcend the past in what is most beneficial and honourable, he that 
 perceives this, being in no error, has no cause for complaint ; but if it be 
 not so, a youth of genius might, it should seem, be preserved from any 
 wrong influence of this faith, by an insight into a simple truth, namely, 
 that it is not necessary, in order to satisfy the desires of our nature, or 
 to reconcile us to the economy of Providence, that there should be at all 
 times a continuous advance in what is of highest worth. In fact it is 
 not, as a writer of the present day has admirably observed, in the 
 power of fiction to portray in words, or of the imagination to con- 
 ceive in spirit, actions or characters of more exalted virtue than those 
 which thousands of years ago have existed upon earth, as we know 
 from the records of authentic history. Such is the inherent dignity 
 of human nature, that there belong to it sublimities of virtues which 
 all men may attain, and which no man can transcend ; and though 
 this be not true, in an equal degree, of intellectual power, yet in the 
 persons of Plato, Demosthenes, and Homer, and in those of Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and Lord Bacon, were enshrined as much of the divinity of 
 intellect as the inhabitants of this planet can hope will ever take up 
 its abode among them. But the question is not of the power or worth 
 of individual minds, but of the general moral or intellectual merits 
 of an age, or a people, or of the human race. Be it so ; let us allow 
 and believe that there is a progress in the species towards unattainable 
 perfection, or whether this be so or not, that it is a necessity of a good 
 and greatly-gifted nature to believe it ; surely it does not follow, that 
 this progress should be constant in those virtues and intellectual quali- 
 ties, and in those departments of knowledge, which in themselves abso- 
 lutely considered are of most value things independent and in their 
 degree indispensable. The progress of the species neither is nor can be 
 like that of a Roman road in a right line. It may be more justly com- 
 pared to that of a river, which, both in its smaller reaches and larger 
 turnings, is frequently forced back towards its fountains by objects 
 which cannot otherwise be eluded or overcome ; yet with an accom- 
 panying impulse that will insure its advancement hereafter, it is either 
 gaining strength every hour, or conquering in secret some difficulty, by 
 a labour that contributes as effectually to further it in its course, as 
 when it moves forward uninterrupted in a line, direct as that of the 
 Roman road with which we began' the comparison. 
 
 It suffices to content the mind, though there may be an apparent 
 stagnation, or a retrograde movement in the species, that something is 
 doing which is necessary to be done, and the effects of which will in due 
 time appear ; that something is unremittingly gaining, either in secret 
 preparation or in open and triumphant progress. But in fact here, as 
 everywhere, we are deceived by creations which the mind is compelled 
 to make for itself : we speak of the species not as an aggregate, but as
 
 262 Introduction. 
 
 endued with the form and separate life of an individual. But human 
 kind, what is it else than myriads of rational beings in various degrees 
 obedient to their reason ; some torpid, some aspiring ; some in eager 
 chase to the right hand, some to the left ; these wasting down their 
 moral nature, and these feeding it for immortality ? A whole genera- 
 tion may appear even to sleep, or may be exasperated with rage they 
 that compose it tearing each other to pieces with more than brutal 
 fury. It is enough for complacency and hope, that scattered and 
 solitary minds are always labouring somewhere in the service of truth 
 and virtue ; and that by the sleep of the multitude, the energy of the 
 multitude may be prepared ; and that by the fury of the people, the 
 chains of the people may be broken. Happy moment was it for 
 England when her Chaucer, who has rightly been called the morning 
 star of her literature, appeared above the horizon ; when her Wickliff, 
 like the sun, " shot orient beams " through the night of Romish super- 
 stition ! Yet may the darkness and the desolating hurricane which 
 immediately followed in the wars of York and Lancaster, be deemed in 
 their turn a blessing, with which the land has been visited. 
 
 May I return to the thought of progress, of accumulation, of in- 
 creasing light, or of any other image by which it may please us to 
 represent the improvement of the species? The hundred years that 
 followed the usurpation of Henry IV. were a hurling-back of the mind 
 of the country, a dilapidation, an extinction ; yet institutions, laws, 
 customs, and habits, were then broken down, which would not have 
 been so readily, nor perhaps so thoroughly, destroyed by the gradual 
 influence of increasing knowledge ; and under the oppression of which, 
 if they had continued to exist, the virtue and intellectual prowess of the 
 succeeding century could not have appeared at all, much less could they 
 have displayed themselves with that eager haste, and with those bene- 
 ficent triumphs, which will to the end of time be looked back upon with 
 admiration and gratitude. 
 
 If the foregoing obvious distinctions be once clearly perceived, and 
 steadily kept in view, I do not see why a belief in the progress of 
 human nature towards perfection should dispose a youthful mind, 
 however enthusiastic, to an undue admiration of his own age, and thus 
 tend to degrade that mind. 
 
 But let me strike at once at the root of the evil complained of in my 
 correspondent's letter. Protection from any fatal effect of seductions, 
 and hindrances which opinion may throw in the way of pure and high- 
 minded youth, can only be obtained with certainty at the same price by 
 which everything great and good is obtained, namely, steady de- 
 pendence upon voluntary and self-originating effort, and upon the 
 practice of self-examination, sincerely aimed at and rigorously enforced. 
 But how is this to be expected from youth ? Is it not to demand the
 
 Introduction. 263 
 
 fruit when the blossom is barely put forth, and is hourly at the mercy 
 of frosts and winds? To expect from youth these virtues and habits, ia 
 that degree of excellence to which in mature years they may be carried, 
 would indeed be preposterous. Yet has youth many helps and apti- 
 tudes for the discharge of these difficult duties, which are withdrawn 
 for the most part from the more advanced stages of life. For youth 
 has its own wealth and independence; it is rich in health of body and 
 animal spirits, in its sensibility to the impressions of the natural 
 universe, in the conscious growth of knowledge, in lively sympathy and 
 familiar communion with the generous actions recorded in history, and 
 with the high passions of poetry ; and, above all, youth is rich in the 
 possession of time, and the accompanying consciousness of freedom and 
 power. The young man feels that he stands at a distance from the 
 season when his harvest is to be reaped, that he has leisure and may 
 look around may defer both the choice and the execution of his pur- 
 poses. If he makes an attempt and shall fail, new hopes immediately 
 rush in, and new promises. Hence, in the happy confidence of his 
 feelings, and in the elasticity of his spirit, neither worldly ambition, 
 nor the love of praise, nor dread of censure, nor the necessity of 
 worldly maintenance, nor any of those causes which tempt or compel 
 the mind habitually to look out of itself for support ; neither these, nor 
 the passions of envy, fear, hatred, despondency, and the rankling of dis- 
 appointed hopes (all which in after-life give birth to and regulate 
 the efforts of men, and determine their opinions), have power to preside 
 over the choice of the young, if the disposition be not naturally bad, or 
 the circumstances have not been in an uncommon degree unfavourable. 
 In contemplation, then, of this disinterested and free condition of the 
 youthful mind, I deem it in many points peculiarly capable of searching 
 into itself, and of profiting by a few simple questions such as these 
 that follow. Am I chiefly gratified by the exertion of my power from 
 the pure pleasure of intellectual activity, and from the knowledge 
 thereby acquired ? In other words, to what degree do I value my 
 faculties and my attainments for their own sakes ? or are they chiefly 
 prized by me on account of the distinction which they confer, or the 
 superiority which they give me over others ? Am I aware that imme- 
 diate influence and a general acknowledgment of merit are no necessary 
 adjuncts of a successful adherence to study and meditation, in those 
 departments of knowledge which are of most value to mankind ? that a 
 recompence of honours and emoluments is far less to be expected ; in 
 fact, that there is little natural connection between them ? Have I 
 perceived this truth? and, perceiving it, does the countenance of 
 philosophy continue to appear as bright and beautiful in my eyes? 
 Has no haze bedimmed it ? Has no cloud passed over and hidden from 
 me that look which was before so encouraging ? Knowing that it is my
 
 261 Introduction. 
 
 duty, and feeling that it is my inclination, to mingle as a social being 
 with my fellow men ; prepared also to submit cheerfully to the necessity 
 that will probably exist of relinquishing, for the purpose of gaining a 
 livelihood, the greatest portion of my time to employments where I 
 shall have little or no choice how or when I am to act ; have I, at this 
 moment, when I stand as it were upon the threshold of the busy world, 
 a clear intuition of that pre-eminence in which virtue and truth (in- 
 volving in this latter word the sanctities of religion) sit enthroned above 
 all denominations and dignities which, in various degrees of exaltation, 
 rule over the desires of men? Do I feel that, if their solemn mandates 
 shall be forgotten, or disregarded, or denied the obedience due to them 
 when opposed to others, I shall not only have lived for no good purpose, 
 but that I shall have sacrificed my birthright as a rational being, and 
 that every other acquisition will be a bane and a disgrace to me ? This 
 is not spoken with reference to such sacrifices as present themselves to 
 the youthful imagination in the shape of crimes, acts by which the 
 conscience is violated ; such a thought, I know, would be recoiled from 
 at once, not without indignation ; but I write in the spirit of the 
 ancient fable of Prodicus, representing the choice of Hercules. Here is 
 the World, a female figure approaching at the head of a tram of willing 
 or giddy followers ; her air and deportment are at once careless, remiss, 
 self-satisfied, and haughty : and there is Intellectual Prowess, with a 
 pale cheek and serene brow, leading in chains Truth, her beautiful and 
 modest captive. The one makes her salutation with a discourse of ease, 
 pleasure, freedom, and domestic tranquillity ; or, if she invite to labour, 
 it is labour in the busy and beaten track, with assurance of the complacent 
 regards of parents, friends, and of those with whom we associate. The 
 promise also may be upon her lip of the huzzas of the multitude, of the 
 smile of kings, and the munificent rewards of senates. The other does 
 not venture to hold forth any of those allurements ; she does not conceal 
 from him whom she addresses the impediments, the disappointments, 
 the ignorance and prejudice which her follower will have to encounter, 
 if devoted, when duty calls, to active life ; and if to contemplative, she 
 lays nakedly before him, a scheme of solitary and unremitting labour, a 
 life of entire neglect perhaps, or assuredly a life exposed to scorn, insult, 
 persecution, and hatred ; but cheered by encouragement from a grateful 
 few, by applauding conscience, and by a prophetic anticipation, perhaps, 
 of fame a late, though lasting consequence. Of these two, each in this 
 manner soliciting you to become her adherent, you doubt not which to 
 prefer : but oh ! the thought of moment is not preference, but the 
 degree of preference ; the passionate and pure choice, the inward sense of 
 absolute and unchangeable devotion. 
 
 I spoke of a few simple questions : the question involved in this 
 deliberation is simple, but at the same time it is high and awful ; and
 
 Introduction. 265 
 
 I would gladly know whether an answer can be returned satisfactory to 
 the mind. We will for a moment suppose that it cannot ; that there is 
 a startling and a hesitation. Are we then to despond ? to retire from all 
 contest ? and to reconcile ourselves at once to cares without a generous 
 hope, and to efforts in which there is no more moral life than that 
 which is found in the business and labours of the unfavoured and un- 
 aspiring many ? No ; but if the inquiry have not been on just grounds 
 satisfactorily answered, we may refer confidently our youth to that 
 nature of which he deems himself an enthusiastic follower, and one who 
 wishes to continue no less faithful and enthusiastic. We would tell 
 him that there are paths which he has not trodden, recesses which he 
 has not penetrated ; that there is a beauty which he has not seen, a 
 pathos which he has not felt, a sublimity to which he hath not been 
 . If he have trembled because there has occasionally taken place 
 in him a lapse of which he is conscious ; if he foresee open or secret 
 attacks, which he has had intimations that he will neither be strong 
 enough to resist nor watchful enough to elude, let him not hastily 
 ascribe this weakness, this deficiency, and the painful apprehensions 
 accompanying them, in any degree to the virtues or noble qualities with 
 which youth by nature is furnished ; but let him first be assured, 
 before he looks about for the means of attaining the insight, the dis- 
 criminating powers, and the confirmed wisdom of manhood, that his 
 soul has more to demand of the appropriate excellences of youth than 
 youth has yet supplied to it ; that the evil under which he labours is 
 not a superabundance of the instincts and the animating spirit of that 
 age, but a falling short, or a failure. But what can he gain from this 
 admonition ? he cannot recall past time ; he cannot begin his journey 
 afresh ; he cannot untwist the links by which, in no undelightful 
 harmony, images and sentiments are wedded in his mind. Granted that 
 the sacred light of childhood is and must be for him no more than a 
 remembrance. He may, notwithstanding, be remanded to nature, and 
 with trustworthy hopes, founded less upon his sentient than upon his 
 intellectual being : to nature, as leading on insensibly to the society of 
 reason ; but to reason and will, as leading back to the wisdom of nature. 
 A reunion, in this order accomplished, will bring reformation and 
 timely support; and the two powers of reason and nature, thus re- 
 ciprocally teacher and taught, may advance together in a track to which 
 there is no limit. 
 
 We have been discoursing (by implication at least) of infancy, child- 
 hood, boyhood, and youth, of pleasures lying upon the unfolding 
 intellect plenteously as morning dewdrops, of knowledge inhaled 
 insensibly like the fragrance, of dispositions stealing into the spirit like 
 music from unknown quarters, of images uncalled-for and rising up 
 like exhalations, of hopes plucked like beautiful wild flowers from the
 
 266 Introduction. 
 
 ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to make a garland 
 for a living forehead : in a word, we have been treating of nature as a 
 teacher of truth through joy and through gladness, and as a creatress of 
 the faculties by a process of smoothness and delight. We have made 
 no mention of fear, shame, sorrow, nor of ungovernable and vexing 
 thoughts ; because, although these have been and have done mighty ser- 
 vice, they are overlooked in that stage of life when youth is passing into 
 manhood overlooked, or forgotten. We now apply for the succour 
 which we need, to a faculty that works after a different course ; that 
 faculty is reason ; she gives more spontaneously, but she seeks for more ; 
 she works by thought, through feeling ; yet in thoughts she begins and 
 ends. 
 
 A familiar incident may elucidate this contrast in the operations of 
 nature, may render plain the manner in which a process of intellectual 
 improvements, the reverse of that which nature pursues is by reason 
 introduced. There never perhaps existed a school-boy who, having when 
 he retired to rest, carelessly blown out his candle, and having chanced to 
 notice, as he lay upon his bed in the ensuing darkness, the sullen light 
 which had survived the extinguished flame, did not, at some time or 
 other, watch that light as if his mind were bound to it by a spell. It 
 fades and revives gathers to a point seems as if it would go out in a 
 moment again recovers its strength, nay becomes brighter than before : 
 it continues to shine with an endurance which, in its apparent weakness, 
 is a mystery ; it protracts its existence so long, clinging to the power 
 which supports it, that the observer, who had lain down in his bed so 
 easy-minded, becomes sad and melancholy ; his sympathies are touched : 
 it is to him an intimation and an image of departing human life ; the 
 thought comes nearer to him it is the life of a venerated parent, of a 
 beloved brother or sister, or of an aged domestic, who are gone to the 
 grave, or whose destiny it soon may be thus to linger, thus to hang upon 
 the last point of mortal existence, thus finally to depart and be seen no 
 more. This is nature teaching seriously and sweetly through the affec- 
 tions melting the heart, and, through that instinct of tenderness, 
 developing the understanding. In this instance the object of solicitude 
 is the bodily life of another. Let us accompany this same boy to that 
 period between youth and manhood when a solicitude may be awakened 
 for the moral life of himself. Are there any powers by which, beginning 
 with a sense of inward decay that affects not however the natural life, he 
 could call to mind the same image and hang over it with an equal interest 
 as a visible type of his own perishing spirit? Oh ! surely, if the being 
 of the individual be under his own care ; if it be his first care if duty 
 begin from the point of accountableness to our conscience, and, through 
 that, to God and human nature ; if without such primary sense of duty, 
 all secondary care of teacher, of friend, or parent, must be baseless and
 
 Introduction. 267 
 
 fruitless ; if, lastly, the motions of the soul transcend in worth those of 
 the animal functions, nay give to them their sole value; then truly are 
 there such powers ; and the image of the dying taper may be recalled 
 and contemplated, though with no sadness in the nerves, no disposition 
 to tears, no unconquerable sighs, yet with a melancholy in the soul, a 
 sinking inward into ourselves from thought to thought, a steady remon- 
 strance, and a high resolve. Let then the youth go back, as occasion 
 will permit, to nature and to solitude, thus admonished by reason, and 
 reiving upon this newly acquired support. A world of fresh sensations 
 will gradually open upon him as his mind puts oft' its infirmities, and as 
 i of being propelled restlessly towards others in admiration, or too 
 hasty love, he makes it his prime business to understand himself. New 
 sensations, I affirm, will be opened out pure, and sanctioned by that 
 reason which is their original author ; and precious feelings of disinte- 
 rested, that is self-disregarding, joy and love may be regenerated and 
 d : and, in this sense, he may be said to measure back the track 
 of life he has trod. 
 
 In such disposition of mind let the youth return to the visible 
 universe, and to conversation with ancient books ; and to those, if such 
 there be, which in the present day breathe the ancient spirit ; and let 
 him feed upon that beauty which unfolds itself, not to his eye as it sees 
 carelessly the things which cannot possibly go unseen, and are remem- 
 bered or not as accident shall decide, but to the thinking mind ; which 
 searches, discovers, and treasures up, infusing by meditation into the 
 objects with which it converses an intellectual life, whereby they remain 
 planted iu the memory, now and for ever. Hitherto the youth, I 
 suppose, has been content for the most part to look at his own mind 
 after the manner in which he ranges along the stars in the firmament, 
 with naked unaided sight: let him now apply the telescope of art to 
 call the invisible stars out of their hiding-places, and let him endeavour 
 to look through the system of his being, with the organ of reason; sum- 
 moned to penetrate, as far as it has power, in discovery of the impelling 
 forces and the governing laws. 
 
 These expectations are not immoderate ; they demand nothing more 
 than the perception of a few plain truths ; namely, that knowledge effi- 
 cacious for the production of virtue is the ultimate end of all effort, the 
 sole dispenser of complacency and repose. A perception also is implied 
 of the inherent superiority of contemplation to action. The Friend does 
 not in this contradict his own words, where he has said heretofore, that 
 " doubtless to act is nobler than to think." In those words, it was his 
 purpose to censure that barren contemplation which rests satisfied with 
 itself in cases where the thoughts are of such quality that they may be, 
 and ought to be embodied in action. But he speaks now of the general 
 superiority of thought to action, as preceding and governing all action
 
 268 Introduction. 
 
 that moves to salutary purposes ; and, secondly, as leading to elevation, 
 the absolute possession of the individual mind, and to a consistency or 
 harmony of the being within itself, which no outward agency can reach 
 to disturb or to impair ; and lastly, as producing works of pure science ; 
 or of the combined faculties of imagination, feeling, and reason works 
 which, both from their independence in their origin upon accident, their 
 nature, their duration, and the wide spread of their influence, are entitled 
 rightly to take place of the noblest and most beneficent deeds of heroes, 
 statesmen, legislators, or warriors. 
 
 Yet, beginning from the perception of this established superiority, we 
 do not suppose that the youth, whom we wish to guide and encourage, 
 is to be insensible to those influences of wealth, or rank, or station, by 
 which the bulk of mankind are swayed. Our eyes have not been fixed 
 upon virtue which lies apart from human nature, or transcends it. In 
 fact there is no such virtue. We neither suppose nor wish him to 
 undervalue or slight these distinctions as modes of power, things that 
 may enable him to be more useful to his contemporaries ; nor as gratifi- 
 cations that may confer dignity upon his living person, and, through 
 him, upon those who love him ; nor as they may connect his name, 
 through a family to be founded by his success, in a closer chain of grati- 
 tude with some portion of posterity, who shall speak of him, as among 
 their ancestry, with a more tender interest than the mere general bond 
 of patriotism or humanity would supply. We suppose no indifference 
 to, much less a contempt of, these rewards ; but let them have their due 
 place : let it be ascertained, when the soul is searched into, that they are 
 only an auxiliary motive to exertion, never the principal or originating 
 force. If this be too much to expect from a youth who, I take for granted, 
 possesses no ordinary endowments, and whom circumstances with respect 
 to the more dangerous passions have favoured, then, indeed, must the 
 noble spirit of the country be wasted away ; then would our institutions 
 be deplorable ; and the education prevalent among us utterly vile and 
 debasing. 
 
 But my correspondent, who drew forth these thoughts, has said 
 rightly, that the character of the age may not without injustice be thus 
 branded : he will not deny that, without speaking of other countries, 
 there is in these islands, in the departments of natural philosophy, of 
 mechanic ingenuity, in the general activities of the country, and in the 
 particular excellence of individual minds, in high stations civil or mili- 
 tary, enough to excite admiration and love in the sober-minded, and more 
 than enough to intoxicate the youthful and inexperienced. I will com- 
 pare, then, an aspiring youth, leaving the schools in which he has been 
 disciplined, and preparing to bear a part in the concerns of the world, I 
 will compare him, in this season of eager admiration, to a newly-invested 
 knight appearing, with his blank unsigualized shield, upon some day of
 
 Introduction. 269 
 
 solemn tournament, at the court of the Faery Queen, as that sovereignty 
 was conceived to exist by the moral and imaginative genius of our divine 
 Spenser. He does not himself immediately enter the lists as a combatant, 
 but he looks round him with a beating heart: dazzled by the gorgeous 
 pageantry, the banners, the impresses, the ladies of overcoming beauty, the 
 persons of the knights now first seen by him, tho fame of whose actions 
 is carried by the traveller, like merchandize, through the world, and re- 
 sounded upon the harp of the minstrel. But I am not at liberty to make 
 this comparison. If a youth were to begin his career in such an assem- 
 blage, with such examples to guide and to animate, it will be pleaded there 
 would be no cause for apprehension ; he could not falter, he could not be 
 misled. But ours is, notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a de- 
 generate age, and recreant knights are among us far out-numbering the 
 true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, which 
 they who perform them, in their blindness, know not to be such ; and 
 which are recompensed by rewards as worthless, yet eagerly grasped at, 
 as if they were the immortal guerdon of virtue. 
 
 I have in this declaration insensibly overstepped the limits which 1 
 had determined not to pass ; let me be forgiven ; for it is hope which 
 hath carried me forward. In such a mixed assemblage as our age pre- 
 sents, with its genuine merit and its large overbalance of alloy, I may 
 boldly ask into what errors, either with respect to person or thing, 
 could a young man fall, who had sincerely entered upon the course of 
 moral discipline which has been recommended, and to which the condi- 
 tion of youth, it has be j en proved, is favourable ? His opinions could no- 
 where deceive him beyond the point up to which, after a season, he would 
 rind that it was salutary lor him to have been deceived. For, as that 
 man cannot set a right value upon health who has never known sickness, 
 nor feel the blessing of ease who has been through his life a stranger to 
 pain, so can there be no confirmed and passionate love of truth for him 
 who has not experienced the hollowness of error. Eange against each 
 ptber as advocates, oppose as combatants, two several intellects, each 
 strenuously asserting doctrines which he sincerely believes ; but the one 
 contending for the worth and beauty of that garment which the other 
 has outgrown and cast away. Mark the superiority, the ease, the dig- 
 nity, on the side of the more advanced mind, how he overlooks his 
 subject, commands it from centre to circumference, and hath the same 
 thorough knowledge of the tenets which his adversary, with impetuous 
 zeal, but in confusion also, and tin-own off his guard at every turn of 
 the argument, is labouring to maintain ! If it be a question of the fine 
 arts (poetry for instance), the riper mind not only sees that his opponent 
 is deceived, but, what is of far more importance, sees hoiv he is 
 deceived. The imagination stands before him with all its imperfections 
 laid open ; as duped by shows enslaved by words, corrupted by mis-
 
 270 Introduction. 
 
 taken delicacy and false refinement ; as not having even attended with 
 care to the reports of the senses, and therefore deficient grossly in the 
 rudiments of its own power. He has noted how, as a supposed neces- 
 sary condition, the understanding sleeps in order that the fancy may 
 dream. Studied in the history of society, and versed in the secret laws 
 of thought, he can pass regularly through all the gradations, can pierce 
 infallibly all the windings which false taste through ages has pursued 
 from the very time when first, through inexperience, heedlessness, or 
 affectation, it took its departure from the side of Truth, its .original 
 parent. Can a disputant thus accoutred be withstood ? to whom, 
 further, every movement in the thoughts of his antagonist is revealed by 
 the light of his own experience ; who, therefore, sympathizes with 
 weakness gently, and wins his way by forbearance ; and hath, when 
 needful, an irresistible power of onset, arising from gratitude to the 
 truth which he vindicates, not merely as a positive good for mankind, 
 but as his own especial rescue and redemption ? 
 
 I might here conclude ; but my correspondent, towards the close of 
 his letter, has written so feelingly upon the advantages to be derived, in 
 his estimation, from a living instructor, that I must not leave this 
 part of the subject without a word of direct notice. The Friend cited, 
 some time ago, a passage from the prose works of Milton, eloquently 
 describing the manner in which good and evil grow up together in the 
 field of the world almost inseparably ; and insisting, consequently, upon 
 the knowledge and survey of vice, as necessary to the constituting of 
 human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth. 
 
 If this be so, and I have been reasoning to the same effect in the pre- 
 ceding paragraph, the fact, and the thoughts which it may suggest, 
 will, if rightly applied, tend to moderate an anxiety for the guidance of a 
 more experienced or superior mind. The advantage, where it is pos- 
 sessed, is far from being an absolute good ; nay, such a preceptor, ever 
 at hand, might prove an oppression not to be thrown off, and a fatal 
 hindrance. Grant that in the general tenor of his intercourse with 
 his pupil he is forbearing and circumspect, inasmuch as he is rich in 
 that knowledge (above all other necessary for a teacher) which cannot 
 exist without a liveliness of memory, preserving for him an unbroken 
 image of the winding, excursive, and often retrograde course along 
 which his own intellect has passed. Grant that, furnished with these 
 distinct remembrances, he wishes that the mind of his pupil should be 
 free to luxuriate in the enjoyments, loves, and admirations appropriated 
 to its age ; that he is not in haste to kill what he knows will in due 
 time die of itself ; or be transmuted, and put on a nobler form and 
 higher faculties otherwise unattainable. In a word, that the teacher is 
 governed habitually by the wisdom of patience waiting with pleasure. 
 Yet perceiving how much the outward help of art can facilitate the pro-
 
 Introduction. 271 
 
 gress of nature, he may be betrayed into many unnecessary or pernicious 
 mistakes where he deems his interference warranted by substantial 
 experience. And in spite of all his caution, remarks may drop insensi- 
 bly from him which shall wither in the mind of his pupil a generous 
 sympathy, destroy a sentiment of approbation or dislike, not merely 
 innocent but salutary ; and for the inexperienced disciple how many 
 pleasures may be thus cut off, what joy, what admiration, and what 
 love! while in their stead are introduced into the ingenuous mind mis- 
 givings, a mistrust of its own evidence, dispositions to affect to feel where 
 there can be no real feeling, indecisive .judgments, a superstructure of 
 opinions that has no base to support it, and words uttered by rote with 
 the impertinence of a parrot or a mocking-bird, yet which may not be 
 listened to with the same indifference, as they cannot be heard without 
 some feeling of moral disapprobation. 
 
 These results, I contend, whatever may be the benefit to be derived 
 from such an enlightened teacher, are in their degree inevitable. And 
 by this process humility and docile dispositions may exist towards 
 the master, endued as he is with the power which personal presence 
 confers ; but at the same time they will be liable to overstep their 
 due bounds, and to degenerate into passiveness and prostration of mind. 
 This towards him ! while, with respect to other living men, nay even 
 to the mighty spirits of past times, there may be associated with such 
 weakness a want of modesty and humility. Insensibly may steal in 
 presumption and a habit of sitting in judgment in cases where no sen- 
 timent ought to have existed but diffidence or veneration. Such 
 virtues are the sacred attributes of youth ; its appropriate calling is net- 
 to distinguish in the fear of being deceived or degraded, not to analyze 
 with scrupulous minuteness, but to accumulate in genial confidence ; 
 its instinct, its safety, its benefit, its glory, is to love, to admire, to feel, 
 and to labour. Kature has irrevocably decreed that our prime de- 
 pendence, in all stages of life after infancy and childhood have been 
 passed through (nor do I know that this latter ought to be excepted), 
 must be upon our own minds ; and that the way to knowledge shall be 
 long, difficult, winding, and oftentimes returning upon itself. 
 
 What has been said is a mere sketch, and that only of a part of the 
 interesting country into which we have been led ; but my correspondent 
 will be able to enter the paths that have been pointed out. Should he 
 do this and advauee steadily for a while, he need not fear any devia- 
 tions from the truth which will be finally injurious to him. He will 
 not long have his admiration fixed upon unworthy objects ; he will 
 neither be clogged nor drawn aside by the love of friends or kindred, 
 betraying his understanding through his affections ; he will neither be 
 bowed down by conventional arrangements of manners, producing too 
 often a lifeless decency, nor will the rock of his spirit wear away in the
 
 272 Introduction. 
 
 endless beating of the waves of the world ; neither will that portion of 
 his own time, which he must surrender to labours by which his liveli- 
 hood is to be earned or his social duties performed, be unprofitable to 
 himself indirectly, while it is directly useful to others ; for that time has 
 been primarily surrendered through an act of obedience to a moral law 
 established by himself, and therefore he moves then also along the orbit 
 of perfect liberty. 
 
 Let it be remembered, that the advice requested does not relate to the 
 government of the more dangerous passions, or to the fundamental 
 principles of right and wrong as acknowledged by the universal con- 
 science of mankind. I may therefore assure my youthful correspondent, 
 if he will endeavour to look into himself in the manner which I have 
 exhorted him to do, that in him the wish will be realized, to him in 
 due time the prayer granted, which was uttered by that living teacher 
 of whom he speaks with gratitude as of a benefactor, when, in his 
 character of philosophical poet, having thought of morality as implying 
 in its essence voluntary obedience, and producing the effect of order, he 
 transfers, in the transport of imagination, the law of moral to physical 
 natures, and having contemplated, through the medium of that order, 
 all modes of existence as subservient to one spirit, concludes his address 
 to the power of duty in the following words : 
 
 To humbler functions, awful power ! 
 
 I call thee : I myself commend 
 
 Unto thy guidance from this hour ; 
 
 Oh, let my weakness have an end ! 
 
 Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
 
 The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
 
 The confidence of reason give I 
 
 And, in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live ! 
 
 WORDSWOBTH.
 
 THE FRIEND. 
 
 Jrrctton tfje J|>rc0irti. 
 
 ON THE GROUNDS OF MORALS AND RELIGION, 
 
 DISCIPLINE OF THE MIXO REQUISITE FOR A TRUE UN 
 OF THE SAME. 
 
 1 know, the seeming and selt-pleasing wisdom of our times consists much in cavilling and 
 
 unjustly carping at ;ill things that see light, and that there are many who earnestly hunt 
 after the public fame o; learning and judgment by this easily-trod and despicable path, which, 
 nutwithslunding, they treail with as much confidence as folly; for that, utttimcs, which they 
 \,tin y and unjuMly brand with opprobrie, outlives their fate, and fl< urisheth when it is forgot 
 that ever any such as they had being. Dedication to Lord Herbert of Ambrose Parey't 
 H'nV., tiy Tkinmis Jn'unsQii, tlu: Truiutlatur, 1634.
 
 274 Tie Friend. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 We cannot but look up with reverence to the advanced natures of the naturalists and 
 moralists in highest repute amongst us, and wish they had been heightened by a more 
 noble principle, which had crowned all their various sciences with the principal science, and 
 in their brave strayings after truth helped them to better fortune than only to meet wuh 
 her handmaids, and kept them from the fate of Ulysses, who wandering through the shades 
 met all the ghosts, yet could not see the queen. 
 
 J. H, (JOHN HALL?) his Motion to the Parliament of England 
 concerning the Advancement of Learning. 
 
 THE preceding section had for its express object the principles of our 
 duty as citizens, or morality as applied to politics. According to his 
 scheme there remained for The Friend first, to treat of the principles of 
 morality generally, and then of those of religion. But since the com- 
 mencement of this [second] edition, the question has repeatedly arisen in 
 my mind, whether morality can be said to have any principle distinguish- 
 able from religion, or religion any substance divisible from morality ? 
 Or should I attempt to distinguish them by their objects, so that morality 
 were the religion which we owe to things and persons of this life, and re- 
 ligion our morality toward God and the permanent concerns of our own 
 souls, and those of our brethren ; yet it would be evident, that the latter 
 must involve the former, while any pretence to the former without the 
 latter would be as bold a mockery as if, having withheld an estate from 
 the rightful owner, we should seek to appease our conscience by the plea, 
 that we had not failed to bestow alms on him in his beggary. It was 
 never my purpose, and it does not appear to be the want of the age, to 
 bring together the rules and inducements of worldly prudence. But to 
 substitute these for the laws of reason and conscience, or even to confound 
 them under one name, is a prejudice, say rather a profanation, which I 
 became more and more reluctant to natter by even an appearance of 
 assent, though it were only in a point of form and technical arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 At a time when my thoughts were thus employed, I met with a 
 volume of old tracts, published during the interval from the captivity of 
 Charles I. to the restoration of his son. Since my earliest manhood it 
 had been among my fondest regrets, that a more direct and frequent 
 reference had not been made by our historians to the books, pamphlets, 
 and flying sheets of that momentous period, -during which all the possible 
 forms of truth and error (the latter being themselves for the greater part 
 caricatures of truth) bubbled up on the surface of the public mind as in 
 the ferment of a chaos. It would be difficult to conceive a notion or a 
 fancy, in politics, ethics, theology, or even in physics or physiology, 
 which had not been anticipated by the men of that age ; in this as in 
 most other respects sharply contrasted with the products of the French 
 Revolution, which was scarcely more characterized by its sanguinary and
 
 Section 2. Essay 1. 275 
 
 sensual abominations than (to borrow the words of an eminent living 
 j oet) by 
 
 A dreary want at once of books and men. 
 
 The parliament's army was not wholly composed of mere fanatics. There 
 was no mean proportion of enthusiasts ; and that enthusiasm must have 
 been of no ordinary grandeur which could draw from a common soldier, 
 in an address to his comrades, such a dissuasive from acting in " the cruel 
 spirit of fear !" and such sentiments as are contained in the following 
 extract, which I would fain rescue from oblivion,* both for the honour 
 of our forefathers, and in proof of the intense difference between the re- 
 publicans of that period, and the democrats, or rather demagogues, of the 
 present. " I judge it ten times more honourable for a single person 
 in witnessing a truth to oppose the world in its power, wisdom and 
 jiuthority, this standing in its full strength, and he singly and nakedly, 
 than fighting many battles by force of arms, and gaining them all. 
 1 have no life but truth ; and if truth be advanced by my suffering, 
 then my life also. If truth live, I live; if justice live, I live; and 
 these cannot die, but by any man's suffering for them are enlarged, 
 enthroned. Death cannot hurt me. I sport with him, am above his 
 reach. I live an immortal life. What we have within, that only can 
 we see without. I cannot see death ; and he that hath not this freedom 
 is a slave. He is in the arms of that, the phantom of which he beholdeth 
 and seemeth to himself to flee from. Thus, you see that the king hath 
 a will to redeem his present loss. You see it by means of the lust alter 
 power in your own hearts. For my part I condemn his unlawful seek- 
 ing after it. I condemn his falsehood and indirectness therein. But if 
 lie should not endeavour the restoring of the kingliness to the realm, and 
 the dignity of its kings, he were false to his trust, false to the majesty of 
 God that he is intrusted with. The desire of recovering his loss is justi- 
 fiable. Yea, I should condemn him as unbelieving and pusillanimous, if 
 he should not hope for it. But here is his misery and yours too at pre- 
 sent, that ye are unbelieving and pusillanimous, and are, both alike, 
 pursuing things of hope in the spirit of fear. Thus you condemn the 
 parliament for acknowledging the king's }>ower so far as to seek to him 
 by a treaty ; while by taking such pains against him you manifest your 
 own belief that he hath a great power which is a wonder, that a prince 
 despoiled of all his authority, naked, a prisoner, destitute of all friends 
 and helps, wholly at the disposal of others, tied and bound too with all 
 . litigations that a parliament can imagine to hold him, should yet be such 
 a terror to you, and fright you into such a large, remonstrance, and such 
 
 * The more so because every year con- of the Parliament war to the restoration, to 
 
 - r Wilfred Law- bis butler, and it supplied the chain:; 
 
 ton's predecessor, f rum .-. 'i\.-. jiuiu" <T ct:i<>r. dniirsisu-' shops ol Penriili and Kendal for 
 
 left a largf and unique collection, of the many years. 
 p..mph}ets published from the corniiitnctnient
 
 276 The Friend. 
 
 perilous proceedings to save yourselves from him. Either there is some 
 strange power in him, or you are full of fear that are so affected with a 
 shadow. 
 
 " But as you give testimony to his power, so you take a course to 
 advanc3 it ; for there is nothing that hath any spark of God in it, but the 
 more it is suppressed the more it rises. If you did indeed believe that 
 the original of power were in the people, you would believe likewise that 
 the concessions extorted from the king would rest with you, as, doubt- 
 less, such of them as in righteousness ought to have been given, would 
 do ; but that your violent courses disturb the natural order of things, on 
 which they still tend to their centre : and so far from being the way to 
 secure what we have got, they are the way to lose them, and (for a time 
 at least) to set up princes in a higher form than ever. For all things by 
 force compelled from their nature will fly back with the greater earnest- 
 ness on the removal of that force ; and this, in the present case, must 
 soon weary itself out, and hath no less an enemy in its own satiety than 
 in the disappointment of the people. 
 
 " Again : you speak of the king's reputation, and do not consider that 
 the more you crush him, the sweeter the fragrance that comes from him. 
 While he suffers, the spirit of God and glory rests upon him. There is a 
 glory and a freshness sparkling in him by suffering, an excellency that 
 was hidden, and which you have drawn out. And naturally men are 
 ready to pity sufferers. When nothing will gain me, affliction will. I 
 confess his sufferings make me a royalist, who never cared for him. 
 He that doth and can suffer shall have my heart ; you had it while you 
 suffered. But now your severe punishment of him for his abuses in 
 government, and your own usurpations, will not only win the hearts of 
 the people to the oppressed suffering king, but provoke them to rage 
 against you, as having robbed them of the interest which they had in his 
 royalty. For the king is in the people, and the people in the king. The 
 king's being is not solitary, but as he is in union with his people, who are 
 his strength in which he lives ; and the people's being is not naked, but 
 an interest in the greatness and wisdom of the king who is their honour 
 which lives in them. And though you will disjoin yourselves from 
 kings, God will not, neither will I. God is King of kings, kings' and 
 princes' God, as well as people's, theirs as well as ours, and theirs emi- 
 nently (as the speech enforces, God of Israel, that is, Israel's God above 
 all other nations ; and so King of kings) by a near and especial kindred and 
 communion. Kingliness agrees with all Christians, who are indeed Chris- 
 tians. For they are themselves of a royal nature, made kings with Christ, 
 and cannot but be friends to it, being of kin to it : and if there were not 
 kings to honour, they would want one of the appointed objects upon which 
 to bestow that fulness of honour which is in their breasts. A virtue 
 lie unemployed within them, and in prison, pining and restless from ti.u
 
 Section 2. Essay 1. 277 
 
 want of its outward correlative. It is a bastard religion, that is incon- 
 sistent with the majesty and the greatness of the most splendid monarch. 
 Such spirits are strangers from the kingdom of heaven. Either they 
 know not the glory in which God lives, or they are of narrow minds 
 that are corrupt themselves, and not able to bear greatness, and so think 
 that God will not, or cannot, qualify men for such high places with cor- 
 respondent and proportionable power and goodness. Is it not enough to 
 have removed the malignant bodies which eclipsed the royal sun, and 
 mixed their bad influences with his ? And would you extinguish the 
 sun itself to secure yourselves ? Oh ! this is the spirit of bondage to fear, 
 and not of love and a sound mind. To assume the office and the name 
 of champions for the common interest, and of Christ's soldiers, and yet to 
 act for self-safety is so poor and mean a tiling that it must needs produce 
 most vile and absurd actions, the scorn of the old pagans, but for Chris- 
 tians, who in all things are to love their neigh bour as themselves, and 
 God above both, it is of all affections the unworthiest. Let me be a fool 
 and boast, if so I may show you, while it is yet time, a little of that 
 rest and security which I and those of the same spirit enjoy, and which 
 you have turned your backs u[K>n ; self, like a banished thing, wandering 
 in strange ways. First, then, I fear no party, or interest, for I love all, 
 I am reconciled to all, and therein I find all reconciled to me. I have 
 enmity to none but the son of perdition. It is enmity begets insecurity ; 
 and while men live in the flesh, and in enmity to any party, or interest, 
 in a private, divided, and self good, there will be, there cannot but be, 
 perpetual wars; except that one particular should quite ruin all other 
 parts and live alone, which the universal must not, will not, suffer. For 
 to admit a part to devour and absorb the others were to destroy the 
 whole, which is God's presence therein ; and such a mind in any part 
 doth not only fight with another part, but against the whole. Every 
 faction of men, therefore, striving to make themselves absolute, and to 
 o\\v their safety to their strength, and not to their sympathy, do directly 
 Avar against God who is love, peace, and a general good, gives being to all 
 and cherishes all, and therefore can have neither peace nor security. But 
 we being enlarged into the largeness of God, and comprehending all things 
 in our bosoms by the Divine Spirit, are at rest with all, and delight in 
 all : for we know nothing but what is, in its essence, in our own hearts. 
 Kings, nobles, are much beloved of us, because they are in us, of us, one 
 with us, we as Christians being kings and lords by the anointing of 
 God." 
 
 But such sentiments, it will be said, are the flights of speculative 
 minds. Be it so ! yet to soar is nobler than to creep. We attach, like- 
 wise, some value to a thing on the mere score of its rarity ; and specula- 
 tive minds, alas ! have been rare, though not equally rare, in all ages and 
 countries of civilized man. With us the very word seems to have
 
 278 The Friend. 
 
 abdicated its legitimate sense. Instead of designating a mind so con- 
 stituted and disciplined as to find in its own wants and instincts an interest 
 in truths for their truth's sake, it is now used to signify a practical 
 schemer, one who ventures beyond the bounds of experience in the forma- 
 tion and adoption of new ways and means for the attainment of wealth or 
 power. To possess the end in the means, as it is essential to morality in 
 the moral world, and the contra-distinction of goodness from mere pru- 
 dence, so is it, in the intellectual world, the moral constituent of genius, 
 and that by which true genius is contra-distinguished from mere talent. 
 (See the postscript at the end of this essay.) 
 
