LECTURES 
 
 .DLMIKSSEI) CKIEHV XI 
 
 THE WORKING CLASSES, 
 
 W. J. FOX. 
 
 PUBLISHED FROM THE REPORTER'S NOTES. 
 
 VOLUME III. 
 
 LONDOIs : 
 CHARLES FOX, 07 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
 M.IJCCC.XLVI.
 
 >,■■: ■■: • Y 
 
 .UMViwiSITY • :r : C MFOKMA 
 
 SAJN'TA UAiCiJAKA 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURES PAGE 
 
 I. On Moral Power and Money-Power 1 
 
 II. On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Acquittals of Hardy, 
 
 Tooke, Thelwall. and others, in 1 794- 18 
 
 III. On the Life and Character of Martin Luther .... .'!G 
 
 IV. The Genius and Poetry of Campbell 50 
 
 V. Mental Slavery 65 
 
 VI. Mental Freedom 78 
 
 VII. VIII. On a Cheap Edition of Bacon's Essays .... 97 
 
 IX. The Influence of the Vicissitude of the Seasons on the 
 
 Mental and Moral Constitution 129 
 
 X. Robert Burns the first Poet of the Foor 142 
 
 XI. " Young England " 159 
 
 XII. XIII. On the Moral Principles implied in "the People's 
 
 Charter," and the Application of those Principles to 
 
 the Concerns of Daily Life 17o 
 
 XIV. Anniversary of the Storming of the Bastile . . . . . 213 
 
 XV. On the Battle of Waterloo 231 
 
 XVI. The Injurious Influence of Excessive Labour .... 217 
 
 XVII. The Chief End of Human Life, and the Hindrances to 
 
 its Attainment in the Present State of Society . . . 26(- 
 
 XVIII. XIX. XX An Inquiry into the History of Opinion 
 
 concerning Death, and the Mental State induced by 
 
 its Approach 281
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 ON" MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. 
 
 [DELIVERED OCT. 27, 1844, THE evening before the open- 
 ing OF THE new royal exchange.] 
 
 The Persians of old believed in two deities, — one the 
 source of light and life, the other of death and darkness. 
 To the first they referred whatever makes our existence 
 joyous and hopeful, to the second every thing which ren- 
 ders it calamitous and desponding. Such was their mode 
 of interpreting the contrasts and conflicts which present 
 themselves to our contemplation in the material world, 
 which we find also in the concerns of human intelligence 
 and of social arrangement. That interpretation is obsolete; 
 but still the phenomenon continues, and presses for ex- 
 planation. Though the faith of the Persians be outworn 
 and gone, yet even now when the religious contemplatist 
 looks up to heaven, regards the blue sky which bends over 
 all ; sees the sun in his strength, the moon in her loveli- 
 ness, the stars in their harmonious constellations, and the 
 clouds ; ' dropping fatness" on the earth, — his imagination 
 realises the descending figure of a benignant God. And 
 when he is oppressed by the sense of calamity, bewildered 
 by the mass of physical and moral evil, then to his ap- 
 palled fancy, from the abyss of darkness and corruption, 
 — from the pit whose smoke is pestilential, — from sul- 
 phureous lakes and palpable gloom, — from the unfathomed 
 depths of creation, — there rises the fearful form of a devil. 
 Throughout the whole range of society we find anta- 
 gonistic principles in ceaseless conflict; good and evil in 
 their various shapes are intermingled, and their collision 
 never ceases. We give them different names ; but still 
 there are the same essential principles: the one appeals to 
 our hopes, the other to our fears ; the one to love, the 
 other to aversion. In our manners, relics of barbarism still 
 present a contrast with the growing gentleness and urba- 
 
 B
 
 2 LECTURE I. 
 
 nit} 7 of civilisation. In politic?, despotism and freedom 
 maintain a strife, which has lasted since governments were 
 first formed, and will continue the struggle until they are 
 all reformed. In our speculations there are some who in- 
 sist upon deference to authority ; others, again, claim the 
 rights of reason ; and this conflict is carried on more or 
 less in every mind. There is ever to be seen arrayed 
 against each other free principle and tyrannical authority; 
 a generous kindness and the fiercest selfishness. There is 
 a perpetual disposition either to look around with gladness 
 and hopefulness, or to sink into gloom and despondency. 
 
 In this variety of conflicts and contrasts, not one oi the 
 least important is that which is exhibited to us in the pre- 
 sent condition and state of the struggle between the money 
 and moral powers. Now, when I speak of this as a con- 
 flict between a vast evil and a great good, — for cer- 
 tainly that is an evil which elevates the purse above the 
 mind; the mere material coinage above the fine gold of 
 the intellect ; external possession over internal worth ; ami 
 that also must be a good which levels all such dross before 
 the majesty of human nature; which sees in thought, feel- 
 ing, character, worth, and usefulness, the highest claim to 
 reverence, — yet, nevertheless, I by no means intend to 
 speak of the money-power as altogether evil. Our moral- 
 ists often talk, conventionally, the language of a bygone 
 state of things, or without considering the full import oi' 
 their words, in their declamations against money. If it be 
 " the root of all evil," it is also the germ of much good. 
 If it leads into temptation, it may also raise beyond the 
 reach of seduction to crime. If there be much of a moral 
 tendency in poverty, there is likewise a great, deal which 
 has a corrupting influence; and the pleasantest and best 
 mode of guarding against this danger is, by a diminution 
 of poverty and an increase of good. With all the exhorta- 
 tions winch have been given, the sermons preached, and 
 tracts circulated, I doubt whether any one individual has 
 ever been really and heartily convinced thereby thai it is 
 absolutely a better thing for him to have' an empty pocket 
 than a full purse. In fact, those who deliver such lessons 
 by no means shew practically that they consider them ap- 
 plicable to their own concerns. After putting forth the 
 most eloquent exhortations to the poor to be content in 
 the station in which it has pleased Providence to place
 
 OX MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. .'$ 
 
 them, they shew a great anxiety that Providence should 
 please to place themselves in more elevated stations. I 
 take it to be a far wholesomer admonition, to make the 
 best of your condition, be it ever such a bad one; to ne- 
 glect no honest or honourable means for advancing that 
 condition, and raising yourselves above the reach either 
 of want, poverty, or any limitation which your circum- 
 stances enable you to surmount. Whatever be the mis- 
 chief produced by money, it is still that which keeps the 
 wolf from the door, turns back famine, satisfies hungry 
 families with food ; and it is a thing which if a man be en- 
 abled to lay-by a little store of, he knows that when the 
 first stroke of sickness or anv casualty may befal him, it 
 will not hurl him down into the gulf of pauperism. Jt is 
 by money that in the days of his strength he prepares for 
 himself a security in the time of declining vigour and 
 old age. It is by its aid that he realises the means of 
 mental good as well as those of physical support, and calls 
 up around him the wisdom of past times, or the eloquence 
 and science of the present day. By this he is enabled to 
 serve even the greatest interests which have engaged his 
 attention and excited his zeal, in these -ways, and thus 
 disposed of by the individual possessor, money is not the 
 antagonist of the moral power, but becomes itself a moral 
 power, ami the means of acquiring moral good, and dif- 
 fusing it. abroad in the world through all the different 
 classes of society. 
 
 But there are various conditions in which the money 
 and the moral power come into direct collision. Such are 
 those cases in which wealth exercises an influence apart 
 from any consideration of principle, knowledge, character, 
 fitness, and public utility. These are of continual occur- 
 rence in the present arrangements of society. How often, 
 for instance, docs money, without regard to any other qua- 
 lity whatever, decide tin; conferment of legislative power 
 and honours! In the history of elections, how often does 
 it happen that the decision remains in the hands of some 
 small number of unprincipled persons: the question whe- 
 ther the candidate be wise or foolish, eloquent or a dumb 
 dog that never barks — whether his mind be stored with 
 principles that can render a nation great, free, and glori- 
 ous, or he care nothing for country or aught but his own 
 interests — this is thrown altogether on one side : the dis-
 
 4 LECTURE I. 
 
 tribution of so much hard cash in the shape of election- 
 bribes makes the man a member of parliament, confers 
 upon him legislative authority, and causes him to be en- 
 trusted with a share in the decision of questions which 
 affect the happiness of millions of the living, as well as the 
 prosperity of millions upon millions yet unborn. Even with- 
 out the direct intervention of bribery, how wide is the influ- 
 ence exercised by the money-power upon political arrange- 
 ments ! The mere formation of an active staff of agents and 
 arrangements for registration-contests in the courts from 
 year to year, produce, as every body knows, results almost in 
 direct proportion to the amount of money expended there- 
 upon. In short, the whole matter might be simplified in a 
 way which was once seriously proposed as a scheme of 
 parliamentary reform: the projector suggesting that the 
 two candidates should appear before the returning-ofticer ; 
 that the friends of each candidate should state how much 
 money they intended to back, their man with ; that they 
 should be allowed to bid one against the other until one 
 should give in; that the highest bidder should then be re- 
 turned as the member, and the purchase-money be dis- 
 tributed amongst the charities of the city, town, or county. 
 The result, said the inventor of the plan, would be pre- 
 cisely the same as now, with the exception that all the de- 
 moralisation and bribery would be saved to the world, and 
 somebody or other would be benefited by such a mode of 
 distributing the cost of the seat. 
 
 This phrase, " money-power," was, I believe, a coinage 
 of the Times newspaper, some few years ago, when they 
 wished to cast odium upon Mr. Hume, for the way in 
 which he was then contesting the county of Middlesex. 
 Because that gentleman refused to expend a large sum in 
 the employment of agents, they tried to brand him for 
 endeavouring to make popularity do the work of money- 
 power, the employment of which they represented as es- 
 sential in English elections. Necessary it unhappily is, as 
 our elections are at present conducted. There is no work 
 which the moral power can achieve, in opposition to the 
 money-power, more needed than that of making elections 
 the simple and uncostly choice of the fittest man to assert 
 the people's rights and promote the nation's interests. 
 
 The money-power not only enacts, but administers the 
 laws. A certain amount of property, or a station in society
 
 O.V MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. 5 
 
 ■which wealth confers, places a man upon the bench of jus- 
 tice. And how do the individuals selected upon this prin- 
 ciple deal out that justice ? We see them in their magis- 
 terial capacity continually acting as the guardians of the 
 money-power to which they owe their own elevation, to 
 an extent which causes people to recoil with disgust, and 
 would appear ridiculous, were it not wicked and demoral- 
 ising. A case was reported the other day of a poor boy, 
 for knocking down three walnuts from a tree which over- 
 hung a lane, sent to jail for fourteen days accompanied by 
 hard labour; expiating, not the amount of his theft, but 
 his sin, rebellion, and blasphemy against the deity of the 
 money-power. There was another case where a poor girl 
 drew a turnip or two from a field through which she was 
 passing; she was fined sixpence, and costs three shillings 
 and sixpence : her poor brother took the shoes from off his 
 feet, and sold them to pay the money for his sister's re- 
 lease. The offence of the girl was, a stepping over the 
 boundary which the divinity of Mammon had fixed, visit- 
 ing with an unpitying severity all who dare to trespass on its 
 ground. A man only looking into a snare in which there 
 was not a hare, gets a heavy punishment ; while another 
 poor fellow, whose family were in a state of starvation, and 
 who gave them some mutton irregularly obtained, was the 
 other day sentenced to ten years' transportation. This was 
 an administration not of justice but injustice, and is one of 
 the results of investing men with magisterial authority, of 
 assuming that there is wisdom and discretion in their heads 
 and hearts, because there is cash in their pockets ; of mak- 
 ing the great object for which they sit upon what is called 
 the bench of justice, not the preservation of the interests 
 of the poor, but the maintenance of what are deemed, 
 and that in a most extensive sense, the rights of pro- 
 perty. 
 
 Nor is it in matters of legislation and administration 
 alone that we find this power exercising its demoralising 
 influence. Money is mighty even in the provinces of 
 opinion and literature. The pleadings to the public; mind 
 which are kept up by newspapers, look at these, and mark 
 the difference which exists in tone and sentiment between 
 those which are published daily and such as appear but 
 once a Meek. Why is this ? Dues writing every day or 
 only once a week make a difference in a man's turn of
 
 6 LECTURE I. 
 
 thought? Does what is true in the one case become false 
 in the other ? Has frequency of publication anything to 
 do with his intellectual light or power of persuasion ? Is 
 the one writer less zealous than the other, and less de- 
 sirous of propagating his opinions? Nothing of the kind ; 
 but one set of papers are got up with reference to one 
 portion, the other for another portion, of the community, 
 and the money which distinguishes those classes in society 
 becomes the line of demarcation of opinions which should 
 be decided by truth alone. Were you to raise the price of 
 a newspaper to 2s., even the daily papers would not be so 
 democratical as they are now. There would be an altera- 
 tion of tone corresponding to the change of price : there 
 would be a nearer approach to the peculiar opinions of 
 those who enjoy their broad acres and their ample hoards 
 than there now is. In like manner, if their price diminished, 
 you would perceive an extension of sympathy with the 
 greater class of readers, who would thereby have it in 
 their power to purchase their journals, verifying the asser- 
 tion which was made a few years ago — I think by Lord 
 Brougham — that of all the taxation upon newspapers, the 
 last penny was the worst penny of all. This was stated 
 before the alteration of the law : the Ministry to which he 
 belonged struck off the other pence, but not the last, leav- 
 ing thereby a barrier which I trust in future times the 
 moral power will surmount, preventing, as the remaining 
 duty does, the wider diffusion of knowledge and opinion, 
 which should ever be like the atmosphere we breathe, a 
 blessing readily accessible to the poorest of all, — to those 
 who are compelled to join together in order to get their 
 penny paper, and their share of information and criticism 
 upon the current events of the day, in which they are as 
 deeply interested as are the wealthy and great. 
 
 This system has a most injurious influence upon indi- 
 vidual character. Take for example a young man of talent 
 becoming connected with the press, in one of our great 
 establishments— made so by the very amount, of capital 
 which is invested in them, and which defies competition : 
 had the mind of our supposed noviciate been properly 
 matured, it might have become stored with rich, lofty, 
 and generous thought, and his powers of communication 
 have enabled him to be the disseminator of just principles 
 in the minds of millions. Tie imagines that in the proles-
 
 ON .MORAL POWER AND MOXEY-I'OWER. ~ 
 
 sion he has chosen, a path is opened to him to earn an 
 honourable livelihood, and at the same time retain his own 
 integrity, truthfulness, and simplicity of feeling. He feels 
 his way; and commences perhaps by reporting, — a voca- 
 tion in which there ought to be nothing but the strictest 
 impartiality ; but he soon discovers, by a hint from head- 
 quarters, that he should magnify the numbers at meetings 
 of one description, and diminish them at those of the op- 
 posite class: that in his reports of the speeches and de- 
 bates, if lie does not exactly follow the example of Dr. 
 Johnson, and make a point of always " giving the Whig 
 dogs the worst of it," or the Tory dogs cither, as the case 
 may be, he may, at least, exercise some discretion in his 
 representation of the way in which the eloquence upon 
 the one side is opposed to that upon the other. If he can 
 at the outset of Ids career but reconcile his mind to this 
 sacrifice of principle, he will next find the system affecting 
 him in what he writes as matter of opinion. There are 
 some points which he must reserve; certain extremes or 
 forms of opinion of which he should beware, and he learns 
 to tamper, for a while only, as he fancies, with this or that 
 subject. This prostitution of his mental powers goes sadly 
 against his feelings at the commencement; he feels that he 
 is compromising himself; but still it is not much; it is a 
 prudent course for him to take under his present circum- 
 stances ; and so, with some qualms of conscience, he gets 
 thus far. Then comes a harder trial. His proprietor finds 
 it convenient to wheel round in his politics, and take up a 
 :ij\v position upon great national questions; our youth is 
 then called upon cither to renounce his only means of sub- 
 sistence for the time, or to fall in with this shameful move- 
 ment, obey orders, and : - right about face" with the rest. 
 With a sorer struggle than before, perhaps, he makes up 
 Ids mind to this point in the scale of moral degradation. 
 In a short time he acquires a greater readiness in writing 
 that winch he does not believe: he finds that his pen, like 
 a machine, will work as well on the wrong side as on the 
 right ; he shakes his head, and, it may lie, .--ays to a com- 
 radc, as one editor is reported to have, observed to another 
 under similar circumstances, •• Brother, brother, wo shall 
 write tins so often that at last we shall come to believe it 
 ourselves." Working in this manner, his mind loses its 
 ^ uness of perception, ami at last he becomes absolutely
 
 8 LECTURE I. 
 
 incapable of judging by evidence. His understanding is 
 impervious to the light; it can only do the voluntary work 
 of a sophist : truth and falsehood are no longer opposed 
 realities to him. At last he sinks into the unprincipled 
 hireling — the Swiss of the press, ready to do any dirty 
 work ; to embody any slander, to stab even the most hon- 
 ourable opponent, provided he obtains his reward ; and 
 thus exhibits, in the most glaring colours, the last direful 
 victory of the money over the moral power in human cha- 
 racter. 
 
 All these evils are maintained by that regard which a 
 long course of years has engrafted on our national charac- 
 ter for the mere possession of wealth. From our conven- 
 tional habits, money seems to us to add something to the 
 nature of a man, and render him something more than a 
 man. People are even tenacious of its dignity for others 
 as well as themselves. It becomes a kind of abstract prin- 
 ciple — a sort of religion. An odd circumstance happened in 
 an omnibus some two or three years ago. A conversation 
 arose, and one person contradicted the statement of an- 
 other: they had met by chance in the vehicle, and there 
 seemed no reason why either party should have thought 
 any more of the matter : however, after the gentleman who 
 was contradicted had left the omnibus, a person who was 
 present said to the contradicter, " Do you know, sir, what 
 you have done, and who you were speaking to ?" " No," 
 replied the other ; " but I know that what he said was 
 wrong." " But that man is not be contradicted in such a 
 manner." " Why not, if he states the thing erroneously ?" 
 " Why not, sir ! Why, that man has made 50,000/. !" 
 The contradicter was not convinced by this argument; the 
 disputants grew irritated, and, as the story was told in the 
 newspapers of the day, it came at last to a fair knock-down 
 battle ; out of pure abstract zeal on the part of the one 
 individual to uphold the reverence due to the man who 
 had made 50,000/., and who was, therefore, not to be con- 
 tradicted in any omnibus whatever. 
 