 The man of talent, who is, if not exclusively, yet chiefly and charac- 
 teristically a man of talent, seeks and values the means wholly in 
 relation to some object not therein contained. His means may be 
 peculiar ; but his ends are conventional, and common to the mass of 
 mankind. Alas ! in both cases alike, in that of genius, as well as in that 
 of talent, it too often happens, that this diversity in the "morale" of 
 their several intellects, extends to the feelings and impulses properly aud 
 directly moral, to their dispositions, habits, and maxims of conduct. It 
 characterizes not the intellect alone, but the whole man. The one sub- 
 stitutes prudence for virtue, legality in act and demeanour for warmth 
 and purity of heart ; and too frequently becomes jealous, envious a 
 coveter of other men's good gifts, and a detractor from their merits, 
 openly or secretly, as his fears or his passions chance to preponderate.* 
 The other, on the contrary, might remind us of the zealots for legiti- 
 mate succession after the decease of our sixth Edward, who not content 
 with having placed the rightful sovereign on the throne, would wreak 
 their vengeance on " the meek usurper," who had been seated on it by 
 a will against which she had herself been the first to remonstrate. For 
 with that unhealthful preponderance of impulse over motive, which, 
 though no part of genius, is too often its accompaniment, he lives in con- 
 tinued hostility to prudence, or banishes it altogether ; and thus de- 
 prives virtue of her guide and guardian, her prime functionary, yea, the 
 very organ of her outward life. Hence a benevolence that squanders its 
 shafts and still misses its aim, or like the charmed bullet that, levelled 
 at the wolf, brings down the shepherd! Hence the desultoriness, ex- 
 tremes, exhaustion 
 
 And thereof cometh in the end despondency and madness ! WORDSWORTH. 
 
 * According to the principles of Spnrz- redly) the part of the skull asserted to be 
 
 helm's Craniosix'py ( a scheme, the indicative significant of that tendency and correspon- 
 
 or gnomonic parts of which have a stronger dent to the organ, is strikingly large in a ca*t 
 
 support in facts than the theory in reason or of the head of the famous Dr. Dodd ; and it 
 
 common sense), we should find in the skull of was found of equal dimension in a literary 
 
 such an individual the organs of circum- man, whose skull puzzled the cranioscopist 
 
 spection and appropriation disproportionately more than it did me. Nature, it should seem, 
 
 large and prominent compared with those of makes no distinction between manuscripts and 
 
 ideality and benevolence. Jt is certain that money-drafts, though the law does. 
 the organ of appropriation, or (more cor-
 
 Section 2. Essay 1. 279 
 
 Let it not be forgotten, however, that these evils are the disease of the 
 mail, while the records of biography furnish ample proof that genius, in 
 the higher decree, acts as a preservative against them : more remarkably, 
 ami in more frequent instances, when the imagination and precon- 
 structive {tower have taken a scientific or philosophic direction ; as in 
 Plato, indeed in almost all the first-rate philosophers in Kepler, Milton, 
 Boyle, Newton, Leibnitz, and Berkeley. At all events, a certain number 
 of speculative minds is necessary to a cultivated state of society, as a 
 condition of its progress! veness ; and nature herself has provided against 
 an}- too great increase in this class of her productions. As the gifted 
 masters of the divining-rod to the ordinary miners, and as the miners of 
 a country to the husbandmen, mechanics, and artisans, such is the pro- 
 portion of the Trismegisti to the sum total of speculative minds, even of 
 those, I mean, that are truly such ; and of these again, to the remaining 
 mass of useful labourers and "operatives" in science, literature, and 
 the learned professions. 
 
 This train of thought brings to my recollection a conversation with a 
 friend of my youth, an old man of humble estate, but in whose society 
 I had great pleasure. The reader will, I hope, pardon me if I embrace 
 the opportunity of recalling old affections, afforded me by its fitness to 
 illustrate the present subject. A sedate man he was, and had been a 
 miner from his boyhood. Well did he represent the old " lang syne," 
 when every trade was a mystery and had its own guardian saint ; when 
 the sense of self-importance was gratified at home, and ambition had a 
 hundred several lotteries, in one or other of which every freeman had a 
 ticket, and the only blanks were drawn by sloth, intemperance, or in- 
 evitable calamity ; when the detail of each art and trade (like the oracles 
 of the prophets, interpretable in a double sense) was ennobled in the eyes 
 of its professors by being spiritually improved into symbols and me- 
 mentoes of all doctrines and all duties, and every craftsman had, as it 
 were, two versions of his Bible, one in the common language of the 
 country, another in the acts, objects, and products of his own particular 
 craft. There are. not many things in our older popular literature more 
 interesting to me than those contests, or Amoibean eclogues, between 
 workmen for the su{terior worth and dignity of their several callings, 
 which used to be sold at our village fairs, in stitched sheets, neither un- 
 titled nor undecorated, though without the sii{>erfluous cost of a separate 
 title-page. 
 
 With this good old miner I was once walking through a cornfield at 
 harvest time, when that part of the conversation to which I have 
 alluded took place. " At times," said I, " when you were delving in the 
 bowels of the arid mountain or foodless rock, it must have occurred to 
 your mind as a pleasant thought, that in providing the scythe and the 
 sword you were virtually reaping the harvest and protecting the harvest-
 
 280 The Friend. 
 
 man." "Ah !" he replied with a sigh, that gave a fuller meaning to his 
 smile, " out of all earthly things there come both good and evil ; the good 
 through God, and the evil from the evil heart. From the look and 
 weight of the ore I learnt to make a near guess, how much iron it would 
 yield ; but neither its heft, nor its hues, nor its breakage would pro- 
 phesy tome, whether it was to become a thievish picklock, a murderer's 
 dirk, a slave's collar, or the woodman's axe, the feeding ploughshare, the 
 defender's sword, or the mechanic's tool. So, perhaps, my young friend ! 
 I have cause to be thankful, that the opening upon a fresh vein gives 
 me a delight so full as to allow no room for other fancies, and leaves 
 behind it a hope and a love that support me in my labour, even for the 
 labour's sake." 
 
 As, according to the oldest philosophy, life, being in its own nature 
 aeriform, is under the necessity of renewing itself by inspiring the con- 
 natural, and therefore assimilable air, so is it with the intelligential soul 
 with respect to truth ; for it is itself of the nature of truth. Ttvo^evrj 
 fK 6eu>pias, KOI df'apM dflov, <j)v(riv fX flv $iAo&a/ioi'a VTra/^ft. Plotinus. 
 But the occasion and brief history of the decline of true speculative 
 philosophy, with the origin of the separation of ethics from religion, I 
 must defer to the following number. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 As I see many good and can anticipate no ill consequences, in the 
 attempt to give distinct and appropriate meanings to words hitherto 
 synonymous, or at least of indefinite and fluctuating application, if only 
 the proposed sense be not passed upon the reader as the existing and 
 authorized one, I shall make no other apology for the use of the word, 
 talent, in this preceding essay and elsewhere in my works, than by an- 
 nexing the following explanation. I have been in the habit of consider- 
 ing the qualities of intellect, the comparative eminence in which charac- 
 terizes individuals and even countries, under four kinds genius, talent, 
 sense, and cleverness. The first I use in the sense of most general 
 acceptance, as the faculty which adds to the existing stock of power and 
 knowledge by new views, new combinations, &c. In short, I define 
 genius as originality in intellectual construction ; the moral accompani- 
 ment and actuating principle of which consists, perhaps, in the carrying 
 on of the freshness and feelings of childhood into the powers of man- 
 hood. 
 
 By talent, on the other hand, I mean the comparative facility of ac- 
 quiring, arranging, and applying the stock furnished by others and 
 already existing in books or other conservatories of intellect. 
 
 By sense I understand that just balance of the faculties which is to 
 the judgment what health is to the body. The mind seems to act en 
 masse, by a synthetic rather than an analytic process; even as the out-
 
 Section 2. Essay 1. 281 
 
 ward senses, from which the metaphor is taken, perceive immediately, 
 each as it were by a peculiar tact or intuition, without any consciousness 
 of the mechanism by which the perception is realized. This is often 
 exemplified in well-bred, unaffected, and innocent women. I know a 
 lady, on whose judgment, from constant experience of its rectitude, 1 
 could rely almost as on an oracle. But when she has sometimes pro- 
 i to a detail of the grounds and reasons for her opinion, then, led 
 by similar experience, 1 have been tempted to interrupt her with, " I 
 will take your advice,' 1 or, "I shall act on your opinion; for I am sure, 
 you are in the right. But as to the fors and becauses, leave them tome 
 to tind out." The general accompaniment of sense is a disposition to 
 avoid extremes, whether in theory or in practice, with a desire to remain 
 in sympathy with the general mind of the age or country, and a feeling 
 of the necessity and utility of compromise. If genius be the initiative, 
 and talent the administrative, sense is the conservative, branch in the 
 intellectual republic. 
 
 By cleverness (which I dare not with Dr. Johnson call a low word, 
 while there is a sense to be expressed which it alone expresses) I mean 
 a comparative readiness in the invention and use of means for the 
 realizing of objects and ideas, often of such ideas which the man of 
 genius only could have originated, and which the clever man perhaps 
 neither fully comprehends nor adequately appreciates, even at the mo- 
 ment that he is prompting or executing the machinery of their accom- 
 plishment. In short, cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality, 
 it is the brain in the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently 
 accompanied by wit, genius and sense by humour. 
 
 If I take the three great countries of Europe, in respect of intellectual 
 character, namely, Germany, England, and France, I should characterize 
 them thus ; premising only that in the first line of the first two tables I 
 mean to imply that genius, rare in all countries, is equal in both of 
 these, the instances equally numerous, and characteristic therefore not 
 in relation to each other, but in relation to the third country. The other 
 qualities are more general characteristics. 
 
 GERMANY. 
 GENIUS, | TALENT, | FANCY. 
 
 The latter chiefly as exhibited in wild combination and in pomp of 
 ornament. N.B. Imagination is implied in genius. 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 GENIUS, | SENSE, | HUMOUR. 
 
 FRANCE. 
 CLEVERNESS, | TALENT, | WIT.
 
 282 
 
 TJte Friend. 
 
 So again with regard to the forms and effects, in which the qualities 
 manifest themselves intellectually. 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 IDEA, or Law anticipated,* | TOTALITY^ | DISTINCTNESS. 
 
 LAW discovered,^ 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 SELECTION, 
 
 CLEARNESS. 
 
 FRANCE. 
 THEORY invented, | PARTICULARITY,! | PALPABILITY. 
 
 Lastly, we might exhibit the same qualities in their moral, religious, 
 and political manifestations ; in the cosmopolitism of Germany, the con- 
 temptuous nationality of the Englishman, and the ostentatious and 
 boastful nationality of the Frenchman. The craving of sympathy marks 
 the German, inward pride the Englishman, vanity the Frenchman. 
 So again, enthusiasm, visionariness seems the tendency of the German ; 
 zeal, zealotry of the English; fanaticism of the French. But the 
 thoughtful reader will rind these and many other characteristic points 
 contained in, and deducible from, the relations in which the mind of the 
 three countries bears to time. 
 
 GERMANY PAST and FUTURE. 
 ENGLAND PAST and PRESENT. 
 FRANCE THE PRESENT. 
 
 A whimsical friend of mine, of more cenius than discretion, charac- 
 terizes the Scotchman of literature (confining his remark, however, to 
 
 * This as co-ordinate with genius in the 
 first table, applies likewise to the few only ; 
 and conjoined with the two following quali- 
 ties, as ger.eral characteristics of German 
 Intellect, includes or supposes, as its conse- 
 quences and accompaniments, speculation, 
 system, method ; which in a somewhat 
 lower class of minds appear as nationality, 
 (or a predilection for noumena, mundus in- 
 telligibilis, as contra-distinguished from 
 phenomena, or mundus sensibilis) scheme, 
 arrangement, orderliness. 
 
 f In totality I imply encyclopjedic learn- 
 ing, exhaustion of the subjects treated of, and 
 the passion for completion and the love of 
 the complete. 
 
 J See the following Essays on Method. It 
 might have been expressed as the contem- 
 plation of ideas objectively, as existing 
 powers, while the German of equal genius is 
 predisposed to contemplate law subjectively, 
 with anticipation of a correspondent in 
 nature. 
 
 5 Tendency to individualize, embody, in- 
 sulate, tx. gr. the vitreous and the resinous 
 fluids instead of the positive and negative 
 forces of the power of electricity. Thus too, 
 it was not sufficient that oxygen was the 
 principal, and wi-h one exception, the only 
 then known acidifying substance ; the power 
 and principle of acidification must be em- 
 bodied and as it were impersonated and 
 hypostasized in this gas. Hence the idolism 
 of the French, here expressed in one of its 
 results, viz., palpability. Ideas are here out 
 of the question. I had almost said, that 
 ideas and a Parisian philosopher are incompa- 
 tible lerms, since the latter half, I mean, of 
 the reign of I ouis XIV. But even the con- 
 ceptions of a Frenchman, whatever he admits 
 to be conceivalile, must be imageable, and the 
 imageable m ust lie fancied tangible the nou- 
 apparency of either or both being accounted 
 for by the disproportion of our senses, not by 
 the nature of the conceptions.
 
 Section Z.Essay 2. 283 
 
 the period since the Union) as a dull Frenchman and a superficial Ger- 
 man. But when I recollect the splendid exceptions of Hume, Robert- 
 son, Smollett, Keid, Thompson (if this last instance be not objected to as 
 savouring of geographical pedantry, that truly amiable man and genuine 
 poet having been born but a few furlongs from the English border), 
 Dugald Stewart, Burns, Walter Scott, Hogg and Campbell not to 
 mention the very numerous physicians and prominent dissenting 
 ministers, burn and bred beyond the Tweed I hesitate in recording so 
 wild an opinion, which derives its plausibility chiefly from the circum- 
 stance, so honourable to our northern sister, that Scotchmen generally 
 have more, and a more learned, education than the same ranks in other 
 countries, below the first class ; but in part likewise, from the common 
 mistake of confounding the general character of an emigrant, whose ob- 
 jects are in one place and his best affections in another, with the parti- 
 cular character of a Scotchman : to which we may add, jierhaps, the 
 clannish spirit of provincial literature, fostered undoubtedly by the 
 peculiar relations of Scotland, and of which therefore its metropolis may 
 be a striking, but is far from being a solitary, instance. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 'H 6Sos (caroi. 
 The road downward. HERACUT. Fragment. 
 
 AMOUR de moi-meme, mais bien cdlcule, was the motto and maxim 
 ^* of a French philosopher. Our fancy, inspirited by the more imagi- 
 native powers of hope and fear, enables us to present to ourselves the 
 future as the present ; and thence to accept a scheme of self-love for a 
 system of morality. And doubtless, an enlightened self-interest would 
 recommend the same course of outward conduct as the sense of duty 
 would do ; even though the motives in the former case had respect to 
 this life exclusively. But to show the desirableness of an object, or the 
 contrary, is one thing ; to excite the desire, to constitute the aversion, is 
 another : the one being to the other as a common guide-post to the 
 " chariot instinct with spirit," which at once directs and conveys, or (to 
 use a more trivial image) as the hand and hour-plate, or at the utmost 
 the regulator, of a watch to the spring and wheel-work, or rather to the 
 whole watch. Xay, where the sufficiency and exclusive validity of the 
 former are adopted as the maxim (rcyula maxima') of the moral sense, it 
 would be a fairer and fuller comparison to say, that it is to the latter as 
 the dial to the sun, indicating its path by intercepting its radiance. 
 
 But let it be granted, that in certain individuals from a happy even- 
 ness of nature, formed into a habit by the strength of education, the 
 influence of example, and by favourable circumstances in general, the
 
 284 The Frieml 
 
 actions diverging from self-love as their centre should be precisely the 
 same as those produced from the Christian principle, which requires of 
 us that we should place our self and our neighbour at an equal distance, 
 and love both alike as modes in which we realize and exhibit the love of 
 God above all : wherein would the difference be then ? I answer boldly ; 
 even in that for which all actions have their whole worth and their 
 main value in the agents themselves. So much indeed is this of the 
 very substance of genuine morality, that wherever the latter has given 
 way in the general opinion to a scheme of ethics founded on utility, its 
 place is soon challenged by the spirit of honour. Paley, who degrades 
 the spirit of honour into a mere club-law among the higher classes 
 originating in selfish convenience, and enforced by the penalty of excom- 
 munication from the society which habit had rendered indispensable to 
 the happiness of the individuals, has misconstrued it not less than 
 Shaftesbury, who extols it as the noblest influence of noble natures. 
 The spirit of honour is more indeed than a mere conventional substitute 
 for honesty ; but, on the other hand, instead of being a finer form of moral 
 life, it may be more truly described as the shadow or ghost of virtue 
 deceased. For to take the word in a sense which no man of honour would 
 acknowledge, may be allowed to the writer of satires, but not to the 
 moral philosopher. Honour implies a reverence for the invisible and 
 supersensual in our nature, and so far it is virtue ; but it is a virtue that 
 neither understands itself or its true source, and therefore often unsub- 
 stantial, not seldom fantastic, and always more or less capricious. 
 Abstract the notion from the lives of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, or 
 Henry IV. of France ; and then compare it with 1 Cor. xiii. and the 
 Epistle to Philemon, or rather with the realization of this fair ideal 
 in the character of St. Paul * himself. I know not a better test. >>'or 
 can I think of any investigation that would be more instructive where 
 it would be safe, but none likewise of greater delicacy from the probability 
 of misinterpretation, than a history of the rise of honour in the European 
 
 * This has struck the better class even of good while it is latent, and bidden, as it 
 infidels. Collins, one of the most learned of were, in the centre ; but the essential cause of 
 our English deists, is said to have declared, fiendish guilt, when it makes itst-li existential 
 that contradictory as miracles appeared to and peripheric si quando in circumferen- 
 his reason, he would believe in them not- tiam erumpat: (in both cases 1 have pur- 
 withstanding, if it could be proved to htm posely adopted the language of the old 
 that St. Paul had asserted any one as having mystic theosophers) 1 find the onlyexplana- 
 been worked by himself in the modern sense tion of a moral phenomenon not very un- 
 of the word miracle ; adding, " St. Paul was common in the last moments of condemned 
 BO perfect a gentleman and a man of felons viz. the obstinate denial, nut of the 
 honour !" When 1 call duelling, and similar main guilt, which might be accounted for bv 
 aberrations of honour, a moral heresy, I ordinary motives, but of some particular act, 
 refer to the force of the Greek aipe<rts, as sig- which had been proved beyond all possibility 
 nifying a principle or opinion taken up by of doubt, and attested by the criminal's own 
 the will for the will's sake, as a proof and accomplices and fellow-sufferers in their last 
 pledge to itself of its own power of self- confessions ; and this too an act, the non- 
 determination, independent of all other perpetration of which, if believed, could 
 motives. In the gloomy gratification de- neither mitigate the sentence of the law, nor 
 rived or anticipated from the exercise of this even the opinions of men after the sentence 
 awful power the condition of all moral had been carried into execution.
 
 Section 2. Essay 2. 285 
 
 monarchies as connected with the corruptions of Christianity ; and an 
 inquiry into the specific causes of the inefficacy which has attended the 
 combined efforts of divines and moralists against the practice and obliga- 
 
 f duelling. 
 
 Of a widely different character from this moral aipetrtc, yet as a deri- 
 vative from the same root, we may contemplate the heresies of the 
 os in the early ages of the church, and of the family of love, with 
 other forms of Antinomianism, since the Reformation to the present day. 
 But lest in uttering truth I should convey falsehood and fall myself into 
 the error which it is my object to expose, it will be requisite to distinguish 
 an apprehension of the whole of a truth, even where that apprehension 
 is dim and indistinct, from a partial ]x?rception of the same rashly 
 assumed as a perception of the whole. The first is rendered inevitable 
 in many things for many, in some points for all, men from the pro- 
 gressivenes-s no less than from the imperfection of humanity, which 
 itself dictates and enforces the precept, Believe that thou inayest under- 
 stand. The most knowing must at times be content with the facit 
 of a sum too complex or subtle for us to follow nature through the 
 antecedent process. The Greek verb, ovvifvai, which we render by 
 the word understand, is literally the same as our own idiomatic phrase, 
 to go along with. Hence in subjects not under the cognizance of the 
 senses wise men have always attached a high value to general and long- 
 continued assent, as a presumption of truth. After all the subtle reason- 
 ings and fair analogies which logic and induction could supply to a 
 mighty intellect, it is yetou this ground that the Socrates of Plato mainly 
 rests his faith in the immortality of the soul, and the moral government 
 of the universe. It had been held by all nations in all ages, but with 
 deepest conviction by the best and wisest men, as a belief connatural 
 with goodness and akin to prophecy. The same argument is adopted by 
 Cicero, as the principal ground of his adherence to divination. Oentem 
 n ntilluiii video neque tain humane m atijtic <hx:t<nit, ne<juc tain 
 imnianan tamque barbaram, qua? no/i *i' ; //><jic'/ri ftttitnt, tt a qts&tudai* 
 iitttlligi jira'dicique posse censeat.* 1 confess, I can never read the De 
 
 * (Tran flat ion.) I find indeed no people favour of eminent and even of popular 
 
 or nation, however civilized and cultivated, or literati, among whom 1 tike this opportunity 
 however wild and barbarous, but ha\ y ackiiowledsnnenU to the 
 
 . that there are antnvdent signs of author of Waverh-y. (iuy MannrTiug. \i 
 
 luture events, and some men capable of un- How (asked Ulysses, sddres.-inu his guardian 
 
 .lei-standing and predicting them. goddess} shall i be able to recognize Hrotens, 
 
 1 am tempted to ailil a passage from my in the shallow that >klms round our hou>e.-. 
 
 own translation of Schiller's \Vallenstein. whom 1 have Ni/n accustomed to behold as a 
 
 the more so that the work has bein long ago swan of 1'iuel.us, ineuMiring his movements 
 
 used up, as "winding-sheets for pilcliards." to a celestial n -h al'ke, she re- 
 
 - 1 would fain flatt r plied, tbon oust recognise tlx 
 
 tile kind partiality of the trunk- So su]iporte<i. 1 tiarc avow that I have 
 
 ( i with exception of works for thought my translation worthy of a more 
 
 which public admirati"ii supersedes or in- favourable reception from the public and 
 
 eludes individual commendations, i scarce their literary guides aiul purveying lint 
 
 r member a book that has been more when 1 recollect, that a much Ivtter and very 
 
 honoured by the express attestations in its far more valuable work, the Kev. .Mr. Caiy s
 
 286 The Friend. 
 
 Divinatione of this great orator, statesman, and patriot, without feeling 
 myself inclined to consider this opinion as an instance of the second class, 
 namely, of fractional truths integrated by fancy, passion, accident, and 
 that preponderance of the positive over the negative in the memory, 
 which makes it no less tenacious of coincidences than forgetful of failures. 
 I am indeed firmly persuaded, that no doctrine was ever widely 
 diffused among various nations through successive ages, and under dif- 
 ferent religions (such, for instance, as the tenets of original sin and ot 
 redemption, those fundamental articles of every known religion professing 
 to have been revealed), which is not founded either in the nature ot 
 things, or in the necessities of human nature. Kay, the more strange 
 and irreconcileable such a doctrine may appear to the understanding, the 
 judgments of which are grounded on general rules abstracted from the 
 world of the senses, the stronger is the presumption in its favour. For 
 whatever satirists may say, or sciolists imagine, the human mind has no 
 predilection for absurdity. I would even extend the principle (propor- 
 tionately I mean) to sundry tenets, that from their strangeness or 
 dangerous tendency, appear only to be generally reprobated, as eclipses 
 in the belief of barbarous tribes are to be frightened away by noises and 
 execrations ; but which rather resemble the luminary itself in this one 
 respect, that after a longer or shorter interval of occultation, they are 
 still found to re-emerge. It is these, the reappearance of which 
 {nomine tantum mutato), from age to age, gives to ecclesiastical history 
 a deeper interest than that of romance, and scarcely less wild, for every 
 philosophic mind. 1 aru far from asserting that such a doctrine (the 
 Antinomian, for instance, or that of a latent mystical sense in the words 
 of Scripture and the works of nature, according to Emanuel Sweden- 
 borg) shall be always the best possible, or not a distorted and dangerous, 
 as well as partial, representation of the truth, on which it is founded. 
 For the same body casts strangely different shadows in different positions 
 and different degrees of light. But I dare, and do affirm that it always 
 does shadow out some important truth, and from it derives its main 
 
 incomparable translation of Pante, had very Of great events stride on before the events, 
 
 nearly met with the same fate, 1 lose all And in to-day a ready walks to-niom>w. 
 
 right, and, 1 trust, all inclination to com- That which we read of the Fourth Henry's 
 plain: an inclination, which the mere sen<e death 
 
 o! its folly and uselessntss "11 not always Pid e\vr vex and haunt me, like a tale 
 
 suffice to preclude. Of niv own future destiny. The king 
 
 ^" ""' Uio n i """" *
 
 Section 2. E*say 2. 287 
 
 influence over the faith of its adherents, obscure as their perception of this 
 truth may be, and though they may themselves attribute their belief to 
 the supernatural gifts of the founder, or the miracles by which his 
 preaching had been accredited. (See Wesley's Journal.') But we have 
 the highest possible authority, that of Scripture itself, to justify us in 
 putting the question : Whether miracles can, of themselves, work a true 
 conviction in the mind? There are spiritual truths which must derive 
 their evidence from within, which whoever rejects, " neither will he 
 believe though a man were to rise from the dead " to confirm them. 
 And under the Mosaic law a miracle in attestation of a false doctrine 
 subjected the miracle-worker to death : whether really or only seemingly 
 supernatural, makes no difference in the present argument, its power of 
 convincing, whatever that power may be, whether great or small, de- 
 pending on the fulness of the belief in its miraculous nature. Estquibus 
 esse vitletur. Or rather, that I may express the same position in a form 
 less likely to offend, is not a true efficient conviction of a moral truth, 
 is not " the creating of a new heart," which collects the energies of a 
 man's whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, 
 the same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and the learned, which 
 no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal ? Is it not em- 
 phatically that leading of the Father, without which no man can come 
 to Christ? Is it not that implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of 
 miracle in the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication between 
 the senses and the soul? That predisposing warmth that renders the 
 understanding susceptible of the specific impression from the historic, 
 and from all other outward, seals of testimony ? Is not this the one 
 infallible criterion of miracles, by which a man can know whether they 
 be of God? The abhorrence in which the most savage or barbarous 
 tribes hold witchcraft, in which however their belief is so intense * as 
 even to control the springs of life, is not this abhorrence of witchcraft, 
 under so full a conviction of its reality, a proof how little of divine, how 
 little fitting to our nature, a miracle is, when insulated from spiritual 
 truths, and disconnected from religion as its end ? What then can we 
 think of a theological theory, which adopting a scheme of prudential 
 i.-mility, common to it with " the sty of Epicurus," as far at least as the 
 springs of moral action are concerned, makes its whole religion consist 
 in the belief of miracles! As well might the poor African prepare for 
 himself a fetisch by plucking out the eyes from the eagle or the lynx, 
 and enshrining the same, worship in them the power of vision. As the 
 tenet of professed Christians (I sj>eak of the principle not of the men, 
 whose hearts will always more or less correct the errors of their under- 
 
 * I refer the reader to Hearne's Travels Indies, grounded on judicial documents ami 
 among the Copper Indians, and to Bryan personal observation. 
 Ldwarda'a account ol tlie Oby in the Vttbt
 
 283 The Friend. 
 
 standings) it is even more absurd, and the pretext for such a religion 
 more inconsistent than the religion itself. For they profess to derive 
 from it their whole faith in that futurity, which if they had not previously 
 believed on the evidence of their own consciences, of Moses and the Pro- 
 phets, they are assured by the great Founder and Object of Christianity, 
 that neither will they believe it, in any spiritual and profitable sense, 
 though a man should rise from the dead. 
 
 For myself, I* cannot resist the conviction, built on particular and 
 general history, that the extravagancies of Antinomianism and Solifi- 
 diauism are little more than the counteractions to this (?hritian 
 paganism : the play, as it were, of antagonist muscles. The feelings 
 will set up their standard against the understanding, whenever the un- 
 derstanding has renounced its allegiance to the reason ; and what is 
 faith, but the personal realization of the reason by its union with the 
 will ? If we would drive out the demons of fanaticism from the people, 
 we must begin by exorcising the spirit of Epicureanism in the higher 
 ranks, and restore to their teachers the true Christian enthusiasm,* the 
 vivifying influences of the altar, the censer, and the sacrifice. They 
 must neither be ashamed of, nor disposed to explain away, the articles 
 of prevenieiit and auxiliary grace, nor the necessity of being born again 
 to the life from which our nature had become apostate. They must 
 administer indeed the necessary medicines to the sick, the motives of 
 tear as well as of hope ; but they must not withhold from them the idea 
 of health, or conceal from them that the medicines for the sick are not 
 the diet of the healthy. Nay, they must make it a part of the curative 
 process to induce the patient, on the first symptoms of recovery, to look 
 forward with prayer and aspiration to that state in which perfect love 
 shutteth out fear. Above all, they must not seek to make the mysteries 
 of faith what the world calls rational, by theories of original sin and 
 redemption borrowed analogically from the imperfection of human 
 law-courts and the coarse contrivances of state expedience. 
 
 Among the numerous examples with which I might enforce this 
 warning, I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and one 
 of the most learned of our divines ; a rigorist, indeed, concerning the 
 authority of the Church, but a latitudinarian in the articles of its faith ; 
 who stretched the latter almost to the advanced post of Socinianism, 
 a:i.l strained the former to a hazardous conformity with the asotiK. 
 of the Kom >n hierarchy. With what emotions must not a pious mind 
 peruse such passages as the following: "Death reigned upon them 
 whose sins could not be so imputed as Adam's was ; but although it 
 was not wholly imputed upon their own account, yt-t it was imputed 
 
 * The original meaning of ibe Greek, priest during the performance of the - 
 (v6yuaiA<rfio^, is the influence of the divinity, at the alUr. 
 uch as was supposed to take possession of Uie
 
 Section 2. Essay 2. 289 
 
 upon their's and Adam's. For God was so exasperated with mankind, 
 that being angry He would still continue that punishment to lesser sins 
 and sinners, which he had first threatened to Adam only. The case is 
 this : Jonathan and Michal were Saul's children. It came to pass that 
 seven of Saul's issue were to be hanged ; all equally innocent equally 
 culpable.* David took the five sons of Michal, for she had left him 
 unhandsomely. Jonathan was his friend, and therefore he spared his 
 son, Mephibosheth. Here it was indifferent as to the guilt of the 
 persons (observe, no guilt was attached to either of them) whether 
 David should take the sons of Michal or of Jonathan ; but it is likely 
 that, as upon the kindness which David had to Jonathan, he spared his 
 son, so upon the just provocation of Michal he made that evil to fall 
 upon them, which, it may be, they should not have suffered, if their 
 mother had been kind. Adam was to God as Michal to David ! ! ! 
 (Taylor's Pdem. Tracts, p. 711.) And this, with many passages equally 
 gross, occurs in a refutation of the doctrine of original sin, on the ground 
 of its incongruity with reason, and its incompatibility with God's 
 justice ! " Exasperated " with those whom the bishop has elsewhere, in 
 the same treatise, declared to have been " innocent and most unfor- 
 tunate " the two things that most conciliate love and pity ! Or, if 
 they did not remain innocent, yet, those whose abandonment to a mere 
 nature, while they were subjected to a law above nature, he affirms to 
 be the irresistible cause that they, one and all, did sin ! and this at 
 once illustrated and justified by one of the worst actions of an imperfect 
 mortal ! So far could the resolve to coerce all doctrines within the 
 limits of reason ('. e. the individual's power of comprehension) and the 
 prejudices of an Arminian against the Calvinist preachers, carry a 
 highly-gifted and exemplary divine. Let us be on our guard, lest 
 similar effects should result from the zeal, however well-grounded in 
 some respects, against the church Calvinists of our days. The writer's 
 belief is, perhaps, equi-distant from that of both parties, the Grotian 
 and the Genevan. But, confining my remark exclusively to the 
 doctrines and the practical deductions from them, I could never read 
 Bishop Taylor's Tract on " The Doctrine and Practice of Repentance," 
 without being tempted to characterize High Calvinisifc as (compara- 
 tively) a lamb in wolfs skin, and strict Arminianism as approaching to 
 the reverse. 
 
 Actuated by these motives, I have devoted the following essay to a 
 brief history of the rise and occasion of the latitudinarian system in its 
 first birth-place in Greece, and a faithful exhibition both of its parentage 
 and its offspring. The reader will find it strictly correspondent to the 
 motto of both essays, fj oSor KOTW the way downwards. 
 
 These two words are added without the but that they were the children of Saul ! and 
 Ipast ground in Scripture, according to which sacrificed to a point of state expedience. 
 (2 Samuel, xxi.) no charge was laid to them 
 
 U
 
 290 The Friend. 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 OS THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE SECT OF SOPHISTS IN GREECE. 
 
 'H 6<5<X KOLTOl. 
 
 The road downwards. HF.EACLIT. Fragment. 
 
 AS Pythagoras (584 A.C.), declining the title of the wise man, is said 
 to have first named himself Philosopher, or lover of wisdom, so 
 Protagoras, followed by Gorgias, Prodicus, &c. (444 A.C.), found even 
 the former word too narrow for his own opinion of himself, and first 
 assumed the title of Sophist ; this word originally signifying one who 
 professes the power of making others wise, a wholesale and retail dealer 
 in wisdom a wisdom-monger, in the same sense as we say, an iron- 
 monger. In this, and not in their abuse of the arts of reasoning, have 
 Plato and Aristotle placed the essential of the sophistic character. 
 Their sophisms were indeed its natural products and accompaniments, 
 but must yet be distinguished from it, as the fruits from the tree. 
 'EfiTropos rls, KOTTTjXoy, dvTOTru>\r]s TTtpi TO. Tijs V"^X'? S na6f)fuiTa a 
 vender, a market-man, in moral and intellectual knowledges (connoi&- 
 sances} one who hires himself out or puts himself up at auction, as a 
 carpenter and upholsterer to the heads and hearts of his customers 
 such are the phrases by which Plato at once describes and satirizes the 
 proper sophist. Nor does the Stagyrite fall short of his great master 
 and rival in the reprobation of these professors of wisdom, or differ from 
 him in the grounds of it. He too gives the baseness of the motives, 
 joined with the impudence and delusive nature of the pretence as the 
 generic character. 
 
 Next to this pretence of selling wisdom and eloquence, they were 
 distinguished by their itinerancy. Athens was, indeed, their great 
 emporium and place of rendezvous ; but by no means their domicile. 
 Such were Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Polus, Callicles, 
 Thrasymachus, and a whole host of sophists minorum gentium : and 
 though many of the tribe, like the Euthydemus and Dionysiodorus so 
 dramatically portrayed by Plato, were mere empty disputants, sleight- 
 of-word jugglers, this was far from being their common character. 
 Both Plato and Aristotle repeatedly admit the brilliancy of their talents 
 and the extent of their acquirements. The following passage from the 
 Timaeus of the former will be my best commentary as well as authority. 
 " The race of sophists, again, I acknowledge for men of no common 
 powers, and of eminent skill and experience in many and various kinds 
 of knowledge, and these too not seldom truly fair and ornamental of our 
 nature ; but I fear that somehow, as being itinerants from city to city, 
 loose from all permanent ties of house and home, and everywhere aliens,
 
 Section 2. Essay 3. 291 
 
 they shoot wide of the proper aim of man whether as philosopher or as 
 citizen." The few remains of Zeno the Eleatic, his paradoxes against 
 the reality of motion, are mere identical propositions spun out into a 
 sort of whimsical conundrums, as in the celebrated paradox entitled 
 Achilles and the tortoise, the whole plausibility of which rests on the 
 trick of assuming a minimum of time while no minimum is allowed to 
 space, joined with that of exacting from Intelligibilia (Nov^fpa) the 
 conditions peculiar to objects of the senses ((ftaivofitva). The passages 
 still extant from the works of Gorgias, on the other hand, want nothing 
 but the form* of a premise to undermine by a legitimate deductio ad 
 absurdum all the philosophic systems that had been hitherto advanced 
 with the exception of the Heraclitic, and of that too as it was generally 
 understood and interpreted. Yet Zeno's name was and ever will be 
 held in reverence by philosophers ; for his object was as grand as his 
 motives were honourable that of assigning limits to the claims of 
 the senses, and of subordinating them to the pure reason ; while Gorgias 
 will ever be cited as an instance of prostituted genius from the immoral 
 nature of his object and the baseness of his motives. These and not his 
 sophisms constituted him a sophist a sophist whose eloquence and 
 logical skill rendered him only the more pernicious. 
 
 Soon after the repulse of the Persian invaders, and as a heavy 
 counter-balance to the glories of Marathon and Platzea, we may date 
 the commencement of that corruption first in private and next in public 
 life, which displayed itself more or less in all the free states and com- 
 munities of Greece, but most of all in Athens. The causes are obvious, 
 and such as in popular republics have always followed, and are them- 
 selves the effects of, that passion for military glory and political prepon- 
 derance, which may well be called the bastard and the parricide of 
 liberty. In reference to the fervid but light and sensitive Athenians, 
 we may enumerate, as the most operative, the giddiness of sudden 
 aggrandisement ; the more intimate connection and frequent inter- 
 course with the Asiatic states ; the intrigues with the court of Persia ; 
 the intoxication of the citizens at large, sustained and increased by the 
 continued allusions to their recent exploits, in the flatteries of the 
 theatre, and the funeral panegyrics ; the rage for amusement and 
 public shows ; and, lastly, the destruction of the Athenian constitution 
 by the ascendancy of its democratic element During the operation of 
 these causes, at an early period of the process, and no unimportant part 
 of it, the Sophists made their first appearance. Some of these applied 
 the lessons of their art in their own persons, and traded for gain and 
 gainful influence in the character of demagogues and public orators ; but 
 
 * Viz. If either the world itself as an anl- ing to Thales or Empedocles, or if a rout, as 
 
 mated whole, according to the Italian school ; explained by Anaxagoras ; be assumed as 
 
 or If atoms, according to Democritus ; or any the absolutely first ; then, Sec. 
 one primal element, as water or fire, accord-
 
 292 The Friend. 
 
 the greater number offered themselves as instructors, in the arts of 
 persuasion and temporary impression, to as many as could come up to 
 the high prices at which they rated their services. No>i/ TrXouo-uui/ 
 6r)pa <ro(f>i<mKT) (these are Plato's words) Hireling hunters of the 
 young and rich, they offered to the vanity of youth and the ambition of 
 wealth a substitute for that authority, which by the institutions of 
 Solon had been attached to high birth and property, or rather to the 
 moral discipline, the habits, attainments, and directing motives, on 
 which the great legislator had calculated (not indeed as necessary or 
 constant accompaniments, but yet) as the regular and ordinary results 
 of comparative opulence and renowned ancestry. 
 
 The loss of this stable and salutary influence was to be supplied by 
 the arts of popularity. But in order to the success of this scheme, it 
 was necessary that the people themselves should be degraded into a 
 populace. The cupidity for dissipation and sensual pleasure in all ranks 
 had kept pace with the increasing inequality in the means of gratifying 
 it. The restless spirit of republican ambition, engendered by their 
 success in a just war, and by the romantic character of that success, had 
 already formed a close alliance with luxury in its early and most 
 vigorous state, when it acts as an appetite to enkindle, and before it has 
 exhausted and dulled the vital energies by the habit of enjoyment. 
 But this corruption was now to be introduced into the citadel of the 
 moral being, and to be openly defended by the very arms and instru- 
 ments which had been given for the purpose of preventing or chastising 
 its approach. The understanding was to be corrupted by the perversion 
 of the reason, and the feelings through the medium of the under- 
 standing. For this purpose all fixed principles, whether grounded on 
 reason, religion, law-, or antiquity, were to be undermined, and then, as 
 now, chiefly by the sophistry of submitting all positions alike, however 
 heterogeneous, to the criterion of the mere understanding, disguising or 
 concealing the fact, that the rules which alone they applied, were 
 abstracted from the objects of the senses, and applicable exclusively to 
 things of quantity and relation. At all events, the minds of men were 
 to be sensualized ; and even if the arguments themselves failed, yet the 
 principles so attacked were to be brought into doubt by the mere 
 frequency of hearing all things doubted, and the most sacred of all now 
 openly denied, and now insisted by sneer and ridicule. For by the 
 constitution of our nature, as far as it is human nature, so awful is 
 truth, that as long as we have faith in its attainability and hopes of its 
 attainment, there exists no bribe strong enough to tempt us wholly and 
 permanently from our allegiance. 
 
 Religion, in its widest sense, signifies the act and habit of reverencing 
 the Invisible, as the highest both in ourselves and in nature. To this 
 the senses and their immediate objects are to be made subservient, the
 
 Section 2. Essay 3. 293 
 
 one as its organs, the other as its exponents ; and as such, therefore, 
 naviug on their own account no true value, because no inherent worth. 
 Thev are a language, in short ; and taken independently of their repre- 
 sentative function, from words they become mere empty sounds, and 
 differ from noise only by exciting expectations which they cannot gratify 
 (it ii - of the idolatrous charm, the potent Abracadabra of a 
 
 sophisiiiMi. ' race, who had sacrificed the religion of faith to the super- 
 stition of the senses, a race of animals, in whom the presence of reason 
 is manifested solely by the absence of instinct. 
 
 The same principle, which in its application to the whole of our being 
 becomes religion, considered speculatively is the basis of metaphysical 
 science, that, namely, which requires an evidence beyond that of sensible 
 concretes, which latter the ancients generalized in the word, physica, 
 and therefore (prefixing the preposition meta, i. e. beyond or transcending) 
 named the superior science, metaphysics. The Invisible was assumed 
 as the supporter of the apparent, T&V (ftatvop-evav as their substance, a 
 term which, in any other interpretation, expresses only the striving of 
 the imaginative power under conditions that involve the necessity of its 
 frustration. If the Invisible be denied, or (which is equivalent) con- 
 sidered invisible from the defect of the senses and not in its own nature, 
 the sciences even of observation and experiment lose their essential 
 copula. The component parts can never be reduced into an harmo- 
 nious whole, but must owe their systematic arrangement to accidents of 
 an ever-shifting perspective. Much more than this must apply to the 
 moral world disjoined from religion. Instead of morality, we can at 
 best have only a scheme of prudence, and this too a prudence fallible and 
 short-sighted ; for were it of such a kind as to be bond fide coincident 
 with morals in reference to the agent as well as to the outward action, 
 its first act would be that of abjuring its own usurped primacy. By 
 celestial observations alone can even terrestrial charts be constructed 
 scientifically. 
 