 This money-power shews itself in other forms ; in the 
 regard which throws into the shade what would otherwise 
 be represented as of paramount consideration. In a pam- 
 phlet upon Church-Reform, published by a clergyman, a 
 matter-of-fact illustration is given of the different manner 
 in which things are looked at with reference to this world
 
 ON MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. V 
 
 and that to come. In a country parish there resided a 
 lawyer who had rendered himself very obnoxious to his 
 neighbours, both on account of his opinions and his con- 
 duct. In religion he was an unbeliever ; and as to his 
 moral conduct, he had been convicted of dishonesty. This 
 unhappy person was taken ill, and his life was given over. 
 The clergyman of the parish, in the exercise of the bene- 
 volent functions of his office, visited the sick man, entered 
 into conversation with him, and made a favourable im- 
 pression upon his mind. This circumstance was very much 
 talked of in the locality, and all the good people were re- 
 joiced at the success of the minister, who had actually con- 
 verted the infidel lawyer, and made him a pious and good 
 character. The sacrament was administered to the ap- 
 parently dying man ; his dismission to heaven seemed as 
 perfectly secure as though St. Peter had already applied 
 his keys to the gates of Paradise : when the disease sud- 
 denly took a turn ; the man recovered ; and having been 
 so warmly hailed into the fellowship of the saints, and so 
 certified of his salvation by the vicar of the parish, he made 
 application to that reverend gentleman to be employed as 
 his agent in the collection of tithes and other matters, that 
 office having fallen vacant. The good vicar, however, 
 who had asserted that the penitent lawyer was safe for 
 glory, thought it a very different matter when he applied 
 to have charge of his temporalities : he lifted up his eyes 
 in amazement at the impudence of a man who, having been 
 convicted of dishonesty, should think of being entrusted 
 with the collection of church-property. Such is the money- 
 power in matters of religion. 
 
 By the moral power, I mean the influence of thought, 
 truth, zeal, generous feeling, and devotion to whatever 
 cause we believe to be right and good. It is the power 
 by which truth realises itself in the mind, so as to become 
 a portion of our very being: by which it lays hold of the 
 imagination, fills it with glorious pictures, and is seen as 
 an aetive principle stimulating to all appropriate exertion; 
 a power by which that truth goes from mind to mind and 
 heart to heart, throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land, until at last it is proclaimed in a voice so strong, that 
 even the money-power, sordid interests, ancient pre.-tige, 
 and long-confirmed dignities, give way before it; and once 
 in an aire or so the right is enshrined in triumph. Then 
 n 2
 
 10 LECTURE I. 
 
 corruption again docs its work, until the extent of oppres- 
 sion brings on another reaction and a fresh reformation. 
 
 Oh, how much is done when truth thus works ! What 
 was the condition of the question of African slavery some 
 sixty years ago in this country ? Almost entirely unre- 
 garded. Here and there a philanthropist made a senti- 
 ment, and a poet wrote a verse, upon it; but it touched 
 nobody; there was no response; in the public mind. There 
 was a young man at that time in one of the universities, 
 who was called upon to produce an essay, and his theme 
 — selected originally perhaps as a mere play for the intel- 
 lect, or strife for college-honours — was African slavery. 
 He read up for his task ; but with other results than those 
 originally anticipated. As one fearful fact after another 
 was opened to his mind— as the extent of the wretchedness 
 and horror by which that slave-trade was characterised ap- 
 peared before him with all their appalling imagery — his 
 course of study became a state of suffering, and presented 
 to his imagination ghastly pictures, which followed him 
 wherever he went. His very dreams were disturbed ; he 
 could not avoid the thought, which haunted him perpe- 
 tually, and in whatever occupation lie engaged. At length 
 he became completely fevered by incessant contemplation 
 of the fearful subject. He went upon a journey ; still 
 the soul-harrowing circumstances connected with African 
 slavery were present before him. One day in the course 
 of his ride, so great was his mental agony, that lie slipped 
 off' his horse, and threw himself under an old and spreading 
 tree which stood by the road-side, and there he indulged 
 the sympathies and agonies which arose within him, and 
 reviewed all the horrors of which he had been reading. 
 This mental paroxysm gradually subsided in his mind, and 
 took the form of a fixed determination that the dreadful 
 system of African slavery should not last. In the strength 
 of that resolution he arose; and though years elapsed, and 
 the object was not attained until there had been debates in 
 parliament, meetings of societies, collections of information, 
 distributions of tracts, and a long succession of exertions 
 made — yet notwithstanding all, in that one moment when 
 Thomas Clarkson sprang from the ground, remounted his 
 horse, and rode back to Cambridge with that resolution in 
 his soul, at that very instant, by the moral power of his 
 determination, (he slave-trade was abolished. The way is
 
 ON" .MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. 11 
 
 open for similar achievements by like-minded men. It 
 was truly and grandly said during the French revolution- 
 ary times, " for a nation to be free it is sufficient that she 
 wills it." There are truths which when announced can 
 never be thrown back into darkness, obscurity, or utter 
 indifference ; give them utterance, let them spread through 
 the world, and they will become a portion of the intellec- 
 tual atmosphere of nations, and give tone and temper to 
 rising minds. Though long periods may elapse, bearing as 
 great a proportion to the age of the nation, as did that 
 interval to the life of Clarkson, yet at last their time of 
 victory shall come, and humanity triumph over all inferior 
 powers and principles. 
 
 I have already intimated that there are circumstances 
 in which the money becomes a moral power. In the 
 changing things of life we cannot mark out well-defined 
 and distinct existence as we can when we are classifying 
 minerals or animals according to their ranks in the scale of 
 creation. The money-power doing evil, being in some 
 particulars the opposite to the moral power, ha-; yet been 
 a moral power in others; has done; its work, and prepared 
 the wa.v lor its most extensive triumphs. How many of 
 the measures which have ameliorated the political condition 
 of the people of this country have been gained simply as 
 money-questions ! How often has it happened, when an 
 extension of the power of the representatives of the people 
 has been wrested from the crown or aristocracy, that the 
 contest has turned simply upon a point of taxation ! What 
 was it that gave the first heavy blow to the old feudal 
 domination, that provided a shelter for the serfs of the 
 barons, and received them in towns, which became their 
 cities of refuge ? What was it that raised another agency, 
 which met and swept away from the country those old 
 degrading cu>toms, tome of which were so base that they 
 can scarcely be described in our times, or consistently with 
 the delicacy of modern ears? What was all this but the 
 monev-power doing its work of destroying evil, and pre- 
 paring the way for that moral power which shall succeed 
 it. ami which will lead the world on, until not for posses- 
 sions but worth, not for his trappings but for himself, shall 
 man be respected — all laws be framed in the spirit of justice 
 ami benevolence, and the vision of the Millennium which 
 is anticipated bv religionists, be realised, or that condition
 
 12 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 of society which philosophers have depicted under the name 
 of Utopia. 
 
 Most of the great questions which are now mooted may, 
 at least in one view of them, be regarded as points in con- 
 flict between the moral and money powers. This is beyond 
 all doubt the case in the United States of America with 
 ref rence to the slavery-question. There is, in the minds 
 of a large portion of the population of that country, a 
 principle of earnestness leading them to protest against 
 that foul abuse of powc, shewing its iniquity and de- 
 nouncing its danger. There is another set of persons, 
 saying, " Yes, this is all very true and fine ; but if the 
 slaves be emancipated, what will be the worth of our 
 estates ?" There the two principles — the moral and money 
 powers — are face to face, and let them fight it out ; for we 
 cannot be doubtful as to the result. The question of the 
 suffrage is also a money-question. The existing law makes 
 the franchise a privilege dependent upon the possession of 
 a certain amount of property, the want of which entails the 
 disadvantages of exclusion from the rights of a freeman 
 and the benefits of citizenship. With the more honest op- 
 ponents of the universality of the suffrage, I have no doubt 
 that there is a fear as to the security of property and the 
 monied interest if every man had a vote in elections : they 
 do not like to trust the " no-monied interest." But what 
 an absurdity is this ! Where and when was it known that 
 confiscation has been the work of the people? When and 
 where has property been invaded, except by despots and 
 the aristocracy ? Perhaps I may be told of the repudiators 
 of Pennsylvania ; and I will freely give up the defence of 
 that case. But Pennsylvania is not the most democratic 
 of the United States : it is one of those in which the voter 
 must not only be a freeman, but have paid certain taxes 
 besides ; it is a portion of America in which a money- 
 qualification is requisite for the franchise, as well as the 
 possession of the attributes of a common nature. During 
 the period of the French revolutionary times property was 
 respected. The political creed even of Robespierre in- 
 cluded the sacredncss of property amongst the natural 
 and universal rights of mankind ; nor can there be any 
 surer safeguard for property than that all should feel that 
 as they would not have it invaded in their persons, there 
 was no motive in them to interpose or attempt a violation
 
 OX MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. 13 
 
 of it in other parties. Life, liberty, property, and the 
 means of happiness, have always been accounted the rights 
 of man ; they are dear to those who advocate the rights of 
 humanity, and the danger of their infringement is from 
 those who perpetrate the wrongs of man. 
 
 Education, again, is a question between the money and 
 moral powers. We often hear great lamentations that the 
 youth of this country are not universally educated. Why 
 not ? who prevents ? where are the Vandals among the 
 poorer classes who oppose education in itself, and say, 
 " Our children shall not be taught ; we know that a little 
 learning is a dangerous thing, and they shall not be brought 
 into peril from any such cause." There is no antagonism 
 of this description existing among the industrious classes 
 of England. There is not the slightest difficulty upon that 
 ground : as regards themselves, the real obstacle is their 
 poverty, which places the necessary expenditure out of 
 their reach. Neither is there any lack of instructors; 
 there are teachers willing and earnest to be employed ; 
 there is ample scope for their labours. There are funds in 
 the country abundantly sufficient for training the whole ju- 
 venile population of the kingdom, without respect to rank 
 or wealth, and for giving them, as they should have, the 
 best education for all, without regard to their future destiny 
 in life. Why, then, has not this been done? Because of 
 the interference of the money-power. The wealthy classes 
 are anxious to possess the influence which they imagine 
 will arise from being the leaders and directors of popular 
 education. They cannot tolerate the idea of leaving the 
 thing to work its own way, throwing it fairly afloat in the 
 world, and merely promoting education as education ; but 
 Dissent claims a portion of the power on the one side, and 
 the Church demands the whole of it on the other; and 
 thus by their quarrels and jarring they keep back the in- 
 struction of the people, and prolong the reign of ignorance 
 and darkness. The Factory Bill, which was introduced 
 into the House of Commons the session before last, by 
 Sir James Graham, professed to be an arrangement for 
 extending the education of children throughout the coun- 
 try. But what was its real object ? I believe that the 
 very purpose of that measure was, and certainly its effect 
 would have been, to cut up by the roots every educational 
 establishment whatever offensive to the clenrv. All these
 
 li LECTURE I. 
 
 would have been put down by the operation of that scheme, 
 and the child would have been left dependent upon the 
 ciergvman of the parish for a certificate, without which it 
 would not have been lawful to give the poor little one em- 
 ployment, and enable him to earn his livelihood. Is it for 
 individuals who promote such plans as this to talk of their 
 love of popular education, and their desire to see it ex- 
 tended ? Their only real object is to render education 
 subservient to the interests of certain wealthy and powerful 
 classes ; while that moral appreciation of its benefits, that 
 earnest wish that humanity, wherever it exists, however 
 lowly its condition, should have all the gladdening views 
 and lofty aspirations which a wholesome training and guid- 
 ance would bestow, is altogether thrown overboard, and 
 the whole thing is sacrificed to a thirst of power, and a 
 principle of sordidness. 
 
 Taxation is another question in which the morality is 
 all on the one side, and the money-power on the other. 
 The largest possessors of wealth have the greatest influence 
 in the enactment of laws by which the people are taxed. 
 Thus we find, us a consequence of this undue influence of 
 property, that the whole round of taxation falls most hardly 
 upon the poor, and those who have the least ability to pay. 
 It is not upon large properties, immense estates, and great 
 accumulations of wealth, that the burden of taxation ever 
 falls with a pressure which can be felt for an instant; but 
 the weight bears upon all the necessaries of life, taxing 
 every thing winch comes to the poor man, and making him 
 pay without immediately seeing the hand of the tax-col- 
 lector : but although the process is invisible to the eye of 
 the oppressed individual, it is in reality plundering him of 
 a large portion of his earnings. This is the result of legis- 
 lation being exclusively in the hands of the money-power, 
 by which the taxation is thus imposed; instead of being, 
 as it should be, in the possession of that moral power which 
 would make realised property pay for its security and per- 
 manence — a tax which would scarcely be i'elt by the indi- 
 vidual, and which is amply due from him as the amount 
 of his insurance in the great office of social safety. 
 
 The contest which is now going on between monopoly 
 and free trade is another struggle of the same description. 
 lb.', indeed, it may be said that there is the money-power 
 on both .-ides; and that accumulation is the object of those
 
 ON MORAL POWER AND MONEY- POWER. 15 
 
 who are striving for the one object as well as for those who 
 are righting against its attainment. But there lies some- 
 thing deeper in the conflict than a mere struggle between 
 two sections of the money-power : there is a most vital 
 elementary principle at stake — man's right to what he earns, 
 an.! to the greatest amount of good which his industry will 
 produce in the world's market — his liberty to buy, at the 
 lowest price that he can, any of the commodities of which 
 he stands in need. This is a question involving the natural 
 right of the people, and which is not the less infringed for 
 the interference being veiled under a variety of terms, and 
 practised indirectly. It is, in reality, the same thing as 
 though that portion of his earnings which is abstracted in 
 taxation, or by what is called " protection," was actually 
 taken from him by force, and applied against his own con- 
 sent to purposes in which he had no concern. 
 
 Among the recorded biographies of individuals, per- 
 haps the one who blended more largely than most of his 
 class, whose lives have been handed down to posterity, the 
 moral and money powers, was that worthy London mer- 
 chant. Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder — and that, too, in 
 groat part from his own resources — of the Royal Exchange. 
 He was a man whose wealth was most honourably ac- 
 quired, and nobly and usefully employed. He bequeathed 
 his own house for a college, in which he made provision 
 for seven professors, whose duty was to teach the arts and 
 sciences to the citizens of London. Although till within a 
 comparatively recent period that institution was converted 
 into a mere job — and a most shameful one — the views and 
 character of the founder are not the less to be appreciated 
 on that account. Sir Thomas Gresham reared the first 
 Exchange : it was but a poor thing compared with the 
 building by which it was afterwards replaced; as that is 
 now eclipsed by one still more splendid. There it stands 
 in its magnificence! It is a temple of the money-power; 
 and worship will be rendered within it at least, as devout 
 as that which is ottered in any cathedral in this kingdom. 
 What an interesting history might be written of the late 
 building, could we tract! the variety of transactions which 
 have there taken place! What fortunes made and lost: 
 what loans advanced — rarely for the cause of Iibertv or 
 iustiet , but for the purpose of enabling governments to rivet 
 the fttt( rs of slavery upon mankind, and to give power to
 
 16 LECTURE I. 
 
 invading despots to shed torrents of blood, that they might 
 crush human freedom. Wars have originated there by 
 which slaughter and desolation -were carried through the 
 world under the pretext of some paltry mercantile purpose, 
 but which have left their cost and consequences on record 
 as a warning to all future generations that war, at least 
 commercially, is a bad speculation, which ought never to 
 be entertained in the new Exchange. There a spirit has 
 been displayed by which wealth opposes aristocracy, and 
 yet perhaps more frequently that by which it manifests a 
 degrading servility to aristocracy, and licks the dust before 
 it. There, with perhaps more of meaning than was in- 
 tended, is the statue of Sir Thomas Gresham, looking 
 eastward, and placed not in a very conspicuous situation ; 
 while at the other and principal front stands in bronze the 
 figure of a man, certainly distinguished by no regard for 
 commerce, nor celebrated for any particular promotion of 
 its interests ; but who has gained a renown in fields of 
 warfare, and acquired a fame which should by this time 
 have become obsolete — there he stands with his back to- 
 wards the building, whose originators have placed him 
 there, looking westward to palaces and the Horseguards ; 
 looking westwards towards the setting sun of that aristo- 
 cratical policy of which he has put himself forward and 
 been recognised as the champion. 
 
 In this new temple may the money-god be -worshipped 
 with a purer homage, and rendered more friendly to human 
 rights and enjoyments than heretofore! Then, indeed, 
 we may regard with complacency that pageantry, the ex- 
 clusiveness of which seems to have called forth so much 
 anger in certain quarters of late, and produced so many 
 letters in the Times of yesterday, from Conservatives and 
 others, asking in a fierce and menacing tone whether 
 "John Bull is to stand" this exclusion; talking of having 
 recourse to violence, like that practised in other countries; 
 saying that there is no capital in Europe which would bear 
 such an outrage; and in short, going such lengths of vio- 
 lence — merely about seeing the black, bay, and cream- 
 coloured horses — as though the contest had actually re- 
 lated to the dearest rights of humanity in their most im- 
 portant extension of political freedom. Had such lan- 
 guage been employed with reference to Chartism instead 
 of a mere spectacle, it might have called forth the animad-
 
 ON MORAL POWER AND MONEY-POWER. 17 
 
 version of the attorney-general, while the votaries of the 
 money-power in opposition to the moral power would have 
 elevated their hands, turned up their eyes, and said, " See 
 what outrageous, incorrigible, violent, and blood-thirsty 
 people these are !" I repeat my trust that the agencies 
 and operations of commerce in their greater splendour 
 will, as intelligence advances, also draw closer their affi- 
 nities with human right and good; and render the money- 
 power, in this view of it, more and more a means of pro- 
 moting that end towards which society is advancing. This 
 power is a sort of transition ; a bridge from the aristocra- 
 tical tyranny of ancient days leading to the freedom and 
 enjoyment of future times. It is a transition power, and 
 while we wish ourselves well through the change, we can- 
 not but regard its progress with that satisfaction which 
 arises from counting, though it be but slowly, the succes- 
 sion of minutes which we know will at length bring the 
 day and the hour when humanity shall stand erect in its 
 own strength, having obtained possession of its long-with- 
 held heritage. 
 
 May the coming morrow, then, be fine ! Blow, ye 
 trumpets, and proclaim the royal title of the place ! Be 
 there, ye heralds, in all your pomp ! Aldermen and com- 
 mon councihnen — ye who swell the grandeur of the pro- 
 cession — manage your curvetting chargers as ye may! 
 Royalty, roll on in state to the inauguration of the noble 
 edifice, which, while it stands as a temple of the money- 
 power, Mill ultimately become the porch of a nobler tem- 
 ple, of human freedom and improvement. This new Ex- 
 change is but a large London tavern ; a half-way house, 
 where the Genius of civilisation stops a while to bait, and 
 then resumes the journey from the old mouldering castles 
 of feudal aristocracy towards the rising homes of demo- 
 cratic freedom.
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 OX THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ACQUITTALS OF 
 HARDY, TOOKE, THELWALL, AND OTHERS, IN 1794. 
 
 The state-trials of 1794 can scarcely be placed second in 
 importance to any similar event in the records of history; 
 not only because of those who had deserved well of their 
 country, and were rescued from the fangs of persecution, — 
 for events of that description had happened before, and 
 have occurred since ; and although wo may not hope that 
 this will be the invariable ride, yet we may trust that it 
 will take place again and again, whenever governments be- 
 come the persecutors, instead of the protectors, of their 
 subjects, — but the peculiar value of those trials was, that 
 not merely individuals, but a principle, was on trial. The 
 result baffled a monstrous innovation upon the administra- 
 tion of justice, and secured the triumph of law ; for its 
 supremacy and integrity were at stake in the proceedings 
 then instituted. 
 
 The peculiar feature of those trials was, an endeavour to 
 set up the doctrine of constructive and cumulative treason: 
 that is to say, of treason not established by any overt act, 
 proving the guilty intention ; but by adding together' a 
 number of demonstrations, not one of which, by itself, nor 
 therefore the whole combined, could make out the parti- 
 cular offence which the statute-law has described as alone 
 constituting the crime of treason. While the law has con- 
 nected with the offence of treason its most tremendous 
 penalties, and, in former times at least, the most ferocious 
 modes of punishment, there was also some care for the 
 safety of the subject, and a check upon the aberrations of 
 despotism, by a clearer definition of the crime than is, per- 
 haps, to be found in any other portion of our criminal 
 code. The offence of treason is that of " compassing and 
 imagining the death of the sovereign.'" It is not the mere 
 meeting to accomplish the reforms of institutions, or con- 
 templating a change in this or that department of the go- 
 vernment: nav, it bv no means follows that even an armed
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 19 
 
 attempt to bring about alterations in law or national institu- 
 tions would amount to this offence. As I stated before, it 
 is the compassing and imagining the death of the sovereign. 
 The endeavour of the government in the trials of 1791' was 
 to affix this crime upon several persons by inference from 
 a variety of acts, many of them of the most innocent de- 
 scription, and a number of others which, if proved to 
 have had a guilty principle attached to them, yet did not 
 constitute this species of offence ; but all were let in and 
 piled up together, and this unwarrantable inference was 
 associated with them in a manner which, had it been suc- 
 cessful, would have led lo the destruction of all clearness, 
 detiniteness, propriety, and certainty whatsoever in the ad- 
 ministration of the criminal code of England. The minis- 
 ters of the day who endeavoured to effect this tyrannical 
 purpose; the judges — or at all events the chief justice — 
 who aided them ; the legal officers who submitted to be- 
 come government-tools for the occasion; were all, in fact, 
 guilty of a conspiracy against the lav/ of the country. 
 They endeavoured to deprive the subjects of all the ad- 
 vantages which they previously possessed, arising from a 
 clear definition of the crime, and a rigid requirement of 
 evidence. This, if successful, would have opened the 
 flood-gates of a most sanguinary persecution, which would 
 soon have rolled itself triumphantly over the whole face of 
 the country. All who participated in this iniquitous con- 
 spiracy well deserved to have been themselves placed upon 
 their trials. Even the charge of the Lord Chief Justice 
 Eyre, in which he laboured with all Ins dexterity to shew 
 that treason might be made up of the accumulation of a 
 great variety of particulars — in which the compassing the 
 death of the king was endeavoured to he proved from the 
 act of meeting together to pass resolutions declaring the 
 corruption of parliament, and calling for its reform, — that 
 charge, which deservedly brought disgrace upon the judge; 
 at, the time, in the estimation of most thinking men, has 
 placed his memory on trial in the pages of history, and 
 brought an impeachment against him and his patrons 
 winch wii! draw down the verdict of posterity in terms of 
 tiie strongest condemnation, and the memory of all the 
 conspirators will be 1 branded as men who Mere not only 
 opposed to freedom and enemies of reform, but who ear- 
 ned their opposition and enmitv to the most disgraceful
 
 20 LECTURE II. 
 
 length, and expressed it in the most atrocious forms ; en- 
 deavouring to accomplish their purpose by the destruction 
 of all security in the integrity of a solemn law which they 
 were bound to uphold. 
 
 The very efforts which were made against Hardy and 
 his coadjutors at the commencement of the proceedings, 
 the huge packages of books and papers which were 
 brought into court, the extent of the discussion into which 
 they found it necessary to enter — all these circumstances 
 shewed the character of the proceedings, and proved that 
 the ministry had something very different in hand from a 
 plain accusation and proof, successful or unsuccessful, of 
 treason. It was a shrewd remark of the ex- chancellor 
 Thurlow (and adorned with his usual flowers of speech), 
 who, when he heard that the attorney-general had occu- 
 pied nine hours in his opening speech upon the trial of 
 
 Thomas Hardy, exclaimed, " Nine hours ! then by 
 
 there is no treason in the case." 
 
 Had the result of those trials been different ; had the 
 crime of constructive and cumulative treason been ad- 
 mitted, and the precedent established, what man in the 
 country who felt any desire for the improvement of his 
 fellow-creatures through the means of good political insti- 
 tutions would have been safe from persecutions even to 
 the death ? The same loose and absurd construction of 
 the law which would have served for the conviction of 
 Hardy, Tooke, Thelwall, Joyce, and their fellow-reformers, 
 would have sufficed to establish the charge of treason 
 against countless multitudes of our countrymen. It would 
 have brought within the fangs of the law, not merely the 
 70,000 members of the Corresponding Society, but every 
 individual who belonged to similar associations, banded 
 together for the most simple objects of a reformatory kind. 
 It would have entangled in the guilt of treason the innu- 
 merable multitudes who had attended at the meetings held 
 in London and various parts of the country. It would 
 have included in the same capacious net men unconnected 
 with any societies whatever ; but who, by some demonstra- 
 tion or other of their opinions and desires, would have been 
 deemed to have linked themselves with the great political 
 movement then going on. Nor is it possible to tell the 
 point at which the danger would have stopped, or who, 
 throughout the whole extent of the kingdom, would have
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 21 
 
 been safe. Assuredly, if the principle had been carried out 
 impartially, even the very authors of the plan might have 
 been caught by other parties in their own net; and the 
 guilt of treason have been brought home as clearly to Wil- 
 liam Pitt and the Duke of Richmond, as it ever could 
 have been against Hardy, Tooke, or Thelwall : for both 
 the nobleman and statesman were implicated (and this was 
 most ingeniously brought out by Home Tooke upon his 
 trial) in what was represented as an important portion 
 of the evidence of compassing the king's death, namely, 
 meetings by delegation. This was a great point urged at 
 the trial, that those who met by delegation, professing to 
 represent the people, set themselves up as the supreme 
 authority, thereby coming into collision with the consti- 
 tuted authorities, and in such collision the life of the sove- 
 reign would be imperilled ; as by what circumstance might 
 not the life of a sovereign, like that of any other person, 
 be put into danger, and become liable to the casualties of 
 our mortal condition ? This very offence of delegation, as 
 elicited from Pitt himself, after many failures of his me- 
 mory and endeavours to blink the question upon his ex- 
 amination by Home Tooke, had been committed some few 
 years before at a meeting held at the Thatched House Ta- 
 vern, and recorded in the public prints of the day as hav- 
 ing taken place on the 18th of May, 1782, consisting of 
 " divers members of parliament friendly to a constitutional 
 reform, and of members of several committees of counties 
 and cities, who passed the following resolutions, Sir Wil- 
 liam Plomer, lord mayor of London, being in the chair, 
 and the Duke of Richmond and the Hon. William Pitt, 
 &c, &c, being present : 
 
 " Resolved unanimously : — That the motion of the Hon. 
 William l'itt on the 7th instant, for the appointment of a com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons to inquire into the state of the 
 representation of the people of Great Britain in parliament, and 
 to report the same to the House, and also what steps it might be 
 proper in their opinion to take thereupon ; having been defeated 
 by a motion made for the order of the day, it has become indis- 
 pensably necessary that application should be made to parlia- 
 ment by petition from the collective body of the people in their 
 respective districts, requesting a substantial reformation of the 
 Commons House of Parliament. 
 
 " Resolved unanimously : — That this meeting, considering 
 that a general application by the collective body to the Commons
 
 22 LECTURE II. 
 
 House of Parliament cannot be made before the close of the pre- 
 sent session, is of opinion that the sense of the people should be 
 taken at such times as may be convenient during this summer, 
 in order to lay their several petitions before parliament early in 
 the next session ; when their proposition for a parliamentary re- 
 formation, without which neither the liberty of the nation can 
 be preserved, nor the permanence of a wise and virtuous admi- 
 nistration can be secured, may receive that ample and mature 
 discussion which so momentous a question demands." t 
 
 Thus had William Pitt committed himself to parlia- 
 mentary reform, and he and those with whom he then as- 
 sociated had agreed upon the means afterwards to be 
 adopted for bringing it about. I3y merely attending this 
 meeting he became involved, not merely in the guilt, if 
 there was any, of belonging to a great combined move- 
 ment for eii'ecting a change in parliamentary representa- 
 tion, but even to the special form by delegation from dis- 
 tricts, and by a reaction back again upon those districts, 
 which was placed foremost amongst the allegations against 
 the prisoners who in 1794 were tried for their lives. 
 
 But what was there which the officers of the Crown 
 were not disposed at that time to construe into treason ? 
 Why, they attempted in court to make a great effect by 
 reading a few lines which had been adopted by Thomas 
 Hardy as a motto to one of the publications of the Cor- 
 responding Society. This poetical effusion was brought 
 forward with pomp and emphasis, as if there were some- 
 thing in blank verse more deadly and treasonable thai; 
 could be conveyed by simple prose. The lines run thus: — 
 
 " Unblest by virtue, Government a league 
 Becomes, a circling junto of the great, 
 To rob by law ; religion mild a yoke 
 To tame the stooping soul, a trick of state, 
 To mark their rapine, and to share the prey. 
 "What are without it senates, save a farce 
 Of consultation deep and reason fixe, 
 While the determin'd voice and heart are sold .' 
 What boasted freedom, save a sounding name ? 
 And what election, but a market vile 
 Of slaves self-barter'd ?" 
 
 These very suspicious lines — this portion of the evidence 
 of high treason against Hardy and the Corresponding So- 
 ciety — were unfortunately discovered by the more extended 
 information in literature of the counsel on the opposite
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. CJ 
 
 side to be neither more nor less than a very innocent 
 quotation from Thomson's very inoffensive poem entitle; I 
 "Liberty;" a production which was actually written under 
 the roof of Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George 
 the Third, and when published was graced with his royal 
 name in the dedication by special permission. Had these 
 trials been successful, on such grounds, it might have been 
 suspected that treasonable principles had intermingled with 
 kingly blood, and that George the Third himself was not 
 free from tiie taint of that guilt which his ministers were 
 so laboriously endeavouring to fix upon some of his most 
 honest and honourable subjects. Where would have been 
 the safety of such men as Charles James Fox, who, when 
 the gagging bills were introduced, afterwards declared that 
 if the people obeyed them, it would be only as a matter of 
 prudence, and not as a dictate of conscience. If the cal- 
 culation of prudence took a particular turn, and led to dis- 
 obedience, another Chief Justice Eyre might, with a simi- 
 lar plausibility to that which he used upon the former 
 occasion, have shewn that by this resistance to these most 
 abominable laws the life of his most sacred majesty must 
 necessarily have been endangered. The Duke of Norfolk, 
 when he gave the toast of " the sovereignty of the people," 
 — for which act he was cashiered from his lord lieuten- 
 ancy, as for the same reason Charles Fox was struck out 
 by the king's own hand from the list of privy councillors, 
 — might, by this decision, in pledging the toast, have both 
 been considered as compassing or imagining the death of 
 the king. Of the extent to which the persecution would 
 have gone, there is evidence in the fact that, anticipating 
 a conviction instead of an acquittal, SO warrants for high 
 treason had been prepared, 53 of which were actually 
 signed and ready to be issued, and the arrests would in- 
 stantly have taken place had the trial terminated in a dif- 
 ferent manner. The 80 would soon have increased to 
 800; every man obnoxious to the ruling faction would 
 have been liable to he thrown into prison, and put at peril 
 of his life. Pitt would have been Azrael, the angel of 
 death, going through the length and breadth of the land, 
 marking his victims; blood would have flowed in torrents 
 at his bidding; and the' gibbet would have been the des- 
 tiny of some of the best, wisest, and most patriotic men 
 this countrv ever produced. These darts of death would
 
 24 LECTURE II. 
 
 have been hurled, not with the impartiality of nature or 
 the justice and wisdom of Providence, but at the bidding 
 of the foul and malignant demon of despotism. 
 
 Such was the issue then tried, whether treason was to 
 remain a crime as strictly defined by ancient statute, or 
 whether it was to be rendered so indefinite as to catch any- 
 one within its meshes whom the government desired to 
 crush. This most important question was decided by those 
 trials, which certainly occupied sufficient length of time to 
 give the decision the character of deliberation. The pro- 
 tracted term which the trial was made to occupy must be 
 reckoned amongst the endurances of the noble men whom 
 persecution had marked out for its victims. For nine days 
 had Thomas Hardy to appear at the bar of the Old Bailey; 
 his trial extended over a period of eleven days, for two 
 Sundays intervened ; it commenced on the 25th of October, 
 and terminated on the 5th of November. For all this time 
 was Hardy awaiting the decision which was -with him to 
 terminate in life or death. Surprised at his acquittal, the 
 government paused in its proceedings, stopped twelve days 
 to take breath, and then plucked up courage again for 
 another trial. Home Tooke then appeared before the 
 court and jury for six days; a second acquittal followed. 
 Again the ministry hesitated, and deliberated for ten days 
 more, as to whether they would proceed further. At length 
 they made a third effort and brought up Thelwall, keeping 
 him before the court from the 1st to the 6th of December, 
 when he also was acquitted. This last decision settled the 
 matter, and put an end to any further proceedings against 
 the other prisoners. Six weeks had, however, been occu- 
 pied ; during which time these honourable men — adjudged 
 innocent by the solemn verdict of three successive juries of 
 their countrymen — were forced to abide the agitation of a 
 trial under the tremendously depressing and awful circum- 
 stances of a decision which was to restore them again to 
 their position in society, or to consign them to the igno- 
 miny of a public execution. One word unwarily escaped 
 me in the sentence I have just uttered. I spoke of their 
 "agitation ;" but in fact there was no such effect produced 
 in the breast of any of the prisoners on their own account. 
 Never did men in the most trying situation exhibit a more 
 heroic demeanour. Throughout the whole proceedings they 
 were perfectly calm and collected. Thelwall relates that
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 2,5 
 
 ho clambered up his dungeon to a small pane of glass, by 
 which he could get a peep into the yard through which 
 Hardy passed. He watched him going morning alter 
 morning, and returning night after night, always with the 
 same composure; invariably ready — as each of them de- 
 clared they were — to serve their country either by their 
 deaths or with their lives. They all displayed a willingness 
 to brave any fate, worthy of the nobility of as great a cause 
 as man could be engaged in. One of them — Holcroft — 
 was not within the reach of the persecutors, but kept him- 
 self at large until the trials ; when, to shew that he had 
 merely been avoiding the inconvenience of a prison for the 
 intermediate time, he came forward, presented himself in 
 court, declared he was the Holcroft named in the indict- 
 ment, demanded to be put on his trial, and would perhaps 
 with the rest have forfeited his life for his patriotism, had 
 the proceedings taken the turn which the ministry expected 
 they would. 
 
 But although the government was baflied in the result 
 of those indictments, it had its swing of oppression through 
 the country to a tremendous extent. It did not obtain the 
 blood of the victims it had at first selected, but there were 
 lives which it succeeded in sacrificing. In one instance, 
 angry at its disappointment in destroying reformers, it 
 actually took the life of one of its own tools; and Watt, 
 the spy, was hung in Edinburgh for having made his 
 treason more evident than that of the dupes lie was en- 
 deavouring to seduce. This government-agent had missed 
 his mark ; he had not been a successful purveyor of blood 
 for the sanguinary masters by whom he was employed, and 
 therefore they punished him, not for actual treason, but for 
 failing in his profession, and bungling in his workmanship 
 as a spy. 
 