 The first attempt therefore of the Sophists was to separate ethics from 
 the faith in the Invisible, and to stab morality through the side of religion 
 an attempt to which the idolatrous polytheism of Greece furnished too 
 many facilities. To the zeal with which ho counteracted this plan by 
 endeavours to purify and ennoble that popular belief, which, from obedi- 
 ence to the laws he did not deem himself permitted to subvert, did 
 Socrates owe his martyr-cup of hemlock. Still while any one principle 
 of morality remained, religion in some form or other must remain in- 
 clusively. Therefore, as they commenced by assailing the former 
 through the latter, so did they continue their warfare by reversing the 
 operation. The principle was confounded with the particular acts, in 
 which under the guidance of the understanding or judgment it was to 
 manifest itself. Thus the rule of expediency, which properly belonged
 
 294 The Friend. 
 
 to one and the lower pail of morality, was made to be the whole. And 
 so far ther was at least a consistency in this ; for in two ways only 
 could it subsist. It must either be the mere servant of religion, or its 
 usurper and substitute. Viewed as principles, they were so utterly 
 heterogeneous, that by no grooving could the two be fitted into each 
 other by no intermediate could they be preserved in lasting adhesion. 
 The one or the other was sure to decompose the cement. We cannot 
 have a stronger historical authority for the truth of this statement than 
 the words of Polybius, in which he attributes the ruin of the Greek 
 states to the frequency of perjury, which they had learnt from the 
 Sophists to laugh at as a trifle that broke no bones, nay, as in some 
 cases, an expedient and justifiable exertion of the power given us by 
 nature over our own words, without which no man could have a secret 
 that might not be extorted from him by the will of others. In the same 
 spirit the sage and observant historian attributes the growth and 
 strength of the Eoman republic to the general reverence of the invisible 
 powers, and the consequent horror in which the breaking of an oath was 
 held. This he states as the causa causarum, as the ultimate and in- 
 clusive cause of Eoman grandeur. 
 
 Under such convictions, therefore, as the Sophists laboured with such 
 fatal success to produce, it needed nothing but the excitement of the 
 passions under circumstances of public discord to turn the arguments of 
 expedience and self-love against the whole scheme of morality founded 
 on them, and to procure a favourable hearing for the doctrines which Plato 
 attributes to the Sophist Callicles. The passage is curious, and might 
 be entitled, a Jacobin head, a genuine antique, in high preservation. 
 " By nature," exclaims this Napoleon of old, " the worse off is always 
 the more infamous, that, namely, which suffers wrong ; but according 
 to the law it is the doing of wrong. For no man of noble spirit will let 
 himself be wronged : this a slave only endures, who is not worth the 
 life he has, and under injuries and insults can neither help himself or 
 those that belong to him. Those who first made the laws were, in my 
 opinion, feeble creatures, which in fact the greater number of men are ; 
 or they would not remain entangled in these spider-webs. Such, how- 
 ever, being the case, laws, honour, and ignominy were all calculated for 
 the advantage of the law-makers. But in order to frighten away the 
 stronger, whom they could not coerce by fair contest, and to secure 
 greater advantages for themselves than their feebleness could otherwise 
 
 \ 
 
 have procured, they preached up the doctrine that it was base and con- 
 trary to right to wish to have anything beyond others, and that in this 
 wish consisted the essence of injustice. Doubtless it Avas very agreeable 
 to them, if being creatures of a meaner class they were allowed to share 
 equally with their natural superiors. But nature dictates plainly enough 
 another code of right, namely, that the nobler and stronger should pos-
 
 Section 2. Essay 3. 295 
 
 sess more than the weaker and more pusillanimous. Where the power 
 is, there lies the substantial right. The whole realm of animals, nay 
 the human race itself as collected in independent states and nations, de- 
 monstrates that the stronger has a right to control the weaker for his 
 own advantage. Assuredly they have the genuine notion of right, and 
 follow the law of nature, though truly not that which is held valid in 
 our governments. But the minds of our youths are preached away from 
 them by declamations on the beauty and fitness of letting themselves 
 be mastered, till by these verbal conjurations the noblest nature is tamed 
 and cowed, like a young lion born and bred in a cage. Should a man 
 with full untamed force but once step forward, he would break all your 
 spells and conjurations, trample your contra- natural laws under his feet, 
 vault into the seat of supreme power, and in a splendid style make the 
 right of nature be valid among you." 
 
 It would have been well for mankind, if such had always been the 
 language of sophistry ! A selfishness, that excludes partnership, all men 
 have an interest in repelling. Yet the principle is the same; and if for 
 power we substitute pleasure and the means of pleasure, it is easy to 
 construct a system well fitted to corrupt natures, and the more mis- 
 chievous in proportion as it is less alarming. As long as the spirit of 
 philosophy reigns in the learned and highest ckss, and that of religion 
 in all classes, a tendency to blend and unite will be found in all objects 
 of pursuit, and the whole discipline of mind and manners will be calcu- 
 lated in relation to the worth of the agents. With the prevalence of 
 sophistry, when the pure will (if indeed the existence of a will be ad- 
 mitted in any other sense than as the temporary main current in the 
 wide gust-eddying stream of our desires and aversions) is ranked among 
 the means to an alien end, instead of being itself the one absolute end, 
 in the participation of which all other things are worthy to be called 
 good with this revolution commences the epoch of division and sepa- 
 ration. Things are rapidly improved, persons as rapidly deteriorated; 
 and for an indefinite period the powers of the aggregate increase, as the 
 strength of the individual declines. Still, however, sciences may be 
 estranged from philosophy, the practical from the speculative, and one 
 of the two at least may remain. Music may be divided from poetry, 
 and both may continue to exist, though with diminished influence. But 
 religion and morals cannot be disjoined without the destruction of both ; 
 and that this does not take place to the full extent, we owe to the fre- 
 quency with which both take shelter in the heart, and that men are 
 always better or worse than the maxims which they adopt or concede. 
 
 To demonstrate the hollowness of the present system, and to deduce 
 the truth from its sources, is not possible for me without a previous 
 agreement as to the principles of reasoning in general. The attempt 
 could neither be made within the limits of the present work, nor would
 
 296 The Friend. 
 
 its success greatly affect the immediate moral interests of the majority 
 of the readers for whom this work was especially written. For as sciences 
 are systems on principles, so in the life of practice is morality a principle 
 without a system. Systems of morality are in truth nothing more than 
 the old books of casuistry generalized, even of that casuistry which 
 the genius of Protestantism gradually worked off from itself like a 
 heterogeneous humour, together with the practice of auricular confes- 
 sion : a fact the more striking, because in both instances it was against 
 the intention of the first teachers of the Reformation ; and the revival 
 of both was not only urged, but provided for, though in vain, by no less 
 men than Bishops Saunderson and Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 But there is yet another prohibitory reason ; and this I cannot con- 
 vey more effectually than in the words of Plato to Dionysius : 
 
 "AAAa Trolov TL fir)V rovr' ea~nv, S> TTOLL Aioiixri'ou ai Awpi'Sos, TO cptinjfxa, & iravTutv O.ITIOV 
 eari KOKUIV ; juaAAor 6e 17 rrepi TOVTOV b>5if (V 777 i/*vx?7 eyYtyojueVrj, rfv h ;ur) TIS efaipeflij- 
 crcrai, Tijs aXrjfleias OVT<I><> ov fir)iroTe Tv\f- H\ar<av &IOW<TIU> en-iar- Sevr 1 
 
 (Translation.') But what a question is -this, which you propose, Oh son of Dionysius and 
 Doris ! what is the origin and cause of all evil ? But rather is the darkness and travail con- 
 cerning this, that thorn in the soul which unless a man shall have had removed, never can 
 he partake of the truth that is verily and indeed truth. 
 
 Yet that I may -fulfil the original scope of The Friend, I shall attempt 
 to provide the preparatory steps for such an investigation in the follow- 
 ing Essays on the Principles of Method common to all investigations ; 
 which I here present as the basis of my future philosophical and theo- 
 logical writings, and as the necessary introduction to the same. And in 
 addition to this, I can conceive no object of inquiry more appropriate, 
 none which, commencing with the most familiar truths, with facts of 
 hourly experience, and gradually winning its way to positions the most 
 comprehensive and sublime, will more aptly prepare the mind for the 
 reception of specific knowledge, than the full exposition of a principle 
 which is the condition of all intellectual progress, and which may be 
 said even to constitute the science of education, alike in the narrowest 
 and in the most extensive sense of the word. Yet as it is but fair to let 
 the public know beforehand what the genius of my philosophy is, and 
 in what spirit it will be applied by me, whether in politics or religion, 
 I conclude with the following brief history of the last hundred and 
 thirty years, by a lover of Old England : 
 
 Wise and necessitated confirmation and explanation of the law of 
 England, erroneously entitled The English Revolution of 1688 me- 
 chanical philosophy, hailed as a kindred revolution in philosophy, and 
 espoused as a common cause, by the partisans of the revolution in the 
 state. 
 
 The consequence is, or was, a system of natural rights instead of social 
 and hereditary privileges acquiescence in historic testimony substitute^
 
 Section 2. Essay 4. 297 
 
 for faith, and yet the true historical feeling, the feeling of being an his- 
 torical people, generation linked to generation by ancestral reputation, 
 by tradition, by heraldry this noble feeling, 1 say, openly stormed or 
 perilously undermined. 
 
 Imagination excluded from poesy, and fancy jwrarnount in physics ; 
 the eclipse of the ideal by the mere shadow of the sensible subfiction 
 for supposition. Plcbs pro Senatu Populoque the wealth of nations 
 for the well-being of nations and of man ! 
 
 Anglo-mania in France, followed by revolution in America ; consti- 
 tution ol America appropriate, perhaps, to America, but elevated from a 
 particular ex{>t>riment to a universal model. The word constitution 
 altered to mean a capitulation, a treaty, imposed by the people on 
 their own government, as on a conquered enemy ; hence giving sanction 
 to falsehood, and universality to anomaly ! 
 
 Despotism ! Despotism ! Despotism ! of finance in statistics of 
 vanity in social converse of presumption and overweening contempt of 
 the ancients in individuals! 
 
 French Eevolution ! Pauperism, revenue laws, government by clubs, 
 committees, societies, reviews, and newspapers ! 
 
 Thus it is that a nation first sets fire to a neighbouring nation, then 
 catches fire and burns backward. 
 
 Statesmen should kuow that a learned class is an essential element 
 of a state, at least of a Christian state. But you wish for general illu- 
 mination ! You begin with the attempt to popularise learning and 
 philosophy, but you will end in the plebification of knowledge. A 
 true philosophy in the learned class is essential to a true religious feel- 
 ing in all el 
 
 In fine, religion, true or false, is and ever has been the moral centre 
 of gravity in Christendom, to which all other things must and will 
 accommodate themselves. 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 *O &( jucotop (m muiv. O.KOVC iris xPV *X" 1 ' M *<" ff* fpo* aAAijAow. Ei fttv oAws 
 ij>iAocro^Has KaroL~e^)p6vT]iea.f. e^v \aiptiv ei &f irop' erc'pov oucijftoas ij avrbf /ScAri'ora eiipTjxa? 
 T<av Trap Cfiot, fffi.ro. Ttfia- ei &' apa Ta trap' >'j/xu' <roi apttrxfi, Tifn/Te'ov ica! tfit juaAtOTO. 
 
 IIAATQN- AlfiN : eirierr- Sfvrcpa- 
 
 (Translation.) Hear then what are the terms on which you and I ought to stand toward 
 each other. If yon hold philosophy altogether in contempt, bid it fare well. Or if you have 
 heard from any other person, or have yourself found out a better than mine, then give 
 honour to that, which ever it be. But if the d<x-trine taught in these our works please you, 
 then it is but just that you should honour me too in the same proportion. 
 
 Plato's 2nd Letter to Dion. 
 
 WHAT is that which first strikes us, and strikes us at once, in a 
 man of education ; and which among educated men so instantly 
 distinguishes the man of superior mind, that (as was observed with
 
 298 The Friend. 
 
 eminent propriety of the late Edmund Burke) " we cannot stand under 
 the same archway during a shower of rain, without finding him out"? 
 Not the weight or novelty of his remarks ; not any unusual interest of 
 facts communicated by him ; for we may suppose both the one and 
 the other precluded by the shortness of our intercourse and the triviality 
 of the subjects. The difference will be impressed and felt, though the 
 conversation should be confined to the state of the weather or the pave- 
 ment. Still less will it arise from any peculiarity in his words and 
 phrases. For if he be, as we now assume, a well-educated man as well 
 as a man of superior powers, he will not fail to follow the golden rule of 
 Julius Csesar, Insolens verbum, tanquam scopulum, evitare. Unless 
 where new things necessitate new terms, he will avoid an unusual 
 word as a rock. It must have been among the earliest lessons of his 
 youth that the breach of this precept at all times hazardous becomes 
 ridiculous in the topics of ordinary conversation. There remains but one 
 other point of distinction possible, and this must be, and in fact is, the 
 true cause of the impression made on us. It is the unpremeditated and 
 evidently habitual arrangement of his words, grounded on the habit of 
 foreseeing in each integral part, or (more plainly) in every sentence, 
 the whole that he then intends to communicate. However irregular and 
 desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments. 
 
 Listen, on the other hand, to an ignorant man, though perhaps shrewd 
 and able in his particular calling, whether he be describing or relating. 
 We immediately perceive, that his memory alone is called into action ; 
 and that the objects and events recur in the narration in the same 
 order, and with the same accompaniments, however accidental or im- 
 pertinent, as they had first occurred to the narrator. The necessity of 
 taking breath, the efforts of recollection, and the abrupt rectification of 
 its failures, produce all his pauses ; and with exception of the " and 
 then," the " and there," and the still less significant " and so," they 
 constitute likewise all his connections. 
 
 Our discussion, however, is confined to method as employed in the 
 formation of the understanding, and in the constructions of science and 
 literature. It would indeed be superfluous to attempt a proof of its 
 importance in the business and economy of active or domestic life. 
 From the cotter's hearth or the workshop of the artisan to the palace 
 of the arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute nor 
 equivalent, is, that every thing is in its place. Where this charm is 
 wanting, every other merit either loses its name, or becomes an addi- 
 tional ground of accusation and regret. Of one by whom it is emi- 
 nently possessed, we say, proverbially, he is like clock-work. The 
 resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short 
 of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent 
 and otherwise indistinguishable lapse of rime. But the man of me-
 
 Section 2. Essay 4. 299 
 
 thodical industry and honourable pursuits does more ; he realizes its 
 ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. 
 If the idle arc described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it 
 into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not 
 only of the consciousness but of the conscience. He organizes the 
 hours and gives them a soul ; and that, the very essence of which is to 
 fleet away, and evermore to have been, he takes up into his own perma- 
 nence, and communicates to it the imperishableness of a spiritual na- 
 ture. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies, thus directed, 
 are thus methodized, it is less truly affirmed that he lives in time, than 
 that time lives in him. His days, months,, and years, as the stops and 
 punctual marks in the records of duties performed, will survive the 
 wreck of worlds, and remain extant when time itself shall be no more. 
 
 But as the importance of method in the duties of social life is incom- 
 parably greater, so are its practical elements proportionably obvious, and 
 such as relate to the will far more than to the understanding. Hence- 
 forward, therefore, we contemplate its bearings on the latter. 
 
 The difference between the products of a well disciplined and those 
 of an uncultivated understanding, in relation to what we will now ven- 
 ture to call the Science of Method, is often and admirably exhibited by 
 our great dramatist. We scarcely need refer our readers to the Clown's 
 evidence, in the first scene of the second act of " Measure for Measure," 
 or to the Nurse in " Romeo and Juliet." But not to leave the position, 
 without an instance to illustrate it, we will take the " easy-yielding " 
 Mrs. Quickly 's relation of the circumstances of Sir John Falstaff's 
 debt to her : 
 
 FAI.STAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee ? 
 
 Mrs. QUICKLY. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou 
 didst swear to mo upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round 
 table, by a sen-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for 
 liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor thou didst swear to me then, as I was wash- 
 ing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it ? Did not 
 goodwife Kecch, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly .'coming in 
 to borrow a mess of vinegar : telling us she had a good dish of prawns whereby thou didst 
 desire to eat some whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Henry IV. 2nd pt. act il. sc. 1. 
 
 And this, be it observed, is so far from being carried beyond the 
 bounds of a fair imitation, that "the poor soul's" thoughts and sen- 
 tences are more closely interlinked than the truth of nature would have 
 reqiiired, but that the connections and sequence, which the habit of 
 method can alone give, have in this instance a substitute in the fusion 
 of passion. For the absence of method, which characterizes the un- 
 educated, is occasioned by an habitual submission of the understanding 
 to mere events and images as such, and independent of any power in 
 the mind to classify or appropriate them. The general accompaniments 
 of time and place are the only relations which persons of this class
 
 300 The Friend. 
 
 appear to regard in their statements. As this constitutes their leading 
 feature, the contrary excellence, as distinguishing the well-educated 
 man, must be referred to the contrary habit. Method, therefore, be- 
 comes natural to the mind which has been accustomed to contemplate 
 not things only, or for their own sake alone, but likewise and chiefly 
 the relations of things, either their relations to each other, or to the 
 observer, or to the state and apprehension of the hearers. To enume- 
 rate and analyze these relations, with the conditions under which alone 
 they are discoverable, is to teach the science of method. 
 
 The enviable results of this science, when knowledge has been 
 ripened into those habits which at once secure and evince its possession, 
 can scarcely be exhibited more forcibly as well as more pleasingly, 
 than by contrasting with the former extract from Shakespeare the 
 narration given by Hamlet to Horatio of the occurrences during his 
 proposed transportation to England, and the events that interrupted his 
 
 voyag 
 
 HAM. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting 
 That would not let me sleep : methought I lay 
 Worse than the routines in the bilboes. Rashly, 
 
 And prais'd be rashness for it Let us know, 
 
 Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, 
 
 When our deep plots do pall : and that should teach us, 
 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 
 Rough-hew them how we wilL 
 
 HOB. That is most certain. 
 
 HAM. Up from my cabin, 
 My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark 
 Grop'd I to find out them ; had my desire 
 Finger'd their packet ; and, in fine, withdrew 
 To my own room again : making so bold, 
 My fears forgetting manners, to unseal 
 Their grand commission ; where I found, Horatio, 
 royal knavery ! an exact command, 
 Larded with many several sorts of reasons, 
 Importing Denmark's health, and England's too, 
 With, ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life, 
 That on the supervise, no leisure bated, 
 No, not to stay the grinding of the axe 
 My head should be struck off! 
 
 HOB. Is't possible ? 
 
 HAM. Here's the commission. Read it at more leisure. 
 
 Act v. sc. 2. 
 
 Here the events, with the circumstances of time and place, are all 
 stated with equal compression and rapidity, not one introduced which 
 could have been omitted without injury to the intelligibility of the 
 whole process. If any tendency is discoverable, as far as the mere facts 
 are in question, it is the tendency to omission ; and, accordingly, the 
 reader will observe that the attention of the narrator is afterwards called 
 back to one material circumstance, which he was hurrying by, by a direct 
 question from the friend to whom the story is communicated, " How
 
 Section 2. Essay 4. 301 
 
 was this sealed ?" But by a trait which is indeed peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of Hamlet's mind, ever disposed to generalize, and meditative to 
 excess (but which, with due abatement and reduction, is distinctive of 
 every powerful and methodizing intellect), all the digressions and 
 enlargements consist of reflections, truths, and principles of general 
 and permanent interest, either directly expressed or disguised in playful 
 satire. 
 
 I sat me down : 
 
 Devis'd a new commission ; wrote it fair. 
 I once did Quid it, as our statists do, 
 A baseness to write fair, and laboured much 
 How to forget that learning ; but, sir, now 
 It did me yeoman's service. Wilt tl.ou know 
 The effect of what I wrote? 
 
 HOB. Aye, good my lord. 
 
 HAM. An earnest conjuration from the king, 
 As England was his faithful tributary ; 
 As love between them, like the palm, mifAt flourish ; 
 As peace should still her wheaten garland wear, 
 And many such like As'es of great charge 
 That on the view and knowing of these content* 
 He should the bearers put to sudden death, 
 Not shriving time allowtd. 
 
 Hon. How was this sealed ? 
 
 HAX. Why, even in that wag heaven ordinant. 
 I had my father's signet in my \> 
 Which was the model of that Danish seal: 
 Folded the writ up in form of the other ; 
 Subscribed it; gave't the impression ; placed it safely. 
 The changeling never known. Xo\v, the next day 
 Was our sea-fight ; and what to this was sequent, 
 Thou knowest already. 
 
 HOB. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't ? 
 
 HAM. Why, man, they did make love to this employment 
 They are not near my conscience : their defeat 
 Doth by their own insinuation grow. 
 "Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes 
 Between the pass and fell incensed points 
 Of mighty opposites. 
 
 It would, perhaps be sufficieut to remark of the preceding passage, in 
 connection with the humorous specimen of narration, 
 
 Fermenting o'er with frothy circumstance, 
 
 in Henry IV., that if overlooking the different value of matter in each, 
 we considered the form alone, we should find both immethodical ; 
 Hamlet from the excess, Mrs. Quickly from the want, of reflection and 
 generalization : and that method, therefore, must result from the due 
 mean or balance between our passive impressions and the mind's own 
 reaction on the same. (Whether this reaction does not suppose or imply 
 a primary act positively originating in the mind itself, and prior to the 
 object in order of nature, though co-instantaneous in its manifestation,
 
 302 The Friend. 
 
 will be hereafter discussed.) But we had a further purpose in thus 
 contrasting these extracts from our " myriad-minded bard," (pvpiovovs 
 avr)p.') We wished to bring forward, each for itself, these two ele- 
 ments of method, or (to adopt an arithmetical term) its two main 
 factors. 
 
 Instances of the want of generalization are of no rare occurrence in real 
 life ; and the narrations of Shakespeare's Hostess and the Tapster differ 
 from those of the ignorant and unthinking in general by their superior 
 humour, the poet's own gift and infusion, not by their want of method, 
 which is not greater than we often meet with in that class of which 
 they are the dramatic representatives. Instances of the opposite fault, 
 arising from the excess of generalization and reflection in minds of the 
 opposite class, will, like the minds themselves, occur less frequently in 
 the course of our own personal experience. Yet they will not have 
 been wanting to our readers, nor will they have passed unobserved, 
 though the great poet himself (6 r^v eavrov ^vx^l v **0"et uXijv riva 
 dcru>fjiaTov ftopfpals KoiKiXais /iop<a><ras *) has more conveniently sup- 
 plied the illustrations. To complete, therefore, the purpose aforemen- 
 tioned, that of presenting each of the two components as separately as 
 possible, we chose an instance in which, by the surplus of its own 
 activity, Hamlet's mind disturbs the arrangement, of which that very 
 activity had been the cause and impulse. 
 
 Thus exuberance of mind, on the one hand, interferes with the 
 forms of method ; but sterility of mind, on the other, wanting the 
 spring and impulse to mental action, is wholly destructive of method 
 itself. For in attending too exclusively to the relations which the past 
 or passing events and objects bear to general truth, and the moods of 
 his own thought, the most intelligent man is sometimes in danger of 
 overlooking that other relation in which they are likewise to be placed 
 to the apprehension and sympathies of his hearers. His discourse ap- 
 pears like soliloquy intermixed with dialogue. But the uneducated and 
 unreflecting talker overlooks all mental relations, both logical and 
 psychological ; and consequently precludes all method that is not 
 purely accidental. Hence the nearer the things and incidents in time 
 and place, the more distant, disjointed, and impertinent to each other, 
 and to any common purpose, will they appear in his narration ; and this 
 from the want of a staple, or starting-post, in the narrator himself ; from 
 the absence of the leading thought, which, borrowing a phrase from the 
 nomenclature of legislation, we may not inaptly call the initiative. On 
 the contrary, where the habit of method is present and effective, things 
 the most remote and diverse in time, place, and outward circumstance, 
 are brought into mental contiguity and succession, the more striking as 
 
 * ( Translation.) He that moulded his own sonl, as some incorporeal material, into various 
 forms. THEMierrcs.
 
 Section Z.Essaij 4. 303 
 
 the less expected. But while we would impress the necessity of this 
 habit, the illustrations adduced give proof that in undue preponderance, 
 and when the prerogative of the mind is stretched into despotism, the 
 discourse may degenerate into the grotesque or the fantastical. 
 
 With what a profound insight into the constitution of the human 
 soul is this exhibited to us in the character ot the Prince of Denmark, 
 where flying from the sense of reality, and seeking a reprieve from the 
 pressure of its duties in that ideal activity, the overbalance of which, 
 with the consequent indisposition to action, is his disease, he compels 
 the reluctant good sense of the high yet healthful-minded Horatio, to 
 follow him in his wayward meditation amid the graves ! " To what 
 base uses we may return, Horatio ! Why may not imagination trace 
 the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole ? HOB. 
 Twere to consider too curiously to consider so. HAM. No, faith, not 
 a jot ; but to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to 
 lead it. As thus : Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander 
 returneth to dust the dust is earth ; of earth we make loam : and why 
 of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer- 
 barrel ? 
 
 Imperial Casar, dead and turn'd to clay, 
 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away !" (Act v. sc. 1.) 
 
 But let it not escape our recollection, that when the objects thus con- 
 nected are proportionate to the connecting energy, relatively to the real, 
 or at least to the desirable sympathies of mankind ; it is from the same 
 character that we derive the genial method in the famous soliloquy, 
 " To be ? or not to be?" which, admired as it is, and has been, has yet 
 received only the first-fruits of the admiration due to it. 
 
 We have seen that from the confluence of innumerable impressions in 
 each moment of time the mere passive memory must needs tend to con- 
 fusion a rule, the seeming exceptions to which (the thunder-bursts in 
 Lear, for instance) are really confirmations of its truth. For, in many 
 instances, the predominance of some mighty passion takes the place of 
 the guiding thought, and the result presents the method of nature, rather 
 than the habit of the individual. For thought, imagination (and we 
 may add passion), are, in their very essence, the first, connective, the 
 latter, cc-adunative ; and it has been shown, that if the excess lead to 
 method misapplied, and to connections of the moment, the absence, or 
 marked deficiency, either precludes method altogether, both forra and 
 substance, or (as the following extract will exemplify) retains the out- 
 ward form only. 
 
 My liege and madam, to expostulate 
 What majesty should be, what duty is, 
 Why day is day, night night, and time is time, 
 Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. 
 Therefore since brevity is the soul of wit.
 
 304 Tlie Friend. 
 
 And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, 
 I will be brief. Your noble son is mad : 
 Mad call I it for to define true madness, 
 What is't, but to be nothing else but mad ? 
 But let that go. 
 
 QUEEN. More matter with less art. 
 
 POL. Madam ! I swear, I use no art at all. 
 That he is mad, 'tis true : 'tis true, 'tis pity : 
 And pity 'tis, 'tis true (a foolish figure ! 
 But farewell it, for I will use no art.) 
 Mad let us grant him then : and now remains, 
 That we find out the cause of this effect, 
 Or rather say the cause of this defect : 
 For this effect defective comes by cause. 
 Thus it remains, and the remainder thus 
 Perpend ! Samlet, act il. scene 2. 
 
 Does not the irresistible sense of the ludicrous in this flourish of the 
 soul-surviving body of old Polonius's intellect, not less than in the end- 
 less confirmations and most undeniable matters of fact, of Tapster Pom- 
 pey or " the hostess of the tavern " prove to our feelings, even before 
 the word is found which presents the truth to our understandings, that 
 confusion and formality are but the opposite poles of the same null- 
 point ? 
 
 It is Shakespeare's peculiar excellence, that throughout the whole of 
 his splendid picture gallery (the" reader will excuse the confessed in- 
 adequacy of this metaphor), we find individuality everywhere, mere 
 portrait nowhere. In all his various characters, we still feel ourselves 
 communing with the same human nature, which is everywhere present 
 a* the vegetable sap in the branches, sprays, leaves, buds, blossoms, and 
 fruits, their shapes, tastes, and odours. Speaking of the effect, i. e. his 
 works themselves, we may define the excellence of their method as con- 
 sisting in that just proportion, that union and interpenetration of the 
 universal and the particular, which must ever pervade all works of de- 
 cided genius and true science. For method implies a progressive tran- 
 sition, and it is the meaning of the word in the original language. The 
 Greek M$o8os, is literally a way, or path of transit. Thus we extol 
 the Elements of Euclid, or Socrates' discourse with the slave in the 
 Menon, as methodical, a term which no one who holds himself bound to 
 think or speak correctly would apply to the alphabetical order or 
 arrangement of a common dictionary. But as, without continuous 
 transition, there can be no method, so without a pre-conception there 
 can be no transition with continuity. The term, method, cannot there- 
 fore, otherwise than by abuse, be applied to a mere dead arrangement, 
 containing in itself no principle of progression.
 
 Section 2. Essay 5. 305 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 Scientiit idem quod plantit. Si plantd aliqvd nti aimo habeat, dr. radice quid fat, 
 nil refert : ti vero trantferre cupias in aliud .-<>Ji<;/i, tittius et radicibus uti quan surculit. 
 Sic traditio, qwz nunc in utu est, exhibet plane ta'iqiiam truncos (pulchros illos quidem) 
 tcientiarum ; ted tainen absque radicibus fabro lignario certe commodof, at plantatori 
 inutiles. Quod si, disciplinte tit crescant, tibi cordi tit, de truncit minut sit tolicitus : ad 
 id curam adkibe, ut radices <nu aliiiuantulo terra adhcerentis, extrahantur : 
 
 dummodo hoc pacto et Kientiam propiiam recittre, resligiaque cognitionis lute remetiri 
 postit ; et earn sic tian.-pUtiitare inanimuin alicnum, iicut crecit in too. 
 
 BACON de Augment. Scient. I. vi. c. ii. 
 
 (Trantlation.) It is with sciences as with trees. If it be your purpose to make some 
 particular use of the tree, you need not concern yourself about the roots. But if you wish 
 to transfer It into another soil, it is then safer to employ the roots th;;n the scions. Thus 
 the mode of teaching most common at pre>em exhibits clearly enough the trunks, as it were, 
 of the sciences, and those too of bantaow growth; but nevertheless, without the roots, 
 valuable and convenient as they undoubtedly are to the carpenter, thfy are useless to the 
 planter. But if you have at heart the advancement of education, as that which proposes to 
 itself the general discipline of the mind for its end and aim, be less anxious concerning the 
 trunks, and let it be your care that the roots should be extracted entire, even though a small 
 portion of the soil should adhere to them : so that at all events you may be able, by this 
 means, both to review your own scientific acquirement*, re-measuring as it were the steps of 
 your knowledge for your own satisfaction, and at the tame time to transplant it into the 
 minds of others, just as it grew in your own. 
 
 IT lias been observed, in a preceding page, that the relations of objects 
 are prime materials of method, and that the contemplation of relations 
 is the indispensable condition of thinking methodically. It becomes neces- 
 sary theretore to add, that there are two kinds of relation, in which objects 
 of mind may be contemplated. The first is that of law, which, in its 
 absolute jerfection, is conceivable only of the Supreme Being, whose 
 creative idea not only appoints to each thing its position, but in that 
 position, and in consequence of that position, gives it its qualities, yea, 
 gives it its very existence, as that particular thing. Yet in whatever 
 science the relation of the parts to each other and to the whole is ] re- 
 determined by a truth originating in the mind, and not abstracted or 
 generalized from observation of the parts, there we affirm the presence of 
 a law, if we are speaking of the physical sciences, as of astronomy for 
 instance ; ur the presence of fundamental ideas, if our discourse be upon 
 those sciences, the truths of which, as truths absolute, not merely have 
 an independent origin in the mind, but continue to exist in and for the 
 mind alone. Such, for instance, is geometry, and such are the ideas of a 
 perfect circle, of asymptotes, &c. 
 
 We have thus assigned the first place in the science of method to law ; 
 and first of the first, to law, as the absolute kind, which comprehending in 
 itself the substance of every possible degree precludes from its conception 
 all degree, not by generalization but by its own plenitude. As such, 
 therefore, and as the sufficient cause of the reality correspondent thereto, 
 
 X
 
 306 'he Friend. 
 
 we contemplate it as exclusively an attribute of the Supreme Being, in- 
 separable from the idea of God ; adding, however, that from the con- 
 templation of law in this, its only perfect form, must be derived all true 
 insight into all other grounds and principles necessaiy to method, as the 
 science common to all sciences, which in each Tvy^dvei ov oXXo dvr^s 
 TTJS eTria-TrjfjiTjs- Alienated from this (intuition shall we call it ? or sted- 
 fast faith?) ingenious men may produce schemes, conducive to the pecu- 
 liar purposes of particular sciences, but no scientific system. 
 
 But though we cannot enter on the proof of this assertion, we dare not 
 remain exposed to the suspicion of having obtruded a mere private 
 opinion, as a fundamental truth. Our authorities are such that our only 
 difficulty is occasioned by their number. The following extract from 
 Aristocles (preserved with other interesting fragments of the same writer 
 by Eusebius) is as explicit as peremptory. 'E^iXoo-d^cre p.tv nXarow, 
 ft KO.I TIS oXXoy TG>V TTonrorf, yvr]o~ia>s Kal reXet'oos- TJ^LOV 6e p.^ Bvvacrdai 
 Ta dvdp<07Tiva KdTiOflv T)p.as, el p.r) TO. 6fia irportpov 6(f)6eir]. EUSEB. Praep. 
 Evan. xi. 3.* And Plato himself in his De Republica, happily still ex- 
 tant, evidently alludes to the same doctrine. For personating Socrates 
 in the discussion of a most important problem, namely, whether political 
 justice is or is not the same as private honesty, after many inductions, 
 and much analytic reasoning, he breaks off with these words fv y 
 1<T&i, to T\avKa>v, a>s fj e/iij 8do, aKpi t 3a>s p.ev TOVTO fK TOIOVTCOV fj.f668a>v, 
 oiais vvv Iv Tols \6yois ^patp-fda, ov fj.r) iroTf Xd^cufjifV aXXa -yap fj-aKporepa 
 KOI n\eia>v 68bs T] eVt TOVTO ayoucra.t not however, he adds, precluding 
 the former (the analytic and inductive, to wit), which have their place 
 likewise, in which (but as subordinate to the other) they are both useful 
 and requisite. If any doubt could be entertained as to the purport of 
 these words, it would be removed by the fact stated by Aristotle in his 
 Ethics, that Plato had discussed the problem, whether in order to scien- 
 tific ends we must set out from principles, or ascend towards them : in 
 other words, whether the synthetic or analytic be the right method. 
 But as no such question is directly discussed in the published works of 
 the great master, Aristotle must either have received it orally from 
 Plato himself, or have found it in the aypcxpa o6yp.aTa, the private text- 
 books or manuals constructed by his select disciples, and intelligible to 
 those only who like themselves had been entrusted with the esoteric 
 (interior or unveiled) doctrines of Platonism. Comparing this therefore 
 
 * (Translation.} Plato, who philosophized solute, a? far as they can be made kiK~^ to 
 
 legitimately and perfectively, if ever any us. 
 
 man did in any age, held it for an axiom, f (Translation.) But know well, OGlau- 
 
 that it is not possible for us to have an in- con, as my firm per^uasiun, that by such 
 
 sigbt into things human (i.e. the nature and methods, as we have hitherto used in this 
 
 relations of man, and the objects presented inquisition, \ve can never attain to a satisfac- 
 
 by nature for his investigation), without a tory Insight; for it is a longer and ampler 
 
 previous contemplation (or intellectual way that conducts to this. PLATO De 
 
 vision) of things divine ; that is, of truths Republica, iv. 
 that are to be affirmed concerning the ab-
 
 Section 2. Essay 5. 307 
 
 with the writings, which he held it safe or not profane to make public, 
 we may safely conclude, that Plato considered the investigation of truth 
 a posteriori as that which is employed in explaining the results of a 
 more scientific process to those, for whom the knowledge of the results 
 was alone requisite and sufficient ; or in preparing the mind for legiti- 
 mate method, by exposing the insufficiency or self-contradictions of the 
 proofs and results obtained by the contrary process. Hence therefore the 
 earnestness with which the genuine Platonists opposed the doctrine (that 
 all demonstration consisted of identical projxjsitions) advanced by Stilpo, 
 and maintained by the Megaric school, who denied the synthesis, and as 
 Hume and others, in recent times, held geometry itself to be merely 
 analytical. 
 
 The grand problem, the solution of which forms, according to Plato, 
 the final object and distinctive character of philosophy, is this : for all 
 that exists conditionally (i. e. the existence of which is inconceivable 
 except under the condition of its dependency on some other as its ante- 
 cedent) to find a ground that is unconditional and absolute, and thereby 
 to reduce the aggregate of human knowledge to a system. For the rela- 
 tion common to all being known, the appropriate orbit of each becomes 
 discoverable, together with its peculiar relations to its concentries in the 
 common sphere of subordination. Thus the centrality of the sun 
 having been established, and the law of the distances of the planets from 
 the sun having been determined, we possess the means of calculating the 
 distance of each from the other. But as all objects of sense are in con- 
 tinual tiux, and as the notices of them by the senses must, as far as they 
 are true notices, change with them, while scientific principles (or laws) 
 are no otherwise principles of science than as they are permanent and 
 always the same, the latter were appropriated to the pure reason, either 
 as its products or as* implanted in it. And now the remarkable fact 
 forces itself on our attention, viz. that the material world is found to 
 obey the same laws as had been deduced independently from the reascn ; 
 and that the masses act by a force, which cannot be conceived to result 
 from the component parts, known or imaginable. In the phaenomena 
 of magnetism, electricity, galvanism, and in chemistry generally, the 
 mind is led instinctively, as it were, to regard the working powers as 
 conducted, transmitted, or accumulated by the sensible bodies, and not 
 as inherent. This fact has, at all times, been the stronghold alike of 
 the materialists and of the spiritualists, equally solvable by the two 
 contrary hypotheses, and fairly solved by neither. In the clear and 
 
 * Which of these two doctrines was Plato's fore preparatory and for the discipline of 
 
 own opinion, it is hard to say. In many tht- niii.'d ra'lier than directly d'ttrmal, it is 
 
 passages of his wi rks, the '.alter (i. e. the not improbable that I'laio chose it as the 
 
 doctrine of innate, or rather of connate, more popular representation, ana as belong- 
 
 iikas) seems to IK- ii ; but from the character ing to the poetic drapery of his Philosophe- 
 
 and avowed p>ir|><>si- <.f UK-SI w.)rks, as ad- mata. 
 to a promiscuous public, and there-
 
 308 The Friend. 
 
 masterly* review of the elder philosophies, which must be ranked among 
 the most splendid proofs of judgment no less than of genius, and more 
 expressly in the critique on the atomic or corpuscular doctrine of Demo- 
 critus and his followers, as the one extreme, and that of the pure ration- 
 alism of Zeno and the Eleatic school as the other, Plato has proved in- 
 controvertibly, that in both alike the basis is too narrow to support the 
 superstructure ; that the grounds of both are false or disputable ; and 
 that if these were conceded, yet neither the one nor the other is ade- 
 quate to the solution of the problem ; viz. what is the ground of the 
 coincidence between reason and experience ? Or between the laws of 
 matter and the ideas of the pure intellect ? The only answer which 
 Plato deemed the question capable of receiving, compels the reason to 
 pass out of itself and seek the ground of this agreement in a supersensual 
 essence, which, being at once the ideal of the reason and the cause of the 
 material world, is the pre-establisher of the harmony in and between 
 both. Religion therefore is the ultimate aim of philosophy, in conse- 
 quence of which philosophy itself becomes the supplement of the 
 sciences, both as the convergence of all to the common end, namely, 
 wisdom ; and as supplying the copula, which modified in each, in the 
 comprehension of its parts to one whole, is in its principles common to 
 all, as integral parts of one system. And this is method, itself a distinct 
 science, the immediate offspring of philosophy, and the link or mordant 
 by which philosophy becomes scientific and the sciences philosophical. 
 
 * I can conceive no better remedy for the Thales and Pythagoras to the appearance of 
 overweening self-complacency of modern the Sophists. 2. And of Socrates. The 
 philosophy, than the annulment of its j>re- character and effects of Socrates's life and 
 tended originality. The attempt has been doctrines, illustrated in the instances of 
 made by Dutens, but he failed in it by flying Xenopbon, as his most faithful representa- 
 to the oppostie extreme. When he should tive, and of Antisthenes or the Cynic sect 
 have confined himself to the philosophies, he as the one partial view of his philosophy, 
 extended his attack to the sciences and even and of Aristippus or the Cyrenaic sect as 
 to the main discoveries of later times; and the other and opposite extreme. 3. Plato 
 thus instead of vindicating the ancients, he and Platonisui. 4. Aristotle and the Peri- 
 became the calumniator of the moderns ; as patetic school. 5. Zenci and Stoicism, 
 far at lea^t as detraction is calumny. It is Epicurus and Epicureiini.-m, with the effects 
 my inti'iition to give a course of lectures in of these in the Roman republic and empire, 
 thecouiseof the present season, comprising 6. The rise of the Eclectic or Alexamliian 
 the origin and progress, the fates and for- philosophy, the attempt to set up a pseudo- 
 tunes of philosophy, from Pythagoras to Platonic Polytheism against Christianity, the 
 Locke, with the lives and succession of the degradation of philosophy iiself into mys- 
 philosophers in each sect; tracing the pro- ticism and magic, and iis final disappearance, 
 gress of speculative science chiefly in rela- as philosophy, under Justinian. 7. The re- 
 tion to the gradual development of the sumption of the Aristotelian philosophy in 
 human mind, but without omitting the the thirteenth century, and the successive re- 
 favourable or inauspicious influence of cir- appearance of the different sects from the 
 cumstances and the accidents of individual restoration of literature to our own times, 
 genius. The main divisions will be, 1. From S. T. C.
 
 Section -2. Essay 6. 309 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 *Ai7roi>Ta> fijrourre? \6yov fg<aOfv, avatpovcri \oyov. 
 (Translation,) Seeking the reason of all things from without, they preclude reason. 
 
 Theoph. In Mel. 
 