 What perilous times were those ! What man could 
 then speak the language of truth without personal danger? 
 For the most careless words, uttered in answer to questions 
 in streets or coffee-houses, men were committed to gaol, 
 tried, convicted, imprisoned, and fined. The instances 
 Mere multiplied. Holt, the printer, was condemned and 
 imprisoned- — I think for two years — -for literal! v repub- 
 lishing the Duke of Richmond's letter upon universal 
 suffrage. Gilbert Wakefield was sent to Dorchester jail, 
 the results thereby produced upon his constitution affect- 
 
 c
 
 26 LECTURE II. 
 
 ing the life of that great and learned man, merely for 
 asserting Christian principles in their bearing upon national 
 policy. Church-and-king mobs were let loose upon any 
 person who was called " disaffected," and the grossest out- 
 rages were perpetrated both upon person and property. 
 I myself remember, when a boy, witnessing some of the 
 havoc produced by acts of this description. Upon one 
 occasion, a regiment of dragoons was turned loose in 
 Norwich, to "gut," as it was called, the houses of some re- 
 formers ; that is, to throw all the furniture out of window, 
 to smash and demolish every thing, and to reduce the whole 
 dwelling to a mere wreck. Such acts of violence were, in 
 many places, perpetrated with perfect impunity. Then there 
 were the Scotch reformers. Who does not remember their 
 fate ? A sentence was passed upon them which ought never 
 to be forgotten, being in violation of all principles of law as 
 well as justice ; a sentence unknown to the ancient jurispru- 
 dence of that country; for a forced interpretation was put 
 upon the word " banishment," by which it was rendered sy- 
 nonymous with " transportation," and thus, instead of beimx 
 merely expelled from their own country, the strength of a 
 word so perverted from its original and legal meaning, en- 
 abled the tyrants to gratify their revenge against those 
 brave men by sending them to Botany Bay. The judge 
 very coollv told them, that they had the option, in deliver- 
 ing sentence, of consigning them to banishment (so inter- 
 preted), or of adjudging them to be torn to death by wild 
 beasts. " Torn by wild beasts," indeed, they may meta- 
 phorically be said to have been : they had to appear in a 
 court where upon some appeal having been made to the 
 constitution, one of the judges declared that no person had 
 a right to talk of the constitution unless he were a landed 
 proprietor. A preacher of the name of Winterbotham, for 
 an incautious expression in a sermon, was sent to prison for 
 four years and heavily fined. Dr. Priestley was worried and 
 harried out of his native land, and compelled to end his 
 days the other side of the Atlantic. A system of unceasing, 
 unrelenting, and minute persecution was adopted, which 
 deprived life of all its external social comforts, and at length 
 established as frightful a reign of terror in England as that 
 which priests and statesmen were then declaiming against 
 in revolutionised France. 
 
 How atrocious was the treatment of the prisoners in
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 27 
 
 many of its circumstances! All their books and papers 
 were seized: documents which could have nothing what- 
 ever to ilo with the pending trials were taken from Thel- 
 wall, and even a very valuable collection of prints was 
 taken possession of, as though there were treason in the 
 painter's creations or the graver's copy. They even took 
 away Johnson's Dictionary, a work surely free from treason ! 
 In that dictionary they found an unfinished letter which he 
 had written, stuck in between the leaves and forgotten ; 
 one of the government-witnesses afterwards swore upon the 
 trial, that he took this letter from the pocket of Richter, 
 another of the accused, thus endeavouring to make out the 
 necessary fact of publication. Had there been treason in 
 the letter, at any rate it only established the production 
 of what had never gone beyond the desk and the book of 
 the person by whom it was written. They were deprived 
 of the use of pen, ink, and paper. No indulgence what- 
 ever was to be granted them, except by tin' special per- 
 mission of the privy council. A volume of Shakspeare, 
 which Thelwall had borrowed from the jailor, was taken 
 away from him, as going beyond the limits which had been 
 determined upon and imposed for the safe keeping of those 
 who were awaiting their trial. His wife could not come to 
 visit him without being subjected to rudeness and insult. 
 Guards were always quartered with him in his cell; de- 
 priving him even of the comfort of solitude. When he was 
 removed from the Tower to Newgate, he was put into a 
 cell in which the corpse of a man who had died of an in- 
 fectious disease had just been deposited, and which was 
 removed to make way for Thelwall. Another was turned 
 into the condemned cell; and all of them were subjected to 
 an accumulation of privations which might have caused 
 feebler minded men to rid themselves of life by their own 
 hands, rather than endure the annoyances to which they 
 were exposed. Indeed, there is little doubt but that there 
 were those who thought, and secretly wished, that such an 
 event should take place. A. curious fact is mentioned by 
 Mrs. Thelwall, in her interesting memoirs other husband: 
 that, when after a while Thelwall's paint-box was restored 
 to him before he left Newgate, he found a large lump of 
 opium had been placed in it — a substance which he had 
 never used, purchased, or been the possessor of. No per- 
 son could have brought it to him by possibility, in conse-
 
 28 LECTURE II. 
 
 quence of the vigilance of the guards, by whom every tiling 
 was inspected. There, however, was the deadly drug, 
 placed most opportunely had self-destruction occurred to 
 his mind, and in some moment of disappointment been the 
 impulse of his feelings. 
 
 The government having been baffled in this procedure, 
 what was their next step ? The bringing in of a law which 
 crippled the exercise of reforming power in the people; 
 which made it illegal for societies to hold communication 
 with each other through their secretaries — an act winch 
 was one of the greatest steps in the advance of the career 
 of despotism which had been made for many a vear in the 
 history of our country — a law which, with all its incon- 
 venience and unfair restrictions, has generally been obeyed 
 by reformers since that time, but which dukes, lords, and 
 wealthy landlords, associated for the object of what they 
 call " agricultural protection," do not find altogether con- 
 venient. In the resolutions of some of their societies it 
 has been proposed, and probably acted upon, that their 
 secretaries should correspond with one another, and also 
 Avith the central society in London ; thus flying in the 
 face of legal restrictions which have limited the exertions 
 of reformers, but appear not to interfere with combinations 
 of monopolists. 
 
 After all, what was this " Corresponding Society,"' 
 ■whose very name seemed to be taken as an indication of 
 treason? Its rules and regulations are not, perhaps, so 
 ■universally familiar as to make it a superfluous work to 
 read them. They describe its objects, and indicate the 
 purposes at which its founders and leaders were aiming. 
 They were as follows : 
 
 '• Man is an individual, is entitled to liberty ; it is his birth- 
 right. As a member of society, the preservation of that liberty 
 becomes his indispensable duty. When he associated, he gave 
 up certain rights in order to secure the possession of the re- 
 mainder. But he voluntarily yielded up only as much as was 
 necessary for common good : he still preserved a right of sharing 
 in the government of his country ; without it no man with truth 
 can call himself free. Fraud or force, sanctioned by custom, 
 withholds that right from by far the greater number of the in- 
 habitants of this country. The few with whom the right of 
 election and representation remains abuse it ; and the strong 
 temptations held out to electors sufficiently prove that the repre- 
 sentatives of this country seldom procure a seat in parliament
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 29 
 
 from the unbought suffrages of a free people. The nation at 
 length perceives it, and testifies an ardent desire for remedying 
 the evil." 
 
 It then embodies in several resolutions the principles of 
 the society : 
 
 " Resolved, That every individual has a right to share in 
 the government of that society of which he is a member, unless 
 incapacitated. Resolved, That nothing but non-age, privation of 
 reason, or an offence against the general rules of society, can 
 incapacitate him. Resolved, That it is no less the right than 
 the duty of every citizen to keep a watchful eye on the govern- 
 ment of his country, that the laws, by being multiplied, do not 
 degenerate into oppression ; and that those who are entrusted 
 with the government do not substitute private interest for public 
 advantage. Resolved, That the people of Great Britain are not 
 effectually represented in parliament. Resolved, That in con- 
 sequence of a partial, unequal, and therefore inadequate repre- 
 sentation, together with the corrupt method in which representa- 
 tives are elected, oppressive taxes, unjust laws, restrictions of 
 liberty, and wasting of the public money, have ensued. Re- 
 solved, That the only remedy for those eviis is a fair, equal, and. 
 impartial representation of the people in parliament. Resolved, 
 That a fair, equal, and impartial representation can never take 
 place until all partial privileges are abolished. Resolved, That 
 this society do express their abhorrence of tumult and violence ; 
 and that as they aim at reform, not anarchy, reason, firmness, 
 and unanimity are the only arms they themselves will employ, 
 or persuade their fellow-citizens to exert, against abuse of power." 
 
 What could any government find in these rules to be 
 suspicious and jealous of, and to justify them in persecut- 
 ing its supporters ? Does not the very antipathy towards 
 facts so undeniable and principles so just and useful, in 
 itself prove a design upon the part of tiie ministry to keep 
 the country in bondage, and render it subservient to any 
 mode of oppression and plunder? Why, if this society had 
 succeeded, instead of public spirit being so restricted and 
 for a while kept down as it was subsequently by the perse- 
 cution of the Pitt ministry — had it succeeded in its pur- 
 pose, and become, as it promised to do, so decisive a ma- 
 jority ol tiie active mind of the nation, that the reforms it 
 contemplated were attained, what would have been the 
 consequence? Would it have ultimately been a subject 
 for the regret or rejoicing of the country ? Would the 
 results have been better or worse than the doings of Pitt's
 
 30 LECTURE II. 
 
 administration, or the ministries by which it was succeeded ? 
 Look only at one point. Had the Corresponding Society 
 been successful, the war with France would have been 
 averted. That unjustifiable act increased our national debt 
 to 780,000,000/. In 1793 it only amounted to 170,000,000/.: 
 the difference between that and the former sum, amount- 
 ing to 610,000,000/., added to the public burdens, must 
 all be attributed to the policy of these opponents and per- 
 secutors of the London Corresponding Society. But this 
 frightful increase cf the national debt was not all that 
 would have been thereby averted. Taxation was then 
 levied at a most enormous rate. At one time an endea- 
 vour was made to obtain the whole expenditure of the 
 year by taxes raised within the twelve months. During 
 the period to which I am referring — the French revolu- 
 tionary war from 1793 to 1815 — the prodigious sum of 
 1,034,000,000/. sterling was raised by taxation. Allowing 
 the half of this immense sum — and far less during a great 
 portion of that time was so employed — for the government 
 of the country, the other half must be put down to the 
 war-spirit and anti-democratical mania of the dominant 
 party. We have thus altogether a cost of 1,200,000,000/. 
 sterling inflicted upon the country to gratify those who 
 still would not be satisfied unless they could hang Hardy, 
 Tooke, Thelwall, and the other members or friends of the 
 London Corresponding Society. Only imagine what a dif- 
 ference there would have been in the country if this im- 
 mense drain of wealth had been stopped at the very out- 
 set. What might not even a small fraction of this amount 
 have achieved ! We talk of education and institutions for 
 the people : why, the country might have been covered 
 with endowed schools, institutions, museums, libraries, pic- 
 ture and sculpture galleries. We might have brought the 
 luxuries of life home to every village, and furnished the 
 means of intellectual and artistical improvement and enjoy- 
 ment to the entire population of these realms. Nor was it 
 merely a waste of money, but of human life and happiness, 
 which the principles of ihe Corresponding Society would 
 have averted. During the long and bloody wars with 
 France men fell as thick as pounds were wasted— by hun- 
 dreds of thousands and by millions. There was scarcely 
 a stream which Mas not stained by British blood, however 
 remote the country in which its waters flowed — scarcely
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 31 
 
 a soil which was not saturated and fertilised with the blood 
 of our countrymen. And for what? To keep down free- 
 dom both abroad and at home; to arrest the eourse of 
 the French revolution, and prevent the commencement of 
 an English reformation. Not only is the loss of life to be 
 considered, but also the sacrifice of human enjoyment and 
 peace. Widows and orphans were made by wholesale; 
 sorrow and suffering were spread over Europe ; every de- 
 partment of trade and commerce was disturbed. There 
 was, so to speak, almost an omnipresence of evil generated ; 
 bad passions, lashed into a fury of demoralisation, spread 
 from country to country, too often under the name of re- 
 ligion, by means of which it was attempted to establish over 
 humanity the reign of the most demoniacal principles and 
 practices. There was a fearful suspension of that regular 
 career of improvement by which the human race left to 
 itself would advance, — a throwing back of the destinies of 
 humanity, and, as far as human power extends, counter- 
 acting the purposes of Divine Providence for the amelior- 
 ation of the condition of mortals, and their gradual ad- 
 vancement towards a higher state of being. If the Cor- 
 responding Society had been successful, not onlv would 
 external warfare have been prevented, but internal dis- 
 sension likewise. The Irish rebellion of 1798 would not 
 have taken place; the tremendous horrors of which have 
 not yet been forgotten, and never will be until that country 
 has every wrong redressed. Pitch-caps, floggings, triangles, 
 and all the gross barbarities to which the inhabitants of 
 that land were subjected by an insolent soldiery, — the re- 
 collection of which accumulated so much of horror and 
 hatred around the name of Lord Castlereagh, that it could 
 not be obliterated even by the death which he inflicted 
 upon himself — these would have been saved, and all the 
 passions and collisions which have resulted from this state 
 of things, and have spread so much derangement and con- 
 fusion abroad in society since that time. Had the Corres- 
 ponding Society been successful, classes of the community 
 who now look with alienated feelings upon each other, 
 between whom a wide gulf has opened, might have been of 
 one mind and heart, pursuing their joint career of mutual 
 service, freedom, improvement, and enjoyment. But, for 
 such intentions — for these imaginings and aims — they were 
 branded as auiltv bv those who then held the reins of
 
 32 LECTURE II. 
 
 power;, so-much so that they were desirous of adding them 
 to the number of those who, as Charles Fox, in his history, 
 says, have been " doomed to expiate their virtues on a 
 scaffold." 
 
 A similar spirit to that which was shewn by the then 
 government, in this attempt to establish the doctrine of 
 cumulative and constructive treason, was recently evinced 
 in the Irish state-trials, where the attempt was made to 
 establish the principle of constructive sedition : where a. 
 number of legal meetings and the quantities of people 
 legally attending then), was held to constitute together a 
 growing illegality ; as if nothing repeated a certain number 
 of times would become something ; a tangible figure, to be 
 multiplied into an index of crime. This attempt again has 
 been defeated ; and that, be it observed, not so much by 
 constitutional provision and reliable working of the ma- 
 chinery of law and legislation, as by accident, which may 
 also be said to have shared in producing the result of the 
 trials in 1 794. The similarity between the two cases holds 
 good in this particular. In the former case, as well as in 
 the recent instance, there had been tampering with the 
 jury-lists. In the first trials there was the intervention of 
 one honest man, whose rectitude defeated the dishonest 
 intention of the government-agents, so that the juries who 
 actually tried the prisoners were not those whom it was 
 intended should have done so ; but there being this honest 
 individual, filling a comparatively subordinate office, who 
 happened to have the power of correcting the mischief, 
 may assuredly be regarded as an accidental circumstance 
 in the case. An accident, also, was the elevation of Lord 
 Campbell to the House of Peers, in time to become the 
 majority of one among the law-lords, who, in the name of 
 the Mouse, as a court of appeal, reversed the decision of 
 the Irish judges. But the freedom of a people, English 
 or Irish, ought not to be at the mercy of accident, or con- 
 tingent on the failure' of any portion of that, machinery by 
 which the work of legislation and administration is carried 
 on. There should be the security of plain broad principles 
 and eilicient means, so that no one could be injured in 
 liberty, property, or life, but where his own clearly prov- 
 able criminality draws down deserved punishment upon his 
 guilty head. Nor can the people ever have safety for any 
 of the privileges they possess, or cease to hold property
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. S3 
 
 and life at the mercy of an arbitrary power, until, through 
 all arrangements, legislative, executive, and judicial, the 
 popular voice can be heard, and the rights of the people 
 are respected. Responsible representatives, judges, and 
 agents, in all departments, are needful for the public safety : 
 they are the people's right, as assuredly they are their in- 
 terest. For the attainment of this object, let the friends of 
 their country never cease to strive. For the revision of 
 the constitution of our legislature, for bringing it into har- 
 mony with the opinions, principles, wants, and desires of 
 the great bulk of the community, and for taking care that 
 there shall be in the administration of the law a surer inde- 
 pendence than that so much vaunted, but very shadowy, 
 independence, which it has been made a boast that George. 
 III. conferred upon the judges of this country. A sort of 
 independence, indeed, ho secured to them by procuring an 
 act for their continuance in office; upon the demise of the 
 sovereign ; thereby making them independent of his suc- 
 cessor, but at the same time rendering them more depend- 
 ent upon himself. He placed an obstacle in the way of 
 their worshipping the rising sun, to secure their homage 
 to the setting luminary as long as it was visible above the 
 horizon. Independent ! why, did not the alteration leave 
 them still in the great march of their profession ? Were 
 there not prospects of advantage before them, rewards for 
 subserviency to the crown, and good things in the bestowal 
 of the minister of the day? Was there not, and is there 
 not now, a practical responsibility to the holders of power 
 and patronage, without any responsibility at all to the great 
 mass of the people? When the day of reform comes, let 
 it not stop merely at legislative improvement, but extend 
 itself to the administration of justice throughout the coun- 
 try in all forms, from that of the tribunal which takes cog- 
 nisance of high treason to that which sits in judgment upon, 
 and sometimes punishes, the poor woman who stands to 
 get a scanty meal by selling half-a-dozen apples in the 
 street upon a Sunday. 
 
 Since that acquittal, which spread such electrical joy 
 through the country, fifty years have elapsed. They whose 
 lives were then saved have, one after another, been gathered 
 to tin; great majority, sonic of them having lived to be 
 cheered by indications of progress in the principles which 
 they had asserted, and for the maintenance of which they had 
 
 c 2
 
 34* LECTURE II. 
 
 suffered so much. None of them by their lives dishonoured 
 the jury who pronounced them virtually, by its decision, 
 good men and true, and free from the crime of which they 
 were accused. Fifty years have, elapsed, bringing with 
 them abundant evidence of the mischiefs which this noble 
 band of patriots denounced, the extent of the evils which 
 they sought to redress, the corruptions which they would 
 have superseded, and the defects of the institutions they 
 proposed to reform. Time has imprinted their lessons and 
 principles yet more deeply upon the mind of the observer, 
 and calls upon us for a similar patriotic spirit and reform- 
 ing zeal. Fifty years have elapsed, and from that time to 
 this the recollection and commemoration of their acquittals 
 has been sustained, sometimes in comparative obscurity, at 
 others with greater publicity, but still shewing that whether 
 men live or die, principles are enduring and everlasting, 
 and will never want their assertors, or fade away from the 
 world for lack of champions. Fifty years have elapsed, 
 and in that time there have been other lessons of endurance 
 in our country's cause, and for the sacred objects of re- 
 form. Others have appeared to vindicate the rights of 
 their fellow-countrymen who have not been so fortunate as 
 they. Some have had verdicts of " guilty" pronounced 
 against them, and have been sent to meditate good within 
 the walls of a prison, and to come out and benefit the 
 country by wise and philanthropic plans matured there, 
 tending to heap blessings on the community, not excepting 
 even those by whom they had been injured. Fifty years 
 have elapsed, and testimony has been enforced in that time 
 to the principles of reform even from the most reluctant 
 parties. The House of Commons has within that period 
 voted itself corrupt, and pretended to achieve its own re- 
 formation ; the very act being a concession of the principle 
 which warrants those who find the results of the Reform 
 Bill so little satisfactory in calling for something more con- 
 sistent, extensive, and efficient for the assertion of the 
 people's rights. Fifty years have elapsed, and they have 
 brought us history, time, observation, and experience ; all 
 joining to testify that that half century has landed us nearer 
 to the great and happy consummation when arbitrary ten- 
 dencies and despotic power, though veiled in the guise of 
 free institutions ; when conventionalisms, assumptions, and 
 distinctions which nature does not recognise, and which
 
 ACQUITTALS OF HARDY, TOOKE, ETC. 3.5 
 
 are used as the means of oppressing nature's noblest works 
 below the basest; when these and a host of evils and mis- 
 chiefs by which society is pervaded shall pass away, and be 
 thrown to the dust, giving room for the triumphant pro- 
 gress of the rights of man — the only security for the great- 
 ness, freedom, and progress of nations.
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 OX THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MARTIN* LUTHER. 
 