 THE second relation is that of theory, in which the existing forms and 
 qualities of objects, discovered by observation or experiment, suggest 
 a given arrangement of many under one point of view ; and this not 
 merely or principally in order to facilitate the remembrance, recollection, 
 or communication of the same ; but for the purjioses of understanding, 
 and, in most instances, of controlling them. In other words, all theory 
 supposes the general idea of cause and effect. The scientific arts of 
 medicine, chemistry, and of physiology in general, are examples of a 
 method hitherto founded on this second sort of relation. 
 
 Between these two lies the method in the fine arts which belongs 
 indeed to this second or external relation, because the effect and position 
 of the parts is always more or less influenced by the knowledge and ex- 
 perience of their previous qualities ; but which nevertheless constitutes a 
 link connecting the second form of relation with the first. For in all, 
 that truly merits the name of poetry in its most comprehensive sense, 
 there is a necessary predominance of the ideas (t. e. of that which origi- 
 nates in the artist himself), and a comparative indifference of the 
 materials. A true musical taste is soon dissatisfied with the harmonica, 
 or any similar instrument of glass or steel, because the body of the sound 
 (as the Italians phrase it), or that effect which is derived from the 
 materials, encroaches too tar on the effect from the proportions of the 
 notes, or that which is given to music by the mind. To prove the high 
 value as well as the superior dignity of the first relation, and to evince 
 that on this alone a perfect method can be grounded, and that the 
 methods attainable by the second are at best but approximations to the 
 first, or tentative exercises in the hope of discovering it, form the first 
 object of the present disquisition. 
 
 These truths we have (as the most pleasing and popular mode of in- 
 troducing the subject) hitherto illustrated from Shakespeare. But the 
 same truths, namely, the necessity of a mental initiative to all method, 
 as well as a careful attention to the conduct of the mind in the exercise 
 of method itself, may be equally, and here perhaps more characteristi- 
 cally, proved from the most familiar of the sciences. \V<> may draw our 
 elucidation even from those which are at present fashionable among us ; 
 from botany or from chemistry. In the lowest attempt at a methodical 
 arrangement of the former science, that of artificial classification for the 
 preparatory purjiose of a nomenclature, some antecedent must have l>ccn 
 contributed by the mind itself; some purpose must be in view ; or sonic-
 
 310 
 
 The Friend. 
 
 question at least must have been proposed to nature, grounded, as all 
 questions are, upon some idea of the answer. As for instance, the 
 assumption that 
 
 Two great sexes animate the world. 
 
 For no man can confidently conceive a fact to be universally true who 
 does not with equal confidence anticipate its necessity, and who does not 
 believe that necessity to be demonstrable by an insight into its nature, 
 whenever and wherever such insight can be obtained. We acknowledge, 
 we reverence the obligations of botany to Linnseus, who, adopting from 
 Bartholinus and others the sexuality of plants, grounded thereon a scheme 
 of classific and distinctive marks, by which one man's experience may be 
 communicated to others, and the objects safely reasoned on while absent, 
 and recognized as soon as and wherever they are met with. He invented 
 a universal character for the language of botany chargeable with no 
 greater imperfections than are to be found in the alphabets of every par- 
 ticular language. As for the study of the ancients, so of the works of 
 nature, an accidence and a dictionary are the first and indispensable 
 requisites ; and to the illustrious Swede, botany is indebted for both. 
 But neither was the central idea of vegetation itself, by the light oc 
 which we might have seen the collateral relations of the vegetable to the 
 inorganic and to the animal world ; nor the constitutive nature and inner 
 necessity of sex itself, revealed to Linnseus,* Hence, as in all other cases 
 
 * The word nature has been used in two 
 senses, viz. actively and passively ; energetic 
 (= forma formans"), and material (= for- 
 ma formata). In the first (the sense in 
 which the word is used in the text) it signi- 
 fies the inward principle of whatever is 
 requisite for the reality of a thing, as exist- 
 ent ; while the essence, or essential property, 
 signifies the inner principle of all that 
 appertains to the possibility of a thing. 
 Hence, in accurate language, we say the 
 essence of a mathematical circle or other 
 geometrical figure, not the nature ; because 
 in the conception of forms purely geometrical 
 there is no expression or implication of their 
 real existence. In the second, or material 
 sense of the word nature, we mean by it tht 
 sum total of all things, as far as they are 
 objects of our senses, and consequently of 
 possible experience the aggregate of phse- 
 nomena, whether existing for our outward 
 senses, or for our inner sense. The doctrine 
 concerning material nature would therefore 
 (the word physiology being both ambiguous 
 in itself, and already otherwise appropriated) 
 be more properly entitled phsenomenology, 
 distinguished into its two grand divisions, 
 somatology and psychology. The doctrine 
 concerning energetic nature is comprised in 
 the science of Dynamics ; the union of which 
 wiih phenomenology, and the alliance of 
 both with the sciences of the possible, or of 
 
 the conceivable, viz. logic and mathematics, 
 constitute natural philosophy. 
 
 Having thus explained the term nature, we 
 now more especially entreat the reader's 
 attention to the sense in which here, and 
 everywhere through this essay, we use the 
 word idea. We assert, that the very im- 
 pulse to universalize any phenomenon in- 
 volves the prior assumption of some efficient 
 law in nature, which in a thousand different 
 forms is evermore one and the same ; entire 
 in each, yet comprehending all ; and incapa- 
 ble of being abstracted or generalized from 
 any number of phienomena, because it is 
 itself pre-supposed in each and all as their 
 common ground and condition ; and because 
 every definition of a genus is the adequate 
 definition of the lowest species alone, while 
 the efficient law must contain the ground of 
 all in all. It is attributed, never derived. 
 The utmost we ever venture to say is, that 
 the falling of an apple suggested the law of 
 gravitation to Sir I. Newton. Now a law 
 and an idea are correlative terms, and differ 
 only as object and subject, as being and 
 truth. 
 
 . Such is the doctrine of the Xovutn Orga- 
 nuni of Lord Bacon, agreeing (as we shall 
 more largely show in the text) in all essential 
 points with the true doctrine of Plato, the 
 apparent differences being for the greater 
 part occasioned by the Grecian sage having
 
 Section 2. Essay 6. 311 
 
 where the master-light is missing, so in this : the reflective mind avoids 
 Scylla only to lose itself on Charybdis. If we adhere to the general 
 notion of sex, as abstracted from the more obvious modes and forms in 
 which the sexual relation manifests itself, we soon meet with whole 
 classes of plants to which it is found inapplicable. If arbitrarily we 
 give it indefinite extension, it is dissipated into the barren truism, that 
 all specific products suppose specific means of production. Thus a 
 growth and a birth are distinguished by the mere verbal definition, that 
 the latter is a whole in itself the former not ; and when we would 
 apply even this to nature, we are baffled by objects (the flower polypus, 
 &c., &c.) in which each is the other. All that can be done by the most 
 patient and active industry, by the widest and most continuous re- 
 searches ; all that the amplest survey of the vegetable realm, brought 
 under immediate contemplation by the most stupendous collections of 
 species and varieties, can suggest ; all that minutest dissection and 
 exactest chemical analysis, can unfold ; all that varied experiment and 
 the position of plants and of their component parts in every conceivable 
 relation to light, heat (and whatever else we distinguish as imponderable 
 substances), to earth, air, water, to the supposed constituents of air and 
 water, separate and in all proportions in short, all that chemical agents 
 and re-agents can disclose or adduce ; all these have been brought, as 
 conscripts, into the field, with the completest accoutrement, in the best 
 discipline, under the ablest commanders. Yet after all that was effected 
 by Linnauis himself, not to mention the labours of Cassalpinus, Ray, 
 Gesner, Tournefort, and the other heroes who preceded the general 
 adoption of the sexual system, as the basis of artificial arrangement 
 after all the successive toils and enterprises of Hedwig, Jussieu, Mirbel, 
 Sir James Smith, Knight, Ellis, &c., &c. what is botany at this present 
 hotir ? Little more than an enormous nomenclature ; a huge catalogue, 
 bien arrange, yearly and monthly augmented, in various editions, each 
 with its own scheme of technical memory and its own conveniences of re- 
 ference ! A dictionary in which (to carry on the metaphor) an Ainsworth 
 arranges the contents by the initials ; a Walker by the endings ; a 
 Scapula by the radicals ; and a Cominius by the similarity of the uses 
 and purposes! The terms system, method, science, are mere improprie- 
 ties of courtesy, when applied to a mass enlarging by endless appositions 
 but without a nerve that oscillates, or a pulse that throbs, in sign of 
 growth or inward sympathy. The innocent amusement, the healthful 
 
 applied his principles chiefly|to the Investiga- of which saw in the Aristotelians, or school- 
 
 tion of the mind, and the method of evolving men, the antagonists of Protestantism, and in 
 
 Its powers, and the Knglish philosopher to the Italian Platonlsts the despisers and secret 
 
 the development of nature. That our great enemies of Christianity itself; and partly, by 
 
 countryman speaks too often detractingly of his having formed his notions of Plato's doc- 
 
 the divine philosopher must be explained, trlnes from the absurdities and phantasms of 
 
 partly by the tone given to thinking minds his misinterpreters, rather than from an un- 
 
 by the Reformation, the founders and fathers prejudiced study of the original works.
 
 312 Tlie Friend. 
 
 occupation, the ornamental accomplishment of amateurs (most honour- 
 able indeed and deserving of all praise as a preventive substitute for the 
 stall, the kennel, and the subscription-room), it has yet to expect the 
 devotion and energies of the philosopher. 
 
 So long back as the first appearance of Dr. Darwin's Phytologia, the 
 writer, then in earliest manhood, presumed to hazard the opinion, that 
 the physiological botanists were hunting in a false direction ; and sought 
 for analogy where they should have looked for antithesis. He saw, or 
 thought he saw, that the harmony between the vegetable and animal 
 world, was not a harmony of resemblance, but of contrast ; and their 
 relation to each other that of corresponding opposites. They seemed to 
 him (whose mind had been formed by observation, unaided, but at the 
 same time unenthralled, by partial experiment) as two streams from the 
 same fountain indeed, but flowing the one due west, and the-other direct 
 east ; and that consequently, the resemblance would be as the proximity, 
 greatest in the first and rudimental products of vegetable and animal 
 organization. Whereas, according to the received notion, the highest 
 and most perfect vegetable, and the lowest and rudest animal forms, 
 ought to have seemed the links of the two systems, which is contrary to 
 fact. Since that time the same idea has dawned in the minds of philo- 
 sophers, capable of demonstrating its objective truth by induction of facts 
 in an unbroken series of correspondences in nature. From these men, or 
 from minds enkindled by their labours, we hope hereafter to receive it, 
 or rather the yet higher idea to which it refers us, matured into-laws of 
 organic nature ; and thence to have one other splendid proof, that with 
 the knowledge of law alone dwell power and prophecy, decisive experi- 
 ment, and, lastly, a scientific method, that, dissipating with its earliest 
 rays the gnomes of hypothesis and the mists of theory, may, within a 
 single generation, open out on the'phHosophic seer discoveries that had 
 baffled the gigantic, but blind and guideless industry of ages. 
 
 Such, too, is the case with the assumed indecomponible substances of 
 the laboratory. They are the symbols of elementary powers, and the 
 exponents of a law, which, as the root of all these powers, the chemical 
 philosopher, whatever his theory may be, is instinctively labouring to 
 extract. This instinct, again, is itself but the form in which the idea, the 
 mental correlative of the law, first announces its incipient germination 
 in his own mind ; and hence proceeds the striving after unity of principle 
 through all the diversity of forms, with a feeling resembling that which 
 accompanies our endeavours to recollect a forgotten name ; when we seem 
 at once to have and not to have it ; which the memory feels but cannot 
 find. Thus, as " the lunatic, the lover, and the poet," suggest each other 
 to Shakespeare's Theseus, as soon as his thoughts present him the one 
 form, of which they are hut varieties ; so water and flame, the diamond, 
 the charcoal, and the mantling champagne, with its ebullient sparkles,
 
 Section 1.Eway 7. 313 
 
 are convoked and fraternized by the theory of the chemist. This is, in 
 truth, the first charm of chemistry, and the secret of the almost univer- 
 sal interest excited by its discoveries. The serious complacency which 
 is afforded by the sense of truth, utility, permanence, and progression, 
 blends with and ennobles the exhilarating surprise and the pleasurable 
 sting of curiosity, which accompany the propounding and the solving of 
 an enigma. It is the sense of a principle of connection given by the 
 mind, and sanctioned by the correspondency of nature. Hence the strong 
 hold which in all ages chemistry has had on the imagination. If in 
 Shakespeare, we find nature idealized into poetry, through the creative 
 power of a profound yet observant meditation, so through the meditative 
 observation of a Davy, a Woollaston, or a Hatchett, 
 
 By some connatural force, 
 
 Powerful at greatest distance to unite ' 
 
 With secret amity things of like kind, 
 
 we find poetry, as it were, substantiated and realized in nature ; yea, 
 nature itself disclosed to us, geminam istam naturam, qucejit etfucit, et 
 creat et creatur, as at once the poet and the poem ! 
 
 ESSAY VII. 
 
 TavTjj nivvv iatpa> \uiptf fif, ovs vvv &T\ eAeyes /uAoSea/ioras re, Kal <f>i\OTfxvovS Kai 
 pajCTtKov;, Kai \cupts av nepl an* o A6y(K, ovs fj-ovov; o.v ri<; opdios irpotretVot <iAoa"6<f>ovs, to? 
 v yiyvuxricovTa^, rivot tcrriv eiucmj/ij) eicooTT) rovriuv ruv cirurngfiwi', 6 Tuyx<ivei ov aAAo 
 
 EEAATON. 
 
 (Translation.) In the following then I distinguish, first, those whom you indeed may 
 call Philotheorists, or Pbilotechnists, or Practicians, and secondly thote whom alone you 
 may rightly denominate philosophers, as knowing what the science of all these branches of 
 science Is, which may prove to be something more than the mere aggregate of the knowledges 
 in any particular science. PLATO. 
 
 FROM Shakespeare to Plato, from the philosophic poet to the poetic 
 philosopher, the transition is easy, and the road is crowded with 
 illustrations of our present subject. For of Plato's works, the larger and 
 more valuable portion have all one common end, which comprehends 
 and shines through the particular purpose of each several dialogue ; and 
 this is to establish the sources, to evolve the principles, and exemplify 
 the art of method. This is the clue, without which it would be difficult 
 to exculpate the noblest productions of the divine philosopher from the 
 charge of being tortuous and labyrinthine in their progress, and unsatis- 
 factory in their ostensible results. The latter indeed appear not seldom 
 to have been drawn for the purpose of starting a new problem, rather 
 than that of solving the one proposed as the subject of the previous dis- 
 cussion. But with the clear insight that the purpose of the writer is 
 not so much to establish any particular truth as to remove the obstacles 
 the continuance of which is preclusive of all truth, the whole scheme
 
 314 The Friend. 
 
 assumes a different aspect, and justifies itself in all its dimensions. We 
 see, that to open anew a well of springing water, not to cleanse the stag- 
 nant tank, or fill, bucket by bucket, the leaden cistern ; that the educa- 
 tion of the intellect, by awakening the principle and method of self- 
 development, was his proposed object, not any specific information that 
 can be conveyed into it from without : not to assist in storing the pas- 
 sive mind with the various sorts of knowledge most in request, as if the 
 human soul were a mere repository or banqueting-room, but to place it 
 in such relations of circumstance as should gradually excite the germi- 
 nal power that craves no knowledge but what it can take up into itself, 
 what it can appropriate, and reproduce in fruits of its own. To shape, to 
 dye, to paint over, and to mechanize the mind, he resigned, as their 
 proper trade, to the Sophists, against whom he waged open and unre- 
 mitting war. For the ancients, as well as the moderns, had their ma- 
 chinery for the extemporaneous mintage of intellects, by means of which, 
 off-hand, as it were, the scholar was enabled to make a figure on any 
 and all subjects, on any and all occasions. They too had their glittering 
 vapours, that (as the comic poet tells us) fed a host of sophists 
 
 fjLfya\au. BCO.L ai'Spd&ii' apyoi? 
 
 Aiffep yvw/i-riv (tat SidAefti/ icai vovv rjiJL.lv Trapt'^ovcrif , 
 Kai TfpaTfiav icai irepi'Ae'f if icai Kpovtriv icai jcaTaAijiJaf. 
 
 API2TO*. N4>. 2x. S. 
 
 IMITATED. 
 
 Great goddesses are they to lazy folks, 
 Who pour down on us gifts of fluent speech, 
 Sense most sententious, wonderful fine effect, 
 And how to talk about it and about it, 
 Thoughts brisk as bees, and pathos soft and thawy. 
 
 In fine, as im progressive arrangement is not method, so neither is a 
 mere mode or set fashion of doing a thing. Are further facts required ? 
 We appeal to the notorious fact that zoology, soon after the commence- 
 ment of the latter half of the last century, was falling abroad, weighed 
 down and crushed, as it were, by the inordinate number and manifold- 
 ness of facts and phasnomena apparently separate, without evincing 
 the least promise of systematizing itself by any inward combination, 
 any vital interdependence, of its parts. John Hunter, who appeared at 
 times almost a stranger to the grand conception, which yet never ceased 
 to work in him as his genius and governing spirit, rose at length in the 
 horizon of physiology and comparative anatomy. In his printed works, 
 the one directing thought seems evermore to flit before him, twice or 
 thrice only to have been seized, and after a momentary detention to have 
 been again let go ; as if the words of the charm had been incomplete, 
 and it had appeared at its own will only to mock its calling. At length, 
 in the astonishing preparations for his museum, he constructed it for the 
 scientific apprehension out of the unspoken alphabet of nature. Yet not-
 
 Section 2. Essay 7. 315 
 
 withstanding the imperfection in the annunciation of the idea, how ex- 
 hilarating have been the results! We dare appeal to Abemethy,* to 
 Kverard Homo, to Hatchett, whose communication to Sir Everard on 
 the egg and its analogies, in a recent paper of the latter (itself of high 
 excellence) in the Philosophical Transactions, we point out as being, in 
 the ]>r i>f the term, the development of a fact in the history 
 
 of physiology, and to which we refer as exhibiting a luminous instance 
 of what we mean by the discovery of a central phenomenon. To these 
 :ieal, whether whatever is grandest in the views of Cuvier be not 
 either a reflection of this light or a continuation of its rays, well and 
 wisely directed through fit media to its appropriate object.f 
 
 We have seen that a previous act and conception of the mind is in- 
 dispensable even to the mere sernblances of method : that neither fashion, 
 mode, nor orderly arrangement can be produced without a prior purpose, 
 and "a pre-cogitatiou (id iitttntionem ejus quod quceritur," though this 
 purpose may have been itself excited, and this " pre-cogitation " itself ab- 
 stracted from the perceived likenesses and differences of the objects to 
 be arranged. But it has likewise been shown, that fashion, mode, or- 
 donnance, are not method, inasmuch as all method supposes a principle 
 of unity with progression ; in other words, progressive transition without 
 breach of continuity. But such a principle, it has been proved, can 
 never in the sciences of experiment or in those of observation be ade- 
 quately supplied by a theory built on generalization. For what shall 
 determine the mind to abstract and generalize one common point rather 
 than another ? and within what limits, from what number of individual 
 objects, shall the generalization be made ? The theory must still require 
 a prior theory for its own legitimate construction. With the mathema- 
 tician the definition makes the object, and pre-establishes the terms 
 which, and which alone, can occur in the after-reasoning. If a circle be 
 found not to have the radii from the centre to the circumference perfectly 
 equal, which in fact it would be absurd to expect of any material circle, 
 it follows only that it was not a circle ; and the tranquil geometrician 
 would content himself with smiling at the quid pro quo of the simple 
 objector. A mathematical theoria seu ctmte/uiflatio may therefore be 
 perfect. For the mathematician can be certain, that he has contem- 
 plated all that appertains to his proposition. The celebrated Euler, 
 
 * Since the first deliver}- of this sheet, Mr. Cuvier, who, we understand, was not born in 
 
 AbernetLy has realized this anticipation, France, and is not of unmixed French ex- 
 
 dictaied solely l>y the writer's wir-lies, and at traction, had prepared himself for b : s i'.lus- 
 
 thut time justified only by his general ad- triniis labours (as we Irani from a reference 
 
 miration of Mr. A 's talents and principles; in the tir>t chapter of Iris great work, and 
 
 but composed without the lea.-t knowledge should have concluded from the general 
 
 that he was then actually engaged In proving style of thinking, though the language be- 
 
 the assertion here hazarded, at large and in trays suppression, as of one who doubted the 
 
 detail S. . his eminent " I'liysloloaical sympathy of bis readers or audience) in a 
 
 Lectures," lately published in one volume very different school of methodology and 
 
 octavo. philosophy than Paris could have afforded. 
 
 f Nor should it be wholly unnoticed, that
 
 316 The Friend. 
 
 treating on some point respecting arches, makes this curious remark, 
 " All ex[>erieiice is in contradiction to this ; sed potius fidendum est 
 analyst ; i.e. but this is no reason for doubting the analysis." The words 
 sound paradoxical ; but in truth mean no more than this, that the 
 properties of space are not less certainly the properties of space because 
 they can never be entirely transferred to material bodies. But in physics, 
 that is, in all the sciences which have for their objects the things of 
 nature, and not the entia rationis more philosophically, intellectual 
 acts and the products of those acts, existing exclusively in and for the 
 intellect itself the definition must follow, and not precede, the reasoning. 
 It is representative not constitutive, and is indeed little more than an 
 abbreviature of the preceding observation, and the deductions therefrom. 
 But as the observation, though aided by experiment, is necessarily 
 limited and imperfect, the definition must be equally so. The history 
 of theories, and the frequency of their subversion by the discovery of a 
 single new fact, supply the best illustrations of this truth.* 
 
 As little can a true scientific method be grounded on an hypothesis, 
 unless where the hypothesis is an exponential image or picture-language 
 of an idea, which is contained in it more or less clearly ; or the symbol 
 of an undiscovered law, like the characters of unknown quantities in 
 algebra, for the purpose of submitting the phenomena to a scientific cal- 
 culus. In all other instances, it is itself a real or supposed phenomenon, 
 and therefore a part of the problem which it is to solve. It may be 
 among the foundation-stones of the edifice, but can never be the 
 ground. 
 
 But in experimental philosophy, it may be said how much do we not 
 owe to accident? Doubtless: but let it not be forgotten, that if the 
 
 * The following extract from a most re- some years past ; but these (and by parity 
 spectable scientific journal contains an expo- of reason the incomparably greater number 
 sition of the impossibility of a perfect that remain to be made) must be collected, 
 theory in physics, the more striking because collated, proved, and alterwards brought to- 
 H is directly against the purpose and inten- gether into one focus before ever a founda- 
 tion of the" writer. We content ourselves tion can be formed upon which anything 
 with one question, what if Kepler, what if like a sound and stable theory can be consti- 
 Newton in his investigations concerning the tuted for the explanation of such changes." 
 tides, had held themselves bound to this Journal of Science and the Arts, No. vii 
 canon, and instead.of propounding a la', had p. 103. 
 
 employed themselves exclusively in collect- An intelligent friend, on reading the 
 
 ing materials for a theory? words " into one focus." observed : But what 
 
 " The magnetic influence has long been and where is the lens ? I however fully 
 
 known to have a variation which is con- agree with the writer. All this and much 
 
 stantly changing ; but that change is so slow, more must have been achieved before "a 
 
 and at the same time so different in various sound and stable theory " could be " consti- 
 
 (difierent ?) parts of the world that it would be tutrd " which even then (except as far as it 
 
 in vain to seek for the means of reducing it might occasion the discovery of a law) might 
 
 to established rules, until all its local and possibly explain (ex plicis piano, rcddere), 
 
 particular circumstances are clearly ascer- but never account for, the facts In question, 
 
 tained and recorded by accurate observations But the most satisfactory comment on these 
 
 made in various parts of the globe. The and similar assertions would be afforded by a 
 
 necessity and importance of such observa- matter-of-fact history of the rise and pro- 
 
 tions are now pretty generally understood, g-ess, the accelerating and retarding mo- 
 
 and they have been actually carrying on for menu, of science in the civilized world.
 
 Section 2. Essay 7. 317 
 
 discoveries so made stop there ; if they do not excite some master idea; if 
 they do not lead to some law (in whatever dress of theory or hypothesis 
 the fashions and prejudices of the time may disguise or disfigure it) ; 
 the discoveries may remain for ages limited in their uses, insecure and 
 unproductive. How many centuries, we might have said millennia, have 
 passed, since the first accidental discovery of the attraction and repul- 
 sion of light bodies by rubbed amber, &c. Compare the interval with 
 the progress made within less than a century, after the discovery of the 
 phsenomena that led immediately to a theory of electricity. That here, 
 as in many other instances, the theory was supported by insecure hypo- 
 theses ; that by one theorist two heterogeneous fluids are assumed, the 
 vitreous and the resinous ; by another, a plus and minus of the same 
 fluid ; that a third considers it a mere modification of light ; while a 
 fourth composes the electrical aura of oxygen, hydrogen, and caloric : 
 this does but place the truth we have been evolving in a stronger and 
 clearer light. For abstract from all these suppositions, or rather imagi- 
 nations, that which is common to and involved in them all ; and we 
 shall have neither notional fluid or fluids, nor chemical compounds, nor 
 elementary matter, but the idea of two opposite forces, tending to 
 rest by equilibrium. These are the sole factors of the calculus, alike in 
 all the theories. These give the law, and in it the method, both of 
 arranging the phenomena and of substantiating appearances into facts 
 of science ; with a success proportionate to the clearness or confusedness 
 of the insight into the law. For this reason, we anticipate the greatest- 
 improvements in the method, the nearest approaches to a system of 
 electricity from these philosophers, who have presented the law most 
 purely, and the correlative idea as an idea; those, namely, who, since 
 the year 1798, in the true spirit of experimental dynamics, rejecting the 
 imagination of any material substrate, simple or compound, contemplate 
 in the phaniomena of electricity the operation of a law which reigns 
 through all nature, the law of polarity, or the manifestation of one 
 power by opposite forces : who trace in these appearances, as the most 
 obvious and striking of its innumerable forms, the agency of the positive 
 and negative poles of a power essential to all material construction ; the 
 second, namely, of the three primary principles, for which the beautiful 
 and most appropriate symbols are given by the mind in the three ideal 
 dimensions of space. 
 
 The time is, perhaps, nigh at hand, when the same comparison be- 
 tween the -results of two unequal periods; the interval between the 
 knowledge of a fact, and that from the discovery of the law, will be ap- 
 plicable to the sister science of magnetism. But how great the contrast 
 between magnetism and electricity, at the present moment ! From 
 remotest antiquity, the attraction of iron by the magnet was known and 
 noticed ; but century alter century, it remained the undisturbed property
 
 318 The Friend. 
 
 of poets and orators. The fact of the magnet and the fable of the pho3- 
 nix stood on the same scale of utility. In the thirteenth century, or 
 perhaps earlier, the polarity of the magnet, and its communicability to 
 iron, were discovered ; and soon suggested a purpose so grand and im- 
 portant, that it may well be deemed the proudest trophy ever raised by 
 accident* in the service of mankind the invention oi the compass. But 
 it led to no idea, to no law, and consequently to no method ; though a 
 variety of phasnomena, as startling as they are mysterious, have forced 
 on us a presentiment of its intimate connection with all the great agen- 
 cies of nature; of a revelation, in ciphers, the key to which is still want- 
 ing. We can recall no incident of human history that impresses the 
 imagination more deeply than the moment when Columbus,f on an un- 
 known ocean, first perceived one of these startling facts, the change of 
 the magnetic needle ! 
 
 In what shall we seek the cause of this contrast between the rapid 
 progress of electricity and the stationary condition of magnetism ? As 
 many theories, as many hypotheses, have been advanced in the latter 
 science as in the former. But the theories and fictions of the electricians 
 contained an idea, and all the same idea, which has necessarily led to 
 method ; implicit indeed, and only regulative hitherto, but which re- 
 quires little more than the dismission of the imagery to become consti- 
 tutive like the ideas of the geometrician. On the contrary, the assump- 
 tions of the magnetists (as, for instance, the hypothesis that the planet 
 itself is one vast magnet, or that an immense magnet is concealed within 
 it; or that of a concentric globe within the earth, revolving on its own 
 independent axis) are but repetitious of the same fact or phenomenon 
 
 * If accident it were : if the compass did majesty of the poetry, has but " few peers iu 
 
 not obscurely travel to us from the remotest ancient or in modern song." 
 east: if its existence there does not point to COLUMBUS. 
 
 an age and a race, to which scholars of Certo da cor, ch' alto destin non scelse, 
 
 highest rank in the world of letters, Sir W. Son 1' imprese magnanime neglette ; 
 
 Jones, Bailly, Schlegel have attached faith ! Ma le bell' alme alle bell' opre elette 
 
 That it was known before the era generally Sanno gioir nelle tatiche eccelse : 
 
 assumed for its invention, and not spoken of Ne biasmo popolar, frale catena, 
 
 as a novelty, has been proved by Mr. Southey Spirto d' onore il suo cammin raffrena. 
 
 and others. Cosi Umga stagion per modi indegni 
 
 f It cannot be deemed alien from the pur- Kuropa disprezzb 1' inclita sperue : 
 
 poses of this disquisition, if we are anxious Schernendo il vulgo (e seco i Regi insieme) 
 
 to attract the &.tt?iuio of our readers to the Nudo nocchier promettitcr di Rfgni; 
 
 importance of speculative meditation, even Ma per le sconosciute onde marine 
 
 for the worlulj interests of mankind ; and to L' invitta proraei pur sospinseal fine, 
 
 that concurrence of nature and historic ercnt Qual uom, che torni alia gentil consorte, 
 
 with the great revolutionary movements of Tal ei da sua magion spiego 1' antenne ; 
 
 individual genius, of which so many instances L' ocean corse, e 1 turbini sostenne, 
 
 occur in the stu 'j of history how Nature Vinse le crude immagini di morte; 
 
 (why should we hesitate in saying, that I'oscia, del!" ampio mar spenta la guerra, 
 
 which in nature itself is more than nature?) Scorse la dianzi favolosa Terra, 
 
 seems to come forward in order to meet, to Allorda! cavo Pin scende veloce 
 
 aid, and tu reward every idi j a excited by a Edi grand Orma il nuovo mondo imprime; 
 
 contemplation of her methods in the spirit of Ne rcen ratio per 1' Aria erge sublime, 
 
 filial care.'and with the humility of love ! It Segno del Ciel, I'insuperabil Croce ; 
 
 is with this view tliut we extract from an ode E porge umile esempio, onde adorarla 
 
 of Chiabrera's the followinn lines, which, in JJebba sua Geute. 
 the strength of the thought and the lofty CHIABUF.RA. vol. i.
 
 Section 2. Essay 8. 319 
 
 looked at through a magnifying glass ; the reiteration of the problem, 
 not its solution. The naturalist, who cannot or will not see, that one 
 fact is often worth a thousand, as including them all in itself, and that 
 it first makes all the others facts ; who has not the head to comprehend, 
 the soul to reverence, a central experiment or observation (what the 
 Greeks would perhaps have called a protophajnomenon) ; will never 
 receive an auspicious answer from the oracle of nature. 
 
 ESSAY VIII. 
 
 The sun doth give 
 
 Brightness to the eye ; and some say, that the sun 
 If not enligliten'd by the Intelligence 
 That doth inhabit it, would shine no more 
 Than a dull clod of earth. CABTWBIGUT. 
 
 IT is strange, yet characteristic of the spirit that was at work during the 
 latter half of the last century, and of which the French Revolution was, 
 we hope, the closing monsoon, that the writings of Plato should be 
 accused of estranging the mind from sober experience and substantial 
 matter of fact, and of debauching it by fictions and generalities. Plato, 
 whose method is inductive throughout, who argues on all subjects not 
 only from, but in and by, inductions of facts! Who warns us indeed 
 against that usurpation of the senses, which, quenching the " lumen 
 siccum" of the mind, sends it astray after individual cases for their own 
 sakes ; against that " tenuem ct manipularem experientiam,'" which re- 
 mains ignorant even of the transitory relations, to which the " pauca 
 particidaria " of its idolatry not seldom owe their fluxional existence ; 
 but who so far oftener, and with such unmitigated hostility, pursues the 
 assumptions, abstractions, generalities, and verbal legerdemain of the 
 Sophists ! Strange, but still more strange, that a notion so groundless 
 should be entitled to plead in its behalf the authority of Lord Bacon, 
 from whom the Latin words in the preceding sentence are taken, and 
 whose scheme of logic, as applied to the contemplation of nature, is 
 Platonic throughout, and differing only in the mode ; which in Lord 
 Bacon is dogmatic, i.e. assertory, in Plato tentative, and (to adopt the 
 Socratic phrase) obstetric. We are not the first, or even among the 
 first, who have considered Bacon's studied depreciation of the ancients, 
 with his silence, or worse than silence, concerning the merits of his con- 
 temporaries, as the least amiable, the least exhilarating side in the cha- 
 racter of our illustrious countryman. His detractions from the divine 
 Plato it is more easy to explain than to justify or even to palliate; and 
 that he has merely retaliated Aristotle's own unfair treatment of his 
 predecessors and contemporaries, may lessen the pain, but should not 
 blind us to the injustice of the aspersions on the name and works of
 
 320 The Friend. 
 
 this philosopher. The most eminent of our recent zoologists and mine- 
 ralogists have acknowledged with respect, and even with expressions of 
 wonder, the performances of Aristotle, as the first clearer and breaker- 
 up of the ground in natural history. It is indeed scarcely possible to 
 pursue the treatise on colours, falsely ascribed to Theophrastus, the 
 scholar and successor of Aristotle, after a due consideration of the state 
 and means of science at that time, without resenting the assertion, that 
 he had utterly enslaved his investigations in natural history to his own 
 system of logic (logics suae prorsus mancipavit). Nor let it be forgotten 
 that the sunny side of Lord Bacon's character is to be found neither in 
 his inductions, nor in the application of his own method to particular 
 phenomena, or particular classes of physical facts, which are at least as 
 crude for the age of Gilbert, Galileo, and Kepler, as Aristotle's for 
 that of Philip and Alexander. Nor is it to be found in his recommen- 
 dation (which is wholly independent of his inestimable principles of 
 scientific method) of tabular collections of particulars. Let any unpre- 
 judiced naturalist turn to Lord Bacon's questions and proposals for the 
 investigation of single problems ; to his Discourse on the Winds ; or to 
 the almost comical caricature of this scheme in the " Method of im- 
 proving Natural Philosophy," (page 22 to 48), by Robert Hooke (the 
 history of whose multifold inventions, and indeed of his whole philoso- 
 phical life, is the best answer to the scheme if a scheme so palpably 
 impracticable needs any answer), and put it to his conscience, whether 
 any desirable end could be hoped for from such a process ; or inquire of 
 his own experience, or historical recollections, whether any important 
 discovery was ever made in this way.* For though Bacon never so far 
 deviates from his own principles as not to admonish the reader that the 
 
 We refer the reader to the Posthumous binders, stage-players, dancing-masters, and 
 
 Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. F.R.C. &c. vanlters, apothecaries, chtrurgeuns, seameten, 
 
 folio, published under the auspices of the butchers, barbers, laundresses, and cosmetics ! 
 Royal Society, by their Secretary, Richard &c. &c. &c. &c. (the true nature of which 
 Waller; and especially to the pages from being actually determined) will hugely 
 p. 22 to 42 inclusive, as containing the prelimi- facilitate our inquiries in philosophy ! ! !" 
 nary knowledges requisite or desirable for the As a summary of L)r. R. Hooke's multi- 
 naturalist, before he can form "even a farious recipe lor the growth of science may 
 fiiundat ion upon which anything like a sound be fairly placed that of the celebrated lir. 
 and stable theory can be constituted." As a Watts for the improvement of the mind, 
 small specimen of this appalling catalogue of which was thought, by Dr. Knox, to be w.ir- 
 proliminaries with which he is to make him- thy of insertion in the Elegant Extracts, vol. 
 self conversant, take the following: "The ii. p. 456, under the head of 
 history of potters, tobacco-pipe-makers, "DiitEcriuxs CONCKKMNG ouu IDEAS. 
 glaziers, glass-grinders, looking-glass-makers " Furnish yourselves with a rich variety 
 or toilers, spectacle-makers and optic-glass- of ideas. Acquaint yourselves with things 
 makers, makers of counterfeit pearl and ancient and modern ; things natural, civil, 
 precious stones, bugle-makers, lamp-blowers, and religious ; things of your native land, 
 colour-makers, colour-grinders, gla>s-pa;nters, mid ot foreign countries; things domestic 
 enameUurg, vamishers, colour-sellers, painters, and national; things present, past, and 
 limners, picture-drawers, makers of baby- future ; and above all, be wtll acquainted 
 heads, of little bowling-stones or marbles, with God and yourselves; wiih animal 
 fustian-makers (query whether potts are in- nature, and the workings of your own spirits, 
 eluded in this trade?), music-masters, lirisey- Surh a general acquaintance with thing* will 
 makers, and Uggers. The history of school- be of very great advantage." 
 matters, writing-masters, printers, book-
 
 Section 2. Essay 8. 321 
 
 particulars are to be thus collected, only that by careful selection they 
 may be concentrated into universals ; yet so immense is their number, 
 and so various and almost endless the relations in which each is to lie 
 separately considered, that the lite of an antediluvian patriarch would 
 have been expended, and his strength and spirits wasted, in merely poll- 
 ing the votes, and long before he could have commenced the process of 
 simplification, or have arrived in sight of the law which was to reward 
 the toils of the over-tasked Psychr.* 
 
 \Vi- yield to none in our grateful veneration of Lord Bacon's philoso- 
 phical writings. We are proud of his very name, as men of science ; 
 and as Englishmen, we are almost vain of it. But we may not permit 
 the honest workings of national attachment to degenerate into the 
 jealous and indiscriminate partiality of clanship. Uuawed by such as 
 praise and abuse by wholesale, we dare avow that there are points in the 
 character of our Verulam, from which we turn to the life and labours 
 of John Keplerf as from gloom to sunshine. The beginning and the 
 close of his life were clouded by jwverty aud domestic troubles, while 
 the intermediate years were comprised within the most tumultuous 
 period of the history of his country, when the furies of religious and 
 political discord had left neither eye, ear, nor heart for the Muses. But 
 Kepler seemed born to prove that true genius can overpower all obsta- 
 cles. If he gives an account of his modes of proceeding, and of the views 
 under which they first occurred to his mind, how unostentatiously and 
 in ti'oitbitu, as it were, does he introduce himself to our notice ; and y. t 
 never fails to present the living germ out of which the genuine method, 
 as the inner form of the tree of science, springs up ! With what affec- 
 tionate reverence does he express himself of his master and immediate 
 predecessor, Tycho Bralie ! with what zeal does he vindicate his services 
 against posthumous detraction ! How often aud how gladly does he 
 speak of Copernicus ! and with what fervent tones of faith and consola- 
 tion does he proclaim the historic fact that the great men of all a_;t s 
 have prepared the way for each other, as pioneers and heralds ! Equally 
 just to the ancients and to his contemporaries, how circumstantially, and 
 with what exactness of detail, does Kepler demonstrate that Euclid 
 Copemiciaea a>s npo rov Koirepviicov KorrepviKi&i JLvK\(i8r)sl and how 
 it the compliments which headdresses to Porta ! with what cor- 
 diality he thanks him for the invention of the camera obscura, as en- 
 larging his views into the laws of vision ! But while we cannot avoid 
 contrasting this generous enthusiasm with Lord Bacon's cold invidious 
 treatment of Gilbert, and his at-sertion that the works of Plato and 
 Aristotle had been carried down the stream of time, like straws, by their 
 
 * See the beautiful allegoric tale of Cupid s'anres of that hidden wisdom, " where more 
 
 and ISyche, in the original of Apuleius. Th-; is me:mt thaii meets the ear" 
 
 task-; iu)|><-s< d on her by the Ji-alum-y <>f ln-r "f Horn 1571, ten years after Lord Bacon : 
 
 mother-in-law, and the ac''iicy by which tin y died 1630, four years after the death of 
 
 are at length self-performed, are noble iii- Bacon.
 
 322 n e Friend. 
 
 levity alone, when things of weight and worth had sunk to the bottom : 
 still iu the founder of a revolution, scarcely less important for the scien- 
 tific, and even for the commercial world, than that of Luther for the 
 world of religion and politics, we must allow much to the heat of protes- 
 tation, much to the vehemence of hope, and much to the vividness of 
 novelty. Still more must we attribute to the then existing and actual 
 state of the Platonic and Peripatetic philosophies, or rather to the dreams 
 or verbiage which then passed current as such. Had he but attached 
 to their proper authors the schemes and doctrines which he condemns, 
 our illustrious countryman would, in this point, at least, have needed 
 no apology. And surely no lover of truth, conversant with the particu- 
 lars of Lord Bacon's life, with the very early, almost boyish age, at 
 which he quitted the university, and the manifold occupations and 
 anxieties in which his public and professional duties engaged, and his 
 courtly alas ! his servile, prostitute, and mendicant ambition, entan- 
 gled him in his after years, will be either surprised or offended, though 
 we should avow our conviction, that he had derived his opinions of 
 Plato and Aristotle from any source rather than from a dispassionate 
 and patient study of the originals themselves. At all events, it will be 
 no easy task to reconcile many passages in the De Augmentis, and the 
 Redargutio Philosophiarum, with the author's own fundamental princi- 
 ples, as established in his Novum Organum ; if we attach to the words 
 the meaning which they may bear, or even, in some instances, the 
 meaning which might appear to us, in the present age, more obvious ; 
 instead of the sense in which they were employed by the professors, 
 whose false premises and barren methods Bacon was at that time contro- 
 verting. And this historical interpretation is rendered the more neces- 
 sary by his fondness for point and antithesis in his style, where we must 
 often disturb the sound in order to arrive at the sense. But with these 
 precautions ; and if, in collating the philosophical works of Lord Bacon 
 with those of Plato, we, in both cases alike, separate the grounds and 
 essential principles of their philosophic systems from the inductions 
 themselves ; no inconsiderable portion of which, in the British sage, as 
 well as in the divine Athenian, is neither more nor less crude and erro- 
 neous than might be anticipated from the infant state of natural history, 
 chemistry, and physiology, in their several ages ; and if we moreover 
 separate the principles from their practical application, which in both is 
 not seldom impracticable, and, in our countryman, not always reconcile- 
 able with the principles themselves : we shall not only extract that from 
 each, \vhich is for all ages, and which constitutes their true systems of 
 philosophy, but shall convince ourselves that they are radically one and 
 the same system ; in that, namely, which is of universal and imperish- 
 able worth ! the science of method, and the grounds and conditions of 
 the science of method.
 
 Section '2. Essay 9. 323 
 
 ESSAY IX. 
 
 A great authority may be a poor proof, but it is an excellent presumption : and few things 
 give a wise man a truer delight than to reconcile two great authorities, that had been com- 
 monly but falsely held to be dissonant. STAFYLTON. 
 
 UNDER a deep impression of the importance of the truths we have 
 vcd to develope, we would tain remove every prejudice that 
 does not originate in the heart rather than in the understanding. For 
 truth, says the wise man, will not enter a malevolent spirit. 
 
 To oiler or to receive names in lieu of sound arguments, is only less 
 reprehensible than an ostentatious contempt of the great men of former 
 hut we may well and wisely avail ourselves of authorities in con- 
 firmation of truth, and above all, in the removal of prejudices founded 
 on imperfect information. We do not see, therefore, how we can more 
 appropriately conclude this first explanatory and controversial section 
 of our inquiry, than by a brief statement of our renowned countryman's 
 own principles of method, conveyed for the greater part in his o.wn 
 words. Nor do we see, in what more precise form we can recapitulate 
 the substance of the doctrines asserted and vindicated in the preceding 
 . For we rest our strongest pretensions to a calm and respeeti'ul 
 ])orusal, in the first instance, on the fact, that we have only re-proclaimed 
 the coinciding prescripts of the Athenian Verulam, and the British 
 Plato genuinam scilicet PLATOXIS dialecticem ; et methodologiam 
 principialem 
 
 FRANCISCI DE VERULAMIO. 
 
 In the first instance, Lord Bacon equally with ourselves, demarfds 
 what we have ventured to call the intellectual or mental initiative, as the 
 motive and guide of every philosophical experiment ; some well-grounded 
 purpose, some distinct impression of the probable results, some self- 
 consistent anticipation as the ground of the "prudeus qtuestio*' (the 
 forethoughtful query), which he affirms to be the prior half of the know- 
 ledge sought, diinidium scimti\r. "With him, therefore, as with us, an 
 idea is an experiment proposed, an experiment is an idea realized. Fur 
 so, though, in other words, he himself informs us : " neque sr.itntw.rn mo- 
 lintur (am st-uutt i" I iiitfnnn- n'ix quam experimeittis ; ((mini experi- 
 mentorum lonye major est subtilihis quam sensiis ipslus, licet inftriiincii- 
 ,'iisitis adj'uti. Nam de iislojuirititr cjcjnriiuentis, quit nd iutot- 
 tionem fjus quod queer itur jKrite tt stcundum artem excoffitata <.,' 
 apjx'tita sut. Jtaque percept lot, i n nttu immtdiatce ac jirojn'in nun 
 multuiii tribuimus: sed cb rt/n dedttcifntu, ut sensus tantihn dc t 
 mento, erperimcntinn de re, judicit."' This last sentence is, as the atten-
 
 324 The Friend. 
 
 tive reader will have himself detected, one of those faulty verbal anti- 
 theses, not unfrequent in Lord Bacon's writings. Pungent antitheses, 
 and the analogies of wit in which the resemblance is too often more in- 
 debted to the double or equivocal sense of a word, than to any real con- 
 formity* in the thing or image, form the dulcia vitia of his style, the 
 Delilahs of our philosophical Samson. But in this instance, as indeed 
 throughout all his works, the meaning is clear and evident namely, 
 that the sense can apprehend, through the organs of sense, only the 
 phenomena evoked by the experiment : vis verb mentis ea, quas ejj'tri- 
 meritum excogitaverat, de re jvdictt : i. e. that power which, out of its 
 own conceptions had shaped the experiment, must alone determine the 
 true import of the phenomena. If again we ask, what it is which gives 
 birth to the question, and then ad intent ionem qucfstionissuceexperimen- 
 tum excogitat, unde de re judicet, the answer is: Lux Iritelltctus, lumen 
 siccum, the pure and impersonal reason, freed from all the various idols 
 enumerated by our great legislator of science (idola tribus, speci!s,fori, the- 
 atri~) ; that is, freed from the limits, the passions, the prejudices, the peculiar 
 habits of the human understanding, natural or acquired ; but above all, 
 pure from the arrogance which leads man to take the forms and me- 
 chanism of his own mere reflective faculty, as the measure of nature and 
 of Deity. In this indeed we find the great object both of Plato's and of 
 Lord Bacon's labours. They both saw that there could be no hope of 
 any fruitful and secure method, w r hile forms, merely subjective, were 
 presumed as the true and proper moulds of objective truth. This is the 
 sense in which Lord Bacon uses the phrases, intelltctus humanus, mens 
 hominis, so profoundly and justly characterised in the preliminary 
 essay (Distributio Operis) of his Novum Organum. And with all 
 right and propriety did he so apply them ; for this was, in fact, the sense 
 in which the phrases were applied by the teachers whom he is contro- 
 verting ; by the doctors of the schools ; and the visionaries of the labo- 
 ratory. To adopt the bold but happy phrase of a late ingenious French 
 writer, it is the homme particuliere, as contrasted with Thomme gene- 
 rale; against which, Heraclitus and Plato, among the ancients, and 
 among the moderns, Bacon and Stewart (rightly understood), warn and 
 pre-admonish the sincere inquirer. Most truly, and in strict consonance 
 with his two great predecessors, does our immortal Veralam teach 
 that the human understanding, even independent of the causes that 
 always, previously to its purification by philosophy, render it more or 
 less turbid or uneven, "ipsa sua natura radios ex fgura et sectione 
 propria immutat :" that our understanding not only reflects the objects 
 subjectively, that is, substitutes for the inherent laws and properties of 
 
 * Thus (to take the first instance that light. Where the word, "high," means 
 occurs) Bacon says, that some knowledges, " deep or sublime " in the one case, and " dis- 
 like the stars, arc so high that they give no tant " in the other.
 
 Section %. Essay 9. 325 
 
 the objects the relations which the objects bear to its own particular 
 constitution ; but that in all its conscious presentations and reflexes, it is 
 itself only a phenomenon of the inner sense, and requires the same cor- 
 rections as the appearances transmitted by the outward senses. But that 
 there is potentially, if not actually, in every rational being, a some- 
 what, call it what you will, the pure reason, the spirit, lumen siccum, 
 i/oCy, <wy votpov, intellectual intuition, &c. &c. ; and that in this are 
 to be found the indispensable conditions of all science, and scientific 
 research, whether meditative, contemplative, or experimental ; is often 
 expressed, and everywhere supposed, by Lord Bacon. And that this is 
 not only the right but the possible nature of the human mind, to 
 which it is capable of being restored, is implied in the various reme- 
 dies prescribed by him for its diseases, and in the various means of neu- 
 tralizing or converting into useful instrumentality the imperfections 
 which cannot be removed. There is a sublime truth contained in his 
 favourite phrase Idola intellectus. He thus tells us that the mind of 
 man is an edifice not built with human hands, which needs only be 
 purged of its idols and idolatrous services to become the temple of the 
 true and living Light. Nay, he has shown and established the true 
 criterion between the ideas and the idola of the mind namely, that 
 the former are manifested by their adequacy to those ideas in nature, 
 which in and through them are contemplated. " Nan leve quiddam 
 interest inter humance mentis idola et divince mentis ideas, hoc est, inter 
 placita qucedam inania et veras signaturas atque impressiones factas in 
 ereaturis, prout ratione sand et sicci luminis, quam docendi causa inter- 
 pretem naturae vocare consmvimus, inveniuntur.'' Novum Organum, 
 xxiii. and xxvi. Thus the difference, or rather distinction between 
 Plato and Lord Bacon is simply this : that philosophy being necessarily 
 bi-polar, Plato treats principally of the truth, as it manifests itself at 
 the ideal pole, as the science of intellect (i.e. de mundo iittelligibili) ; 
 while Bacon confines himself, for the most part, to the same truth, as 
 it is manifested at the other, or material pole, as the science of nature 
 (z. e. de mundo sensibili'). It is as necessary, therefore, that Plato should 
 direct his inquiries chiefly to those objective truths that exist in and for 
 the intellect alone, the images and representatives of which we con- 
 struct for ourselves by figure, number, and word ; as that Lord Bacon 
 should attach his main concern to the truths which have their signa- 
 tures in nature, and which (as he himself plainly and often asserts) may 
 indeed be revealed to us through and with, but never by the senses, or 
 the faculty of sense. Otherwise, indeed, instead of being more objec- 
 tive than the former (which they are not in any sense, both being in 
 this respect the same), they would be less so, and, in fact, incapable 
 of being insulated from the " Idola t>-ib/is qua in ipsd naturd humana 
 fundata sunt, atque in ipsd tribu seu gente hominum: cum omnes per-
 
 326 The Friend. 
 
 ceptiones tarn sensus quam mentis, sunt ex analogia liominis non ex ana- 
 logia universi." (X. 0.- xli.) Hence too, it will not surprise us, that 
 Plato so often calls ideas living laws, in which the mind has its whole 
 true being and permanence ; or that Bacon, vice versa, names the laws 
 of nature, ideas ; and represents what we have, in a former part of this 
 disquisition, called facts of science and central phenomena, as signa- 
 tures, impressions, and symbols of ideas. A distinguishable power self- 
 affirmed, and seen in its unity with the Eternal Essence, is, according 
 to Plato, an idea : and the discipline, by which the human mind is 
 purified from its idols, (etSwXa), and raised to the contemplation of 
 ideas, and thence to the secure and ever-progressive, though never- 
 ending, investigation of truth and reality by scientific method, compre- 
 hends what the same philosopher so highly extols under the title of 
 dialectic. According to Lord Bacon, as describing the same truth seen 
 from the opposite point, and applied to natural philosophy, an idea 
 would be defined as Intuitio sive inventio, quce in perceptione senses 
 n<m est (ut quce puree et sicci luminis intellectioni est propria} idemum 
 divince mentis, prout in creaturis per signaturas suas sese patefaciant. 
 That (saith the judicious Hooker) which doth assign to each thing the 
 kind, that which determines the force and power, that which doth 
 appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a law. 
 
 We can now, as men furnished with fit and respectable credentials, 
 proceed to the historic importance and practical application of method, 
 under the deep and solemn conviction, that without this guiding light 
 neither can the sciences attain to their full evolution, as the organs of 
 one vital and harmonious body, nor that most weighty and concerning of 
 all sciences, the science of education, be understood in its first elements, 
 much less display its powers, as the nisus formativus* of social man, as 
 
 So onr medical writers commonly trans- at least contingent causes, ex. gr. ; the limits 
 late Professor Blumenbach's Bildimgstrieb, or imperfection of our senses, or the inapt- 
 the visplastica, or vis ritcefarmatrix of the ness of the media: but that herein he 
 elder physiologists, and the life or living philosophized in the spirit of the purest 
 principle of John Hunter, the profoundest, Newtonians, who in like manner refused to 
 we had almost said the only, physiological hypostasise the law of gravitation into an 
 philosopher of the latter half of the preced- ether, which even if its existence were con- 
 ing century. For in what other ense can ceded, would need another gravitation for 
 tee understand either his assertion, that this itself. The Hunterian position is a genuine 
 principle or agent is " independent of orga- philosophic idea, the negative test of which 
 niZAtion," which yet it animates, sustains, and as of all ideas is, that it is equi-distant from 
 repairs, or the purport of that magnificent an ens logicum (i. e. an abstraction), an ens 
 commentary on his system, the Hunterian repr&sentativum (i.e. a generalization), andan 
 Museum. The Hunterian idea of a life or vital ens phantasticum (t. e, an imaginary thing or 
 principle, " independent of the organization," phenomenon). 
 
 yet in each organ working instinctively to- Is not the progressive enlargement, the 
 
 Wards its preservation, as the ants or termites boldness without temerity, of chirurgical 
 
 in repairing the nests of their own fabrication, views and chirurgical practice since Hunter's 
 
 demonstrates that John Hunter did not, as time to the present day, attributable, in 
 
 Stabl and others had done, individualize, or almost every instance, to his substitution of 
 
 make an bypostasis of the principles of life, as what may perhaps be called experimental 
 
 a somewhat manifestable per se, and conse- dynamics for the mechanical notions, or the 
 
 fluently itself a phenomenon ; the latency of less injurious traditional empiricism, of his 
 
 which was to be attributed to accidental, or predecessors ? And this, too, though the
 
 Section 2. Essay 10. 327 
 
 the appointed protoplast of true humanity. Never can society compre- 
 hend fully, and in its whole practical extent, the permanent distinction, 
 and the occasional contrast, between cultivation and civilization ; never 
 can it attain to a due insight into the momentous fact, fearfully as it 
 has been, and even now is exemplified in a neighbour country, that a 
 nation can never be a too cultivated, but may easily become an over- 
 civilized, race : while we oppose ourselves voluntarily to that grand 
 prerogative of our nature, a hungering and thirsting after truth, as the 
 appropriate end of our intelligential, and its point of union with our 
 moral nature ; but therefore after truth, that must be found within us 
 before it can be intelligibly reflected back on the mind from without, 
 and a religious regard to which is indispensable, both as guide and ob- 
 ject to the just formation of the human being, poor and rich : while, in 
 a word, we are blind to the master-light, which we have already pre- 
 sented in various points of view, and recommended by whatever is of 
 highest authority with the venerators of the ancient, and the adherents 
 of modern, philosophy. 
 
 ESSAY X. 
 
 voov ov SiSoericei- cl^ai yap fti TO {ro<j>oi>, eTrurrao'Oai yvco/utTji' rjre ry/cvy3eppTJ<rei 
 irdvra Sia irairup. 
 
 (Translation.) The effective education of the reason is not to be supplied by multifarious 
 acquirements : for there is but one knowledge that merits to be called wisdom, a knowledge 
 that is one with a law which shall govern all in and through alL 
 
 HERAC. apud Diogenem, Laert. is. } 1. 
 
 Historical and Illustrative. 
 
 rpHERE is still preserved in the Koyal Observatory at Richmond the 
 A. model of a bridge, constructed by the late justly celebrated Mr. Atwood 
 (at that time, however, in the decline of life), in the confidence, that he 
 had explained the wonderful properties of the arch as resulting from the 
 compound action of simple wedges, or of the rectilinear solids of which 
 the material arch was composed ; and of which supposed discovery, his 
 
 light is still struggling through a clond, and inward alarm, tries to shelter itself in out- 
 
 though it is shed on many who see either ward contempt that is at once folly and a 
 
 dimly or not at all the idea from which it is stumbling-block to the partisans of a crass 
 
 eradiated? Willingly would we designate, and sensual materialism, the advocates of 
 
 what we have elsewhere called the mental the Nihil nisi ab extra. 
 
 initiative, by some term less obnoxious to 
 
 the anti-Platonic reader than this of idea ; They, like moles, 
 
 obnoxious, we mean, as soon as any precise Nature's mute monks, live mandrakes of the 
 
 and peculiar sense is attached to the sound. ground, 
 
 Willingly would we exchange the t.-rm, Shrink from (he light, then listen for a sound; 
 
 might it be done without sacrifice of the iru- See but to dread, and dread they know not 
 
 port ; and did we not see, too clearly, that it why, 
 
 is the meaning, not the word, that Is the The natural alien of their negative eye ! 
 
 object of that aversion, which, fleeing from S. T. C.
 
 328 Tiie Friend. 
 
 model was to exhibit ocular proof. Accordingly, lie took a sufficient 
 number of wedges of brass highly polished. Arranging these at first on 
 a skeleton arch of wood, he then removed this scaffolding or support ; 
 and the bridge not only stood firm, without any cement between the 
 squares, but he could take away any given portion of them, as a third 
 or a half, and appending a correspondent weight, at either side, the re- 
 maining part stood as before. Our venerable sovereign, who is known 
 to have had a particular interest and pleasure in all works and dis- 
 coveries of mechanic science or ingenuity, looked at it for a while sted- 
 fastly, and, as his manner was, with quick and broken expressions of 
 praise and courteous approbation, in the form of answers to his own 
 questions. At length turning to the constructor, he said, " But, Mr. 
 Atwood, you have presumed the figure. You have put the arch first in 
 this wooden skeleton. Can you build a bridge of the same wedges in 
 any other figure? A straight bridge, or with two lines touching at the 
 apex ? If not, is it not evident, that the bits of brass derive their con- 
 tinuance in the present position from the property of the arch, and not 
 the arch from the property of the wedge ?" The objection was fatal ; 
 the justice of the remark not to be resisted : and we have ever deemed 
 it a forcible illustration of the Aristotelian axiom, with respect to all just 
 reasoning, that the whole is of necessity prior to its parts ; nor can we 
 conceive a more apt illustration of the scientific principles we have 
 already laid down. 
 
 All method supposes a union of several things to a common end, 
 either by disposition, as in the works of man ; or by convergence, as in 
 the operations and products of nature. That we acknowledge a method, 
 even in the latter, results from the religions instinct which bids us 
 " find tongues in trees ; books in the running streams ; sermons in 
 stones; and good (that is, some useful end answering to some good pur- 
 pose) in everything." In a self-conscious and thence reflecting being, 
 no instinct can exist, without engendering the belief of an object corre- 
 sponding to it, either present or future, real or capable of being realized : 
 much less the instinct, in which humanity itself is grounded : that by 
 which, in every act of conscious perception, we at once identify our being 
 with that of the world without us, and yet place ourselves in contra- 
 distinction to that world. Least of all can this mysterious pre-disposi- 
 tion exist without evolving a belief that the productive power, which is 
 in nature as nature, is essentially one (*'. e. of one kind) with the intel- 
 ligence, which is in the human mind above nature ; however disfigured 
 this belief may become, by accidental forms or accompaniments, and 
 though like heat in the thawing of ice it may appear only in its effects. 
 So universally has this conviction leavened the very substance of all 
 discourse, that there is no language on earth in which a man can abjure 
 it as a prejudice, without employing terms and conjunctions that sup-
 
 Section 2. Essay 10. 329 
 
 pose its reality, with a feeling very different from that which accom- 
 panies a figurative or metaphorical use of words. In all aggregates of 
 construction, therefore, which we contemplate as wholes, whether as in- 
 tegral parts or as a system, we assume an intention, as the initiative, of 
 which the end is the correlative. 
 
 Hence proceeds the introduction of final causes in the works of nature 
 equally as in those of man. Hence their assumption, as constitutive and 
 explanatory, by the mass of mankind ; and the employment of the pre- 
 sumption, as an auxiliary and regulative principle, by the enlightened 
 naturalist, whose office it is to seek, discover, and investigate the effi- 
 cient causes. Without denying that to resolve the efficient into the 
 final may be the ultimate aim of philosophy, he, of good right, resists 
 the substitution of the latter for the former, as premature, presumptuous, 
 and preclusive of all science ; well aware that those sciences have been 
 most progressive in which this confusion has been either precluded by 
 the nature of the science itself, as in pure mathematics, or avoided by 
 the good sense of its cultivator. Yet even he admits a teleological 
 ground in physics and physiology ; that is, the presumption of a some- 
 thing analogous to the causality of the human will, by which, without 
 assigning to nature, as nature, a conscious purpose, he may yet dis- 
 tinguish her agency from a blind and lifeless mechanism. Even he ad- 
 mits its use, and, in many instances, its necessity, as a regulative prin- 
 ciple ; as a ground of anticipation, for the guidance of his judgment and 
 for the direction of his observation and experiment : briefly in all that 
 preparatory process, which the French language so happily expresses oy 
 s'orienter, i. e. to find out the east for one's self. When the naturalist 
 contemplates the structure of a bird, for instance, the hollow cavity of 
 the bones, the position of the wings for motion, and of the tail for steer- 
 ing its course, &c., he knows indeed that there must be a correspondent 
 mechanism, as the nexus effcctivus. But he knows, likewise, that this 
 will no more explain the particular existence of the bird, than the prin- 
 ciples of cohesion, &c. could inform him why of two buildings one is a 
 palace, and the other a church. Nay, it must not be overlooked, that 
 the assumption of the nexus effectivus itself originates in the mind, as 
 one of 'the laws under which alone it can reduce the manifold of the im- 
 pression from without into unity, and thus contemplate it as one thing ; 
 and could never (as hath been clearly proved by Mr. Hume) have been 
 derived from outward experience, in which it is indeed presupposed, as 
 a necessary condition. Notio nexus causalis nan witur, sed supponitur, 
 a sensibus. Between the purpose and the end the component parts are 
 included, and thence receive their position and character as means, . e. 
 parts contemplated as parts. It is in this sense, we will affirm, that the 
 parts, as means to an end, derive their position, and therein their quali- 
 ties or character nay, we dare add, their very existence, as particular
 
 330 The Friend. 
 
 things from the antecedent method, or self-organizing purpose ; upon 
 which, therefore, we have dwelt so long. 
 
 We are aware, that it is with our cognitions as with our children. 
 There is a period in which the method of nature is working for them ; 
 a period of aimless activity and unregulated accumulation, during which 
 it is enough if we can preserve them in health and out of harm's way. 
 Again, there is a period of orderliness, of circumspection, of discipline, in 
 which we purify, separate, define, select, arrange, and settle the nomen- 
 clature of communication. There is also a period of dawning and twi- 
 light, a period of anticipation, affording trials of strength. And all these, 
 both in the growth of the sciences and in the mind of a rightly educated 
 individual, will precede the attainment of a scientific method. But, 
 notwithstanding this, unless the importance of the latter be felt and 
 acknowledged, unless its attainment be looked forward to and from the 
 very beginning prepared for, there is little hope and small chance that 
 any education will be conducted aright, or will ever prove in reality 
 worth the name. 
 
 Much labour, much wealth may have been expended, yet the final 
 result will too probably warrant the sarcasm of the Scythian traveller, 
 " FOE/ quantum nihilil" and draw from a wise man the earnest recom- 
 mendation of a full draught from Lethe, as the first and indispensable 
 preparative for the waters of the true Helicon. Alas ! how many ex- 
 amples are now present to our memory, of young men the most 
 anxiously and expensively be-school-mastered, be-tutored, be-lectured, 
 anything but educated ; who have received arms and ammunition, in- 
 stead of skill, strength, and courage ; varnished rather than polished ; 
 perilously over-civilized, and most pitiably uncultivated ! And all from 
 inattention to the method dictated by Nature herself, to the simple truth, 
 that as the forms in all organized existence, so must all tnie and living 
 knowledge proceed from within ; that it may be trained, supported, fed, 
 excited, but can never be infused or impressed. 
 
 Look back on the history of the sciences. Review the method in 
 which Providence has brought the more favoured portion of mankind to 
 the present state of arts and sciences. Lord Bacon has justly re- 
 marked, Antiquitas temporis juventus mundi et scientioe Antiquity of 
 time is the youth, of the world and of science. In the childhood of the 
 human race, its education commenced with the cultivation of the moral 
 sense ; the object proposed being such as the mind only could apprehend, 
 and the principle of obedience being placed in the will. The appeal in 
 both was made to the inward man. " Through faith we understand 
 that the worlds were framed by the word of God ; so that things which 
 were seen were not made of things which do appear." The solution of 
 phaenomena can never be derived from phaenomena. Upon this ground, 
 the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews (chap, xi.) is not less philoso-
 
 Section 2. Essay 10. 331 
 
 phical than eloquent. The aim, the method throughout was, in the first 
 place, to awaken, to cultivate, and to mature the truly human in human 
 nature, in and through itself, or as independently as possible of the 
 notices derived from sense, and of the motives that had reference to the 
 sensations; till the time should arrive when the senses themselves 
 might be allowed to present symbols and attestations of truths, learnt 
 previously from deeper and inner sources. Thus the first period of the 
 education of our race was evidently assigned to the cultivation of 
 humanity itself; or of that in man, which of all known embodied 
 creatures he alone possesses, the pure reason, as designed to regulate 
 the will. And by what method was this done? First, by the excite- 
 ment of the idea of their Creator as a Spirit, of an idea which they were 
 strictly forbidden to realize to themselves under any image ; and, 
 secondly, by the injunction of obedience to the will of a super-sensual 
 Being. Nor did the method stop here. For, unless we are equally to 
 contradict Moses and the New Testament, in compliment to the paradox 
 of a Warburton, the rewards of their obedience were placed at a distance. 
 For the time present they equally with us were to " endure, as seeing 
 Him who is invisible." Their bodies they were taught to consider as 
 fleshly tents, which as pilgrims they were bound to pitch wherever the 
 invisible Director of their route should appoint, however barren or thorny 
 the spot might appear. " Few and evil have the days of the years of 
 my life been," says the aged Israel. But that life was but " his pil- 
 grimage ;" and he " trusted in the promises." 
 
 Thus were the very first lessons in the Divine School assigned to the 
 cultivation of the reason and of the will ; or rather of both as united in 
 faith. The common and ultimate object of the will and of the reason 
 was purely spiritual, and to be present in the mind of the disciple 
 [j.6vov tv I8ea, pjSa/i?) fl8a>\iKa>s, i. e. in the idea alone, and never as 
 an image or imagination. The means too, by which the idea was to be 
 excited, as well as the symbols by which it was to be communicated, 
 were to be, as far as possible, intellectual. 
 
 Those, on the contrary, who wilfully chose a mode opposite to this 
 method, who determined to shape their convictions and deduce their 
 knowledge from without, by exclusive observation of outward and sen- 
 sible things as the only realities, became, it appears, rapidly civilized ! 
 They built cities, invented musical instruments, were artificers in brass 
 and in iron, and refined on the means of sensual gratification, and the 
 conveniencies of courtly intercourse. They became the great masters of 
 the agreeable, which fraternized readily with cruelty and rapacity ; 
 these being, indeed, but alternate moods of the same sensual selfishness. 
 Thus, both before and after the flood, the vicious of mankind receded 
 from all true cultivation, as they hurried towards civilization. Finally, 
 as it was not in their power to make themselves wholly beasts, or to
 
 332 The Friend. 
 
 remain without a semblance of religion ; and yet continuing faithful to 
 their original maxim, and determined to receive nothing as true, but 
 what they derived, or believed themselves to derive from their senses, or 
 (in modern phrase) what they could prove a posteriori, they became 
 idolaters of the Heavens and the material elements. From the harmony 
 of operation they concluded a certain unity of nature and design, but 
 were incapable of finding in the facts any proof of a unity of person. 
 They did not, in this respect, pretend to find what they must themselves 
 have first assumed. Having thrown away the clusters, which had grown 
 in the vineyard of revelation, they could not as later reasoners, by being 
 born in a Christian country, have been enabled to do hang the grapes 
 on thorns, and then pluck them as the native growth of the bushes. But 
 the men of sense, of the patriarchal times, neglecting reason and having 
 rejected faith, adopted what the facts seemed to involve and the most 
 obvious analogies to suggest. They acknowledged a whole beehive of 
 natural gods ; but while they were employed in building a temple * con- 
 secrated to the material heavens, it pleased Divine Wisdom to send on 
 them a confusion of lip, accompanied with the usual embitterment of con- 
 troversy, where all parties are in the wrong, and the grounds of quarrel 
 are equally plausible on all sides. As the modes of error are endless, the 
 hundred forms of polytheism had each its group of partisans who, 
 hostile or alienated, thenceforward formed separate tribes kept aloof from 
 each other by their ambitious leaders. Hence arose, in the course of a 
 few centuries, the diversity of languages, which has sometimes been con- 
 founded with the miraculous event that was indeed its first and principal, 
 though remote, cause. 
 
 Following next, and as the representative of the youth and approach- 
 ing manhood of the human intellect, we have ancient Greece, from 
 Orpheus, Linus, Musseus, and the other mythological bards, or perhaps 
 the brotherhoods impersonated under those names, to the time when the 
 republics lost their independence, and their learned men sank into 
 copyists and commentators of the works of their forefathers. That we 
 include these as educated under a distinct providential, though not 
 miraculous, dispensation, will surprise no one, who reflects that in what- 
 ever has a permanent operation on the destinies and intellectual condition 
 of mankind at large that in all which has been manifestly employed as 
 
 * We are far from being Hutchinsonians, pleasing and plausible ; we dare not say 
 
 nor have we found much to respect in the more. Those who would wish to learn the 
 
 twelve volumes of Hutchinson's works, either most important points of the Hutchinsonian 
 
 as 4>iblical comment or natural philosophy ; doctrine in the most favourable form, and in 
 
 though we give him credit for orthodoxy and the shortest possible space, we can refer to 
 
 good intentions. But his interpretation of Duncan Forbes's Letter to a Bishop. If our 
 
 the first nine verses of Genesis xi. seems not own judgment did not withhold our assent, 
 
 only rational in itself, and consistent with we should never be ashamed of a conviction 
 
 after accounts of the sacred historian, but held, profc-ssed, and advocated by so good and 
 
 proved to be the literal sense of the Hebrew wise a man as Duncan Forbes, 
 text His explanation of the cherubim is
 
 Section 2. Essay 10. 333 
 
 a co-agent in the mightiest revolution of the moral world, the propagation 
 of the Gospel ; and in the intellectual progress of mankind, the restora- 
 tion of philosophy, science, and the ingenuous arts it were irreligion not 
 to acknowledge the hand of Divine Providence. The periods, too, join 
 on to each other. The earliest Greeks took up the religious and lyrical 
 poetry of the Hebrews ; and the schools of the Prophets were, however 
 partially and imperfectly, represented by the mysteries, derived through 
 the corrupt channel of the Phoenicians. With these secret schools of 
 physiological theology the mythical poets were doubtless in connection ; 
 and it was these schools, which prevented polytheism from producing all 
 its natural barbarizing effects. The mysteries and the mythical hymns 
 and pagans shaped themselves gradually into epic poetry and history on 
 the one hand, and into the ethical tragedy and philosophy on the other. 
 Under their protection, and that of a youthful liberty secretly controlled 
 by a species of internal theocracy, the sciences and the sterner kinds of 
 the fine arts, viz. architecture and statuary, grew up together : followed, 
 indeed, by painting, but a statuesque and austerely idealized painting, 
 which did not degenerate into mere copies of the sense, till the process, 
 for which Greece existed, had been completed. Contrast the rapid 
 progress and perfection of all the products, which owe their existence and 
 character to the mind's own acts, intellectual or imaginative, witli the 
 rudeness of their application to the investigation of physical laws and 
 phaMicinena ; then contemplate the Greeks (Tpa'ioi aet iraldfs} as repre- 
 senting a portion only of the education of man ; and the conclusion is 
 inevitable. 
 
 In the education of the mind of the race, as in that of the individual, 
 each different age and purpose requires different objects and different 
 means ; though all dictated by the same principle, tending toward the 
 same end, and forming consecutive parts of the same method. But if the 
 scale taken be sufficiently large to neutralize or render insignificant the 
 disturbing forces of accident, the degree of success is the best criterion by 
 which to appreciate, both the wisdom of the general principle, and the 
 fitness of the particular objects to the given epoch or period. Now it is 
 a fact, for the greater part of universal acceptance, and attested as to the 
 remainder by all that is of highest fame and authority, by the great, 
 wise, and good, during a space of at least seventeen centuries, weighed 
 against whom the opinions of a few distinguished individuals, or the 
 fashion of a single age, must be held light in the balance, that whatever 
 could be educed by the mind out of its own essence, by attention to its 
 own acts and laws of action, or as the products of the same : and what- 
 ever likewise could be reflected from material masses transformed as it 
 were into mirrors, the excellence of which is to reveal, in the least possible 
 degree, their own original forms and natures all these, whether arts or 
 sciences, the ancient Greeks carried to an almost ideal perfection ; while
 
 334 The Friend. 
 
 in the application of their skill and science to the investigation of the 
 laws of the sensible world, and the qualities and composition of material 
 concretes, chemical, mechanical, or organic, their essays were crude and 
 improsperous, compared with those of the moderns during the early 
 morning of their strength, and even at the first re-ascension of the light. 
 But still more striking will the difference appear, if we contrast the 
 physiological schemes and fancies of the Greeks with their own dis- 
 coveries in the region of the pure intellect, and with their still unrivalled 
 success in the arts of imagination. In the aversion of their great men 
 from any practical use of their philosophic discoveries, as in the well- 
 known instance of Archimedes, " the soul of the world " was at work ; 
 and the few exceptions were but as a rush of billows driven shoreward 
 by some chance gust before the hour of tide, instantly retracted, and 
 leaving the sands bare and soundless long after the momentary glitter 
 had been lost in evaporation. 
 
 The third period, that of the Romans, was devoted to the preparations 
 for preserving, propagating, and realizing the labours of the preceding ; to 
 war, empire, law ! To this we may refer the defect of all originality in 
 the Latin poets and philosophers, on the one hand, and on the other, the 
 predilection of the Romans for astrology, magic, divination, in all its 
 forms. It was the Roman instinct to appropriate by conquest and to 
 give fixture by legislation. And it was the bewilderment and prema- 
 turity of the same instinct which restlessly impelled them to materialize 
 the ideas of the Greek philosophers, and to render them practical by 
 superstitious uses. 
 
 Thus the Hebrews may be regarded as the fixed mid point of the 
 living line, toward which the Greeks as the ideal pole, and the Romans 
 as the material, were ever approximating ; till the co-incidence and final 
 synthesis took place in Christianity, of which the Bible is the law, and 
 Christendom the pha3nomenon. So little confirmation from history, 
 from the process of education planned and conducted by unerring Provi- 
 dence, do those theorists receive, who would at least begin (too many, 
 alas ! both begin and end) with the objects of the senses ; as if Nature 
 herself had not abundantly performed this part of the task, by continuous, 
 irresistible enforcements of attention to her presence, to the direct be- 
 holding, to the apprehension and observation, of the objects that stimu- 
 late the senses ! as if the cultivation of the mental powers, by methodical 
 exercise of their own forces, were not the securest means of forming the 
 true correspondents to them in the functions of comparison, judgment, 
 and interpretation.
 
 Section 2. Etsay 11. 335 
 
 ESSAY XL 
 
 Sapimua aiiimo, frulmur anim& : sine animo anima est debilis. L. Actii Fragmenta. 
 
 AS there are two wants connatural to man, so are there two main direc- 
 tions of human activity, pervading in modern times the whole civilized 
 world ; and constituting and sustaining that nationality which yet it is 
 their tendency, and, more or less, their effect, to transcend and to 
 moderate trade and literature. These were they, which, after the dis- 
 memberment of the old Roman world, gradually reduced the con- 
 querors and the conquered at once into several nations and a common 
 Christendom. The natural law of increase and the instincts of family 
 may produce tribes, and under rare and peculiar circumstances, settle- 
 ments and neighbourhoods ; and conquest may form empires. But 
 without trade and literature, mutually commingled, there can be no 
 nation ; without commerce and science, no bond of nations. As the one 
 hath for its object the wants of the body, real or artificial, the desires for 
 which are for the greater part, nay, as far as respects the origination of 
 trade and commerce, altogether excited from without ; so the other has 
 for its origin, as well as for its object, the wants of the mind, the gratifi- 
 cation of which is a natural and necessary condition of its growth and 
 sanity. And the man (or the nation, considered according to its predo- 
 minant character as one man) may be regarded under these circumstances, 
 as acting in two forms of method, inseparably co-existent, yet producing 
 very different effects according as one or the other obtains the primacy.* 
 As is the rank assigned to each in the theory and practice of the govern- 
 ing classes, and, according to its prevalence in forming the foundation of 
 their public habits and opinions, so will be the outward and inward life 
 of the people at large : such will the nation be. In tracing the epochs, 
 and alternations of their relative sovereignty or subjection, consists the 
 philosophy of history. In the power of distinguishing and appreciating 
 their several results consists the historic sense. And that under the 
 ascendancy of the mental and moral character the commercial relations 
 may thrive to the utmost desirable point, while the reverse is ruinous to 
 both, and sooner or later effectuates the fall or debasement of the country 
 itself this is the richest truth obtained for mankind by historic research ; 
 though unhappily it is the truth, to which a rich and commercial nation 
 listens with most reluctance and receives with least faith. Where the 
 brain and the immediate conductors of its influence remain healthy and 
 vigorous, the defects and diseases of the eye will most often admit either 
 of a cure or a substitute. And so is it with the outward prosperity of a 
 state, where the well-being of the people possesses the primacy in the 
 
 The senses, the memory, and the under- judicial functions of his mind) being common 
 standing (i. e. the retentive, reflective, and to both methods.
 
 336 The Friend. 
 
 aims of the governing classes, and in the public feeling. But what avails 
 the perfect state of the eye, 
 
 Though clear 
 To outward view of blemish or of spot, 
 
 where the optic nerve is paralyzed by a pressure on the brain? And 
 even so is it not only with the well-being, but ultimately with the pros- 
 perity of a people, where the former is considered (if it be considered at 
 all) as subordinate and secondary to wealth and revenue. 
 
 In the pursuits of commerce the man is called into action from 
 without, in order to appropriate the outward world, as far as he can 
 bring it within his reach, to the purposes of his senses and sensual 
 nature. His ultimate end is appearance and enjoyment. Where, on 
 the other hand, the nurture and evolution of humanity is the final aim, 
 there will soon be seen a general tendency toward, an eamest seeking 
 after, some ground common to the world and to man, therein to find 
 the one principle of permanence and identity, the rock of strength and 
 refuge, to which the soul may cling amid the fleeting surge-like objects 
 of the senses. Disturbed as by the obscure quickening of an inward 
 birth ; made restless by swarming thoughts, that, like bees when they 
 first miss the queen and mother of the hive, with vain discursion seek 
 each in the other what is the common need of all ; man sallies forth 
 into nature in nature as in the shadows and reflections of a clear river, 
 to discover the originals of the forms presented to him in his own intel- 
 lect. Over these shadows, as if they were the substantial powers and 
 presiding spirits of the stream, Narcissus-like, he hangs delighted ; till 
 finding nowhere a representative of that free agency which yet is a fact 
 of immediate consciousness sanctioned and made fearfully significant by 
 his prophetic conscience, he learns at last that what he seeks he has 
 left behind, and but lengthens the distance as he prolongs the search. 
 Under the tutorage of scientific analysis, haply first given to him by 
 express revelation (e ccelo descendit, yvadi aeavrbv) he separates 
 the relations that are wholly the creatures of his own abstracting and 
 comparing intellect, and at once discovers and recoils from the dis- 
 covery, that the reality, the objective truth, of the objects he has been 
 adoring, derives its whole and sole evidence from an obscure sensation, 
 which he is alike unable to resist or to comprehend, which compels him 
 to contemplate as without and independent of himself what yet he 
 could not contemplate at all, were it not a modification of his own being. 
 
 Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 
 Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
 Aud, even with something of a mother's mind, 
 And no unworthy aim, 
 
 The homely nurse doth all she can 
 To make her foster-child, her inmate man, 
 
 Forget the glories he hath known, 
 And that imperial palace whence he came
 
 Section 2. Easay 11. 337 
 
 joy ! that in our eml>ers 
 Is something that doth live, 
 That nature yet remembers 
 What was so fugitive ! 
 
 The thought of our past years in mo doth breed 
 Perpetual benedictions : not indeed 
 For that which is most worthy to be blest; 
 Delight and liberty, tV imjile creed 
 Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
 With new-fledgc-d hope still fluttering iu his breast: 
 
 Not for these 1 raise 
 The song of thanks and praise ; 
 But fur timsr oliinatv quri-tiuuings 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 Fallings from us, vanishings; 
 
 l a creature 
 
 Moving about in worlds not realized, 
 High instincts before which our mortal nature 
 Did tremble like a guilty thin; surprised ! 
 But for those first affections, 
 Those shadowy ri-collecn 
 
 Which, be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
 
 Uphold us cherish and have power to mate 
 Our noisy years seem moments In the being 
 Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake, 
 
 To perish never ; 
 Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 
 
 Nor man nor boy. 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
 Can utterly aboli*h or det.tr y : 
 
 Htuce, in a r-cason of calm weather, 
 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hiilier ; 
 Can in a moment travel thither 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 WORDSWORTH.* 
 
 Long indeed will man strive to satisfy the inward querist with the 
 
 phrase, laws of nature. But though the individual may rest content 
 
 with the set-inly metaphor, the race cannot. If a law of nature be a 
 
 I'neralizatiou, it is included in the above as an act of the mind : 
 
 * 1 hiring my residence in Home I bad the ode with evident delight, and as evidently 
 
 pleasure of renting this sublime ode to the not without surprise, and at the close of th"<- 
 
 illustrious IViron Von Humboldt, then tlie recitation exclaimed, " And is this the work 
 
 I'ru->i.m minister at the papal court, and now of a living English poet? 1 should have 
 
 at tin- court of St. JanitVs. iiy tli .^.- \\\i.> aitributed it to the age of Elizabeth, not that 
 
 knew and honoured both the brothers, the I recollect any writer whose style it resem- 
 
 talents of the plenipotentiary >!, li--M Mes: but rather wilh wonder, that so great 
 
 equal to those of the scientific traveller. Ins and original a poet should have escaped my 
 
 judgment sii]iei-ior. 1 can only say, that 1 notice."- - Olten a.- 1 re|H -at pas-ages from it 
 
 know few Englishmen, whom 1 could coin- to myself, I recur to the words of haute; 
 pare with him in ilie extensive know'.. ' in cr ilu. che >.n :nno radi 
 
 and just appreciation of English literature ; ua ragioin- bene intenderanuo : 
 
 and Its various epochs. He listened to the Tanto lor scl faticoso ed alto.
 