 The 10th of November, 1483, was the birthday of Martin 
 Luther, the hero of Protestantism, the champion of the 
 Reformation, the great and successful insurgent against 
 established religion and ecclesiastical authority. It is,. 
 however, not on account of these qualities that I have 
 introduced his life and character as the subject of a lec- 
 ture in this place this evening. I should not have called 
 your attention to him, had there net been something more 
 in his history than merely his being a great theologian, a 
 profound divine, or a zealous Protestant ; because in this 
 place I know neither Protestant nor Catholic, believer nor 
 unbeliever. I trust that I address here persons of a con- 
 siderable variety of opinions upon such matters; and if 
 in these lectures I at any time imply peculiar opinions of 
 my own, it is for no purpose of proselytisin, but simply 
 because I am using that unshackled liberty of speech, 
 which, as I claim for myself, I am most desirous that all 
 others should exercise and enjoy to an equal extent. 
 
 Luther was far more than a great divine; lie was a 
 great man. He possessed mental characteristics which 
 marked him out for the attention of the student in history 
 and literature through ad succeeding times. I think the 
 period has now fully arrived when the Protestant can 
 afford to admit that Luther had faults, and great ones, and 
 the Roman Catholic also to allow that he had virtues, and 
 great ones. I trust the day has also come, or at least is 
 near at hand, when not for their religious denominations or 
 theological opinions, but for their qualities as men freely 
 thinking and acting, the names of the dead will be ho- 
 noured, that those who in dark times have inquired dili- 
 gently after the light, or in periods of mental and moral 
 slumber have aroused mankind to action — who in seasons 
 of corruption have stood forth boldly as advocates of refor- 
 mation, and in periods of improvement have placed them- 
 selves in the van of the march of the human race — when
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LL'THEK. 37 
 
 individuals like these, without reference to any other cir- 
 cumstances, will be held in universal honour, the qualities 
 which they exemplify be cultivated as those which would 
 most adorn our characters, and the services they render 
 become the subject of grateful commemoration. Every 
 church, sect, and religion, has its muster-roll of confessors, 
 martyrs, and saints. In the name of all that is intelligent, 
 free, and honourable, let there be also a calendar of saints 
 and martyrs for humanity. 
 
 It is particularly needful to advert to this view of our 
 present subject; because the 10th of November is not very 
 i'ar removed from the 5th of the same month, — a day 
 which seems consecrated to the work of keeping alive as 
 long as possible, especially amongst those who think least, 
 the remnants of antipathies and animosities which might 
 well be allowed to die out. There are too many yet to be 
 found of the wealthy vulgar, as well as the poor, who can 
 
 " see no reason 
 Why gunpowder treason 
 Should ever be forgot." 
 
 But I think there are many good reasons why the modes of 
 keeping it in mind which are now adopted should not only 
 be allowed to pass away, but sent into oblivion as speedily 
 as pos^ble. The poor creatures who dress up their Guy, 
 and carry it through the streets, may and can know but 
 little of what they are doing. In fact, they often appear 
 as though soliciting charity for a piteous object, rather than 
 directing the public execration against a guilty one ; asking 
 with affectionate tenderness, " Pray remember poor Guy!" 
 But those by whom they are set on, who countenance and 
 keep alive such demonstrations, both know and mean more 
 than this. It is only necessary to read the reports of such 
 meetings as that which took place at Exeter Hall at the 
 commencement of the last week, in order to perceive that 
 there is a spirit yet existing akin to that which in other 
 times has lighted the rlame at the stake, and which pro- 
 longs whatever is most malignant in the unjust laws that 
 have been gradually blotted from our statute-book. There 
 is a yet larger body of men, who, if they do not declare the 
 righteousness of persecution in the broade>t manner, at any 
 ratc display themselves, and maintain in others, feelings 
 hostile to kindliness of temper and a generous tolerance of
 
 38 LECTURE III. 
 
 diversity of opinion, and that free and amicable intercourse 
 which ought to exist between man and man, whatever their 
 opinion may be of things of the unseen world. In a prac- 
 tical view, there is probably something worse in keeping 
 up such expressions of hostile feeling than there Mould be 
 in the repetition of anathemas. There was some sense in 
 the complaint made by a sceptical man of the tone which 
 his minister had thought proper to adopt. It having been 
 remarked to him, "Well, but you need not care; he does 
 not send you to the infernal regions." " No," he replied, 
 " I should not mind if he did that, because I know where 
 the keys of Paradise hang as well as he does ; but what I 
 complain of is, that he makes bad neighbourhood, and 
 generates bitter feelings between those who should love 
 one another and live in mutual kindliness and amity." 
 
 This bigoted and persecuting spirit shews itself in a 
 continual craving to invade the peaceableness of neigh- 
 bourhoods and the order of families. In a newspaper of 
 last week an account was given of a charity which exists in 
 one of the metropolitan parishes, and the mode in which it 
 was exercised was mentioned in terms of praise. No doubt 
 there is something good in the foundation, but there is 
 intermixed with it the venom of bigotry — a continual 
 keeping up of religious distinctions, which, as I have said 
 before, I think every honest man ought to do all in his 
 power to abate. The paragraph is headed " Novel Wed- 
 ding," and runs thus : 
 
 " Yesterday forenoon a marriage took place at the parish 
 church of St. George's-in-the-East, Cannon Street, which at- 
 tracted much curiosity and caused a large concourse of people 
 to assemble. The bride was Ann M'Cormick, an exceedingly 
 pretty girl, who belonged to Rains' 100/. school, and the bride- 
 groom, William Chinnery, a smart young fellow belonging to the 
 Wellclosc-Square division of the fire-brigade. Of the numerous 
 institutions with which the ' great metropolis' abounds there are 
 few from which more positive benefits are disseminated than 
 that of Rains, near Old Gravel Lane, in the parish of St. George- 
 in-the-East. The benevolent donor by his will left a sufficient 
 sum of money to support 40 girls, to be elected from the paro- 
 chial schools, for four years. At the end of that period they are 
 sent out to service, and upon attaining the age of 19, and their 
 characters being irreproachable, they become eligible to draw 
 in a lottery for a husband. Two marriages take place in every 
 year, namely, one upon the merry first of May, or Sweeps' day.
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LUTHER. 39 
 
 and the other on the 5th of November, or Guy Faux's day ; and 
 on the morning of each of those days a drawing takes place for 
 the 1st of May or 5th of November, as the case may be, and Miss 
 M'Cormick having drawn the prize on the 1st of May last, was, 
 of course, the next for preferment. When the lucky ticket is 
 drawn, the next thing to be done by its fortunate owner is to 
 look out for an eligible partner {not a Roman Catholic, for they, 
 according to the will of the testntor, are ineligible)." 
 
 So that, whatever feelings the parties may entertain, 
 however strongly there may be evinced between litem 
 that congeniality of disposition which, in the married 
 state, tends most to ensure happiness, by selecting a Ca- 
 tholic the advantage to which, under other circumstances, 
 the party would have a right, by the terms of the bene- 
 faction, becomes forfeited. Supposing the girl who has 
 won the prize to be attached to a Roman Catholic, the 
 100/. is lost. The supposition of such attachments is cer- 
 tainly by no means impossible ; for we have; known even 
 monarclis of this realm fall in love with Roman Catholic 
 ladies, although it would have been at the peril of their 
 crown that the world should have formally been apprised 
 of the relation which by many was believed to subsist 
 between the Protestant sovereign and the Roman Catholic 
 lady ; and yet, supposing one in the humbler sphere of 
 life in which this girl moved to become so attached, the 
 100/. becomes a direct bribe to her not to marry the man 
 she loves, but to unite herself to some other for whom she 
 entertains no such feeling of affection : thus endeavouring, 
 by the influence of such a "charity," to promote an ob- 
 vious immorality, endanger domestic peace, and produce 
 bitter disappointment ; ay, and even worse than all this, 
 keeping up a system of carrying such distinctions into the 
 household, setting up the demon of persecution as a house- 
 hold god by the fireplace, there? to be worshipped, as though 
 that were its proper shrine and altar, in a Christian country. 
 Why. the very heathens made their household gods patrons 
 of the oppressed : in mimic scene, you have beheld Corio- 
 lanus, after having laid waste the country of the Volscians, 
 feeling himself free and secure by the hearth of Aufidius, 
 under the protection of t\\Q penates or household gods of 
 his enemy ; while here, in a land of Christianity, perse- 
 cution is set up as a household deity, to be worshipped 
 by the manifestation of bitter feelings and exclusiveness,
 
 40 LECTURE III. 
 
 where peace, kindliness, truth, and affection, should have 
 supreme authority. Oh it is time that this foul and dis- 
 graceful spirit had become extinct. If the great work of 
 Luther was to protest against what he deemed in his day 
 corruption and persecution, wheresoever and by whomso- 
 ever practised, the strong protest of every right-minded 
 being should be entered against this feeling of hatred and 
 ill-will, and its commemoration and exhibition should be 
 turned from with disgust by every honest heart. 
 
 One chief reason lor selecting Luther as the subject of 
 the present lecture was, the circumstance of his having 
 been a poor and self-taught man. His ancestors, for seve- 
 ral generations, had been farmers, an occupation in itself 
 but mean and lowly as it then existed ; but. even from that 
 inferior position his lather had sunk into the condition of 
 a labourer in the mines. Luther was born at Eisleben, in 
 a very poor cottage, the only place of refuge which could 
 be found by his parents, who had gone to that town for 
 the purpose of attending the winter fair. As he grew up, 
 like other German boys of his rank in life, lie went about 
 the streets singing, and receiving, at. the door of the people's 
 houses, donations of money and of broken bread. Yes, that 
 ^iartin Luther, -whose name is now identified with great 
 and wealthy churches — who is but named to do him hon- 
 our — to whom, in after life, princes and potentates came for 
 counsel — who now shines with such a lustre on the page 
 of history which records his achievements, was but the poor 
 son of a wretched miner, a lad who traversed the streets in 
 search of alms wherewith to support himself at school, even 
 up to as late a period in life as his sixteenth or seventeenth 
 year. Even then he had but few advantage's of instruc- 
 tion. The monastery into which he entered in his twenty- 
 first or twenty-second year afforded only the ordinary li- 
 mited theological routine. In his biography, we find, that 
 manv years afterwards he was still pursuing his course of 
 acquirement, especially the Hebrew language. He him- 
 self, in his Table-Talk, mentions that he had never seen 
 a Bible, except those portions of it included in the ser- 
 vices in which, as a monk, he was employed ; but an en- 
 tire Bible he had never beheld until he was nearly thirty 
 vears of a^re. This was the early career of the man who 
 afterwards stood forth as the champion of what was con- 
 sidered bv others a new religion, but by himself and his-
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LUTHER. 41 
 
 followers as a revived and reformed faith — against all the 
 learning, talent, and literature of the then Christian world. 
 This was, indeed, high ground to take ; and one cannot 
 but be pleased to see it occupied by a man springing from 
 such an origin, and having to conflict with so great diffi- 
 culties. What may not be done where there is a real love 
 of learning ? It was a fine saying of Chatterton — the poet 
 boy, who perished so prematurely — that if man would but 
 stretch out his arm he might reach the stars. Difficulties 
 give way, and obstacles vanish before a resolute deter- 
 mination. I would not tell any individual here that he 
 would be sure, by perseverance, to "make a figure" in 
 the literary world ; but I would say to any youth, however 
 limited his means and straitened his circumstances, that, 
 let him but throw aside the idea of cutting a figure — let 
 there be within his breast a real love of knowledge — and 
 "impossibility" and " impracticability" then become, as far 
 as his attainments are concerned, obsolete words. His 
 mind will rise towards its proper clement, one difficulty 
 after another will be surmounted, and one good after an- 
 other gained in his pursuit of knowledge, so long as there 
 exists that real life of the soul which results from cultivat- 
 ing, not our own honour, but from realising truth, and 
 ascertaining what there is in our own minds and around 
 us. Why, success as real and gratifying, and as promotive 
 of human happiness, as that which was in store for Martin 
 Luther, will be enjoyed by such young aspirants lor the 
 attainment of knowledge and truth ; and although they 
 may not be chronicled in history among the celebrated 
 reformers of mankind, they will at least have the satisfac- 
 tion of knowing, in their own minds, that they have gained 
 a treasure as bright and rich as any ever yet registered by 
 fame, and more deserving of the poet's loftiest song than 
 all the deeds of warriors, or the achievements of con- 
 querors. 
 
 The moral character of Martin Luther was as remark- 
 able as his intellectual energy. He was a man of most 
 indomitable courage — a quality, indeed, which is implied 
 in the very fact of his taking the course which he did 
 upon matters of religion. It requires no common degree 
 of mental bravery and moral daring to break off from 
 early associations, to venture to suspect falsehood in that 
 which all around believe to be true, to conflict with an
 
 ±•2 LECTURE III. 
 
 authority to which the world submitted, and to find out, 
 independently, a course towards light and truth. Sore 
 must have been the struggles and trials in the mind of 
 the young monk in his convent, when he thus, unaided, 
 worked his own way towards the religion which he after- 
 wards taught. He had also to contend against an enor- 
 mous power. The papacy was then in its flush of strength, 
 pride, and greatness. It was a most corrupt period in the 
 history of the Catholic church. Not long before the birth 
 of Luther, a new bishop, having been appointed to some 
 see in Germany, was inducted into his office, and entered 
 the episcopal palace. He asked to see the library of his 
 predecessors; the attendants shewed him to a room, which, 
 upon opening the door, he found filled with spears, shields, 
 anil implements of warfare. These, he was informed, were 
 the only library of his predecessors in the bishopric ; such 
 the means by which they defended the Church, and put 
 down heretics. It was only in the preceding century that 
 John Huss was burnt by order of the Council of Constance, 
 after having gone to that place with the emperor's guar- 
 antee for safety, and assurance of personal impunity. The 
 same council ordered the body of our own Wickliffe to be 
 dug up and burnt, and his ashes cast into a neighbouring 
 brook, which, as Fuller in his Church History quaintly says, 
 "conveyed his ashes into the Avon, Avon into the Severn, 
 Severn into the narrow seas, these into the main ocean; 
 and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his 
 doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over." 
 
 Luther went to the Diet at Worms, having no slight 
 reason to apprehend a similar fate to that of John Huss. 
 When his friends attempted to dissuade him, his reply is 
 well known: "If there were as many devils in the path as 
 tiles upon the houses of Worms, yet it was the way of duty, 
 and there he would go." His courage, was also evinced 
 by the decisive course which he took in all matters con- 
 nected with his system. His decision of character was 
 seen in his marriage with Catherine de Boria, a nun who 
 had renounced her vows, as he had repudiated those which 
 he had taken as a monk, thereby scandalising even his 
 Protestant coadjutors. Luther, however, saw further than 
 they did. and acted more wisely ; he knew, that having, to 
 a certain extent, departed from the system, his best course 
 was to proceed all lengths in the separation, and cut oil' all
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LUTHER. 43 
 
 hopes of retreat, trampling boldly upon an authority to 
 which he had declared himself so inveterate an enemy. Yet, 
 with all these sterner qualities, Luther was not a stoic ; ho 
 Mas any tiling but a morose, hard, sour man. There was 
 very much in his disposition kindly and affectionate. Ho 
 was a great lover ot nature and children ; he was addicted 
 to song and music, being himself occasionally a composer. 
 Throughout his life there was an air of cheerfulness and 
 urbanity, which harmoniously blended with the great and 
 severe features of his character. 
 
 Independent of his theological doctrines, he may bo 
 regarded as the parent of free thought and unfettered 
 literature in Germany and modern Europe. His transla- 
 tion of the Bible into German formed that language, as 
 the translation into our own tongue contributed to fix 
 and perpetuate a nervous, wholesome English style. His 
 example in throwing off the shackles of ecclesiastical au- 
 thority, in continually appealing directly to the scriptures 
 instead of the decisions of priests or the awards of coun- 
 cils, led men to exercise their minds in like manner upon 
 these and other topics. Thus, they brought about not only 
 the dethronement of the papacy, but that of the despots 
 of philosophical schools. They no longer fettered them- 
 selves by classical rides in their compositions. There was 
 a great outburst of thought in every direction. An im- 
 pulse was thereby given, which was felt promptly in this 
 country; and resulted in the magnificent literature of the 
 reign of Elizabeth. Its workings were subsequently mani- 
 fested in France in that succession of philosophers and 
 great writers, who are believed to have prepared the way 
 for the revolution. The philosophical spirit became in 
 due time the political principle. The revolutions of Ame- 
 rica and France, as well as the great struggle for liberty in 
 England, were all more or less intimately connected with 
 the Reformation which Luther achieved: they were the 
 outworkings of that aroused spirit of human nature. The 
 process began with the assertion of the rights of reason, 
 and it advanced in its natural course to the vindication of 
 tin- rights of man. 
 
 I am far from wishing to represent the character of 
 Luther as without spot; for, after he had become the most 
 conspicuous personage in Europe — after all the various 
 attempts to put him down had completely failed — when
 
 44 LECTURE III. 
 
 princes and monarchs had learned to listen to him with 
 respect, and seek his counsel — when eminent Reformers, 
 in their collision of opinions, came to him for guidance, 
 as though they voluntarily recognised him as a pope — 
 ■when, in fact, the Reformation, from an insurgent doc- 
 trine, had become an established policy, then did Luther, 
 in one memorable instance, most unhappily forget his own 
 principles. He had published an eloquent tract on Chris- 
 tian Liberty. This work found its way — as such tenets, when 
 once broached, will ever do — into other quarters than those 
 for which it was originally intended. Jt obtained circu- 
 lation amongst the peasantry of Westphalia, Suabia, and 
 the provinces adjoining the Rhine. These peasants were 
 just in the condition of men whose ears would tingle at 
 the very word "liberty," whether Christian or otherwise. 
 In their politically degraded state it must have sounded 
 to them as enchantingly as Paradise or Utopia would to 
 others. They were at that time ground down under the 
 horrible feudal system. The great bulk of them were slaves, 
 who were bought and sold like any other marketable ar- 
 ticle ; a class whom their masters multiplied systematically, 
 by breeding, as jockeys do their horses, and with as little 
 regard to the preference of the parties themselves. Their 
 masters might wound and maim them at pleasure, and kill 
 them with impunity, if the murder Mas not complained of 
 within a day; and even when that happened to be the case, 
 the offence was only punished by the payment of a small 
 pecuniary fine. The farmers and peasants were scarcely 
 in a better condition than the slaves. They were subjected 
 to those horrible imposts which have always been asso- 
 ciated with the name of the feudal system. At the best, 
 they could merely earn for themselves out of the soil a 
 wretched pittance, just sufficient for their support; all the 
 residue went to their lords. Their state was such, that if 
 a fanner was taken ill, no one connected with his farm 
 would work a stroke more, knowing very well, that if the 
 master died, whatever was in his house or upon his farm 
 would be. forthwith seized upon under pretence of arrears 
 for rent, or fines and payments due to the lord upon pas- 
 sage of the farm from one tenant to another. The little 
 miserable protection which the labouring people, slaves, 
 and peasantry had, was only a kind of ^ame-law regula- 
 tion, to keep their proprietors from interfering with each
 
 LIKE AND CHARACTER OF LUTHER. 45 
 
 other's property, and had no regard whatever to the par- 
 ties for whose benefit they nominally existed. This com- 
 plicated oppression was too much for human nature to 
 bear, especially when these victims of tyranny found iu 
 Martin Luther's tract that there was such a thing in the 
 world as liberty. They began to consult together whether 
 they might not have a little of this same good thing for 
 themselves, in their social condition as well as in their 
 theological opinions. This intercommunication led to co- 
 operation among them, and at length they mustered 
 300,000 men. Having attained this strength, they issued 
 a manifesto, claiming the right of commonage, and some 
 of the most simple and elementary privileges winch are 
 due to humanity, in a tone and temper, a spirit of reason 
 and moderation, which induced Voltaire to say, that their 
 manifesto would not have been unworthy of the signature 
 of Lycurgus. In this state of things Luther was applied 
 to ; he first strongly advised the lords to be humane, then 
 recommended the slaves to be obedient; but as neither 
 the one party nor the other appeared disposed to adopt 
 this advice — and certainly it could not be expected that 
 the vassals should return to obedience while the lords 
 shewed no symptoms of returning humanity — why, then 
 Luther first rebuked them both, and afterwards advised 
 the princes of Germany to unite in their strength to put 
 down the insubordination. No doubt excesses were per- 
 petrated by tins people ; history has not spared them ; 
 history never spares the faults or excesses of democracy, 
 or of unsuccessful insurrection ; the reason for which fact 
 mav be found in the connexions and partialities of those 
 by whom history has usually been written. A very great 
 part of the alleged excesses of the Anabaptists of Minister, 
 as they have been called, because a number of them were 
 identified with the plain and homely flocks of the Baptists of 
 Germany, have, beyond ail doubt, been grossly exaggerated, 
 piled up in heaps before the world, who have been taught 
 to look back upon them as the most outrageous enthusi- 
 asts and fanatics that ever scourged mankind or disgraced 
 the face of the earth. Yet, if we go to the original docu- 
 ment from which they started, it is plain that this was 
 only one portion of that great serf-movement throughout 
 Europe which took place about that period; the feudal 
 system being found every where so intolerable, that the
 
 46 LECTURE III. 
 
 serfs, like trodden worms, writhed, and rose against the 
 oppression, having a glimmering and indistinct perception. 
 but yet to them an animating one, of a better state of 
 things, wherein the equal value of each human being, and 
 the just rights of humanity, should be acknowledged bv 
 society. It was a similar movement to that which took 
 place in this country in the preceding century, under the 
 leadership of Wat Tyler. There the wrongs were of the 
 same kind : the poor were robbed of their rights of com- 
 monage ; the aristocracy exacted from them, under the 
 name of various feudrl dues, more than they were ca- 
 pable of paying without being reduced to the most abject 
 misery. The imposition of taxes upon them, in a manner 
 which, though nominally equal, was really most partial and 
 unfair — these and similar grievances existed in England as 
 well as Germany. The result of the two efforts for freedom 
 was pretty much the same — a temporary gleam of success 
 beamed upon them : then they were met by their oppo- 
 nents with hollowness and perfidy. In this country a 
 charter of rights was granted to the people ; but, as soon 
 as they had thrown aside their arms, the carnage began. 
 No less than 1800 of the followers of V.'at Tyler were 
 executed upon gibbets by that very authority which had 
 beguiled them with promises, and then avenged itself by 
 treachery. 
 
 The tillers of the soil were the first to commence the 
 warfare against the enormous pressure of the aristocracy 
 upon the classes below it. If they have since forfeited their 
 proud and honourable position, and suffered the struggle to 
 go into other hands, whom they are content to see uphold 
 and carry on the work they originally began — to bear 
 aloft the banner which they first raised- — let us hope 
 that their time will again come round ; that the intelli- 
 gence of society, and the desire for right which they thus 
 stimulated, will come back upon them from other classes ; 
 and that they will at length be eager to join those whom 
 they originally preceded in demanding what is due to hu- 
 man nature, for each and all, knowing no distinction, but 
 placing every member of the community upon the footing 
 of a man who is entitled to his share in the self-government 
 of the nation. 
 
 Let this deduction from the merits of Luther tell for as 
 much as it may. liven with this dark spot upon his hi;-
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LUTHER. 4-7 
 
 tory, we cannot forego for him the title of a brave and 
 great man, whose name and character deserve comme- 
 moration. Very different was the reformation which he 
 effected in Germany from that which was in progress in this 
 country at the same time, through tiie medium of our Pro- 
 testant reformer, and the founder of our " best and most 
 perfect Church in the world ;" I mean, that meekest ' ; De- 
 fender of the Faith,'' Henry the Eighth. The title which 
 he then gained was conferred upon him for writing a 
 pamphlet against Luther. It was a papal grant to the 
 sovereign of this country, — not the result of the Protest- 
 antism of the crown, but the reward of its first blow against 
 the infant Protestant cause. Through a career of licen- 
 tiousness and blood, the English king pursued his course. 
 While Luther was rendering the Bible popular in Germanv 
 by translating it into his native tongue, Harry was intriguing 
 to get Tyndal, the translator, persecuted even to the death 
 in Holland, ami was issuing his manifestoes that the Bible 
 should not be permitted to be read by the working men or 
 any woman whatever, except by special permission of the 
 piiest. The difference in the results of the two move- 
 ments was such as might have been anticipated. In Ger- 
 many the popular feeling spread itself rapidly ; in England, 
 aristoeratical cupidity, patronage, and influence connected 
 themselves with every department of what was called the 
 reformed religion of the country. In the one instance good 
 has been done to society, which may be traced plainly and 
 broadly in a sound education accessible to all classes ; in 
 the other, education has been generally, if not directly 
 opposed, at least made the tool of ecclesiastical power. It 
 may almost be said of the people, in reference to the domi- 
 nation of the Church of England, as was said of the Bap- 
 tists of Minister, when some one doubted whether they 
 really knew what '• church-authority" meant: " Oh, ves," re- 
 plied a Catholic divine, "they know what church-authority 
 is, just as a dog knows a stick." 
 
 Honour, then, to the man whose energetic spirit led to 
 so much of good, whether we believe him to be right or 
 wrong in his theological opinions. In the tribute of re- 
 spect which is to this day paid to his memory in Germanv, 
 there is something characteristic of the intellectual spirit of 
 that country, which, we trust, will in time become its poli- 
 tical feeling also. In the Hercynian Forest — that ancient
 
 48 LECTURE III. 
 
 and mighty forest, which at one time included a thousand 
 square miles; crowning the brow of a wooded eminence, 
 yet stand the remains of a castle called Wartburg, or " the 
 "Watch-Tower," a favourite hunting-seat of Frederick, elec- 
 tor of Saxony. Here he protected Luther when pope and 
 emperor had doomed him. Here, while the storm was 
 raging abroad, the reformer dwelt in safety and quiet, ac- 
 complishing his great work, the translation of the Bible. 
 The marks are still visible upon the wall where Luther 
 threw his inkstand at the devil, who appeared to him one 
 night in order to deter him from proceeding with his trans- 
 lation. Some have said it is printer's ink; very likely; 
 for that is as good a weapon as can be used against the 
 devils that infest mankind. This old watch-tower was as 
 a Patmos to Luther — a place of security in which he in- 
 dulged in bright anticipations of the future. At certain 
 periods the young students of the German universities 
 (those popular institutions which are available to classes of 
 the community who here can never think of a college but 
 as some remote and splendid establishment with which 
 they have nothing to do) assemble by hundreds : their 
 professors mingling with them familiarly ; teachers and 
 pupils appearing to have but one heart and mind ; as 
 though their country were beginning its renovation, and 
 that "Young Germany" was already alive, the name of which 
 is the dread of despots. They form themselves in order, 
 march up the hill in procession to the old tower, speak in 
 praise of Luther and the spirit of free thought which he 
 revived among them, sing his hymns, and celebrate his 
 memory with festive commemoration. This is to them a 
 dear and pleasant work. In England we are not accus- 
 tomed to ceremonies of this kind, but we like to hear of 
 them in others; they form gratifying and lasting pictures 
 in our minds, and some valuable lessons of wisdom may be 
 derived from their contemplation. Although since the 
 Reformation forms and governments have changed, and 
 even what remains of this very castle itself has been eon- 
 verted into a farmhouse, and the grounds around it cleared 
 for cultivation, yet there are associations connected with it 
 belonging not merely to Germany, but the world : and 
 when change shall have passed over the face of nations — 
 when palaces shall have mouldered away, and castles and 
 bastiles become transformed into farmhouses — when the
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LUTHER. 4-9 
 
 wilderness shall have been cleared, and the world prove 
 that it is advancing a fresh step in tiie path of civilisation, 
 — oh, then still will the generous and true in every free 
 country rebuild in their imaginations that old ruined tower, 
 the refuge of Luther, the asylum of i'voe thought; they 
 will hallow and consecrate it in their minds; and to ascer- 
 tain how it will fare with the world — what progress is 
 making in knowledge, freedom, and happiness — what 
 brighter and better times are in store for humanity — they 
 will look out into the distance and beyond the darkness, as 
 from the lofty watch-tower of the truediearted reformer.
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. 
 [DELIVERED ON THE SUNDAY AFTER HIS FUNERAL, JULY 7, 
 
 1844.J 
 
 The philosophers and poets of a nation constitute its 
 glory. They cause it to be known to and regarded bv the 
 most distant countries and the remotest ages ; establish- 
 ing a willing dominion, which is yielded by the minds and 
 hearts of those who would hurl back defiance upon its 
 fleets and armies, who care not for its commerce, and who 
 renounce and would even destroy its religion. 
 
 The great writers of ancient Greece established a sway 
 in the world more enduring than the Roman empire. 
 Blind Homer may have begged his bread on ; ' Scjo's 
 rocky isle;" but nevertheless he feeds the minds of the in- 
 quiring and the intellectual of the modern world. Plato 
 is now more of a god than Jupiter. Into whatever regions 
 the name of a country is carried, its brightness depends on 
 those who have adorned it by their researches, by their 
 logical or imaginative powers : they make it a praise 
 among the nations; and could all its resources be annihi- 
 lated, and its power be swept away, they would still give it 
 an enduring hold upon the thoughts and feelings of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Were it possible for the institutions of this country to 
 be destroyed — for our great interests, in their collision, to 
 shatter each other to pieces — for our mighty military and 
 naval power to be annihilated, and our trade utterly to 
 fail — for pestilence to make the island one great grave — 
 for natural convulsions, volcanoes, and earthquakes to de- 
 solate the soil, till it became an uninhabitable island, — still 
 Mould pilgrim-vessels seek our shore, and devotees land 
 from them to express their reverence for the spot where 
 Shakspeare lived, wrote, and produced his never-dying 
 creations. 
 
 I combine philosophy and poetry as the glory of a na-
 
 THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. .51 
 
 tion, because they have a common essence. The imagina- 
 tive powers cannot be highly developed and finely culti- 
 vated iu any mind without clearness and profundity of 
 intellect; nor has there ever been a great philosopher who 
 was devoid of poetical conception and expression. It was 
 a poetic quality which gave to the language of Plato that 
 charm winch caused the ancients to say, " Such was the 
 Greek which gods themselves would have spoken !" The 
 same remark applies to our own great writers. In Lord 
 Bacon's Essays we continually find passages of marvellous 
 am! touching beauty, which need only the form to be 
 actually classed with poetry, and which in fact are poetry 
 without the form. Those who have gone farthest in the 
 pursuit and discovery of intellectual and moral truth have 
 also possessed tin; power of presenting it to the minds of 
 others, and clothing it in such robes of light and lustre as 
 to evince their claim to something of the poetic essence. 
 There is not one moral question of modern times which we 
 do not find mooted in the pages of the Greek dramatists; 
 and where a philosophy of mind and character is wanted, 
 the best, clearest, most varied and comprehensive, might be 
 placed before the world in a selection of passages from the 
 dramas of our own Shakspcare. 
 
 It is a mistaken notion which many entertain of ima- 
 gination when they regard it as a mere reasonless aimless 
 power, and speak of it as evinced in an undue degree 
 in rhodomontade, grotesque conception, and productions 
 which have nothing of intellectual force, grandeur, or 
 beauty in them. This is not imagination, but something 
 which is destitute alike of imagination and rationality. 
 Depicting truth so as to send it home to the conceptions 
 and the feelings — a quality needful to constitute a pro- 
 found philosopher — is the work also of a great poet. This 
 is the creative power giving defined form, existence, and 
 vitality to the conceptions and principles of the philoso- 
 pher; and hence it is that the best and loftiest philosophy is 
 
 " Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute." 
 
 Philosophy and poetry are the mind of a nation. It is 
 in them that we must discover what any people really were, 
 and see them at their best. Iu no other way can we ar- 
 rive at so sure a conclusion of what the human mind was
 
 52 LECTURE IV. 
 
 under the particular circumstances in which the race or 
 nation existed. Nothing else will furnish it. The arrange- 
 ments, of society may be the result of a hundred entangle- 
 ments, produced by external circumstances; such, fur ex- 
 ample, as those which have perpetuated slavery in the 
 southern states of America — an institution altogether at 
 variance with the tone and temper of American character, 
 as well as with the principles upon which its constitution 
 is founded. The government of the country will not tell 
 what the nation is; for it may be a ministry of conquest or 
 compromise — a government at war with the national in- 
 telligence and interests — a mere antagonistic power of 
 hostile influence, from which no truth as to national cha- 
 racter can ever be elicited. Religion itself may have 
 become only tradition, conventionalism, or external form, 
 without beatinc in the pulse of the popular heart and 
 filling the thoughts and purposes of the public mind. In 
 none of these is there true evidence as to what a people 
 are, and what their tendencies may be : it is in the philo- 
 sophers and poets, who may be in advance of the genera- 
 tion in which they live — who may be in advance of the 
 human race itself, even to such an extent that ages must 
 elapse before their attainments and their loftiness of spirit 
 can become the common lot ; but who, with however 
 much of advance, still indicate the tendencies, and shew 
 which way the tide is flowing, and assure us that in that 
 direction are thought and feeling moving amongst the 
 great mass of humanity which constitutes the nation they 
 belong to. So that to do justice, to any country you must 
 take, not its socially prominent men, not its rank and sta- 
 tion, not those robed with the authority of government, 
 and not even its religion itself with all its priests or minis- 
 ters; but you must look to its poets and philosophers, 
 that is to say, those amongst them who think, feel, and 
 imagine; and when you have done this, you will get at the 
 very heart of a people. 
 
 Why, Robert Burns is Scot/and — best and purest Scot- 
 land — infinitely more so than your Lord Melvilles ; and 
 Cervantes is truer Spain than all your Ferdinands, or even 
 Esparteros. Voltaire is yet more France than Louis Phi- 
 lippe ; nay, Victor Hugo is that, at this time. Thus might 
 we range the world around. Franklin is still perpetual 
 president of the intellect of the United States of America.
 
 THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. oS 
 
 In our own country, Bacon, Shakspeare, and the philoso- 
 phers and poets whom they conjointly represent, may say 
 as Lear said to Kent, " Who are you ?" They may ask of 
 Lords and Commons — Church and State — Whigs and To- 
 ries — Stuarts and Guelphs— Puseyites and Evangelicals — 
 all the conflicting interests and tactions of the country — ■ 
 they may say to them all, " Who are you ? We are Eng- 
 land ;" its eternal mind, and heart and soul : for as philo- 
 sophy and poetry constitute the mind and heart of a coun- 
 try, they must also form its essential being. It is not in 
 imports ami exports, in legislative measures and party 
 movements, that the life and soul of society consist; but 
 it is in what the people think and aspire to— what they 
 struggle against, and are enabled to triumph over : in the 
 history of their conflicts with circumstances, oppressive 
 powers, and the various attempts to keep them in degrada- 
 tion — in their own still soaring and expanding thoughts — 
 it is in these that we find the power which should take the 
 personality of a nation upon itself. Others are but the ex- 
 ternal possessions ; they are something about the people, 
 but they are not the people. As even the limbs may be 
 lopped away, and still that would remain which says " I," 
 and which constitutes self; so we have to penetrate to 
 ■what best expresses the thoughts and feelings in their 
 highest representation and noblest character — we have to 
 go to these for what makes the true identity, the living 
 spirit of the people. 
 