 338 The Friend. 
 
 but if it be other and more, and yet manifestable only in and to an 
 intelligent spirit, it must in act and substance be itself spiritual ; for 
 things utterly heterogeneous can have no intercommunion. In order, 
 therefore, to the recognition of himself in nature man must first learn to 
 comprehend nature in himself, and its laws in the ground of his own 
 existence. Then only can he reduce phenomena to principles then 
 only will he have achieved the method, the self-unravelling clue, which 
 alone can securely guide him to the conquest of the former when he 
 lias discovered in the basis of their union the necessity of their dif- 
 ferences ; in the principle of their continuance the solution of their 
 changes. It is the idea of the common centre, of the universal law, by 
 which all power manifests itself in opposite yet interdependent forces 
 (77 yap 8vas aft irapa fiovddi KadrjTai, KOI votpais da'Tpdimi. ro/ials), that 
 enlightening inquiry, multiplying experiment, and at once inspiring humi- 
 lity and perseverance, will lead him to comprehend gradually and progres- 
 sively the relation of each to the other, of each to all, and of all to each. 
 Such is the second of the two possible directions in which the activity 
 of man propels itself; and either in one or other of these channels 
 or in some one of the rivulets which notwithstanding their occasional 
 retiuence (and though, as in successive schematisms of Becher, Stahl, 
 and Lavoisier, the varying stream may for a time appear to com- 
 prehend and inisle some particular department of knowledge which 
 even then it only peninsulates) are yet flowing towards this mid chan- 
 nel, and will ultimately fall into it all intellectual method has its 
 bed. its banks, and its line of progression. For be it not forgotten, that 
 this discourse is confined to the evolutions and ordonnance of know- 
 -edge, as prescribed by the constitution of the human intellect. Whether 
 there be a correspondent reality, whether the knowing of the mind has 
 its correlative in the being of nature, doubts may be felt. Never to 
 have felt them would indeed betray an unconscious unbelief, which, 
 traced to its extreme roots, will be seen grounded in a latent disbelief. 
 How should it not be so ? if to conquer these doubts, and out of the 
 confused multiplicity of seeing with which "the films of corruption" 
 bewilder us, and out of the unsubstantial shows of existence, which, 
 like the shadow of an eclipse, or the chasms in the sun's atmosphere, 
 are but negations of sight, to attain that singleness of eye with which 
 " the whole body shall be full of light," be the purpose, tKe means, and 
 the end of our probation, the method which is " profitable to all things, 
 and hath the promise in this life and in the life to come !" Imagine the 
 unlettered African, or rude yet musing Indian, poring over an illu- 
 minated manuscript of the Inspired Volume, with the vague yet deep 
 impression that his fates and fortunes are in some unknown, manner 
 connected with its contents. Every tint, every group of characters, has 
 its several dream. Say that after long and dissatisfying toils he begins
 
 Section 2. Essay 11. 339 
 
 to sort, first the paragraphs that appear to resemble each other, then 
 the lines, the words nay, that lie has at length discovered that the 
 whole is formed by the recurrence and interchanges of a limited num- 
 ber of cyphers!, letters, marks, and points, which, however, in the very 
 height and utmost perfection of his attainment, he makes tweutyfold 
 more numerous than they are, by classing every different form of the 
 same character, intentional or accidental, as a separate element. And 
 the whole is without soul or substance, a talisman of superstition, a 
 mockery of science ; or employed i>erhaps at last to feather the arrows 
 of death, or to shine and flutter amid the plumes of savage vanity. The 
 poor Indian too truly represents the state of learned and systematic 
 ignorance arrangement guided by the light of no leading idea, mere 
 orderliness without method ! 
 
 I?ut see ! the friendly missionary arrives. He explains to him the 
 nature of written words, translates them for him into his native 
 sounds, and thence into the thoughts of his heart how many of these 
 thoughts then first evolved into consciousness, which yet the awakening 
 disciple receives, and not as aliens ! Henceforward the book is unsealed 
 for him ; the depth is opened out ; he communes with the spirit of the 
 volume as a living oracle. The words become transparent, and he sees 
 them as though he saw them not. 
 
 We have thus delineated the two great directions of man and society, 
 with their several objects and ends. Concerning the conditions and 
 principles of method appertaining to each, we have affirmed (for the 
 facts hitherto adduced have been rather for illustration than for evi- 
 dence, to make our position distinctly understood rather than to enforce 
 the conviction of its truth) that in both there must be a mental ante- 
 cedent; but that in the one it may be an image or conception received 
 through the senses, and originating from without, the inspiriting pas- 
 sion or desire being alone the immediate and proper offspring of the mind ; 
 while in the other the initiative thought, the intellectual seed, must 
 itself have its birth-place within, whatever excitement from without may 
 be necessary for its germination. Will the soul thus awakened neglect 
 or undervalue the outward and conditional causes of her growth ? Far 
 rather ( might we dare borrow a wild fancy from the Mantuan bard, 
 or the poet of Arno) will it be with her as if a stem or trunk, sud- 
 denly endued with sense and reflection, should contemplate its green 
 shoots, their leaflets and budding blossoms, wondered at as then first 
 noticed, but welcomed nevertheless as its own growth ; while yet with 
 undimiuished gratitude, and a deepened sense of dependency, it would 
 bless the dews and the sunshine from without, deprived of the awaken- 
 ing and fostering excitement of which, its own productiveness would 
 have remained for ever hidden from itself, or felt only as the obscure 
 trouble of a baffled instinct.
 
 340 The Friend. 
 
 Hast thou ever raised thy mind to the consideration of existence, in 
 and by itself, as the mere act of existing? Hast thou ever said to 
 thyself thoughtfully, It is ! heedless in that moment, whether it were 
 a man before thee, or a flower, or a grain of sa:i'i? without refer- 
 ence, in short, to this or that particular mode or form of existence ? 
 If thou hast indeed attained to this, thou wilt have felt the presence of 
 a mystery, which must have fixed thy spirit in awe and wonder. The 
 very words, There is nothing! or, There was a time when there was 
 nothing ! are self-contradictory. There is that within us which repels 
 the proposition with as ull and instantaneous a light, as if it bore evidence 
 against the fact in the right of its own eternity. 
 
 Not to be, then, is impossible ; to be, incomprehensible. If thou hast 
 mastered this intuition of absolute existence, thou wilt have learnt like- 
 wise that it was this, and no other, \\hich in the earlier ages seized the 
 nobler minds, the elect among men, with a sort of sacred horror. This 
 it was which first caused them to feel within themselves a somethirg in- 
 effably greater than their own individual nature. It was this which, 
 raising them aloft, and projecting them to an ideal distance from them- 
 selves, prepared them to become the lights and awakening voices of 
 other men, the founders of law and religion, the educators and foster- 
 gods of mankind. The power, which evolved this idea of be:n_r, being 
 in its essence, being limitless, comprehending its own limits in its 
 dilatation, and condensing itself into its own apparent mounds how 
 shall we name it ? The idea itself, which, like a mighty billow, at once 
 overwhelms and bears aloft what is it ? Whence did it come ? In 
 vain would we derive it from the organs of sense ; for these supply only 
 surfaces, undulations, phantoms! In vain from the instruments of 
 sensation ; for these furnish only the chaos, the shapeless elements of 
 sense ! And least of all may we hope to find its origin, or sufficient 
 cause, in the moulds and mechanism of the understanding, the whole 
 purport and functions of which consist in individualization, in out- 
 lines and differeucings by quantity, quality, and relation. It were 
 wiser to seek substance in shadow, than absolute fulness in mere 
 negation. 
 
 We have asked then for its birth-place in all that constitutes our rela- 
 tive individuality, in all that each man calls exclusively himself. It is 
 an alien of which they know not; and for them the question itself is 
 purposeless, and the very words that convey it are as sounds in an un- 
 known language, or as the vision of heaven and earth expanded by the 
 rising sun, which falls but as warmth on the eyelids of the blind. To 
 no class of phasnomena or particulars can it be referred, itself being none ; 
 therefore, to no faculty by which these alone are apprehended. As 
 little dare we refer it to any form of abstraction or generalizatio , for it 
 has neither co-ordinate or analogon ! It is absolutely one, and that it is,
 
 Section 2. -Essay 11. 341 
 
 and affirms itself to be, is its only predicate. And yet this ]x>\ver, 
 nevertheless, is! In eminence ot' being it is! And he for whom it 
 manifests itself in its adequate idea, dare as little arrogate it to himself 
 >wn, can as little appropriate it either totally or by jvirtition, as 
 he can claim ownership in the breathing air, or make an enclosure in the 
 cope of heaven.* He bears witness of it to his own mind, even as he 
 describes life and light ; and, with the silence of light, it describes itself 
 and dwells in s only as far as we dwell in it. The truths which it 
 manifests are such as it alone can manifest, and in all truth it manifests 
 itself. By what name then canst thou call a truth so manifested? Is 
 it not revelation? Ask thyself whether thou canst attach to that latter 
 word any o insistent meaning not included in the idea of the former. 
 And the manifesting power, the source and the correlative of the idea 
 thus manifested is it not God ? Either thou knowest it to be God, or 
 thou hast called an idol by that awful name ! Therefore in the most 
 appropriate, no less than in the highest, sense of the word were the 
 earliest teachers of humanity inspired. They alone were the true seers 
 of God, and therefore prophets of the human race. 
 
 Look round you and you behold everywhere an adaptation of means 
 to ends. Meditate on the nature of a Being whose ideas are creative, 
 and consequently more real, more substantial than the things that, at 
 the height of their creaturely state, are but their dim reflexes ;f and the 
 intuitive conviction will arise that in such a Being there could exist no 
 motive to the creation of a machine for its own sake ; that, therefore, 
 the material world must have been made for the sake of man, at once 
 the high priest and representative of the Creator, as far as he partakes of 
 that reason in which the essences of all things co-exist in all their dis- 
 tinctions yet as one and indivisible. But I speak of man in his idea, 
 and as subsumed in the Divine humanity, in whom alone God loved the 
 world. 
 
 If then in all inferior things from the grass on the house top to the 
 giant tree of the forest, to the eagle which builds in its summit, and the 
 elephant which browses on its branches, we behold first, a subjection 
 to universal laws, by which each thing belongs to the whole, as inter- 
 penetrated by the powers of the whole ; and, secondly, the intervention 
 of particular laws by which the universal laws are suspended or tem- 
 pered for the weal and sustenance of each particular class, and by which 
 
 * See the Appendix to the STATESMAN'S reference to this passage, a premonition 
 
 MAM 'ii'il.w Si RMON. quoted from the same work (Zoroastris 
 
 f If \ve m.iy not rather resemble them to Oracula, Franciscl Patricii). 
 
 ording to "A Nous Aryet, ^<? I-OOUITI Sr\ vov Aryfu 
 
 the tales of ihi' Uter alchemists) tlv sub-tan- Of the flower apparitions so solemnly 
 
 tial forms of bird and flower made them- affirmed by Sir K. I)ipl\v. Ki -rein -r, Hrliimut, 
 
 - vi.-ible, M>e a full and most interesting account in 
 
 'fls Ta Kaiojs uArj? /3Aa<mjfiara \pr)trra. roi Southoy's Omniann, wllh a protuble solution 
 
 ccrtfAa. of ihb chemical marvel. 
 And let me be permitted to add, in especial
 
 342 TJie Friend. 
 
 each species, and each individual of every species, becomes a system in 
 and for itself, a world of its own if we behold this economy everywhere 
 in the irrational creation, shall we not hold it probable that a similar 
 temperament of universal and general laws by an adequate intervention 
 of appropriate agency, will have been effected for the permanent interest 
 of the creature destined to move progressively towards that Divine idea 
 which we have learnt to contemplate as the final cause of all creation, 
 and the centre in which all its lines converge ? 
 
 To discover the mode of intervention requisite for man's development 
 and progression, we must seek then for some general law by the im- 
 tempered and nncounteracted action of which both would be prevented 
 and endangered. But this we shall find in that law of his understand- 
 ing and fancy by which he is impelled to abstract the outward relations 
 of matter, and to arrange these phenomena in time and space under the 
 form of causes and effects. And this was necessary, as being the con- 
 dition under which alone experience and intellectual growth are possible. 
 But, on the other hand, by the same law he is inevitably tempted to 
 misinterpret a constant precedence into positive causation, and thus to 
 break and scatter the one divine and invisible life of nature into count- 
 less idols of the sense ; and falling prostrate before lifeless images, the 
 creatures of .his own abstraction, is himself sensualized, and becomes a 
 slave to the things of which he was formed to be the conqueror and 
 sovereign. From the fetisch of the imbruted African to the soul- 
 debasing errors of the proud fact-hunting materialist we may trace the 
 various ceremonials of the same idolatry, and shall find selfishness, hate, 
 and servitude as the results. If, therefore, by the over-ruling and sus- 
 pension of the phantom-cause of this superstition, if by separating 
 effects from their natural antecedents, if by presenting the phenomena of 
 time (as far as is possible) in the absolute forms of eternity, the nurs- 
 ling of experience should, in the early period of his pupilage, be com- 
 pelled, by a more impressive experience, to seek in the invisible life 
 alone for the true cause and invisible Nexus of the things that are seen, 
 we shall not demand the evidences of ordinary experience for that 
 which, if it ever existed, existed as its antithesis and for its counteraction. 
 Was it an appropriate mean to a necessary end ? Has it been attested 
 by lovers of truth ; has it been believed by lovers of wisdom ? Do we 
 see throughout all nature the occasional intervention of particular agen- 
 cies in counter-check of universal laws? (And of what other definition 
 is a miracle susceptible ?) These are the questions : and if to these our 
 answer must be affirmative, then we too will acquiesce in the traditions 
 of humanity, and yielding, as to a high interest of our own being, will 
 discipline ourselves to the reverential and kindly faith, that the guides 
 and teachers of mankind were the hands of power, no less than the 
 voices of inspiration ; and little anxious concerning the particular forms
 
 Section 2. Essay 11. 343 
 
 and circumstances of each manifestation, we will give an historic cre- 
 dence to the historic fact, that men sent by God have conie with signs 
 and wonders on the earth. 
 
 If it be objected, that in nature, as distinguished from man, this inter- 
 vention of particular laws is, or with the increase of science will be, 
 resolvable into the universal laws which they had appeared to counter- 
 balance we will reply : Even so it may be in the case of miracles ; but 
 Wisdom forbids her children to antedate their knowledge, or to act and 
 feel otherwise, or further than they know. But should that time 
 arrive, the sole difference, that could result from such an enlargement of 
 our vie\v, would be this : that what we now consider as miracles in 
 opposition to ordinary experience, we should then reverence with a yet 
 higher devotion as harmonious parts of one great complex miracle, when 
 the antithesis between experience and belief would itself be taken up 
 into the unity of intuitive reason. 
 
 And what purpose of philosophy can this acquiescence answer ? A 
 gracious purpose, a most valuable end ; if it prevent the energies of 
 philosophy from being idly wasted, by removing the opposition without 
 confounding the distinction between philosophy and faith. The philo- 
 sopher will remain a man in sympathy with his fellow men. The head 
 will not be disjoined from the heart, nor will speculative truth be alien- 
 ated from practical wisdom. And vainly without the union of both 
 shall we expect an opening of the inward eye to the glorious vision of 
 that existence which admits of no question out of itself, acknowledges no 
 predicate but the i AM IN THAT i AM ! Gav/xafoirfr ^iXoo-o^oO/iei/ 1 <tXo- 
 tro(f)r]<Tairres 6apj3ovp.(v. In wonder (ra> 0avp.dftv*) says Aristotle, does 
 philosophy begin ; and in astcundment (ro> Qa^tlv) says Plato, does all 
 true philosophy finish. As every faculty, with every the minutest organ 
 of our nature, owes its whole reality and comprehensibility to an exist- 
 ence incomprehensible and groundless, because the ground of all compre- 
 nension ; not without the union of all that is essential in all the functions 
 of our spirit, not without an emotion tranquil from its very intensity, 
 shall we worthily contemplate in the magnitude and integrity of the 
 world that life-ebullient stream which breaks through every momentary 
 embankment, again, indeed, and evermore to embank itself, but within 
 no banks to stagnate or be imprisoned. 
 
 But here it behoves us to bear in mind, that all true reality has both 
 its ground and its evidence in the will, without which as its complement 
 science itself is but an elaborate game of shadows, begins in abstractions 
 and ends in perplexity. For considered merely intellectually, individu- 
 ality, as individuality, is only conceivable as with and in the Universal 
 and Infinite, neither before or after it. No transition is possible from 
 one to the other, as from the architect to the house, or the watch to its 
 maker. The finite form can neither be laid hold of, nor is it anything of
 
 344 The Friend. 
 
 itself real, but merely an apprehension, a frame-work which the human 
 imagination forms by its own limits, as the foot measures itself on the 
 snow ; and the sole truth of which we must again refer to the Divine 
 imagination, in virtue of its omniformity ; for even as thou art capable 
 of beholding the transparent air as little during the absence as during the 
 presence of light, so canst thou behold the finite things as actually existing 
 neither with nor without the substance. Not without, for then the forms 
 cease to be, and are lost in night. Xot with it, for it is the light, the 
 substance shining through it, which thou canst alone really see. 
 
 The groundwork, therefore, of all true philosophy is the full appre- 
 hension of the difference between the contemplation of reason, namely, 
 that intuition of things which arises when we possess ourselves, as one 
 with the whole, which is substantial knowledge, and that which presents 
 itself when transferring reality to the negations of reality, to the ever- 
 varying frame-work of the uniform life, we think of ourselves as sepa- 
 rated beings, and place nature in antithesis to the mind, as object to sub- 
 ject, thing to thought, death to life. This is abstract knowledge, or the 
 science of the mere understanding. By the former we know that exist- 
 ence is its own predicate, self-affirmation, the one attribute in which all 
 others are contained, not as parts, but as manifestations. It is an 
 eternal and infinite self-rejoicing, self-loving, with a joy unfathomable, 
 with a love all comprehensive. It is absolute; and the absolute is 
 neither singly that which affirms, nor that which is affirmed; but the 
 identity and living copula of both. 
 
 On the other hand, the abstract knowledge which belongs to us as 
 finite beings, and which leads to a science of delusion then only when it 
 would exist for itself instead of being the instrument of the former in- 
 stead of being, as it were, a translation of the living word into a dead 
 language, for the purposes of memory, arrangement, and general com- 
 munication it is by this abstract knowledge that the understanding 
 distinguishes the affirmed from the affirming. Well if it distinguish 
 without dividing ! Well ! if by distinction it add clearness to fulness, 
 and prepare for the intellectual re-union of the all in one, in that eternal 
 reason whose fulness hath no opacity, whose transparency hath no 
 vacuum. 
 
 Thus we prefaced our inquiry into the science of method with a prin- 
 ciple deeper than science, more certain than demonstration. For that 
 the very ground, saith Aristotle, is groundless or self-grounded, is an 
 identical proposition. From the indemonstrable flows the sap, that 
 circulates through every branch and spray of the demonstration. To 
 this principle we referred the choice of the final object, the control over 
 time or, to comprise all in one, the method of the will. From this we 
 started (or rather seemed to start : for it still moved before us, as an in- 
 visible guardian and guide), and it is this whose re-appearance announces
 
 Section 2 .Essay 11. 345 
 
 the conclusion of our circuit, and welcomes us at our goal. Yea (saitb 
 an enlightened physician), there is but one principle, which alone re- 
 conciles the man with himself, with others and with the world,- which 
 regulates all relations, tempers all pasnions, gives power to overcome or 
 support all suffering, and which is not to be shaken by aught earthly, 
 for it belongs not to the earth namely, the principle of religion, the 
 living and substantial faith " which passeth all understanding," as the 
 cloud-piercing rock, which overhangs the stronghold of which it had 
 been the quarry and remains the foundation. This elevation of the 
 spirit above the semblances of custom and the senses to a world of spirit, 
 this life in the idea, even in the supreme and Godlike, which alone 
 merits the name of life, and without which our organic life is but a 
 state of somnambulism ; this it is which affords the sole sure anchorage in 
 the storm, and at the same time the substantiating principle of all true 
 wisdom, the satisfactory solution of all the contradictions of human 
 nature, of the whole riddle of the world. This alone belongs to and 
 speaks intelligibly to all alike, the learned and the ignorant, if but the 
 heart listens. For alike present in all, it may be awakened, but it can- 
 not be given. But let it not be supposed, that it is a sort of knowledge : 
 No ! it is a form of being, or indeed it is the only knowledge that truly 
 is, and all other science is real only as far as it is symbolical of this. The 
 material universe, saith a Greek philosopher, is but one vast complex 
 mythus (t. e. symbolical representation) ; and mythology the apex and 
 complement of all genuine physiology. But as this principle cannot be 
 implanted by the discipline of logic, so neither can it be excited or 
 evolved by the arts of rhetoric. For it is an immutable truth, that what 
 comes from the heart, that alone goes to the heart ; what proceeds from 
 a Divine impulse, that the Godlike alone can awaken.
 
 THE THIRD 
 
 LANDING-PLACE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ESSAYS MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Ktlam a Musis si quando animum paulisper abducamus, apud Musas nihilominos feramur: 
 at reclines quidem, at otiosas, at de his et illis inter se libere colloquentes.
 
 Essay 1. 347 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 Fortnna plerumqne est velnti 
 
 Galasia quarundam obscurarum 
 
 Virtutum sine nomine. BACOX 
 
 (Trantlation.') Fortune Is for the most part but a galaxy or milky way, as it were, of 
 certain obscure virtues without a name. 
 
 Fortune favour fools ? Or how do you explain the origin of 
 the proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the 
 languages of Europe ?" 
 
 This proverb admits of various explanations, according to the mood of 
 mind in which it is used. It may arise from pity, and the soothing 
 persuasion that Providence is eminently watchful over the helpless, and 
 extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring for them- 
 selves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as " God tempers the wind 
 to the shorn lamb" or the more sportive adage, that " the fairies take 
 care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself, in addition to the 
 general religious feeling of mankind, and the scarcely less general love of 
 the marvellous, may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate 
 all effects that seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and all cir- 
 cumstances that are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of 
 the persons under them. Secondly, it arises from the safety and success 
 which an ignorance of danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in 
 procuring ; inasmuch as it precludes the despondence, which might have 
 kept the more ibresighted from undertaking the enter prise, the depression 
 which would retard its progress, and those overwhelming influences of 
 terror in cases where the vivid perception of the danger constitutes the 
 greater part of the danger itself. Thus men are said to have swooned 
 and even died at the sight of a narrow bridge, over which they had ridden, 
 the night before, in perfect safety ; or at tracing the footmarks along the 
 edge of a precipice which the darkness had concealed from them. A 
 more obscure cause, yet not wholly to be omitted, is afforded by the un- 
 doubted tact, that the exertion of the reasoning faculties tends to extin- 
 guish or bedim those mysterious instincts of skill, which, though for the 
 most part latent, we nevertheless possess in common with other animals. 
 
 Or the proverb may be used invidiously ; and folly in the vocabulary 
 of envy or baseness may signify courage and magnanimity. Hardihood 
 and fool-hardiness are indeed as different as green and yellow, yet will 
 appear the same to the jaundiced eye. Courage multiplies the chances 
 of success by sometimes making opportunities, and always availing itself 
 of them : and in this sense Fortune may be said to favour fools by those 
 who, however prudent in their own opinion, are deficient in valour and 
 enterprise. Again : an eminently good and wise man, for whom the
 
 348 The Third Landing- Place. 
 
 praises of the judicious have procured a high reputation even with the 
 world at large, proposes to himself certain objects, and adapting the right 
 means to the right end attains them : but his objects not being what the 
 world calls fortune, neither money nor artificial rank, his admitted 
 inferiors in moral and intellectual worth, but more prosperous in their 
 worldly concerns, are said to have been favoured by Fortune and he 
 slighted ; although the fools did the same in their line as the wise man 
 in his ; they adapted the appropriate means to the desired end, and so 
 succeeded. In this sense the proverb is current by a misuse, or a cata- 
 chresis at least, of both the words, fortune and fools. 
 
 How seldom, friend ! a good great man inherits 
 Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains t 
 It sounds, like stories from the lanj of spirits, 
 If any man obtain that which he merits, 
 Or any merit that which he obtains. 
 
 REPLY. 
 
 For shame, dear friend ! renounce this canting strain ; 
 AVhat would'st thou have a good great man obtain ? 
 Place ? titles? salary? a gilded chain ? 
 Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain ? 
 Greatness and goodness are not means but ends ! 
 Hath he not always treasures, always friends, 
 The good great man ? Three treasures, love and light, 
 And calm thoughts regular as infant's breath : 
 And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, 
 Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death. S. T. C. 
 
 But, lastly, there is, doubtless, a true meaning attached to fortune, 
 distinct both from prudence and from courage ; and distinct too from 
 that absence of depressing or bewildering passions, which (according to 
 my favourite proverb, " extremes meet,") the fool not seldom obtains in as 
 great perfection by his ignorance, as the wise man by the highest energies 
 of thought and self-discipline. Luck has a real existence in human 
 affairs, from the infinite number of powers that are in action at the same 
 time, and from the co-existence of things contingent and accidental (such 
 as to us at least are accidental) with the regular appearances and general 
 laws of nature. A familiar instance will make these words intelligible. 
 The moon waxes and wanes according to a necessary law. The clouds 
 likewise, and all the manifold appearances connected with tliern, are go- 
 verned by certain laws no less than the phases of the nu-un. But the 
 laws which determine the latter are known and calculable, while those 
 of the former are hidden from us. At all events, the number and variety 
 of their effects baffle our powers of calculation ; and that the sky is clear 
 or obscured at any particular time, we speak of, in common language, as 
 a matter of accident. Well ! at the time of the full moon, but when the 
 sky is completely covered with black clouds, I am walking on in the 
 dark, aware of no particular danger : a sudden gust of wind rends the 
 cloud for a moment, and the moon emerging discloses to me a chasm or
 
 1. 349 
 
 precipice, to the very brink of which I had advanced my foot. This is 
 what is meant by hick, and according to the more or less serious rnood 
 or habit of our mind we exclaim, how lucky ! or, how providential ! The 
 co-presence of numberless phenomena, which from the complexity or 
 subtlety of their determining causes are called contingencies, and the co- 
 existence of these with any regular or necessary phenomenon (as the 
 clouds with the. moon for instance), occasion coincidences, which, when 
 they are attended by any advantage or injury, and are at the same time 
 ble of being calculated or foreseen by human prudence, form good 
 or ill luck. On a hot sunshiny afternoon came on a sudden storm and 
 spoilt the farmer's hay ; and this is called ill luck. We will suppose the 
 same event to take place, when meteorology shall have been perfected 
 into a science, provided with unerring instruments ; but which the 
 farmer had neglected to examine. This is no longer ill luck, but im- 
 prudence. Now apply this to our proverb. Unforeseen coincidences 
 may have greatly helped a man, yet if they have done for him only what 
 possibly from his own abilities he might have effected for himself, his 
 good luck will excite less attention and the instances be less rememlx red. 
 That clever men should attain their objects seems natural, and we 
 neglect the circumstances that perhaps produced that success of themselves 
 without the intervention of skill or foresight ; but \ve dwell on the fact 
 and rememb-.T it, as something strange, when the same happens to a 
 weak or ignorant man. So too, though the latter should fail in his 
 undertakings from concurrences that might have happened to the wisest. 
 man, yet his failure being no more than might have been expected and 
 accounted for from his folly, it lays no hold on our attention, but fleets 
 away among the other undistinguished waves in which the stream of 
 ordinary life murmurs by us, and is forgotten. Had it been as true as 
 it was notoriously false, that those all-embracing discoveries, which have 
 shed a dawn of science on the art of chemistry, and give no obscure 
 promise of some one great constitutive law, in the light of which dwell 
 dominion and the power i>f prophecy ; if these discoveries, instead of 
 having been as they really were, preconcerted by meditation, and evolved 
 out of his own intellect, had occurred by a set of lucky accidents to the 
 illustrious lather and founder of philosophic alchemy ; if they had pre- 
 sented themselves to Sir Humphry Davy exclusively in consequence of 
 his luck in possessing a particular galvanic battery; if this battery, as 
 far as Davy was concerned, had itself been an accident, and not (as in 
 point of fact it was) desired and obtained by him for the purj>oso of in- 
 suring the testimony of experience to his principles, and in order to bind 
 down material nature under the inquisition of reason, and force from her, 
 ashy torture, unequivocal answers to prepared and preconceived questions 
 yet still they would ivt have been talked of or described, as instances 
 of luck, but as the natural results of his admitted genius and known
 
 350 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 skill. But should an accident have disclosed similar discoveries to a 
 mechanic at Birmingham or Sheffield, and if the man should grow rich 
 in-consequence, and partly by the envy of his neighbours, and partly 
 with good reason, be considered by them as a man below par in the general 
 powers of his understanding ; then, " what a lucky fellow ! Well, 
 Fortune does favour fools that's certain ! It is always so !" And 
 forthwith the exclaimer relates half a dozen similar instances. Thus 
 accumulating the one sort of facts and never collecting the other, we do, 
 as poets in their diction, and quacks of all denominations do in their 
 reasoning, put a part for the whole, and at once soothe our envy and 
 gratify our love of the marvellous, by the sweeping proverb " Fortune 
 favours fools." 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 Quod me non movet astimatione : 
 
 Verum est, funq^ocrvvov mei sodalis. CATULL. xlL 
 
 {Translation.') It interests not by any conceit of its value; but it is a remembrance of 
 my honoured friend. 
 
 THE philosophic ruler, who secured the favours of fortune by seeking 
 wisdom and knowledge in preference to them, has pathetically 
 observed " The heart knoweth its own bitterness ; and there is a joy in 
 which the stranger intermeddleth not." A simple question founded on 
 a trite proverb, with a discursive answer to it, would scarcely suggest to 
 an indifferent person any other notion than that of a mind at ease, 
 amusing itself with its own activity. Once before (I believe about this 
 time last year) I had taken up the old memorandum book, from which 
 I transcribed the preceding essay, and they had then attracted my notice 
 by the name of the illustrious chemist mentioned in the last illustration. 
 Exasperated by the base and cowardly attempt that had been made to 
 detract from the honours due to his astonishing genius, I had slightly 
 altered the concluding sentences, substituting the more recent for his 
 earlier discoveries; and without the most distant intention of publishing 
 what I then wrote, I had expressed my own convictions for the gratifi- 
 cation of my own feelings, and finished by tranquilly paraphrasing into 
 a chemical allegory the Homeric adventure of Menelaus with Proteus. 
 Oh ! with what different feelings, with what a sharp and sudden emotion 
 did 1 re-peruse the same question y ester-morning, having by accident 
 opened the book at the page upon which it was written. I was moved ; 
 for it was Admiral Sir Alexander Ball who first projx>sed the question 
 to me, and the particular satisfaction which he expressed had occasioned 
 me to note down the substance of my reply. I was moved ; because to 
 this conversation I was indebted for the friendship and confidence with 
 which he afterwards honoured me, and because it recalled the memory
 
 Essay 2. 351 
 
 of one of the most delightful mornings I ever passed ; when, as we were 
 riding together, the same person related to me the principal events of his 
 own life, and introduced them by adverting to this conversation. It re- 
 called too the deep impression left on my mind by that narrative, the 
 impression, that I had never known any analogous instance, in which a 
 man so successful had been so little indebted to fortune, or lucky acci- 
 dents, or so exclusively both the architect and builder of his own suc- 
 cess. The sum of his history may be comprised in this one sentence 
 Haec, sub numine, nobismet fecimus, sapientia duce,fortunapermittente. 
 (i. e. These things, under God, we have done for ourselves, through the 
 guidance of wisdom, and with the permission of fortune.) Luck gave 
 him nothing : in her most generous moods, she only worked with him 
 as with a friend, not for him as for a fondling ; but more often she simply 
 stood neuter, and suffered him to work for himself. Ah ! how could I be 
 otherwise than affected, by whatever reminded me of that daily and 
 familiar intercourse with him, which made the fifteen months from May 
 1804, to October 1805, in many respects, the most memorable and 
 instructive period of my life ? Ah ! how could I be otherwise than most 
 deeply affected, when there was still lying on my table the paper which, 
 the day before;, had conveyed to me the unexpected and most awful 
 tidings of this man's death ? his death in the fulness of all his powers, in 
 the rich autumn of ripe yet undecaying manhood ! I once knew a lady, 
 who after the loss of a lovely child continued for several days in a state 
 of seeming indifference, the weather, at the same time, as if in unison 
 with her, being calm, though gloomy : till one morning a burst of gun- 
 shine breaking in upon her, and suddenly lighting up the room where 
 she was sitting, she dissolved at once into tears, and wept passionately. 
 In no very dissimilar manner did the sudden gleam of recollection 
 at the sight of this memorandum act on myself. I had been stunned 
 by the intelligence, as by an outward blow, till this trifling incident 
 startled and disentranced me ; the sudden pang shivered through my 
 whole frame ; and if I repressed the outward shows of sorrow, it was by 
 force that 1 repressed them, and because it is not by tears that I ought 
 to mourn for the loss of Sir Alexander Ball. 
 
 He was a man above his age ; but for that very reason the age has 
 the more need to have the master-features of his character portrayed 
 and preserved. This I feel it my duty to attempt, and this alone ; for 
 having received neither instructions nor permission from the family of 
 the deceased, I cannot think myself allowed to enter into the particulars 
 of his private history, strikingly as many of them would illustrate the 
 elements and composition of his mind. For he was indeed a living con- 
 futation of the assertion attributed to the Prince of Conde, that no man 
 appeared great to his valet de chumbre a saying which, I suspect, owes 
 its currency less to its truth than to the envy of mankind, and the mis-
 
 352 The Tltird Landing-Place. 
 
 application of the word great, to actions unconnected with reason and 
 free will. It will be sufficient for my purpose to observe, that the 
 purity and strict propriety of his conduct, which precluded rather than 
 silenced calumny, the evenness of his temper, and his attentive and 
 affectionate manners in private life, greatly aided and increased his 
 public utility ; and, if it should please Providence that a portion of his 
 spirit should descend with his mantle, the virtues of Sir Alexander 
 Ball, as a master, a husband, and a parent, will form a no less remark- 
 able epoch in the moral history of the Maltese than his wisdom, as a 
 governor, has made in that of their outward circumstances. That the 
 private and personal qualities of a first magistrate should have political 
 effects will appear strange to no reflecting Englishman, who has attended 
 to the workings of men's minds during the first ferment of revolutionary, 
 principles, and must therefore have witnessed the influence of our own 
 sovereign's domestic character in counteracting them. But in Malta 
 there were circumstances which rendered such an example peculiarly 
 requisite and beneficent. The very existence, for so many generations, 
 of an order of lay celibates in that island, who abandoned even the 
 outward shows of an adherence to their vow of chastity, must have had 
 pernicious effects on the morals of the inhabitants. But when it is 
 considered too that the Knights of Malta had been for the last fifty 
 years or more a set of useless idlers, generally illiterate, for they 
 thought literature no part of a soldier's excellence ; and yet effeminate, 
 for they were soldiers in name only ; when it is considered that they 
 were, moreover, all of them aliens, who looked upon themselves not 
 merely as of a superior rank to the native nobles, but as beings of a 
 different race (I had almost said species) from the Maltese collectively ; 
 and finally, that these men possessed exclusively the government of the 
 island ; it may be safely concluded that they were little better than a 
 perpetual influenza, relaxing and diseasing the hearts of all the families 
 within their sphere of influence. Hence the peasantry, who fortunately 
 were below their reach, notwithstanding the more than childish igno- 
 rance in which they were kept by their priests, yet compared with the 
 middle and higher classes, were, both in mind and body, as ordinary 
 men compared with dwarfs. Every respectable family had some one 
 knight for their patron, as a matter of course ; and to him the honour of 
 a sister or a daughter was sacrificed, equally as a matter of course. But 
 why should I thus disguise the truth ? Alas ! in nine instances out of 
 ten, this patron was the common paramour of every female in the family. 
 
 * The personal effects of every knight literary studies, as an average. Even in re- 
 were, after his death, appropriated to the spect to works of military science, it is con- 
 Order, and his books, if he had any, devolved temptil>le as the sole public library of so 
 to the public library. This library, therefore, numerous and opulent an order, mast con- 
 which has been accumulating from the time of temptible and in all other departments of 
 their first settlement in the Wand, is a fair liUimture it is beluw contempt, 
 criterion of the nature and degree of their
 
 Easag 2. 353 
 
 Were I comj)osing a state-memorial I should abstain from all allusion to 
 moral good or evil, as not having now first to learn, that with diplo- 
 matists and with practical statesmen of every denomination, it would 
 preclude all attention to its other contents, and have no result but that 
 of securing for its author's name the official private mark of exclusion or 
 dismission, as a weak or suspicious person. But among those for whom 
 I am now writing, there are, I trust, many who will think it not the 
 feeblest reason for rejoicing in our possession of Malta, and not the least 
 worthy motive for wishing its retention, that one source of human 
 misery and corruption has been dried up. Such persons will hear the 
 name of Sir Alexander Ball with additional reverence, as of one who has 
 made the protection of Great Britain a double blessing to the Maltese, 
 and broken " the bonds of iniquity" as well as unlocked the fetters of 
 political oppression. 
 
 When we are praising the departed by our own fire-sides, we dwell 
 most fondly on those qualities which had won our personal affection, 
 and which sharpen our individual regrets. But when impelled by a 
 loftier and more meditative sorrow, we would raise a public monument 
 to their memory, we praise them appropriately when we relate their 
 actions faithfully ; and thus preserving their example for the imitation 
 of the living, alleviate the loss, while we demonstrate its magnitude. 
 My funeral eulogy of Sir Alexander Ball must therefore be a narrative 
 of his life ; and tin's friend of mankind will be defrauded of honour in 
 proportion us that narrative is deficient and fragmentary. It shall, 
 however, be as complete as my information enables, and as prudence' 
 and a proper respect for the feelings of the living permit me to render 
 it. His fame (I adopt the words of our elder writers) is so great 
 throughout the world that he stands in no need of an encomium ; and 
 yet his worth is much greater than his fame. It is impossible not to 
 speak great things of him, and yet it will be very difficult to speak 
 what he deserves. But custom requires that something should be said : 
 it is a duty and a debt which we owe to ourselves and to mankind, not 
 less thau to his memory ; and 1 hope his great soul, if it hath any 
 knowledge of what is done here below, will not be offended at the 
 smallncss even of my offering. 
 
 Ah ! how little, when among the subjects of The Friend I promised 
 "Characters met with in Heal Life," did I anticipate the sad event, 
 which compels me to weave un a cypress branch those sprays of laurel 
 which 1 had destined for his bust, not his monument! He lived as we 
 should all live ; and, 1 doubt not, left the world as we should all wish 
 to leave it. Such is the power of dispensing blessings, which Providence 
 has attached to the truly great and good, that they cannot even die 
 without advantage to their fellow-creatures ; for death consecrates their 
 example, and the wisdom, which might have been slighted at the 
 
 li A
 
 354 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 council-table, becomes oracular from the shrine. Those rare excellences, 
 which make our grief poignant, make it likewise profitable ; and the 
 tears which wise men shed for the departure of the wise, are among 
 those that are preserved in heaven. It is the fervent aspiration of my 
 spirit, that I may so perform the task which private gratitude and public 
 duty impose on me, that " as God hath cut this tree of paradise down 
 from its seat of earth, the dead trunk may yet support a part of the 
 declining temple, or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar." * 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 Si partem tacuisse velim, quodcumque relinquam, 
 Majus erit. Veteres actus, primamque jnventam 
 Prosequar ? Ad sese mentem praesentia ducunt. 
 Narrem justitiam ? Resplendet gloria Martis. 
 Armatl referam vires ? Plus egit inermis. 
 
 CLAUDIAN DE LAUD. srrn.. 
 
 (Translation.) If I desire to pass over a part in silence, whatever I omit, will seem tha 
 most worthy to have been recorded. Shall I pursue his old exploits and early youth ? His 
 recent merits recall the mind to themselves. Shall I dwell on his justice? The glory of the 
 warrior rises before me resplendent. Shall I relate his strength in arms ? He performed yet 
 greater things unarmed. 
 
 4 fTVHERE is something," says Harrington in the Preliminaries to the 
 X Oceana " first in the making of a commonwealth, then in the go- 
 verning of it, and last of all in the leading of its armies, which though 
 there be great divines, great lawyers, great men in all ranks of life, 
 seems to be peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman. For so it is in 
 the universal series of history, that it' any man has founded a common- 
 wealth, he was first a gentleman." Such also, he adds, as have got any 
 fame as civil governors, have been gentlemen, or persons of known 
 descents. Sir Alexander Ball was a gentleman by birth ; a younger 
 brother of an old and respectable family in Gloucestershire. He went 
 into the navy at an early age from his own choice, and, as he himself 
 told me, in consequence of the deep impression and vivid images left 
 on his mind by the perusal of Eobinson Crusoe. It is not my intention 
 to detail the steps of his promotion, or the services in which he was 
 engaged as a subaltern. I recollect many particulars indeed, but not 
 the dates, with such distinctness as would enable me to state them (as 
 it would be necessary to do if I stated them at all) in the order of time. 
 These dates might perhaps have been procured from the metropolis : 
 but incidents that are neither characteristic nor instructive, even such 
 as would be expected with reason in a regular life, are no part of my 
 plan; while those which are both interesting and illustrative I have 
 been precluded from mentioning, some from motives which have been 
 already explained, and others from still higher considerations. The 
 
 * Bp. Jer. Taylor.
 
 <// 3. 355 
 
 most important of these may be deduced from a reflection with which 
 he himself once concluded a long and affecting narration : namely, that 
 no body of men can for any length of time be safely treated otherwise 
 than as rational beings ; and that, therefore, the education of the lower 
 
 - was of the utmost consequence to the permanent security of the 
 empire, even for the sake of our navy. The dangers, apprehended from 
 the education of the lower classes, arose (he said) entirely from its not 
 being universal, and from the unusualness in the lowest classes of those 
 accomplishments which he, like Dr. Bell, regarded as one of the means 
 of education, and not as education itself.* If, he observed, the lower 
 
 - in general ] ossfssed but one eye or one arm, the lew who were 
 so fortunate as to possess two would naturally become vain and restless, 
 and consider themselves as entitled to a higher situation. He illus- 
 trated this by the faults attributed to learned women, and that the 
 same objections were formerly ma Je to educating women at all ; 
 namely, that their knowledge made them vain, atiVctt-d, and neglectful 
 of their projx.>r duties. Now that all women of condition are well 
 educated, we hear no more of these apprehensions, or observe any in- 
 stances to justify them. Yet if a lady understood the Greek one-tenth 
 part as well as the whole circle of her acquaintances understood the 
 French language, it would not surprise us to find her less pleasing from 
 the consciousness of her superiority in the \ ossessiou of an unusual 
 advantage. Sir Alexander Ball quoted the speech of an old admiral, 
 one of whose two great wishes was to have a ship's crew composed 
 altogether of serious Scotchmen. He spoke with great reprobation of 
 the vulgar notion, the worse man the better sailor. Courage, he 
 said, was the natural product of familiarity with danger, which 
 thoughtlessness would oftentimes turn into fool-hardiness ; and that he 
 always found the most usefully brave sailors the gravest and most 
 rational of his crew. The best sailor he had ever had, first attracted his 
 notice by the anxiety which he expressed concerning the means of 
 remitting some money, which he had received in the West Indies, 
 to his sister in England : and this man, without any tin<re of Me- 
 thodism, was never heard to swear an oath, and was remarkable for the 
 firmness with which he devoted a part of every Sunday to the reading 
 of his Bible. I record this with satisfaction as a testimony of un at 
 weight, and in all lesjx/cts unexceptionable; for Sir Alexander Ball's 
 opinions throughout life remained un warped by zealotry, and were 
 those of a mind seeking after truth, in calmness and complete self- 
 possession. He was much pleased with an unsuspicious testimony fur- 
 nished by Dam pier (Vol. ii. Part '2, page 89): "I have particularly 
 
 * Which ivn-i-ts in educing, or to adopt and conscience; varying the means of this 
 
 Dr. Bell's own expression, eliciting the common end according to the sphere and 
 
 faculties of the human mind, and at the particular mo<1e, in which the individual is 
 
 same time subordinating them to the reason likely to act and become useful.
 
 356 The Third Landir.g-Place. 
 
 observed," writes this famous old navigator, " there and in other places, 
 that such as had been well-bred, were generally most careful to im- 
 prove their time, and would be very industrious and frugal where there 
 was any probability of considerable gain ; but on the contrary, such 
 as had been bred up in ignorance and hard labour, when they came to 
 have plenty would extravagantly squander away their time and money 
 in drinking and making a bluster." Indeed it is a melancholy proof 
 how strangely power warps the minds of ordinary men, that there can 
 be a doubt on this subject among persons who have been themselves 
 educated. It tempts a suspicion that, unknown to themselves, they 
 find a comfort in the thought, that their inferiors are something less 
 than men; or that they have an uneasy half-consciousness that, if this 
 were not the case, they would themselves have no claim to be their 
 superiors. For a sober education naturally inspires self-respect. But 
 he who respects himself will respect others ; and he who respects both 
 himself and others, must of necessity be a brave man. The great im- 
 IKH'tance of this subject, and the increasing interest which good men of 
 all denominations feel in the bringing about of a national education, 
 must be my excuse for having entered so minutely into Sir Alexander 
 Ball's opinions on this head, in which, however, I am the more ex- 
 cusable, being now on that part of his life which I am obliged to leave 
 almost a blank. 
 
 During his lieutenancy, and after he had perfected himself in the 
 knowledge and duties of a practical sailor, he was compelled by the state 
 of his health to remain in England for a considerable length of time. Of 
 this he industriously availed himself to the acquirement of substantial 
 knowledge from books ; and during his whole life afterwards, he consi- 
 dered those as his happiest hours, which, without any neglect of official 
 or professional duty, he could devote to reading. He preferred, indeed 
 he almost confined himself to, history, political economy, voyages and 
 travels, natural history, and latterly agricultural works : in short, to 
 such books as contain specific facts, or practical principles capable of 
 specific application. His active life, and the particular objects of imme- 
 diate utility, some one of which he had always in his view, precluded a 
 taste for works of pure speculation and abstract science, though he highly 
 honoured those who were eminent in these respects, and considered them 
 as the benefactors of mankind, no less than those who afterwards disco- 
 vered the mode of applying their principles, or who realized them in 
 practice. Works of amusement, as novels, plays, &c. did not appear 
 even to amuse him ; and the only poetical composition of which I have 
 ever heard him speak, was a manuscript * poem written by one of my 
 friends, which I read to his lady in his presence. To my surprise lie 
 
 * Though it remains, I believe, unpublished, I cannot resist the temptation of recording 
 th.it it wu Mr. Wordsworth's Peter Bell. [1816.]
 
 Essay 3. 357 
 
 afterwards spoke of this with warm interest ; but it was evident to me 
 that it \vas n<>t so much the poetic merit of the composition that had 
 interested him, as the truth and psychological insight with which it 
 uted the practicability of reforming the most hardened minds, and 
 the various accidents which may awaken the most brutalized person to 
 a recognition of his nobler being. I will add one remark of his own 
 knowledge acquired from books, which appears to me both just ami 
 valuable. The prejudice against such knowledge, he said, and the 
 custom of opposing it to that which is learnt by practice, originated in 
 those times when books were almost confined to theology, and to 1 
 and metaphysical subtleties; but that at present there is scarcely any 
 practical knowledge, which is not to be found in books : The press ia 
 the means by which intelligent men now converse with each other, and 
 persons of all classes and all pursuits convey each the contribution of 
 his individual experience. It was, therefore, he said, as absurd to hold 
 book-knowledge at present in contempt, as it would be for a man to avail 
 himself only of his own eyes and ears, and to aim at nothing which 
 could not be performed exclusively by his own arms. The use and 
 necessity of personal exj>erience consisted in the power of choosing and 
 applying what had been read, and of discriminating by the light of 
 analogy the practicable from the impracticable, and probability from 
 mere plausibility. Without a judgment matured and steadied by actual 
 experience, a man would read to little or perhaps to bad purpose ; but. 
 yet that experience, which in exclusion of all other knowledge has been 
 derived from one man's life, is in the present day scarcely worthy of the 
 name at least for those who are to act in the higher and wider spheres 
 of duty. An ignorant general, he said, inspired him with terror; for 
 if he were too proud to take advice he would ruin himself by his own 
 blunders ; and if he were not, by adopting the worst that was offered, 
 r genius may indeed form an exception ; but we do not lay down 
 rules in expectation of wonders. A similar remark I remember to have 
 heard from a gallant officer, who to eminence in professional science and 
 the gallantry of a tried soldier, adds all the accomplishments of a sound 
 scholar and the powers of a man of genius. 
 
 One incident, which hapix/ned at this period of Sir Alexander's life, 
 is so illustrative of his character, and furnishes so strong a presumption, 
 that the thoughtful humanity by -which he was distinguished was not 
 wholly the growth of his latter years, that, though it may appear to 
 some trifling in itself, I will insert it in this place, with the occasion 
 on which it was communicated tome. In a large party at the (hand 
 Master's palace, I had observed a naval officer of distinguished merit 
 listening to Sir Alexander Ball, whenever he joined in the conversation, 
 with so marked a pleasure, that it seemed as if his very voice, inde- 
 pendent of what he said, had been delightful to him ; and once as he
 
 358 The Third Landing -Place. 
 
 fixed his eyes on Sir Alexander Ball, I could not but notice the mixed 
 expression of awe and affection, which gave a more than common inte- 
 rest to so manly a countenance. During his stay in the island, this 
 officer honoured me not unfrequently with his visits ; and at the conclu- 
 sion of my last conversation with him, in which I had dwelt on the 
 wisdom of the Governor's* conduct in a recent and difficult emergency, 
 he told me that he considered himself as indebted to the same excellent 
 person for that which was dearer to him than his life. Sir Alexander 
 Ball, said he, has (I dare say) forgotten the circumstance ; but when he 
 was Lieutenant Ball, he was the officer whom I accompanied in my 
 first boat expedition, being then a midshipman and only in my fourteenth 
 year. As we were rowing up to the vessel which we were to attack, 
 amid a discharge of musketry, I was overpowered by fear, my knees 
 trembled under me, and I seemed on the point of fainting away. 
 Lieutenant Ball, who saw the condition I was in, placed himself close 
 beside me, and still keeping his countenance directed toward the enemy, 
 took hold of my hand, and pressing it in the most friendly manner, 
 said in a low voice, " Courage, my dear boy ! don't be afraid of your- 
 self! you will recover in a minute or so I was just the same, when 
 I first went out in this way." Sir, added the officer to me, it was as if 
 an angel had put a new soul into me. With the feeling that I was not 
 yet dishonoured, the whole burden of agony was removed ; and from 
 that moment I was as fearless and forward as the oldest of the boat's 
 crew, and on our return the lieutenant spoke highly of me to our cap- 
 tain. I am scarcely less convinced of my own being than that I should 
 have been what I tremble to think of, if, instead of his humane en- 
 couragement, he had at that moment scoffed, threatened, or reviled me. 
 And this was the more kind in him, because, as I afterwards under- 
 stood, his own conduct in his first trial had evinced to all appearances 
 the greatest fearlessness, and that he said this therefore only to give me 
 heart, and restore me to my own good opinion. This anecdote, I trust, 
 will have some weight with those who may have lent an ear to any of 
 those vague calumnies from which no naval commander can secure his 
 good name, who knowing the paramount necessity of regularity and 
 strict discipline in a ship of war, adopts an appropriate plan for the at- 
 tainment of these objects, and remains constant and immutable in the 
 execution. To an Athenian, who, in praising a public functionary had 
 said, that eveiy one either applauded him or left him without censure, 
 
 * Such Sir Alexander Ball was in reality, tentiary to the Order of St. John." This is 
 
 a''d such was his general appellation in the not the place to expose the timid and unsteady 
 
 Mediterranean : 1 adopt this title, therefore, policy which continued the latter title, or 
 
 to avoid the ungraceful repetition of his own the petty jealousies which interfered to pre- 
 
 name on the one hand, and on the other the vent Sir Alexander Ball from having the 
 
 confusion of ideas which might arise from title of Governor, from one of the very 
 
 the use of his real title, viz. " His Majesty's causes which rendered him fittest for the 
 
 civil commissioner for the Island of Malta office, 
 and its dependencies; and Minister Plenipo-
 
 Essay 3. 359 
 
 a philosopher replied " How seldom then must he have done his 
 duty !" 
 
 Of Sir Alexander Ball's character, as Captain Ball, of his measures as 
 a disciplinarian, and of the wise and dignified principle on which he 
 grounded those measures, I have already spoken in a former part of this 
 work,* and must content myself therefore with entreating the reader to 
 re-peruse that passage as belonging to this place, and as a part of the 
 present narration. Ah ! little did I expect at the time I wrote that 
 account, that the motives of delicacy, which then impelled me to with- 
 hold the name, would so soon be exchanged for the higher duty which 
 now justifies me in adding it ! At the thought of such events the lan- 
 guage of a tender superstition is the voice of nature kself, and those 
 facts alone presenting themselves to our memory which had left an im- 
 pression on our hearts, we assent to, and adopt the poet's pathetic com- 
 plaint : 
 
 Sir ! the good die first, . 
 And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
 Burn to the socket. WOBDSWORTH. 
 
 Thus the humane plan described in the pages now referred to, that a 
 system in pursuance of which the captain of a man-of-war uniformly 
 regarded his sentences not as dependent on his own will, or to be affected 
 by the state of his feelings at the moment, but as the pre-established 
 determinations of known laws, and himself as the voice of the law in 
 pronouncing the sentence, and its delegate in enforcing the execution, 
 could not but furnish occasional food to the spirit of detraction, must be 
 evident to every reflecting mind. It is indeed little less than impos- 
 sible, that he, who in order to be effectively humane determines to be 
 inflexibly just, and who is inexorable to his own feelings when they 
 would interrupt the course of justice ; who looks at each particular act 
 by the light of all its consequences, and as the representative of ultimate 
 good or evil ; should not sometimes be charged with tyranny by weak 
 minds. And it is too certain that the calumny will be willingly be- 
 lieved and eagerly propagated by all those, who would shun the presence 
 of an eye keen in the detection of imposture, incapacity, and miscon- 
 duct, and of a resolution as steady in their exposure. We soon hate the 
 man whose qualities we dread, and thus have a double interest, an inte- 
 rest of passion as well as of policy, in decrying and defaming him. But 
 good men will rest satisfied with the promise made to them by the divine 
 Comforter, that by her children shall Wisdom be justified. 
 
 * Section 1. Essay 2.
 
 360 TJie Tliird Landing-Place. 
 
 ESSAY IV. 
 
 the generous spirit, who, when brought 
 
 Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
 
 Upon the plan that pleased bis childish thought ; 
 
 Whose high endeavours are an inward light 
 
 That makes the path before him always bright; 
 
 Who doom'd to go in company with pain, 
 
 And fear and bloodshed, miserable train ! 
 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; 
 
 By objects, which might force the soul to abate 
 
 Her feeling, render*d more compassionate. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 AT the close of the American war, Captain Ball was entrusted with 
 the protection and convoying of an immense mercantile fleet to 
 America, and by his great prudence and unexampled attention to the 
 interests of all and each, endeared his name to the American mer- 
 chants, and laid the foundation of that high respect and predilection 
 which both the Americans and their government ever afterwards enter- 
 tained for him. My recollection does not enable me to attempt any 
 accurac}' in the date or circumstances, or to add the particulars of his 
 services in the West Indies and ^n the coast of America, I now there- 
 fore merely allude to the fact with a prospective reference to opinions 
 and circumstances, which I shall have to mention hereafter. Shortly 
 after the general peace was established, Captain Ball, who was now a 
 married man, passed some time with his lady in France, and, if I mis- 
 take not, at Nantes. At the same time, and in the same town, among the 
 other English visitors, Lord (then Captain) Kelson happened to be one. 
 In consequence of some punctilio, as to whose business it was to pay 
 the compliment of the first call, they never met, and this trifling affair 
 occasioned a coldness between the two naval commanders, or in truth 
 a mutual prejudice against each other. Some years after, both their 
 ships being together close off Minorca and near Port Mahon, a violent 
 storm nearly disabled Lord Nelson's vessel, and in addition to the fury 
 of the wind, it was night-time and the thickest darkness. Captain 
 Ball, however, brought his vessel at length to Nelson's assistance, took 
 his ship in tow, and used his best endeavours to bring her and his 
 own vessel into Port Mahon. The difficulties and the dangers in- 
 creased. Nelson considered the case of his own ship as desperate, and 
 that unless she was immediately left to her own fate, both vessels 
 would inevitably be lost. He, therefore, with the generosity natural 
 to him, repeatedly requested Captain Ball to let him loose ; and on 
 Captain Ball's refusal, he became impetuous, and enforced his demand 
 with passionate threats. Captain Ball then himself took the speaking- 
 trumpet, which the fury of the wind and waves rendered necessary, and 
 with great solemnity and without the least disturbance of temper, called
 
 Essay 4. 361 
 
 out in reply, "I feel confident that I can bring you in safe ; I therefore 
 must not, and, by the help of Almighty God, I \villnot leave you!" 
 What he promised he performed ; and alter they were safely anchored, 
 Nelson came on board of Ball's ship, and embracing him with all the 
 ardour of acknowledgment, exclaimed, " A friend in need is a friend 
 indeed !" At this time and on this occasion commenced that firm and 
 perfect friendship between these two great men, which was interrupted 
 only by the death of the former. The pleasing task of dwelling on this 
 mutual attachment I defer to that part of the present sketch which will 
 relate to Sir Alexander Ball's opinions of men and things. It will be 
 sufficient for the present to say, that the two men, whom Lord Nelson 
 especially honoured, were iSir Thomas Troubridge and Sir Alexander 
 Ball ; and once, when they were both present, on some allusion made 
 to the loss of his arm, he replied, " Who shall dare tell me that I want 
 an arm, when I have three right amis this (putting forward his own) 
 and Ball and Troubridge P" 
 
 In the plan of the battle of the Nile it was Lord Nelson's design, that 
 Captains Troubridge and Ball should have led up the attack. The 
 former was stranded ; and the latter, by accident of the wind, could not 
 bring his ship into the line of battle till some time after the engagement 
 had become general. With his characteristic forecast and activity of 
 (what may not improperly be called) practical imagination, he had made 
 arrangements to meet every probable contingency. All the shrouds and 
 sails of the ship, not absolutely necessary for its immediate manage- 
 ment, were thoroughly wetted, and so rolled up that they were as hard 
 and as little inflammable as so many solid cylinders of wood ; every 
 sailor had his appropriate place and function, and a certain number were 
 appointed as the firemen, whose sole duty it was to be on the watch if 
 any part of the vessel should take fire : and to these men exclusively 
 the charge of extinguishing it was committed. It was already dark 
 when he brought his ship into action, and laid her alongside L'Orient. 
 One particular only I shall add to the known account of the memorable 
 engagement between these ships, and this I received from Sir Alexander 
 Ball himself. He had previously made a combustible preparation, but 
 which, from the nature of the engagement to be expected, he had pur- 
 posed to reserve for the last emergency. But just at the time when, 
 from several symptoms, he had every reason to believe that the enemy 
 would soon strike to him, one of the lieutenants, without his know- 
 ledge, threw in the combustible matter ; and this it was that occasioned 
 the tremendous explosion of that vessel, which, with the deep silence 
 and interruption of the engagement which succeeded to it, has been 
 justly deemed the sublimest war incident recorded in history. Yet the 
 incident which followed, and which has not, I believe, been publicly 
 made known, is scarcely less impressive, though its sublimity is of a
 
 362 TJie Third Landing-Place. 
 
 different character. At the renewal of the battle, Captain Ball, though 
 his ship was then on fire in three different parts, laid her alongside a 
 French eighty-four ; and a second longer obstinate contest began. The 
 firing on the part of the French ship having at length for some time 
 slackened, and then altogether ceased, and yet no sign given of surren- 
 der, the senior lieutenant came to Captain Ball and informed him, that 
 the hearts of his men were as good as ever, but that they were so com- 
 pletely exhausted that they were scarcely capable of lifting an arm. 
 He asked, therefore, whether, as the enemy had now ceased firing, the 
 men might be permitted to lie down by their guns for a short time. 
 After some reflection, Sir Alexander acceded to the proposal, taking of 
 course the proper precautions to rouse them again at the moment he 
 thought requisite. Accordingly, with the exception of himself, his offi- 
 cers, and the appointed watch, the ship's crew lay down, each in the 
 place to which he was stationed, and slept for twenty minutes. They 
 were then roused ; and started up, as Sir Alexander expressed it, more 
 like men out of an ambush than from sleep, so co-instantaneously did 
 they all obey the summons ! They recommenced their fire, and in a 
 few minutes the enemy surrendered ; and it was soon after discovered, 
 that during that interval, and almost immediately after the French 
 ship had first ceased firing, the crew had sunk down by their guns, and 
 there slept, almost by the side, as it were, of their sleeping enemy. 
 
 ESSAY V. 
 
 Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, 
 
 Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 
 
 A constant influence, a peculiar grace ; 
 
 But who if he be call'd upon to face 
 
 Some awful moment, to which Heaven hasjoin'd 
 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind. 
 
 Is happy as a lover, is attired 
 
 With sudden brightness like a man inspired ; 
 
 And through the heat of conflict keeps the law 
 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. WORDSTVORTH. 
 
 AN accessibility to the sentiments of others on subjects of importance 
 often accompanies feeble minds, yet it is not the less a true and 
 constituent part of practical greatness, when it exists wholly free from 
 that passiveness to impression which renders counsel itself injurious to 
 certain characters, and from that weakness of heart which, in the literal 
 sense of the word, is always craving advice. Exempt from all such 
 imperfections, say rather in perfect harmony with the excellences that 
 preclude them, this openness to the influxes of good sense and informa- 
 tion, from whatever quarter they might come, equally characterized 
 both Lord Nelson and Sir Alexander Ball, though each displayed it in
 
 Essay o. 3C3 
 
 the way best suited to his natural temper. The former with easy hand 
 collected, as it passed by him, whatever could add to his own stores, 
 appropriated what lie could assimilate, and levied subsidies of knowledge 
 from all the accidents of social life and familiar intercourse. Even at 
 the jovial board, and in the height of unrestrained merriment, a casual 
 -tion, that flashed a new light on his mind, changed the boon 
 companion into the hero and the man of genius ; and with the most 
 graceful transition he would make his company as serious as himself. 
 When the taper of his genius seemed extinguished, it was still sur- 
 rounded by an inflammable atmosphere of its own, and rekindled at the 
 first approach of light, and not seldom at a distance which made ir 
 to flame up self-revived. In Sir Alexander Ball, the same excellence 
 was more an affair of system ; and he would listen, even to weak men, 
 with a patience, which, in so careful an economist of time, always 
 demanded my admiration, and not seldom excited my wonder. It was 
 one of his maxims, that a man may suggest what he cannot give ; 
 adding, that a wild or silly plan bad more than once, from the vivid 
 sense and distinct perception of its folly, occasioned him to see what 
 ought to be done in a new light, or with a clearer insight. There is, 
 indeed, a hopeless sterility, a mere negation of sense and thought, 
 which, suggesting neither difference nor contrast, cannot even furnish 
 hints for recollection. But on the other hand, there are minds so whim- 
 sically constituted, that they may sometimes be profitably interpreted 
 by contraries, a process of which the great Tycho Brahe is said to have 
 availed himself in the case of the little Lackwit, who used to sit and 
 mutter at his feet while he was studying. A mind of this sort we may 
 compare to a magnetic needle, the poles of which had been suddenly 
 reversed by a flash of lightning, or other more obscure accident of 
 nature. It may be safely concluded, that to those whose judgment or 
 information he respected, Sir Alexander Ball did not content himself 
 with giving access and attention. No! he seldom failed of consulting 
 them whenever the subject permitted any disclosure; and where secresy 
 was necessary, he well knew how to acquire their opinion without 
 exciting even a conjecture concerning his immediate object. 
 
 Yet, with all this readiness of attention, and with all this zeal in 
 collecting the sentiments of the well-informed, never was a man more 
 completely uninfluenced by authority than Sir Alexander Ball, never 
 one who sought less to tranquillize his own doubts by the mere suffrage 
 and coincidence of others. The ablest suggestions had no conclusive 
 weight with him, till he had abstracted the opinion from its author, till 
 he had reduced it into a part of his own mind. The thoughts of others 
 were always acceptable, as affording him at least a chance of adding to 
 his materials for reflection ; but they never directed his judgment, much 
 less superseded it. He even made a point of guarding against additional
 
 364 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 confidence in the suggestions of his own mind, from finding that a 
 person of talents had formed the same conviction ; unless the person, at 
 the same time, furnished some new argument, or had arrived at the 
 same conclusion by a different road. On the latter circumstance he set 
 an especial value, and, I may almost say, courted the company and 
 conversation of those whose pursuits had least resembled his own, if he 
 thought them men of clear and comprehensive faculties. During the 
 period of our intimacy, scarcely a week passed in which he did not 
 desire me to think on some particular subject, and to give him the 
 result in writing. Most frequently, by the time I had fulfilled his 
 request he would have written down his own thoughts ; and then, with 
 the true simplicity of a great mind, as free from ostentation as it was 
 above jealousy, he would collate the two papers in my presence, and 
 never expressed more pleasure than in the few instances in which I 
 had happened to light on all the arguments and points of view which 
 had occurred to himself, with some additional reasons which had 
 escaped him. A single new argument delighted him more than the 
 most perfect coincidence, unless, as before stated, the train of thought 
 had been very different from his own, and yet just and logical. He 
 had one quality of mind, which I have heard attributed to the late Mr. 
 Fox, that of deriving a keen pleasure from clear and powerful reasoning 
 for its own sake a quality in the intellect which is nearly connected 
 with veracity and a love of justice in the moral character.* 
 
 Valuing in others merits which he himself possessed, Sir Alexander 
 Ball felt no jealous apprehension of great talent. Unlike those vulgar 
 functionaries, whose place is too big for them, a truth which they 
 attempt to disguise from themselves, and yet feel, he was under no 
 necessity of arming himself against the natural superiority of genius by 
 factitious contempt and an industrious association of extravagance and 
 impracticability, with every deviation from the ordinary routine ; as the 
 geographers in the middle ages used to designate on their meagre maps, 
 the greater part of the world, as deserts or wildernesses, inhabited by 
 griffins and chima?ras. Competent to weigh each system or project by 
 its own arguments, he did not need these preventive charms and 
 cautionary amulets against delusion. He endeavoured to make talent 
 
 * It may not be amiss to add, that the Having observed in some casual conversation, 
 
 pleasure from the perception of truth was that though there were doubtless masses of 
 
 so well poised and regulated by the equal or matter unorganized, I saw no ground for 
 
 greater delight in utility, that his IOTB of asserting a mass of unorganized matter ; Sir 
 
 real accuracy was accompanied with a pro- A. B. paused, and then said to me, with that 
 
 portionate dislike of that hollow appearance frankness of manner which made his very 
 
 of it, which may be produced by turns of rebukes gratifying, " The distinction is just, 
 
 phrase, words placed in balanced antithesis, and, now 1 understand you, abundantly ob- 
 
 and those epigrammatic points that pass for vious ; but hardly worth the trouble ot your 
 
 subtle and luminous distinctions with ordi- inventing a puzzle of words to make it 
 
 nary readers, but are most commonly appear otherwise." I trust the rebuke was 
 
 translatable into mere truisms or trivialities, not lost on me. 
 if indeed they contain any meaning at all.
 
 . 365 
 
 instrumental to his purposes in whatever shape it appeared, and with 
 whatever imperfections it might be accompanied ; but wherever talent 
 was blended with moral worth, he nought it out, loved and cherished it. 
 If it had pleased Providence to preserve his life, and to place him on the 
 same course on which Nelson ran his race of glory, there are two points 
 in which Sir Alexander Ball would most closely have resembled his 
 illustrious friend. The first is, that in his enterprises and engagements 
 he \vould have thought nothing done, till all had been done that was 
 possible : 
 
 Nil actum roputans, si quid superesset agendum. 
 
 The second, that he would have called forth all the talent and virtue 
 that existed within his sphere of influence, and created a band of heroes, 
 a gradation of officers, strong in head and strong in heart, worthy to 
 have been his companions and his successors in fame and public 
 
 r was greater discernment shown in the selection of a fit agent, 
 than when Sir Alexander Ball was stationed off the coast of Malta to 
 intercept the supplies destined for the French garrison, and to watch the 
 movements of the French commanders, and those of the inhabitants 
 who had been so basely betrayed into their power. Encouraged by the 
 well-timed promises of the English captain, the Maltese rose through all 
 their casals (or country towns) and themselves commenced the work of 
 their emancipation, by storming the citadel at Civita Vecchia, the 
 ancient metropolis of Malta, and the central height of the island. 
 Without discipline, without a military leader, and almost without arms, 
 these brave peasants succeeded, and destroyed the French garrison by 
 throwing them over the battlements into the trench of the citadel. In 
 the course of this blockade, and of the tedious siege of Valet ta, Sir 
 Alexander Ball displayed all that strength of character, that variety and 
 iity of talent, and that sagacity, derived in part from habitual 
 circumspection, but which, when the occasion demanded it, appeared 
 intuitive and like an instinct ; at the union of which, in the same man, 
 one of our oldest naval commanders once told me, " he could never 
 exhaust his wonder." The citizens of Valetta were fond of relating 
 their astonishment, and that of the French, at Captain Ball's ship 
 wintering at anchor out of the reach of the guns, in a depth of fathom 
 Unexampled, on the assured impracticability of which the garrison had 
 rested their main hope of regular supplies. Xor can I forget, or 
 'ber without some portion of my original feeling, the solemn en- 
 thusiasm with which a venerable old man, belonging to one of the 
 distant casals, showed me the sea cor, in be, where their father Ball (for 
 so they commonly called him) first lauded, and afterwards pointed out 
 the very place on which he first step|>ed on their island ; while the
 
 3G6 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 countenances of his townsmen, who accompanied him, gave lively 
 proofs that the old man's enthusiasm was the representative of the 
 common feeling. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose, that Sir Alexander Ball was at any 
 time chargeable with that weakness so frequent in Englishmen, and so 
 injurious to our interests abroad, of despising the inhabitants of other 
 countries, of losing all their good qualities in their vices, of making no 
 allowance for those vices, from their religious or political impediments, 
 and still more of mistaking for vices a mere difference of manners and 
 customs. But if ever he had any of this erroneous feeling, he com- 
 pletely freed himself from it by living among the Maltese during their 
 arduous trials, as long as the French continued masters of their capital. 
 He witnessed their virtues, and learnt to understand in what various 
 shapes and even disguises the valuable parts of human nature may 
 exist. In many individuals, whose littleness and meanness in the 
 common intercourse of life would have stamped them at once as con- 
 temptible and worthless, with ordinary Englishmen, he had found such 
 virtues of disinterested patriotism, fortitude, and self-denial, as would 
 have done honour to an ancient Roman. 
 
 There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly 
 feeling, very different even from that which is the most like it, the 
 character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of 
 Europe. This feeling probably originated in the fortunate circumstance, 
 that the titles of our English nobility follow the law of their property, 
 and are inherited by the eldest sons only. From this source, under the 
 influences of our constitution, and of our astonishing trade, it has 
 diffused itself in different modifications through the whole country. 
 The uniformity of our dress among all classes above that of the day 
 labourer, while it has authorized all classes to assume the appearance of 
 gentlemen, has at the same time inspired the wish to conform their 
 manners, and still more their ordinary actions in social intercourse, to 
 their notions of the gentlemanly, the most commonly received attribute 
 of which character is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, 
 the encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned, and 
 favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any 
 cognizable marks of distinction, have rendered each class more reserved 
 and jealous in their general communion, and far more than our climate, 
 or natural temper, have caused that haughtiness and reserve in our 
 outward demeanour, which is so generally complained of among 
 foreigners. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of this gentle- 
 manly feeling ; I respect it under all its forms and varieties, from the 
 House of Commons to the gentlemen in the one shilling gallery. It is 
 always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a support ; but it is a 
 wretched substitute for it. Its worth, as a moral good, is by no means
 
 Essay 5. 367 
 
 in proportion to its value, as a social advantage. These observations 
 are not irrelevant ; for to the want of reflection, that this diffusion of 
 gentlemanly feeling among us, is not the growth of our moral excellence, 
 but the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England ; to 
 our not considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect 
 the same consequences, where the same causes have not existed to 
 produce them ; and, lastly, to our proneness to regard the absence of 
 this character (which, as I have before said, does, for the greater part, 
 and, in the common apprehension, consist in a certain frankness and 
 generosity in the detail of action) as decisive against the sum total of 
 personal or national worth ; we must, I am convinced, attribute a large 
 portion of that conduct, which in many instances has left the inha- 
 bitants of countries conquered or appropriated by Great Britain, 
 doubtful whether the various solid advantages which they derived from 
 our protection and just government, were not bought dearly by the 
 wounds indicted on their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous 
 and insolent demeanour of the English, as individuals. The reader 
 who bears this remark in mind, will meet, in the course of this narra- 
 tion, more than one passage that will serve as its comment and illus- 
 tration. 
 
 It was, I know r , a general opinion among the English in the Mediter- 
 ranean, that Sir Alexander Ball thought too well of the Maltese, and did 
 not share iu the enthusiasm of Britons concerning their own superiority. 
 To the former part of the charge I shall only reply at present, that a 
 more venial, and almost desirable fault, can scarcely be attributed to a 
 governor, than that of a strong attachment to the people whom he was 
 sent to govern. The latter part of the charge is false, if we are to 
 understand by it, that he did not think his countrymen superior on the 
 whole to the other nations of Europe ; but it is true, as far as relates to 
 his belief, that the English thought themselves still better than they are ; 
 that they dwelt on, and exaggerated their national virtues, and weighed 
 them by the opposite vices of foreigners, instead of the virtues which 
 those foreigners possessed, and they themselves wanted. Above all, as 
 statesmen, we must consider qualities by their practical uses. Thus 
 he entertained no doubt, that the English were superior to all others in 
 the kind and the degree of their courage, which is marked by far greater 
 enthusiasm than the courage of the Germans and northern nations, and 
 by a far greater steadiness and self-subsistency than that of the French. 
 It is more closely connected with the character of the individual. The 
 courage of an English army (he used to say) is the sum total of the 
 courage which the individual soldiers bring with them to it, rather than 
 of that which they derive from it. This remark of Sir Alexander's was 
 forcibly recalled to my mind when I was at Naples. A Russian and an 
 English regiment were drawn up together in the same square " See,"
 
 368 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 said a Neapolitan to me, who had mistaken me for one of his country- 
 men, " there is but one face in that whole regiment, while in that " 
 (pointing to the English) " every soldier has a face of his own." On the 
 other hand, there are qualities scarcely less requisite to the completion 
 of the military character, in which Sir A. did not hesitate to think the 
 English inferior to the continental nations ; as for instance, both in the 
 power and the disposition to endure privations; in the friendly temper 
 necessary, when troops of different nations are to act in concert ; in their 
 obedience to the regulations of their commanding officers, respecting the 
 treatment of the inhabitants of the countries through which they are 
 marching, as well as in many other points, not immediately connected 
 with their conduct in the field : and, above all, in sobriety and temper- 
 ance. During the siege of Valetta, especially during the sore distress to 
 which the besiegers were for some time exposed from the failure of pro- 
 vision, Sir Alexander Ball had an ample opportunity of observing and 
 weighing the separate merits and dements of the native and of the English 
 troops ; and surely since the publication of Sir John Moore's campaign, 
 there can be no just offence taken, though I should say, that before the 
 walls of Valetta, as well as in the plains of Galicia, an indignant com- 
 mander might, with too great propriety, have addressed the English 
 soldiery in the words of an old dramatist 
 
 Will you still owe your virtues to your bellies? 
 Ami only then think nobly when y'ure full ? 
 Doth fodder keep you honest ? Are you bad 
 When out of flesh ? And think you't an excuse 
 Of vile and ignominious actions, that 
 V are lean and out of liking ? 
 
 CA in WRIGHT'S Love's Convert. 
 
 From the first insurrectionary movement to the final departure of the 
 French from the island, though the civil and military powers and the 
 whole of the island, save Valetta, were in the hands of the peasantry, 
 not a single act of excess can be charged against the Maltese, if we except 
 the razing of one house at Civita Vecchia belonging to a notorious aud 
 abandoned traitor, the creature and hireling of the French. In no instance 
 did they injure, insult, or plunder, any one of the native nobility, or 
 employ even the appearance of force toward them, except in the collec- 
 tion of the lead and iron from their houses and gardens, in order to 
 supply themselves with bullets ; and this very appearance was assumed 
 from the generous wish to shelter the nobles from the resentment of the 
 French, should the patriotic efforts of the peasantry prove unsuccessful. 
 At the dire command of famine the Maltese troops did indeed once force 
 their way to the ovens, in which the bread for the British soldiery was 
 baked, and were clamorous that an equal division should be made. I 
 mention this unpleasant circumstance, because it brought into proof the 
 firmness of Sir Alexander Ball's, character, his presence of mind, and
 
 Essay 5. 369 
 
 generous disregard of danger and personal responsibility, where the 
 slavery or emancipation, the misery or the happiness, of au innocent and 
 patriotic people were involved ; and because his conduct iu this exigency 
 evinced that his general habits of circumspection and deliberation were 
 the results of wisdom and complete self-possession, and not the easy 
 virtues of a spirit constitutionally timorous and hesitating. He was sit- 
 ting at table with the principal British officers, when a certain general 
 addressed him in strong and violent terms concerning this outrage of the 
 Maltese, reminding him of the necessity of exerting his commanding in- 
 fluence in the present case, or the consequences must be taken. " What," 
 replied Sir Alexander Hall, " would you have us do ? Would you have 
 us threaten death to men dying with famine ? Can you suppose that 
 the hazard of being shot will weigh with whole regiments acting under 
 a common necessity ? Does not the extremity of hunger take away all 
 difference between men and animals ? and is it not as absurd to appeal 
 to the prudence of a body of men starving, as to a herd of famished 
 wolves ? No, general, I will not degrade myself or outrage humanity 
 by menacing famine with massacre ! More effectual means must be 
 taken." With these words he rose and left the room, and having first 
 consulted with Sir Thomas Troubridge, he determined at his own risk on 
 a step, which the extreme necessity warranted, and which the conduct 
 of the Neapolitan court amply justified. For this court, though terror- 
 stricken by the French, was still actuated by hatred to the English, arid 
 a jealousy of their power in the Mediterranean ; and this in so strange 
 and senseless a manner, that we must join the extremes of imbecility and 
 treachery in the same cabinet, in order to find it comprehensible.* 
 Though the very existence of Naples and Sicily, as a nation, depended 
 wholly and exclusively on British support ; though the royal family 
 owed their personal safety to the British fleet ; though not only their 
 dominions and their rank, but the liberty and even the lives of Ferdinand 
 and his family, were interwoven with our success ; yet with an infatua- 
 tion scarcely credible, the most affecting representations of the distress 
 of the besiegers, and of the utter insecurity of Sicily if the Freuch 
 remained possessors of Malta, were treated with neglect ; and the urgent 
 remonstrances for the permission of importing corn from Messina, were 
 answered only by sanguinary edicts precluding all supply. Sir Alex- 
 
 * It cannot be doubted, that the sovereign has given us a true and lively account It 
 
 himself was kept in a state of delusion, will be greatly to the advantage of the pre- 
 
 Huth liis understanding and his moral prind- scut narration, if the reader should have 
 
 pies are fur Ivtier than could reaxmably lx.- previously perused Mr. Leckle's pamphlet on 
 
 expected Irom the infamous mude ot his th<> state of Sicily : the facts which i 
 
 education : if indeed i- have occasion to mention hereafter will re- 
 
 sion of all knowledge, and the unrestrained ciprocally confirm and be confirmed by the 
 
 indulgence of his passions adopted by the documents furnl-hed in that mot interesting 
 
 i.-ourt for the purposes of preserving work; in which 1 see but one blemish of ini- 
 
 him dependent, can be called by the name of portanc", namely, that the author appears 
 
 education. Of the other influencing persons Ux> frequently to consider JiiMict ai d true 
 
 in the Neapolitan government, Mr. Ledclo yul:<;r as capable of being coutradistnit;i'ishLU 
 
 2 B
 
 370 Tlie Tliird Landing-Place. 
 
 aader Ball sent for his senior lieutenant, and gave him orders to proceed 
 immediately to the port of Messina, and there to seize and bring with 
 him to Malta the ships laden with corn, of the number of which Sir 
 Alexander had received accurate information. These orders were executed 
 without delay, to the great delight and profit of the shipowners and pro- 
 prietors ; the necessity of raising the siege was removed ; and the author 
 of the measure waited in calmness for the consequences that might result 
 to himself personally. But not a complaint, not a murmur proceeded 
 from the court of Naples. The sole result was, that the governor of 
 Malta became an especial object of its hatred, its fear, and its respect. 
 
 The whole of this tedious siege, from its commencement to the signing 
 of the capitulation, called forth into constant activity the rarest and most 
 difficult virtues of a commanding mind ; virtues of no show or splendour 
 in the vulgar apprehension, yet more infallible characteristics of true 
 greatness than the most unequivocal displays of enterprise and active 
 daring. Scarcely a day passed, in which Sir Alexander Ball's patience, 
 forbearance, and inflexible constancy were not put to the severest trial. 
 He had not only to remove the misunderstandings that arose between 
 the Maltese and their allies, to settle the differences among the Maltese 
 themselves, and to organize their efforts ; he was likewise engaged in 
 the more difficult and unthankful task of counteracting the weariness, 
 discontent, and despondency of his own countrymen a task, however, 
 which he accomplished by management and address, and an alternation 
 of real firmness with apparent yielding. During many months he 
 remained the only Englishman who did not think the siege hopeless, 
 and the object worthless. He often spoke of the time in which he 
 resided at the country seat of the grand master at St. Antonio, four 
 miles from Valetta, as perhaps the most trying period of his life. For 
 some weeks Captain Vivian was his sole English companion, of whom, 
 as his partner in anxiety, he always expressed himself with affectionate 
 esteem. Sir Alexander Ball's presence was absolutely necessary to the 
 Maltese, who, accustomed to be governed by him, became incapable of 
 acting in concert without his immediate influence. In the outburst of 
 popular emotion, the impulse, which produces an insurrection, is for a 
 brief while its sufficient pilot : the attraction constitutes the cohesion, and 
 the common provocation, supplying an immediate object, not only unites, 
 but directs the multitude. But this first impulse had passed away, and Sir 
 Alexander Ball was the one individual who possessed the general con- 
 fidence. On him they relied with implicit faith ; and even after they had 
 long enjoyed the blessings of British government and protection, it was 
 still remarkable with what child-like helplessness they were in the habit 
 of applying to him, even in their private concerns. It seemed as if they 
 thought him made on purpose to think for them all. Yet his situation 
 at St. Antonio was one of great peril : and he attributed his preservation
 
 Essay 5. 371 
 
 to the dejection which had now begun to prey on the spirits of the French 
 garrison, and which rendered them unenterprising and almost passive, 
 aided by the dread whicli the nature of the country inspired. For sub- 
 divided as it was into small fields, scarcely larger than a cottage garden, 
 and each of these little squares of land inclosed with substantial stone 
 walls ; these too from the necessity of having the fields perfectly level, 
 rising in tiers above each other ; the whole of the inhabited part of the 
 island was an effective fortification for all the purposes of annoyance and 
 offensive warfare. Sir Alexander Ball exerted himself successfully in 
 procuring information respecting the state and temper of the garrison, and, 
 by the assistance of the clergy and the almost universal fidelity of the 
 Maltese, contrived, that the spies in the pay of the French should be in 
 truth his own most confidential agents. He had already given splendid 
 proofs that he could outfight them ; but here, and in his after diplomatic 
 intercourse previous to the recommencement of the war, he likewise out- 
 witted them. He once told me with a smile, as we were conversing on 
 the practice of laying wagers, that he was sometimes inclined to think 
 that the final perseverance in the siege was not a little indebted to 
 several valuable bets of his own, he well knowing at the time, and from 
 information which himself alone possessed, that he should certainly lose 
 them. Yet this artifice had a considerable effect in suspending the im- 
 patience of the officers, and in supplying topics for dispute and conver- 
 sation. At length, however, the two French frigates, the sailing of which 
 had been the subject of these wagers, left the great harbour on the 24th 
 of August, 1800, with a part of the garrison : and one of them soon be- 
 came a prize to the English. Sir Alexander Ball related to me the cir- 
 cumstances which occasioned the escape of the other ; but I do not 
 recollect them with sufficient accuracy to dare repeat them in this place. 
 On the 15th of September following, the capitulation was signed, and 
 after a blockade of two years the English obtained possession of Valetta, 
 and remained masters of the whole island and its dependencies. 
 