 If another Guy Fawkes were to come and be more 
 successful in his mission than his great progenitor, — if he 
 were to lay his trains with more care, make his approaches 
 with greater secrecy, and use his lucifer more dexterously 
 than his predecessor did the dark lantern, and were at 
 one blow to annihilate our present houses of parliament, — 
 the queen could make another House of Lords, who would 
 wear their coronets and robes as gracefully as the present, 
 and enact laws with quite as much judgment ; and, aided 
 by the people, there would be another house of representa- 
 tives elected, which certainly would not have less of union, 
 purity, energy, or patriotism, than the assembly which had 
 gone before them: all this could be done with ease, and in 
 such a manner as that the world should never perceive anv 
 loss occasioned by the extinction of the original bodies. 
 The queen could make Lords and Commons which would
 
 54 LECTURE IV. 
 
 work well enough for all practical purposes : but with all 
 her regality and power — no, not though aided by the 
 nation itself — could she make another Thomas Camp- 
 bell. 
 
 Of this national mind and life of which we have been 
 speaking, every true poet in his measure is a manifestation. 
 To it he is a contributor : of it he aids in the develop- 
 ment. He is part and parcel — much more than others — 
 of this great one living soul of the nation, and such was 
 the man whose name has just escaped me. He was a true 
 poet and a true man — the one because he was the other; 
 for let there be a flaw in the man, and it Avill be hard if 
 you do not find as great a defect in the poet also. Genuine 
 poetry is a true thing, which the false man cannot compass. 
 Campbell through his life was true and steady, not only as 
 an imaginative expounder of poetical truths, but to the prin- 
 ciples which give those truths their practical power over 
 the hearts and lives of men, and which tend to raise com- 
 mon concerns, by that fire from heaven which it brings 
 down to illumine and animate them. Thus he ran his 
 course, or, rather, I should say, thus he commenced his 
 career, for the career of the true poet is for ever, and not 
 for his mortal life. In one sense, the philosopher and poet 
 never die. We may ask of Campbell, in the words which 
 he addressed to like-minded men to himself who had gone 
 before him, and whom his heart appreciated : 
 
 " Is he dead, whose glorious mind 
 Lifts ours on high ? 
 To live in hearts we leave behind 
 Is not to die." 
 
 Campbell himself has distinctly informed us what his 
 own conception was of a poet's mission. It is pithily ex- 
 pressed in a stanza of his poem on Burns : 
 
 "Oh, deem not, 'midst this worldly strife, 
 An idle art the Poet brings ; 
 Let high Philosophy control, 
 And sages calm, the stream of life — 
 'Tis he refines its fountain- springs, 
 The nobler passions of the soul." 
 
 The description which he has here given is true as far 
 as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. It is a just con- 
 ception of the mission of some poets; but it is imperfect as
 
 THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. oO 
 
 a delineation of the mission of poetry. Campbell's fame 
 can afford this criticism ; nor is it needful, even by the 
 poet's grave, to go at all into exaggeration. It is enough 
 to be a poet, though it may not have been of the very 
 highest order. Poetry has, I take it, a loftier scope and 
 purpose than is designated in the lines I have just repeated. 
 It has to do more than refine the passions, even the noblest 
 which belong to our nature. It is called upon to work in 
 tha discovery and delineation of truth. The imagination 
 lias always been the great discovering power. Discoveries 
 are the poetry of science: they have been owing, in almost 
 every instance, to something akin to poetical conception, 
 rather than logical deduction. The case is rare indeed, in 
 which, by merely advancing step by step, in the exercise 
 of the logical faculty, any new truth has been arrived at. 
 Logic conies afterwards, to verify that which imagination 
 sees with its far-darting glance. If the story be true, when 
 Newton marked the falling apple, there promptly arose in 
 his min;l ;i vision of universal order and harmony. He 
 caught the idea as the apple fell, and saw central suns*, 
 revolving planets, and mutually acting and re-acting sys- 
 tems : and that new theory of the world which has so revo- 
 lutionised physical philosophy was a complete idea in his 
 mind long before the propositions of the Priiicipia could 
 be digested, arranged, and marshalled in their order as an 
 array of proof. Hence it is that we continually find in the 
 history of science, at anterior periods, glimpses of truths 
 which have required generation after generation so to verify 
 as to reduce them to actual practical application. This 
 is imagination seeing truth intuitively, and leading mankind 
 onwards. The mere logical power comes not into play till 
 afterwards; it builds with materials already provided, and 
 according to a plan already delineated ; its use is to prove 
 that which has been already seen and foreseen. Imagina- 
 tion is the creative power within us: it is that in which 
 man is most like to God ; and which, as a god, shapes its 
 creation, tixes its central lights, and rolls its planets abroad, 
 leaving calculation afterwards to measure their orbit and 
 ascertain their momentum. 
 
 Campbell was, however, true to his own conceptions. 
 It was a worthy mission, and he worthily fulfilled it. He 
 was the poet oi' actuality ; never dreamy or metaphysical ; 
 seldom embodying the largest or the highest philosophical
 
 56 LECTURE IV. 
 
 conceptions, but applying the principles of justice to the 
 concerns of mankind in their clashing interests and con- 
 tinual conflicts, and in these working out, with a power 
 rarely surpassed, the objects which he aimed to accom- 
 plish. Hence the remarkable distinctness which is always 
 observable in his imagery. It is cut as with the chisel of 
 the statuary ; his forms are always most thoroughly de- 
 fined, and his figures stand out against the blue horizon. 
 He continually gives, in a few lines, what remains per- 
 manently, as it were, a marble in the mind's gallery. Some- 
 thing of this character is distinctly perceptible in the in- 
 troduction and conclusion of " Lord Ullin's Daughter" — 
 
 "A chieftain to the Highlands bound," &c. 
 
 Why, here you have the figures brought before you at 
 once ; you have the whole group ; you are presented with 
 the characters. And then, at last, the wretched father, 
 who is 
 
 "left lamenting." 
 
 There is the statue fixed like that of Xiobe — with its sur- 
 rounding scenery, its lochs, cliffs, and ravines — all are 
 there for ever, a monument of grief, at which the eye gazes 
 tearfully, and which we feel to be as eternal as the rocks 
 and the waves by which it is surrounded. 
 
 So, again, in his poem of " The Rainbow," how dis- 
 tinctly the figures are marked of earth's patriarchs anel 
 first families. I mean, where he describes those who had 
 been in the ark, as they first saw that beautiful appearance 
 in the heavens — 
 
 " When o'er the green undeluged earth, 
 Heaven's covenant, thou didst shine ; 
 How came the world's grey fathers forth 
 To watch thy sacred sign ! 
 And when its yellow lustre smiled 
 
 O'er mountains yet untrod, 
 Each mother held aloft her child 
 To bless the bow of God." 
 
 The figures are here marked with that distinctness and 
 statuesque effect which prevails throughout the whole of 
 his poetry. He could not say with Byron — unless, indeed, 
 it was very late in life — 
 
 " My visions flit less palpably before me." 
 There must have been most palpably to his mind the forms
 
 THE GENIUS AXD POETRY OF CAMPBELL. 57 
 
 and figures which he has rendered enduring in his verses ; 
 and they did so present themselves. I remember, some 
 twelve years ago, his relating to me a dream he had had 
 that morning, in which he had evidently combined the old 
 story of the woman whose scream made the lion drop her 
 child with the deportation of the Polish children which the 
 Emperor of Russia was then practising. " I had," said 
 Campbell, "most distinctly before me — if possible, more 
 vividly than reality — the figures of a woman upon the 
 ground and a bear carrying off her child in his mouth ; the 
 mother starting up, and saying with a voice of tremendous 
 authority, ' Put that child down !'" Such was Campbell's 
 vision. The bear did not put the child down in this case; 
 he carried off that and hundreds more ; and if Campbell 
 was aware of the fact, it must have been an agony to his 
 heart, even in his death-pang, that when the Russian mon- 
 ster presented himself here 1 , there were English fathers who 
 licked the dust where his foot had trod, and English 
 mothers who wore the jewels which he gave upon their 
 arms and bosoms. 
 
 One reason which, perhaps, concurred with others in 
 producing this tendency to distinctness of outline in his 
 imagery was the locality where he passed his youth — the 
 -western coast of Scotland. It is the distinctive character 
 of Scotch scenery, in contrast with English, that you have 
 not the indefiniteness of a landscape without boundary ob- 
 jects. The view seldom, if ever, melts away into dimness 
 and indistinctness. There are the cliff's or the mountains, 
 which form the barriers to farther view, shutting all in, and 
 giving that definiteness of outline to the sight which is 
 analogous to the effect produced in Campbell's poems. 
 His " Pleasures of Hope" was conceived and partly exe- 
 cuted in Ins youth, when he lived as teacher in a family in 
 the Isle of Mull, on tin; western coast of Scotland, and 
 where he probably wrote these well-known opening lines : 
 
 " At summer's eve, when heaven's ethereal bow 
 Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, 
 Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye. 
 Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky .' 
 Why do those chits of shadowy tint appear 
 More sweet than all the landscape smiling near? 
 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, 
 And robes the mountain in its azure hue."
 
 />S LECTURE IV. 
 
 There you may commonly gee all this. There is the 
 beautiful blue of the distant mountain in the sunset, while 
 the hills are bright and the cliffs are shadowy. The rain- 
 bow, which so beautifully opens his poem, is there in all 
 its splendour, and in such unbounded diversity that the in- 
 habitants of populous cities can scarcely form a conception 
 of it; sometimes stretching- from mountain-top to mountain- 
 top, bridging those colossal pillars of the heavens ; some- 
 times sleeping on the wide expanse of wood, its colours 
 mingling with the foliage; sometimes resting upon the 
 edges of the loch, the reflection completing that entire 
 circle which you may also occasionally see from the moun- 
 tain-toil. All this is ever there, and no doubt gave its 
 inspiration to the youthful eye of the poet. To read 
 Campbell's poems with the grand melody into which his 
 verse often rises, is like going to solemn and swelling 
 music, into a stately sculpture-gallery, where you are sur- 
 rounded with god-like forms, which at once in their dis- 
 tinctness give you the impression of proportion and beauty, 
 and which yet, by their majesty, bend you low before 
 them. 
 
 In his choice of subjects a similar quality in Campbell's 
 mind led him to go at once to the elemental — to the 
 broadest and simplest tendencies of our nature. He sought 
 out none of those refinements and niceties in the develop- 
 ment of human thought and feeling which some poets have 
 made prominent in their works; but he laid hold of 
 that which lays hold of all mankind; and when he sang 
 of Hope, it was not to analyse it. He no more at- 
 tempted to dissect it than he would have thought of dis- 
 secting the rainbow itself; but he told how the mother 
 feels it as she weaves her song of melancholy joy over the 
 cradle of her child : he told how the very pauper feels it as 
 he bends upon the cottage-gate, and wishes that for him 
 some home like this would smile, 
 
 " To yield his aged form 
 Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm :" 
 
 lie told how the mariner feels it, when 
 
 " O'er the Atlantic wave he rides afar :" 
 
 how the soldier is animated by it in the shock of battle. 
 He passed from individual emotions to the prospects of
 
 THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. 59 
 
 nations — to the aspirations, of patriotism — to the fate of 
 Kosciusko — and to the hope of Indian emancipation — 
 and all that can delight him whose soul is bound up with 
 the best interests of human kind: and having exhausted 
 alike the individual and the national in this world, he di- 
 rected his thoughts still onward and onward, finding un- 
 bounded scope for this great theme of his song in the ages 
 of eternity. 
 
 How marked are the characters in his " Gertrude of 
 Wyoming!" His Outalissi ; what an enduring bronze fi- 
 gure, which once seen becomes a part of sight ! How 
 touching the tenderness of that story, which makes one 
 still feel of its heroine, that her glance is over us as the 
 tear is falling — those eyes 
 
 " That seem'd to love whate'er thev looked upon !" 
 
 In " O'Connor's Child," there is again this pathos 
 mixed with the rough, the wild, the barbaric character of 
 the times. So throughout the whole range of his poetry — 
 especially his lyrical pieces — so full of grand scenery, yet 
 spirit-stirring, moving the heart like a trumpet: and with 
 all this there is still that keeping in view the broad and 
 elemental principles and passions of our nature; there is no 
 recourse to subtleties and refinements ; there is a disregard 
 of those appliances of scenery or chivalric legends and ro- 
 mantic plots and story by which others have sought to 
 charm. Campbell hail no need of these arts; his song 
 moved on. despising them all, as our country was said to 
 despise those petty Martello towers which were erected 
 on the coast to beat back invasion ; his song moves on like 
 his own " Britannia," which needs no bulwarks, 
 
 " X« towers along the stoop, 
 Her march is o'er the mountain waves, 
 Her home is on the dee;;." 
 
 And the march of his song was upon the mountain waves 
 of passion ; its home was in the profound depths of human 
 nature. 
 
 And then how true he was ; if there be one or two slight 
 exception--, we may well give him that difference of opinion, 
 and say again, how true he was to the free, patriotic, and 
 progressive in humanity ! Where was the blow struck for 
 liberty that he did not prepare his laurel for its success? 
 Where — -in what nation and race — at what time during
 
 60 LECTURE IV. 
 
 half a century — was his heart dead to the conflict — the 
 everlasting conflict between the enslaved and their oppres- 
 sors? Was it in Spain, where he sung the "brave men 
 who at the Trocadero fell ?" Was it in Greece, where his 
 voice was the first lifted up to hail the victory which made 
 Greece again a state? Was it in Germany, which he made 
 vocal with his inspiriting lays? or was it in Poland — Poland 
 ever on his heart ? In the conflict for liberty there was no 
 reverse which did not give his breast a pang — no deed of 
 glory which he was not prompt to sing. Was he silent in 
 our own struggles ? Was his voice dumb at that time to 
 which some of us look back as to one of the best periods 
 which our countrv has yet known for the development of 
 the national spirit — when the struggle for reform seemed 
 on the eve of achieving some splendid triumph of liberty 
 which will yet be in store to reward that great movement, 
 however for a while the people may be baffled in their 
 rights — did he look on then uninterested ? How was his 
 soul then poured forth in lays which >hall yet have their 
 echo and political realisation, as well as their poetical ap- 
 preciation ! 
 
 " Men of England ! who inherit 
 
 Rights that cost your sires their blood ! 
 Men whose undegenerate spirit 
 
 Has been proved on field and rlood : 
 
 Bv the foes you've fought uncounted, 
 
 Bv the glorious deeds ye've done, 
 Trophies captured, breaches mounted, 
 
 Navies conquered, kingdoms won! 
 
 Yet, remember, England gathers 
 
 Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame, 
 If the freedom of your fathers 
 
 Glow not in your hearts the same. 
 
 What are monuments of bravery 
 
 Where no public virtues bloom ? 
 What avail, in lands of slavery, 
 
 Trophied temples, arch, and tomb ? 
 
 Pageants ! — Let the world revere us 
 
 For our people's rights and laws, 
 And the breasts of civic hemes 
 
 bared in Freedom's holv cause.
 
 TIIK GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. Gl 
 
 Yours are Hampden's, Russell's glorv, 
 
 Sidney's matchless shade is yours, — 
 Martyrs in heroic story, 
 
 Worth a hundred Agincourts ! 
 
 We're the sons of sires that baffled 
 
 Crowned and mitred tyranny : 
 They defied the field and scaffold 
 
 For their birthrights — so will we !" 
 
 The early life of Campbell was a time of struggle with 
 the hard pressure of eireunistances ; and yet it was at that 
 period that he poured forth that song of Hope so redolent 
 of faith in humanity which he never lost. In after times 
 we find not merely poetical effusions but works of useful- 
 ness and honour connected with his name. He Mas the 
 originator of the London University. " The Association 
 for the Relief of the Poles'' is a monument of his intense 
 feeling for that people. In his connexion with the press I 
 had occasion to know that, in one instance, he resigned a 
 lucrative post, because he would not, in compliance with 
 the wish of the proprietor, compromise his principles in 
 the matter of slavery. The same principles which are 
 harmoniously enshrined in his poetical works animated him 
 in all his productions, ami in his own being. His life was 
 prolonged; and it has been said his writings were few: 
 but he continued to produce them from time to time to the 
 latest period; and if they be i'ew, the greater portion of 
 them will live for ever. He was worthy to occupy a place 
 where I have many times seen him — the rooms in Duke 
 Street, St. James's, in which John Milton and Andrew 
 Marvel fulfilled the duties of their secretaryships during 
 the protectorate of Cromwell ! He was worthy of the 
 honour that his remains should rest where his dust blends 
 with some of the noblest of English poets — one with them in 
 the peace of the grave, and in the honour of his memory ! 
 