 Anxious not to give offence, but more anxious to communicate the 
 truth, it is not without pain that I find myself under the moral obliga- 
 tion of remonstrating against the silence concerning Sir Alexander Ball's 
 services or the transfer of them to others. More than once has the latter 
 aroused my indignation in the reported speeches of the House of Com- 
 mons ; and as to the former, 1 need only state that in Kees's Encyclopaedia 
 there is an historical article of considerable length under the word Malta, 
 in which Sir Alexander's name does not once occur ! During a resi- 
 dence of eighteen months in that island, I possessed and availed myself 
 of the best possible means of information, not only from eye-witnesses, 
 but likewise from the principal agents themselves. And I now thus 
 publicly and unequivocally assert, that to Sir A. Ball pre-eminently 
 and if I had said, to Sir A. Ball alone, the ordinary use of the word
 
 372 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 under such circumstances would bear me out the capture and the pre- 
 servation of Malta were owing, with every blessing that a powerful mind 
 and a wise heart could confer on its docile and grateful inhabitants. 
 With a similar pain I proceed to avow my sentiments on this capitula- 
 tion, by which Malta was delivered up to his Britannic Majesty and his 
 allies, without the least mention made of the Maltese. With a warmth 
 honourable both to his head and his heart, Sir Alexander Ball pleaded, 
 as not less a point of sound policy than of plain justice, that the Maltese, 
 by some representative, should be made a party in the capitulation, and 
 a joint subscriber in the signature. They had never been the slaves or 
 the property of the Knights of St. John, but freemen and the true 
 landed proprietors of the country, the civil and military government of 
 which, under certain restrictions, had been vested in that order ; yet 
 checked by the rights and influences of the clergy and the native nobi- 
 lity, and by the customs and ancient laws of the island. This trust the 
 Knights had, with the blackest treason and the most profligate perjury, 
 betrayed and abandoned. The right of government of course reverted 
 to the landed proprietors and the clergy. Animated by a just sense of 
 this right, the Maltese had risen of their own accord, had contended for 
 it in defiance of death and danger, had fought bravely, and endured 
 patiently. Without undervaluing the military assistance afterwards 
 furnished by Great Britain (though how scanty this was before the 
 arrival of General Pigot is well known), it remains undeniable, that the 
 Maltese had taken the greatest share both in the fatigues and in the 
 privations consequent on the siege; and that had not the greatest virtues 
 and the most exemplary fidelity been uniformly displayed by them, the 
 English troops (they not being more numerous than they had been for 
 the greater part of the two years) could not possibly have remained 
 before the fortifications of Valetta, defended as that city was by a French 
 garrison, that greatly outnumbered the British besiegers. Still less 
 could there have been the least hope of ultimate success ; as if any part 
 of the Maltese peasantry had been friendly to the French, or even indif- 
 ferent, if they had not all indeed been most zealous and persevering in 
 their hostility towards them, it would have been impracticable so to 
 blockade that island as to have precluded the arrival of supplies. If the 
 siege had proved unsuccessful, the Maltese were well aware that they 
 should be exposed to all the horrors which revenge and wounded pride 
 could dictate to an unprincipled, rapacious, and sanguinary soldiery; 
 and now that success has crowned their efforts, is this to be their re- 
 ward, that their own allies are to bargain for them with the French as 
 for a herd of slaves, whom the French had before purchased from a 
 former proprietor ? If it be urged, that there is no established govern- 
 ment in Malta, is it not equally true, that through the whole population 
 of the island there is not a single dissentient ? and thus that the chief
 
 Essay 6. 373 
 
 inconvenience, which an established authority is to obviate, is virtually 
 removed by the admitted fact of their unanimity ? And have they not 
 a bishop, and a dignified clergy, their judges and municipal magistrates, 
 who were at all times sharers in the power of the government, and now, 
 supported by the unanimous suffrage of the inhabitants, have a rightful 
 claim to be considered as its representatives ? Will it not be oftener 
 said than answered, that the main difference between French and 
 English injustice rests in this point alone, that the French seized on the 
 Maltese without any previous pretences of friendship, while the English 
 procured possession of the island by means of their friendly promises, 
 and by the co-operation of the natives afforded in confident reliance on 
 these promises ? The impolicy of refusing the signature on the part of 
 the Maltese was equally evident ; since such refusal could answer no one 
 purpose but that of alienating their affections by a wanton insult to their 
 feelings. For the Maltese were not only ready but desirous and eager 
 to place themselves at the same time under British protection, to take 
 the oaths of loyalty as subjects of the British crown, and to acknowledge 
 their island to belong to it. These representations, however, were over- 
 ruled : and I dare affirm, from my own experience in the Mediterranean, 
 that our conduct in this instance, added to the impression which had 
 been made at Corsica, Minorca, and elsewhere, and was often referred to 
 by men of reflection in Sicily, who have more than once said to me, "A 
 connection with Great Britain, with the consequent extension and secu- 
 rity of our commerce, are indeed great blessings : but who can rely on 
 their permanence ? or that we shall not be made to pay bitterly for our 
 zeal as partisans of England, whenever it shall suit its plans to deliver 
 us back to our old oppressors ?" 
 
 ESSAY VI. 
 
 The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds, 
 
 Is yet no devious way. Straight forward goes 
 
 The lightning's path ; and straight the fearful path 
 
 Of the cannon-bull. Direct it flies and rapid. 
 
 Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. 
 
 My son ! the road, the human being travels. 
 
 That, on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow 
 
 The river's course, the valley's playful windings, 
 
 Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines. 
 
 Honouring the holy bounds of property 1 
 
 There exists 
 
 A higher than the warrior's excellence. WALLESfcTErs. 
 
 CAPTAIN BALL'S services in Malta were honoured with his sove- 
 reign's approbation, transmitted in a letter from the Secretary 
 Dundas, and with a baronetcy. A thousand pounds* were at the same 
 
 * I scarce know whether it be worth men- till the spring of the year 1 805 ; at which 
 tioning, that this sum remained uudemandcd time the writer of these sketches, during ail
 
 374: Tlie Tliird Landing-Place. 
 
 time directed to be paid him from the Maltese treasury. The best anci 
 most appropriate addition to the applause of his king and his country, 
 Sir Alexander Ball found in the feelings and faithful affection of the 
 Maltese. The enthusiasm manifested in reverential gestures and shouts 
 of triumph whenever their friend and deliverer appeared in public, was 
 the utterance of a deep feeling, and in nowise the mere ebullition of 
 animal sensibility ; which is not indeed a part of the Maltese character. 
 The truth of this observation will not be doubted by any person who 
 has witnessed the religious processions in honour of the favourite saints, 
 both at Valetta and at Messina or Palermo, and who must have been 
 struck with the contrast between the apparent apathy, or at least the per- 
 fect sobriety, of the Maltese, and the fanatical agitations of the Sicilian 
 populace. Among the latter each man's soul seems hardly containable 
 in his body, like a prisoner, whose gaol is on fire, flying madly from one 
 barred outlet to another ; while the former might suggest the suspicion, 
 that their bodies were on the point of sinking into the same slumber 
 with their understandings. But their political deliverance was a thing 
 that came home to their hearts, and intertwined with their most impas- 
 sioned recollections, personal and patriotic. To Sir Alexander Ball ex- 
 clusively the Maltese themselves attributed their emancipation ; on him 
 too they rested their hopes of the future. Whenever he appeared in 
 Valetta, the passengers on each side, through the whole length of the 
 street, stopped, and remained uncovered till he had passed : the very 
 clamours of the market-place were hushed at his entrance, and then 
 exchanged for shouts of joy and welcome. Even after the lapse of 
 years he never appeared in any one of their casals,* which did not lie in 
 the direct road between Yaletta and St. Antonio, his summer residence, 
 but the women and children, with such of the men who were not at 
 labour in their fields, fell into ranks, and followed, or preceded him, 
 singing the Maltese song which had been made in his honour, and which 
 was scarcely less familiar to the inhabitants of Malta and Gozo, than 
 
 examination of the treasury accounts, ob- the confidence and affection of the inhabi- 
 
 served the circumstance and noticed it to the tants, might not be dispensed with in the 
 
 Governor, who had suffered it to escape person entrusted with that government 
 
 altogether from his memory, for the latter Crimea ingraft animi quodmagnis ingeniis 
 
 years at least. The value attached to the hand raro objicitur, fayins nil aliud est 
 
 present by the receiver, must have depended quain perfpicacia qiuedum in cawjan* bene~ 
 
 on his construction of its purpose and mean- Jicii collati. See WAI.LEXSTEIN, Part I. 
 
 ing; for, in a pecuniary point of view, the * It was the Governor's custom to visit 
 
 sum was not a moiety of what Sir Alexander every casal throughout the island once, if not 
 
 had expended from his private fortune during twice, in the course of each summer; and 
 
 the blockade. His immediate appointment during my residence there, I had the honour 
 
 to the government of the island, so earnestly of beinc; his constant, and most often, his 
 
 prayed for by the Maltese, would doubtless only companion in these rides ; to which I 
 
 have furnished a less questionable proof that owe some of the happie>t and most instruo 
 
 his services were as highly estimated by the tlve hours of my life. In the poorest house 
 
 ministry as they were graciously accepted by of the most distant casal two rude paintings 
 
 his sovereign- But this was withheld as long were sure to be found : A picture of the 
 
 as it remained possible to doubt, whether Virgin and Child ; and a portrait of Sir 
 
 great talents, joined to local experience, and Alexander Ball.
 
 // 6. 875 
 
 God save the King to Britons. When he went to the gate through the 
 city, the young men refrained talking ; and the aged arose tind stood up. 
 What t 1 '* eat /,/)'/, fh> i, if Hefted him ; and u'htn the ey<- sav him, it 
 f/in-i- trt't-Hias to him: because he delivered the poor that cried, and the 
 fatherless, arid those that had none to help them. The blessing of them 
 that were rendy to perish came upon him ; and he caused the widoufs 
 heart to sing fur joy. 
 
 These feelings were afterwards amply justified by his administration 
 of the government ; and the very excesses of their gratitude on their first 
 deliverance proved, in the end, only to be acknowledgment! antedated. 
 me time after the departure of the French, the distress was so 
 general and so severe, that a large proportion of the lower classes be- 
 came mendicants, and one of the greatest thoroughfares of Valetta still 
 retains the name of the "Nix many'- from the crowd who 
 
 ere to assail the ears of the passengers with cries of "nix man- 
 giare" or " nothing to eat," the former word nix Ix-ing the low 
 German pronunciation of nichts, nothing. By what means it was intro- 
 duced into Malta, I know not ; but it became the common vehicle both 
 of solicitation and refusal, the Maltese thinking it an Knglish word, and 
 the English supposing it to lx? Maltese. I often felt it as a pleasing re- 
 membrancer of the evil day gone by, when a tribe of little children, 
 quite naked, as is the custom of that climate, and each witli a pair of 
 gold ear-rings in its ears, ami all fat and beautifully proportioned, would 
 suddenly leave their play, and, looking round to see that their parents 
 were not in siirht, change their shouts of merriment for "/./ m<m- 
 ffiare!" awkwardly imitating the plaintive tones of mendicancy; while 
 the white teeth in their little swarthy faces gave a splendour to the 
 happy and confessing laugh, with which they received the good- 
 humoured rebuke or refusal, and ran back to their former sport. 
 
 In the interim between the capitulation of the French garrison and 
 Sir Alexander Ball's appointment as his Majesty's civil commissioner 
 for Malta, his zeal for the Maltese was neither suspended nor unproduc- 
 tive of important benefits, lie was enabled to remove many prejudices 
 and misunderstandings ; and to persons of no inconsiderable influence 
 gave juster notions of the true importance of the island to Great Britain. 
 He displayed the magnitude of the trade of the Mediterranean in its 
 existing state; showed the immense extent to which it might be carried, 
 and the hollowness of the opinion, that this trade was attached to the 
 south of France by any natural or indissoluble lx>nd of connection. I 
 have some reason for likewise believing, that his wise and patriotic repre- 
 sentations prevented Malta from being made the seat of and pretext for 
 a numerous civil establishment, in hapless imitation of Corsica, Ceylon, 
 and the Cape of Good Hope. It was at least generally rumoured, that 
 it had been in the contemplation of the ministry to appoint Sir Kalph
 
 376 TJie Third Landing-Place. 
 
 Abercrombie as governor, with a salary of 10,000?. a year, and to reside 
 in England, while one of his countrymen was to be the lieutenant- 
 governor, at 5,OOOZ. a year ; to which were to be added a long et cetera 
 of other offices and places of proportional emolument. This threatened 
 appendix to the state calendar may have existed only in the imagina- 
 tions of the reporters, yet inspired some uneasy apprehensions in the 
 minds of many well-wishers to the Maltese, who knew that for a 
 foreign settlement at least, and one too possessing in all the ranks and 
 functions of society an ample population of its own such a stately and 
 wide-branching tree of patronage, though delightful to the individuals 
 who are to pluck its golden apples, sheds, like the manchineel, un- 
 wholesome and corrosive dews on the multitude who are to rest beneath 
 its shade. It need not, however, be doubted, that Sir Alexander Ball 
 would exert himself to preclude any such intention, by stating and 
 evincing the extreme impolicy and injustice of the plan, as well as its 
 utter inutility, in the case of Malta. With the exception of the gover- 
 nor, and of the public secretary, both of whom undoubtedly should be 
 natives of Great Britain, and appointed by the British government, there 
 was no civil office that could be of the remotest advantage to the island 
 which was not already filled by the natives, and the functions of which 
 none could perform so well as they. The number of inhabitants (he 
 would state) was prodigious compared with the extent of the island, 
 though from the fear of the Moors one-fourth of its surface remained 
 unpeopled and uncultivated. To deprive, therefore, the middle and 
 lower classes of such places as they had been accustomed to hold, would 
 be cruel ; while the places held by the nobility, were, for the greater 
 part, such as none but natives could perform the duties of. By any 
 innovation we should affront the higher classes and alienate the affec- 
 tions of all, not only without any imaginable advantage but with the 
 certainty of great loss. Were Englishmen to be employed, the salaries 
 must be increased fourfold, and would yet be scarcely worth accept- 
 ance; and in higher offices, such as those of the civil and criminal 
 judges, the salaries must be augmented more than tenfold. For, greatly 
 to the credit of their patriotism and moral character, the Maltese gentry 
 sought these places as honourable distinctions, which endeared them to 
 their fellow-countrymen, and at the same time rendered the yoke of the 
 order somewhat less grievous and galling. With the exception of the 
 Maltese secretary, whose situation was one of incessant labour, and who 
 at the same time performed the duties of law counsellor to the govern- 
 ment, the highest salaries scarcely exceeded 100Z. a year, and were 
 barely sufficient to defray the increased expenses of the functionaries 
 for an additional equipage, or one of more imposing appearance. Besides, 
 it was of importance that the person placed at the head of that govern- 
 ment should be looked up to by the natives, and possess the means of
 
 Essay 6. 377 
 
 distinguishing and rewarding those who had been most faithful and 
 zealous in their attachment to Great Britain, aud hostile to their former 
 tyrants. The number of the employments to be conferred would give 
 considerable influence to his Majesty's civil representative, while the 
 trifling amount of the emolument attached to each precluded all temp- 
 tation of abusing it. 
 
 Sir Alexander Ball would likewise, it is probable, urge, that the com- 
 mercial advantages of Malta, which were most intelligible to the English 
 public, and best fitted to render our retention of the island popular, must 
 necessarily be of very slow growth, though finally they would become 
 great, and of an extent not to be calculated. For this reason, therefore, 
 it was highly desirable that the jxjssessiou should be, and appear to be, 
 at least inexpensive. After the British government had made one ad- 
 vance for a stock of corn sufficient to place the island a year beforehand, 
 the sum total drawn from Great Britain need not exceed 25.000J., or at 
 most 30,0002. annually ; excluding of course the expenditure connected 
 with our own military and navy, and the repair of the fortifications, 
 which latter expense ought to be much less than at Gibraltar, from the 
 multitude and low wages of the labourers in Malta, and from the softness 
 aud admirable quality of the stone. Indeed much more might safely be 
 promised on the assumption, that a wise and generous system of policy 
 were adopted and persevered in. The monopoly of the Maltese corn- 
 trade by the government formed an exception to a general rule, and by 3 
 strange, yet valid, anomaly in the operations of political economy, was 
 not more necessary than advantageous to the inhabitants. The chief 
 reason is, that the produce of the island itself barely suffices for one- 
 fourth of its inhabitants, although fruits and vegetables form so large a 
 part of their nourishment. Meantime the harbours of Malta, and its 
 equi-distance from Europe, Asia, and Africa, gave it a vast and unnatu- 
 ral importance in the present relations of the great European powers, 
 and imposed on its government, whether native or dependent, the neces- 
 sity of considering the whole island as a single garrison, the provisioning 
 of which could not be trusted to the casualties of ordinary commerce. 
 What is actually necessary is seldom injurious. Thus in Malta bread 
 is better and cheaper on an average than in Italy or the coast of Barbary ; 
 while a similar interference with the corn trade in Sicily impoverishes 
 the inhabitants, and keeps the agriculture in a state of barbarism. But 
 the point in question is the expense to Great Britaiu. Whether the 
 monopoly be good or evil in itself, it remains true, that in this established 
 usage, and in the gradual enclosure of the uncultivated district, such 
 resources exist as without the least oppression might render the civil 
 government in Valetta independent of the Treasury at home, finally 
 taking UJXHI itself even the repair of the fortifications, and thus realize 
 one instance of an important possession that cost the country nothing.
 
 378 The Third Landing-Place. 
 
 But now the time arrived which threatened to frustrate the patriotism 
 of the Maltese themselves, and all the zealous efforts of their disinterested 
 friend. Soon after the war had for the first time become indisputably 
 just and necessary, the people at large and a majority of independent 
 senators, incapable, as it might seem, of translating their fanatical anti- 
 Jacobinism into a well-grounded, yet equally impassioned, anti-Galli- 
 canism, grew impatient for peace, or rather for a name, under which the 
 most terrific of all wars would be incessantly waged against us. Our 
 conduct was not much wiser than that of the weary traveller, who 
 bavins proceeded half way on his journey, procured a short rest for 
 himself by getting up behind a chaise which was going the contrary 
 road. In the strange treaty of Amiens, in which we neither recognized 
 our former relations with France nor with the other European ]x>wers, 
 nor formed any new ones, the compromise concerning Malta formed the 
 prominent feature ; and its nominal re-delivery to the Order of St. 
 John was authorized, in the minds of the people, by Lord Nelson's 
 opinion of its worthlessuess to Great Britain in a political or naval view. 
 It is a melancholy fact, and one that must often sadden a reflective and 
 philanthropic mind, how little moral considerations weigh even with the 
 noblest nations, how vain are the strongest appeals to justice, humanity, 
 and national honour, unless when the public mind is under the imme- 
 diate influence of the cheerful or vehement passions, indignation or ava- 
 ricious hope. In the whole class of human infirmities there is none 
 that makes such loud appeals to prudence, and yet so frequently outrages 
 its plainest dictates, as the spirit of fear. The worst cause conducted in 
 hope is an overmatch for the noblest managed by despondency ; in both 
 cases, an unnatural conjunction that recals the old fable of Love and 
 Death, taking each the arrows of the other by mistake. When islands 
 that had courted British protection in reliance upon British honour, are 
 with their inhabitants and proprietors abandoned to the resentment 
 which we had tempted them to provoke, what wonder, if the opinion 
 becomes general, that alike to England as to France, the fates and for- 
 tunes of other nations are but the counters, with which the bloody game 
 of war is played ; and that notwithstanding the great and acknowledged 
 difference between the two governments during possession, yet the pro- 
 tection of France is more desirable because it is more likely to endure ? 
 for what the French take, they keep. Often both in Sicily and Malta 
 have I heard the case of Minorca referred to, where a considerable por- 
 tion of the most respectable gentry and merchants (no provision having 
 been made for their protection on the re-delivery of that island to Spain) 
 expiated in dungeons the warmth and forwardness of their predilection 
 for Great Britain. 
 
 It has been by some persons imagined, that Lord Nelson was con- 
 siderably influenced, in his public declaration concerning the value of
 
 Essay 6. 379 
 
 Malta, by ministerial flattery, and his own sense of the great serviceable- 
 f that opinion to the persons in office. This supposition is, how- 
 ever, wholly false and groundless. His lordship's opinion was indeed 
 greatly shaken afterwards, if not changed ; but at that time he spoke in 
 strictest correspondence with his existing convictions. He said no more 
 than he had often previously declared to his private friends : it was the 
 point on which, after some amicable controversy, his lordship and Sir 
 Alexander Ball had " asreed to differ." Though the opinion itself may 
 have lost the greatest part of its interest, and except for the historian is, 
 as it were, superannuated ; yet the grounds and causes of it, as far as 
 they arose out of Lord Nelson's particular character, and may perhaps 
 tend to re-enliven our recollection of a hero so deeply and justly beloved, 
 will for ever possess an interest of their own. In an essay, too, which 
 purports to be no more than a series of sketches and fragments, the 
 reader, it is hoped, will readily excuse an occasional digression, and a 
 more desultory style of narration than could be tolerated in a work of 
 regular biography. 
 
 Lord Nelson was an admiral every inch of him. He looked at every- 
 thing, not merely in its possible relations to the naval service in general, 
 but in its immediate bearings on his own squadron ; to his officers, his 
 men, to the particular ships themselves, his affections were as strong and 
 ardent as those of a lover. Hence, though his temper was constitution- 
 ally irritable and uneven, yet never was a commander so enthusiastically 
 loved by men of all ranks, from the captain of the fleet to the youngest 
 ship-boy. Hence too the unexampled harmony which reigned in his 
 fleet, year after year, under circumstances that might well have under- 
 mined the patience of the best-balanced dispositions, much more of men 
 with the impetuous character of British sailors. Year after year, the 
 same dull duties of a wearisome blockade, of doubtful policy little if 
 any opportunity of making prizes ; and the few prizes, which accident 
 might throw in the way, of little or no value; and when at last the oc- 
 casion presented itself which would have compensated for all, then a dis- 
 appointment as sudden and unexpected as it was unjust and cruel, and 
 the cup dashed from their lips ! Add to these trials the sense of enter- 
 prises checked by feebleness and timidity elsewhere, not omitting the 
 tiresomeness of the Mediterranean sea, sky, and climate ; and the un- 
 jarring and cheerful spirit of affectionate brotherhood, which linked to- 
 gether the hearts of that whole squadron, will appear not less wonderful 
 to us than admirable and affecting. When the resolution was taken of 
 commencing hostilities against Spain, before any intelligence was sent to 
 Lord Nelson, another admiral, with two or three ships of the line, was 
 sent into the Mediterranean, and stationed before Cadiz, for the express 
 purpose of intercepting the Spanish prizes. The admiral despatched on 
 this lucrative service gave no information to Lord Nelson of his arrival
 
 380 TJie Third Landing-Place. 
 
 in the same sea, and five weeks elapsed before his lordship became ac- 
 quainted with the circumstance. The prizes thus taken were immense. 
 A month or two sufficed to enrich the commander and officers of this 
 small and highly-favoured squadron ; while to Nelson and his fleet the 
 sense of having done their duty, and the consciousness of the glorious 
 services which they had performed, were considered, it must be presumed, 
 as an abundant remuneration for all their toils and long suffering! It 
 was indeed an unexampled circumstance', that a small squadron should 
 be sent to the station which had been long occupied by a large fleet, 
 commanded by the darling of the navy, and the glory of the British 
 empire, to the station where this fleet had for years been wearing away 
 in the most barren, repulsive, and spirit-trying service, in which the 
 navy can be employed ! and that this minor squadron should be sent 
 independently of, and without any communication with the commander 
 of the former fleet, for the express and solitary purpose of stepping 
 between it and the Spanish prizes, and as soon as this short and pleasant 
 service was performed, of bringing home the unshared booty with all 
 possible caution and despatch. The substantial advantages of naval 
 service were perhaps deemed of too gross a nature for men already re- 
 warded with the grateful affections of their own countrymen, and the 
 admiration of the whole world ! They were to be awarded, therefore, on 
 a principle of compensation to a commander less rich in fame, and whose 
 laurels, though not scanty, were not yet sufficiently luxuriant to hide 
 the golden crown which is the appropriate ornament of victory in the 
 bloodless war of commercial capture ! Of all the wounds which were 
 ever inflicted on Nelson's feelings (and there were not a few), this was 
 the deepest this rankled most ! " I had thought " (said the gallant man, 
 in a letter written on the first feelings of the affront), " I fancied but nay, 
 it must have been a dream, an idle dream yet. I confess it, I did fancy, 
 that I had done my country service and thus they use me. It was 
 not enough to have robbed me once before of my West India harvest 
 now they have taken away the Spanish and under what circumstances, 
 and with what pointed aggravations ! Yet, if 1 know my own thoughts, 
 it is not for myself, or on my own account chiefly, that I feel the sting 
 and the disappointment ; no ! it is for my brave officers ; for my noble- 
 minded friends and comrades such a gallant set of fellows ! such a band 
 
 of brothers ! My heart swells at the thought of them !" 
 
 This strong attachment of the heroic admiral to his fleet, faithfully 
 repaid by an equal attachment on their part to their admiral, had no 
 little influence in attuning their hearts to each other ; and when he 
 died, it seemed as if no man was a stranger to another ; for all were 
 made acquaintances by the rights of a common anguish. In the fleet 
 itself, many a private quarrel was forgotten, no more to be remembered ; 
 many, who had been alienated, became once more good friends ; yea,
 
 Essay 6. 381 
 
 many a one was reconciled to his very enemy, and loved and (as 
 it were) thanked him for the bitterness of his grief, as if it had 
 been an act of consolation to himself in an intercourse of private sym- 
 pathy. The tidings arrived at Naples on the day that I returned to 
 that city from Calabria ; and never can I forget the sorrow and conster- 
 nation that lay on every countenance. Even to this day there are 
 times when I seem to see, as in a vision, separate groups and individual 
 faces of the picture. Numbers stopped and shook hands with me be- 
 cause they had seen the tears on my cheek, and conjectured that I was 
 an Englishman ; and several, as they held my hand, burst, themselves, 
 into tears. And though it may awake a smile, yet it pleased and 
 afiected me, as a proof of the goodness of the human heart struggling to 
 exercise its kindness in spite of prejudices the most obstinate, and eager 
 to carry on ita love and honour into the life beyond life, that it was 
 whispered about Naples, that Lord Nelson had become a good Catholic 
 before his death. The absurdity of the fiction is a sort of measurement 
 of the fond and affectionate esteem which had ripened the pious wish of 
 some kind individual, through all the gradations of possibility and pro- 
 bability, into a confident assertion, believed and affirmed by hundreds. 
 The feelings of Great Britain on this awful event have been described 
 well and worthily by a living poet, who has happily blended the passion 
 and wild transitions of lyric song with the swell and solemnity of epic 
 narration. 
 
 Thou art fall'n ! fall'n, In the lap 
 
 Of victory. To thy country thon ram'st back 
 
 Thou, conqueror, to triumphal Albion cam's; 
 
 A corse ! I saw before thy hearse pass on 
 
 The comrades of thy perils and renown. 
 
 The frequent tear upon their dauntless breasts 
 
 Fell. 1 beheld the pomp thick gathered round 
 
 The trophied car that bore thy graced remains 
 
 Through armed ranks, and a nation gazing on. 
 
 Bright glowed the sun, and not a cloud distained 
 
 Heaven's arch of gold, but all was gloom beneath. 
 
 A holy and unutterable pang 
 
 Thrilled on the soul Awe and mnte anguish fell 
 
 On all. Yet high the public bosom throbbed 
 
 With triumph. And if one, 'uiid that vast pomp, 
 
 Jf but the voice of one had shouted forth 
 
 The name of NELSON, thou hadst past alocg, 
 
 Thou in thy hearse to' burial past, as oft 
 
 Before the van of battle, proudly rode 
 
 Thy prow, down Britain's line, shout after shout 
 
 Kending the air with triumph, ere thy hand 
 
 Had lanced the bolt of victory. SOTHEBT (Savl, p. 80). 
 
 I introduced this digression with an apology, yet have extended it so 
 much further than I had designed, that I must once more request my 
 reader to excuse me. It was to be expected (I have said) that Lord
 
 382 Tlie Third Landing- Place. 
 
 Nelson would appreciate the isle of Malta from its relations to the 
 British fleet on the Mediterranean station. It was the fashion of the 
 day to style Egypt the key of India, and Malta the key of Egypt. 
 Nelson saw the hollowness of this metaphor ; or if he only doubted its 
 applicability in the former instance, he was sure that it was false in 
 the latter. Egypt might or might not be the key of India, but Malta 
 was certainly not the key of Egypt. It was not intended to keep con- 
 stantly two distinct fleets in that sea ; and the largest naval force at 
 Malta would not supersede the necessity of a squadron off Toulon. 
 Malta does not lie in the direct course from Toulon to Alexandria ; and 
 from the nature of the winds (taking one time with another) the com- 
 parative length of the voyage to the latter port will be found far less 
 than a view of the map would suggest, and in truth of little practical 
 importance. If it were the object of the French fleet to avoid Malta in 
 its passage to Egypt, the port-admiral at Valetta would in all proba- 
 bility receive his first intelligence of its course from Minorca or the 
 squadron off Toulon, instead of communicating it. In what regards the 
 refitting and provisioning of the fleet, either on ordinary or extraordi- 
 nary occasions, Malta was as inconvenient as Minorca was advan- 
 tageous, not only from its distance (which yet was sufficient to render 
 it almost useless in cases of the most pressing necessity, as after a 
 severe action or injuries of tempest) but likewise from the extreme dif- 
 ficulty, if not impracticability, of leaving the harbour of Valetta with 
 a N. W. wind, which often lasts for weeks together. In all these points 
 his lordship's observations were perfectly just ; and it must be con- 
 ceded by all persons acquainted with the situation and circumstances ot 
 Malta, that its importance, as a British possession, if not exaggerated 
 on the whole, was unduly magnified in several important particulars. 
 Thus Lord Minto, in a speech delivered at a county meeting, and after- 
 wards published, affirms, that supposing (what no one could consider as 
 unlikely to take place) that the court of Naples should be compelled to 
 act under the influence of France, and that the Barbary powers were 
 unfriendly to us, either in consequence of French intrigues or from their 
 own caprice and insolence, there would not be a single port, harbour, 
 bay, creek, or roadstead in the whole Mediterranean, from which our 
 men-of-war could obtain a single ox or a hogshead of fresh water, unless 
 Great Britain retained possession of Malta. The noble speaker seems 
 not to have been aware, that under the circumstances supposed by him, 
 Odessa too being closed against us by a Eussian war, the island of 
 Malta itself would be no better than a vast almshouse of 75,000 per- 
 sons, exclusive of the British soldiery, all of whom must be regularly 
 supplied with com and salt meat from Great Britain or Ireland. The 
 population of Malta and Gozo exceeds 100,000, while the food of all 
 kinds produced on the two islands would barely suffice for one-fourth of
 
 Essay 6. 383 
 
 that number. The deficit is procured by the growth and spinning of 
 cotton, for which corn could not be substituted from the nature of the 
 soil, or, were it attempted, would produce but a small pro[>ortion of the 
 quantity which the cotton raised on the same fields and spun* into 
 thread, enables the Maltese to purchase, not to mention that the sub- 
 stitution of grain for cotton would leave half of the inhabitants without 
 employment. As to live stock, it is quite out of the question, if we 
 except the pigs and goats, which perform the office of scavengers in 
 the streets of Valetta and the towns on the other side of the Porto 
 Grande. 
 
 Against these arguments Sir A. Ball placed the following considera- 
 tions. It had been long his conviction, that the Mediterranean squadron 
 should be supplied by regular store-ships, the sole business f which 
 should be that of carriers for the fleet. This he recommended as by 
 far the most economic plan, in the first instance. Secondly, beyond 
 any other it would secure a system and regularity in the arrival of sup- 
 plies. And, lastly, it would conduce to the discipline of the navy, 
 and prevent both ships and officers from being out of the way on any 
 sudden emergency. If this system were introduced, the objections to 
 Malta, from its great distance, &c., would have little force. On the 
 other hand, the objections to Minorca he deemed irremovable. The 
 same disadvantages which attended the getting out of the harbour of 
 Valetta, applied to vessels getting into Port Mahon ; but while fifteen 
 hundred or two thousand British troops might be safely entrusted 
 with the preservation of Malta, the troops for the defence of Minorca 
 must ever be in proportion to those which the enemy may be supposed 
 likely to send against it It is so little favoured by nature or by art, 
 that the possessors stood merely on the level with the invaders. Cfeteris 
 paribus, if there 12,000 of the enemy landed, there must be an equal 
 number to repel them ; nor could the garrison, or any part of it, be 
 spared for any sudden emergency without risk of losing the island. Pre- 
 viously to the battle of Marengo, the most earnest representations were 
 made to the governor and commander at Minorca by the British ad- 
 miral, who offered to take on himself the whole responsibility of the 
 measure, if he would permit the troops at Minorca to join our allies. 
 The governor felt himself compelled to refuse his assent. Doubtless, 
 he acted wisely, for responsibility is not transferable. The fact is 
 
 * The Maltese cotton is naturally of a deep selves into a coarse nankin, which never loses 
 
 buff, or dusky orange colour, and. by the its colour by washing, and is durable beyond 
 
 laws of tlu> island, must bo spun before it any clothing I have ever known or heard of. 
 
 can be exported. 1 have heard it asserted, The cotton seed is used as a food for the 
 
 by persons apparently well informed on the cattle that are not immediately wanted for 
 
 subject, that the raw material would fetch as the market ; it is very nutritious, but 
 
 high a price as the thread, weight for weight : changes the fat of the animal into a kind of 
 
 the thread from its coarsem-s Ik-ing appli- suet, congealing quickly, aud of an adhesive 
 
 Cable to few purposes. It is manufactured substance. 
 likewise for the use of the natives them-
 
 384: The Third Landing -Place. 
 
 introduced in proof of the defenceless state of Minorca, and its constant 
 liability to attack. If the Austrian army had stood in the same rela- 
 tion to eight or nine thousand British soldiers at Malta, a single regi- 
 ment would have precluded all alarms as to the island itself, and the 
 remainder have perhaps changed the destiny of Europe. What might 
 not, almost I would say, what must not eight thousand Britons have 
 accomplished at the battle of Marengo, nicely poised as the fortunes of 
 the two armies are now known to have been ? Minorca too is alone 
 useful or desirable during a war, and on the supposition of a fleet off 
 Toulon. The advantages of Malta are permanent and national. As a 
 second Gibraltar, it must tend to secure Gibraltar itself; for if by the 
 loss of that one place we could be excluded from the Mediterranean, it 
 is difficult to say what sacrifices of blood and treasure the enemy would 
 deem too high a price for its conquest Whatever Malta may or may 
 not be respecting Egypt, its high importance to the independence of 
 Sicily cannot be doubted, or its advantages, as a central station, for any 
 portion of our disposable force. Neither is the influence which it will 
 enable us to exert on the Barbary powers to be wholly neglected. I 
 shall only add, that during the plague at Gibraltar, Lord Nelson him- 
 self acknowledged that he began to see the possession of Malta in a 
 different light. 
 
 Sir Alexander Ball looked forward to future contingencies as likely 
 to increase the value of Malta to Great Britain. He foresaw that the 
 whole of Italy would become a French province, and he knew that the 
 French government had been long intriguing on the coast of Barbary. 
 The Dey of Algiers was believed to have accumulated a treasure of 
 fifteen millions sterling, and Buonaparte had actually duped him into a 
 treaty, by which the French were to be permitted to erect a fort on the 
 very spot where the ancient Hippo stood, the choice between which and 
 the Hellespont, as the site of New Rome, is said to have perplexed the 
 judgment of Constantine. To this he added an additional point of con- 
 nection with Russia, by means of Odessa, and on the supposition of a 
 war in the Baltic, a still more interesting relation to Turkey, and the 
 Morea, and the Greek islands. It had been repeatedly signified to the 
 British government, that from the Morea and the countries adjacent, a 
 considerable supply of ship timber and naval stores might be obtained, 
 such as would at least greatly lessen the pressure of a Russian war. 
 The agents of France were in full activity in the Morea and the Greek 
 islands, the possession of which, by that government, would augment the 
 naval resources of the French to a degree of which few are aware who 
 have not made the present state of commerce of the Greeks an object of 
 particular attention. In short, if the possession of Malta were advan- 
 tageous to England solely as a convenient watch-tower, as a centre of 
 intelligence, its importance would be undeniable.
 
 Essay 6. 385 
 
 Although these suggestions did not prevent the signing a\\ 
 Malta at the peace k of Amiens, they doubtless were not without effect, 
 when the ambition of Buonaparte had given a full and final answer to the 
 grand question can we remain at peace with France ? I have likewise 
 to believe that Sir Alexander Ball, baffled, by exposing, an in- 
 sidious proposal of the French government, during the negotiations that 
 preceded the recommencement of the war that the fortifications of 
 <hould be entirely dismantled, and the island left to its inhabit- 
 ants. Without dwelling on the obvious inhumanity and flagitious 
 injustice of exposing the Maltese to certain pillage and slavery from 
 their old and inveterate enemies, the Moore, he showed that the plan 
 would promote the interests of Buonaparte even more than his actual 
 possession of the island, which France had no possible interest in de- 
 si rin:i, except as the means of keeping it out of the hands of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 But Sir Alexander Ball is no more. The writer still clings to the 
 hope that he may yet be able to record his good deeds more fully and 
 regularly ; that then, with a sense of comfort, not without a subdued 
 exultation, he may raise heavenward from his honoured tomb the 
 glistening eye of an humble, but ever grateful Friend.
 
 387 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 PROSPECTUS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FRIEND, 
 
 A WEEKLY ESSAY, BY S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 [Extracted from a Letter to a Correspondent.] 
 
 IT is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of 
 my life in acquiring or endeavouring to acquire useful knowledge by 
 study, reflection, observation, and by cultivating the society of my 
 superiors in intellect, both at home and in foreign countries. You know, 
 too, that at different periods of my life I have not only planned, but 
 collected the materials, for many works on various and important sub- 
 jects ; so many, indeed, that the number of my unrealized schemes, 
 and the mass of my miscellaneous fragments, have often furnished my 
 friends with a subject of raillery, and sometimes of regret and reproof. 
 Waiving the mention of all private and accidental hindrances, I am in- 
 clined to believe that this want of perseverance has been produced, in 
 the main, by an over-activity of thought, modified by a constitutional 
 indolence, which made it more pleasant to me to continue acquiring, 
 than to reduce what I had acquired to a regular form. Add too, that 
 almost daily throwing off my notices or reflections in desultory frag- 
 ments, I was still tempted onward by an increasing sense of the imper- 
 fection of my knowledge, and by the conviction that, in order fully to 
 comprehend and develope any one subject, it was necessary that I should 
 make myself master of some other.; which again as regularly involved a 
 third, and so on, with an ever-widening horizon. Yet one habit, formed 
 during long absences from those with whom I could converse with full 
 sympathy, has been of advantage to me that of daily noting down, in 
 my memorandum or common-place book, both incidents and observa- 
 tions ; whatever had occurred to me from without, and all the flux and 
 reflux of my mind within itself. The number of these notices, and their 
 tendency, miscellaneous as they were, to one common end, u quid sumus 
 et quid futuri gignimur," " what we are, and what we are born to 
 
 2 B
 
 388 The Friend. 
 
 become ;" and thus, from the end of our being, to deduce its proper 
 objects, first encouraged me to undertake the Weekly Essay, of which 
 you will consider this letter as the Prospectus. 
 
 Xot only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the 
 nature of my own mind, both in its strength and in its 'weakness ; but 
 conscious that, in upholding some principles both of taste and philo- 
 sophy, adopted by the great men of Europe from the middle of the 
 fifteenth till towards the close of the seventeenth century, I must run 
 counter to the prejudices of many of my readers (for old faith is often 
 modern heresy"), I perceived too, in a periodical essay, the most likely 
 means of winning, instead of forcing my way. Supposing truth on my 
 side, the shock of the first day might be so far lessened by reflections of 
 the succeeding days, as to procure for my next week's Essay a less hos- 
 tile reception than it would have met with, had it been only the next 
 chapter of a present volume. I hoped to disarm the mind of those 
 feelings which preclude conviction by contempt, and, as it were, fling 
 the door in the face of reasoning by a presumption of its absurdity. A 
 motive, too, for honourable ambition was supplied by the fact that every 
 periodical paper of the kind now attempted, which had been conducted 
 with zeal and ability, was not only well received at the time, but has 
 become permanently, and in the best sense of the word, popular. By 
 honourable ambition I mean the strong desire to be useful, aided by the 
 wish to be generally acknowledged to have been so. As I feel myself 
 actuated in no ordinary degree by this desire, so the hope of realizing 
 it appears less and less presumptuous to me, since I have received from 
 men of highest rank and established character in the Republic of 
 Letters, not only strong encouragements as to my own fitness for the 
 undertaking, but likewise promises of support from their own stores. 
 
 The object of "The Friend," briefly and generally expressed, is to 
 uphold those truths and those merits, which are founded in the nobler 
 and permanent parts of our nature, against the caprices of fashion, and 
 such pleasures as either depend on transitory and accidental causes, or 
 are pursued from less worthy impulses. The chief subjects of my own 
 Essays will be : 
 
 The true and sole -ground of morality, or virtue, as distinguished from 
 prudence. 
 
 The origin and growth of moral impulses, as distinguished from ex- 
 ternal and immediate motives. 
 
 The necessary dependence of taste on moral impulses and habits ; 
 and the nature of taste (relatively to judgment in general and to genius) 
 defined, illustrated, and applied. Under this head I comprise the sub- 
 stance of the lectures given, and intended to have been given, at the 
 Royal Institution, on the distinguished English poets, in illustration of 
 the general principles of poetry ; together with suggestions concerning
 
 Appendix. 389 
 
 the affinity of the Fine Arts to each other, and the principles common 
 to them all architecture, gardening, dress, music, painting, poetry. 
 
 The opening out of new objects of just admiration in our own 
 language ; and information of the present state and past history of 
 Swedish, Danish, German, and Italian literature (to which, but as sup- 
 plied by a friend, I may add the Spanish, Portuguese, and French), as 
 far as the same has not been already given to English readers, or is not 
 to be found in common French authors. 
 
 Characters' met with in real life. Anecdotes and results of my own 
 life and travels, &c., &c., as far as they are illustrative of general moral 
 laws, and have no immediate bearing on personal or immediate politics. 
 
 Education in its widest sense, private and national. 
 
 Sources ,of consolation to the afflicted in misfortune, or disease, or 
 dejection of mind, from the exertion and right application of the reason, 
 the imagination, and the moral sense ; and new sources of enjoyment 
 opened out, or an attempt (as an illustrious friend once expressed the 
 thought to me,) to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy 
 more happy. In the words " dejection of mind," I refer particularly to 
 doubt or disbelief of the moral government of the world, and the grounds 
 and arguments for the religious hopes of human nature. 
 
 Orders for " The Friend " received by the publisher, J. Brown, Pen- 
 nth ; by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Eees, and Orme, Paternoster Row ; 
 by Clement, bookseller, opposite St. Clement's, Strand ; London. 
 
 Orders likewise, and all communications, to be addressed to S. T. 
 Coleridge, Grasmere, Kendal. 
 
 [From " The Friend," No. 1, Thursday, June 1, 1809.] 
 
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