 That Abbey-funeral was an appropriate tribute, which 
 I cannot advert to without expressing a wish that it had 
 been more appropriately paid. The Church of England 
 lias yet to learn how to honour poets, and to express her 
 owu homage* to national mind and soid. Upon my arrival 
 in Westminster Abbey, I found a crowd inconveniently 
 pressed together into that narrow space called "Poet's 
 Corner." It is but a corner which the great cathedral
 
 62 LECTURE IV. 
 
 allots to poets ; nobles and monarchs, or the wealth} - , 
 claiming the rest. There was the crowd, I say, inconveni- 
 ently pressed in this narrow boundary, with wooden barri- 
 cades on one side and iron rails upon the other, through 
 which in that mighty space the sixpenny men were watch- 
 ing, and looking as if they thought their time would come 
 by and by to collect their fees. Yet, with all this incon- 
 venient accommodation, it was an assemblage which shewed 
 their true-heartedness. People were present of various 
 countries and diffei'ent stations, but all with faces of ear- 
 nestness and sympathy. The funeral came in — not at the 
 great gates of the church— its public and stately entrance, 
 along its wide and resounding aisles — these are reserved for 
 rank and station ; Poetry is borne in at a back door, from 
 the cloisters. Then there was the service — the inflexible 
 service — which knows no distinction in those over whom 
 it is read : the purest and the vilest — those who have saved 
 their country and those who would have destroyed i: — 
 who would sell it for thirty pieces of silver — they are all 
 " dearly beloved brethren" when they get there ; and in 
 that hardly pressed crowd there certainly was not the 
 quiet solemnity which there should have been. Milman, 
 himself a poet, read the service ; but the church has a 
 secret in its power for taking away solemnity, even from 
 the voice of a poet when uttering the words of an apostle. 
 One moment there was, when, in the interval of the ser- 
 vice, the organ pealed out its deep tones, and then every 
 bosom felt the solemnity of the scene. Yes, that was a 
 true thing; and as that inarticulate voice ran along the 
 lofty arches, it went to the heart, and we could feel that 
 we were indeed around the grave of a poet. There was 
 " silence deep as death," and that same moment was a 
 recompense for all that had occurred before, and a real 
 homage to the memory of the bard. I say, that was worth 
 enduring all the rest for ; but why should there be endur- 
 ance for any portion of the people in the people's own 
 metropolitan temple ? Why should it be barricaded ? 
 Their mighty numbers should spread freely over the vast 
 space, and in their sensations there should be a fitting 
 prelude within to the solemnities presented from without. 
 But it is in vain to hope for any thing of this kind while 
 public buildings and national observances are in the hands 
 of proprietors — so called and miscalled — .who know how
 
 THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF CAMPBELL. 63 
 
 to keep down dissenting worship in their houses, but who 
 do not keep down the worst purposes to which those houses 
 are so often turned, and who seem to have much more skill 
 in calculating how to collect pence than how to honour the 
 memory of a poet. 
 
 Campbell had already taken his position long before he 
 died. While yet living, he was amongst the ever-living. 
 His laurel was awarded. We have not now to estimate 
 what he was; years and years have elapsed since his fame 
 was ascertained and established beyond the possibility of 
 reverse; and now it will survive, and grow with the growth 
 of mind and heart as they advance in the course that he 
 foresaw and predicted. Oh, it will ever and anon lead the 
 men of future generations to cherish his works, and to look 
 witli gladness at one who took so honourable a part in the 
 struggles of the time, whilst in the darkest seasons he saw 
 the coming glory of the future. 
 
 1 cannot but think that a certain criticism on the closing 
 passage in his Pleasures of Hope has been unadvisedly 
 uttered, although by an able critic. I mean, the exception 
 to its final image, on the ground that eternity succeeds to 
 time, that hope is a principle of this lii'e or world only, 
 and that after such termination there is only a changeless 
 fruition. But can there ever, while human consciousness 
 continues, be a state of tilings which will not have its 
 measure of duration ? Prolong that duration as you may 
 — count it not by sunrise and sunset, but by the rising and 
 destruction of worlds and systems — still there is a measur- 
 able advance even in the mind itself, supposing mind only 
 to exist, and to go on developing itself by the power of re- 
 flection. There would be progress, and that very progress 
 would become measurement to the perception, and make 
 time coeval with eternity. If there be convulsions of this 
 globe, as some believe, yet to come, they will follow the 
 great law of past convulsions. Tremendous convulsions 
 there have been here, and what has been their effect? To 
 sweep away one tribe of living beings, and to replace it in 
 the world with a better and nobler race, until at last man 
 came to be its lord, and reap from it its full measure of 
 enjoyment. So will it. be, we may reasonably infer, in 
 future convulsions; they will still be marks of progress; 
 then 1 will be no blank eternity, immeasurable and unpro- 
 gressive, but still ad\ance from good to higher good, from
 
 64 LECTURE IV. 
 
 glory to brighter glory. I take it there is as much truth of 
 actuality as there is poetical grandeur of conception in the 
 closing lines of this poem of Campbell's, with which I shall 
 conclude this lecture : 
 
 " Eternal Hope ! when yonder spheres sublime 
 Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of Time, 
 Thy joyous youth began — but not to fade — 
 When all the sister planets have decayed ; 
 "When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow, 
 And heaven's last thunder shakes the world below ; 
 Thou, undismay'd, shalt o'er the ruins smile, 
 And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile."
 
 ,ECTURE V. 
 
 MENTAL SLAVERY. 
 
 The words in which the subject of this night's lecture is 
 qnnounced — "mental slavery" — arc a fearful combination. 
 Freedom has been hunted through the world, and is ever 
 exposed to insult and injury. It is crushed by conquest; 
 frowned from courts ; expelled from colleges ; scorned 
 out of society; dogged in schools; and anathematised in 
 churches. Mind is her last asylum ; and if freedom quail 
 there, what becomes of the hope, of the world, or the worth 
 of human nature ? 
 
 The association of " mind" with " liberty" may almost 
 be called natural or instinctive: the one term suggests the 
 other. To think of mind is to think of freedom; it occurs 
 as readily as in connexion with whatever in nature is most 
 expansive and universal. We use the phrase " free as the 
 mind," in the same way as we speak of being " free as the 
 waters or the air." And the analog} holds beyond that first 
 association; for both air and water may stagnate, and, in- 
 stead of becoming elements of life and enjoyment, be ren- 
 dered sources of disease, pestilence, and death ; but even 
 these are only feeble types of the miseries which result 
 from a stagnation of thought, and the evils inflicted on 
 society when its mind is subject to the curse of slavery. 
 h>o intimate is this connexion, that even the philosophical 
 doctrine which traces the laws of mind and of thought — 
 for they, like all existences, have laws by which their powers 
 are developed and their results produced. — even that has 
 been prejudiced by tin' unhappy choice of such a term as 
 "philosophical necessity," there being a recoil from the 
 application of the word "necessity" to such an operation as 
 that of thought ; a disposition to assert freedom even in 
 a sense incompatible with the existence of law and the 
 harmonious connexion of cause and effect. This instinc- 
 tive attachment to the union of mentality with liberty is 
 warranted by experience. Nothing can be done for a
 
 66 LECTURE V. 
 
 people who are mentally enslaved. The wisest and most 
 liberal institutions may be established by some great legis- 
 lator ; but the grovelling spirit of the people will take 
 away all the power of such institutions, perverting and 
 bringing them down to their own sordidness. You may 
 conquer freedom for such a countrv from external force ; 
 but even when the invader has been resisted, or when, by 
 some Brutus or Cassius, the tyrant has been struck down 
 to the earth, the innate slavery will be found too much for 
 the external emancipation ; still will chains be sought and 
 worn ; nor is there any hope of redemption for a nation, 
 or prospect of progress for the world, except as intellect 
 can be aroused to assert its own dignity, claim its rightful 
 province of investigation, and pursue its career of inde- 
 pendent examination and individual conclusion. 
 
 There are various states which alike belong to this 
 general description of " mental slavery." It exists wher- 
 ever any topic of thought is what they call in Tahiti "ta- 
 booed ;" a phrase which the attention drawn towards that 
 distant region has rendered not unfamiliar. Certain ruling 
 classes in society have placed a religious restriction around 
 particular objects of thought ; they have warned the popu- 
 lar mind from off these regions, in order that they might 
 the more effectually subdue it into subserviency to their 
 own dictates. Whoever submits to be debarred from the 
 investigation of any subject of human interest, thereby 
 confesses himself slave. The man who signs a declara- 
 tion that he will believe certain propositions to the end of 
 his life, or consents to hold his position upon such condi- 
 tions — the individual who subscribes either to articles of 
 faith or war (for they both come to much the same point), 
 "subscribes himself slave," as Milton most appropriately 
 says of ecclesiastical impositions. They are like the bishop 
 who, in reference to some plausible heresy, said, " 1 dare 
 not inquire." So it is with any clergyman or soldier in 
 what are called their professional duties: "I dare not in- 
 quire" is, in fact, the language both of the one and the 
 other, whether the subject of investigation be the justice 
 of the war in which the latter is called upon to draw the 
 sword and shed the blood of his fellow-creatures, or the 
 truth of the doctrines which the former is required to 
 place before men professedly as a revelation from Heaven. 
 Tach is a mental slave. So also is that large class of
 
 MENTAL SLAVEKY. 
 
 6*; 
 
 people who, in a country like this, divided into parties, are 
 so often found playing the game of " Follow my leader," 
 — men who look not at principles but persons ; pinning 
 their faith upon the sleeve of souk; one individual who has 
 managed to ingratiate himself with them ; who denounce 
 what lie denounces, and praise what he praises ; who look 
 to him as a kind of fugleman, by whom it must be deter- 
 mined whether they shall shout or remain silent, whether 
 they shall clamour for tins or for that; who investigate not 
 the principles upon which measures are founded, or the 
 results to which they may tend, but who think it enough 
 that the master has said that such measures must be 
 adopted ; thus making themselves his " tools" in the very 
 worst sense of that word — following him wherever he may 
 choose to lead, and elevating him upon their shoulders, 
 it may be into the possession of an authority from which, 
 when attained, he will look down with scorn upon those 
 who have placed him there, becoming a far greater tyrant 
 than those whom they have enabled him to supersede and 
 displace. 
 
 Nor is this the only way in which mind is debased, and 
 the human spirit degraded. Not only tiie tools themselves, 
 but the tool-user is often caught in this net ; for as he con- 
 sulted their prejudices to gain his influence, so must he 
 continue to study them in order to maintain his ascend- 
 ancy. W they dare not say their souls are their own, so 
 he in his turn is reduced to have them become, as it were, 
 his soul, so long as he requires their aid. He has to look 
 closely to his words, lest he offend them; he is obliged to 
 think what will please them, rather than what is true, just, 
 and right in itself. lie has to endeavour to extend his 
 influence, although it be by the compromise of their dearest 
 interests and the sacrifice; of the truest principles. It is 
 necessary that he should look to the right hand and tin; 
 left, and often forego the support of, and sometimes even 
 have to denounce, measures which he believes to be most 
 wise and desirable : and thus cajoling his own conscience, 
 he bows his neck to a yoke, while he is, in appearance, 
 wielding a sceptre. As they disgrace themselves by play- 
 ing the game of ' : Follow my leader," the leader himself 
 plunges vet more deeply into the mire, by practising tin 1 , 
 far more base and despicable game of following his fol- 
 lowers.
 
 68 LECTURE V. 
 
 What catch-words have been employed to impose upon 
 men, and frighten from investigation ! In what different 
 ways have they endeavoured to reconcile themselves to 
 foregoing the exercise of some faculty of their minds on 
 topics that well deserve and demand the exercise of all 
 their intellectual energies ! Dr. Watts, for example, enter- 
 tained a profound veneration for John Locke. He wrote 
 an ode, in which he placed the spirit of that great writer 
 in the celestial regions ; but after this description of the 
 soul of John Locke in heaven, he recollected that his great 
 favourite was unfortunately a heretic, and did not believe 
 in certain doctrines professed by the theological school to 
 which the doctor himself belonged, and which by them are 
 deemed essential to salvation. To obviate the difficulty, 
 he stretched his poetic license a little farther, and actually 
 converted the soul of John Locke to orthodoxy after death 
 had dismissed him from the visible to the invisible world. 
 Now Dr. Watts was a man who upon other topics than 
 that of theology gave proof of possessing a better spirit 
 than this would indicate. How just and true, for instance, 
 is his estimate of the nature and work of education, as he 
 expresses it in the ode addressed to his own teacher, Mr. 
 Re we : 
 
 " I love thy gentle influence, Rowe ; 
 Thy gentle influence, like the sun, 
 Only dissolves the frozen snow ; 
 Then bids our thoughts like rivers flow, 
 And choose the channels where they run." 
 
 Nothing can be more true or beautiful as a description of 
 what education should be ; but then the enactments and 
 dogmas which forbid our thoughts to 
 
 " Choose the channels where they run," 
 
 stop the course of those "rivers," dam the free current of 
 thought, and prevent its benignant and fertilising influ- 
 ences. 
 
 Good principles and just in their origin, becoming per- 
 verted or unmeaning in the lapse of time, have sometimes 
 enslaved even great minds. There was a period when the 
 inhabitants of this country were most reasonably and justly 
 attached to their sovereigns ; when the people and the 
 crown were united against the baronial aristocracy, and in 
 that alliance, offensive and defensive, they were paving the
 
 MENTAL SLAVERY, 
 
 69 
 
 way for a greater enjoyment of political freedom. Hence 
 sprang tliat fervent loyalty of which tyrannical sovereigns 
 subsequently took advantage, and which became a conven- 
 tionalism to such an extent that the cavaliers who followed 
 the standard of Charles I. declared they would fight to 
 death for the crown, even though it Mere only stuck upon 
 a thorn-bush. This reverence for royalty affected strongly' 
 even the mind of such a man as Lord Bacon. He could 
 see truth clearly on other subjects, at a period when it had 
 been obscured by the jargon of the schools, and he pre- 
 pared the way for those wonderful advances which have 
 since been made in science ; but while his eye was so keen 
 for the perception of those maxims of freedom, justice, and 
 policy which belong to social life, yet he spoke with the 
 folly of a child of the acquirements of sovereigns. In his 
 history he idealised that man of mean cunning and dirty 
 trickery. Henry VII. ; and before James I., at whom all 
 Europe laughed, he bowed as to a right royal British Solo- 
 mon ; consenting even to become his victim in the disgrace 
 which he suffered, without defence, because he knew that 
 that mean-spirited monarch wished to preserve his favourite 
 from the storm of public indignation ; and so Bacon was 
 made a tub for the whale in his impeachment, and the fury 
 was exhausted upon him which should have hurled Buck- 
 ingham into disgrace. He retired, relying on distant na- 
 tions and future ages to do justice to his memory. 
 
 But what station is exempt from the influences which 
 reduce to mental slavery ? What is the condition of the 
 sovereign of this country — what the mental freedom of 
 the British monarch ? No British regality is allowed the 
 right of conversion to certain theological doctrines, what- 
 ever the individual possessing that royalty may think of 
 them. If the doctrine of transubstantiation could be proved 
 to the satisfaction of the mind of a king or queen of Eng- 
 land, it is at the peril of forfeiting the station they possess 
 to accede to the proofs winch they deem conclusive, and to 
 avow- publicly their religious principles. I call this mental 
 slavery. The sovereign of this country dares not choose 
 a religion, and must not see truth in any theological doc- 
 trine unless it be contained in the articles of the Protestant 
 Church of England as by law established. He is debarred 
 from that which is the common right of human nature, and 
 may not even marry a person who entertains an honest
 
 70 LECTURE V. 
 
 conviction of the truth of such doctrines. Thus has eccle- 
 siastical ambition managed, in the proud and wanton exer- 
 cise of its authority, even to stamp " mental slave" upon 
 the diadem of the British empire. 
 
 One of the influences of mental slavery on which I 
 wish particularly to dwell is that which affects the litera- 
 ture of the country. This is, perhaps, a form of the evil 
 more important than any other, because it is more insi- 
 dious. It corrupts the intellectual air we breathe ; pene- 
 trating into the thoughts, and coming upon us unawares. 
 Political slavery and external bondage give some warning, 
 and may be guarded against, resisted, and thrown off; but 
 the mental slavery which is conveyed by books infuses 
 itself into minds as corrupt air does into the physical 
 frame, rendering them feeble, inert, incapable of helping 
 themselves, and undesirous of assistance from others. 
 
 There is a remarkable instance in English literature of 
 the embodiment in an individual of this mental slavery. 
 We very often hear Dr. Johnson spoken of as ''the great 
 moralist." Pie is held up to veneration by those who 
 desire to affect the public mind in a particular way, and 
 would have it grow within certain restrictions, but not 
 attain to any very high degree of strength or the ful- 
 ness of its maturity. Johnson was just the man for this 
 purpose. Notwithstanding the praises which have been 
 heaped upon him by those who might have been expected 
 to look at literature a little more philosophically, even as 
 a critic Dr. Johnson was an impersonation of whatever 
 is most prejudiced, narrow, gross, and grovelling in the 
 vulgarest portion of the British intellect. He appeared to 
 be great, merely because he gave back in high-sounding 
 words what the ignorant thought in plainer terms. His 
 greatness was like that which is sometimes observed in 
 mountainous countries — for instance, upon the summit of 
 the Broeken. The stranger looks up, on a misty morning, 
 and in the vapour on the top of the mountain lie sees the 
 huge form of a human being, of colossal dimensions and 
 proportions, one to whom the fabled giants are but as 
 pigmies — a being who might ride the mammoth. The 
 observer gazes on this figure with a kind of veneration as 
 something wonderful and preternatural : but by and by he 
 discovers that when he moves, it moves also ; when he 
 inclines his head, it does the same towards him ; when he
 
 MENTAL SLAVERY. 71 
 
 stretches forth his arm, it extends its arm likewise ; when 
 he kneels, it kneels; and at last he perceives that tins 
 figure upon which he has been lavishing his admiration 
 and veneration is merely the reflection in the mist of his 
 own form, an unsubstantial magnification of himself. This 
 is precisely what Dr. Johnson was to the vulgarest of 
 English mind and morals : it saw itself magnified in the 
 mist of his learning, and therefore it paid adoration to 
 • ; the great moralist." And what was he in reality ? What 
 truth did he elucidate, or what error explode? What 
 dying superstition was there in religion and politics, the 
 existence of which he did not endeavour to uphold? Me 
 was a Jacobite when Jaeobitism was all but worn out. 
 One of the last of those who held allegiance to the house 
 of Stuart, he was one of the first of its adherents who 
 accepted a pension from, and rendered Tory loyalty to, 
 the Hanoverian intruder. He was a believer in ghosts 
 when every one else began to smile at the very idea ; nay, 
 lie was even a ghost-seer, or rather a ghost-hearer himself: 
 seriously and gravely recording, that about the time of his 
 mother's death, at midnight, he heard a cry, " Sam ! Sam ! 
 Sam!" three times over — though '-nothing came of it." 
 He was an advocate for hereditariness of faith, contending 
 that no man had a right to change the religion of his fore- 
 fathers. He was so narrow in his charities, that he sets 
 it down as a great act of Christian feeling, that one day 
 when he had partaken of the sacrament at church he 
 gave an old woman half-a-crown, •' although he saw she 
 had Hart's hymns in her hand," the evangelical hymn- 
 book of that period. He was an advocate of the doc- 
 trine of •• taxation no tyranny" at a time when political 
 parties in England had begun to abjure the notion, and 
 when America was in arms, making its final struggle 
 against imposition. And over his whole course of life 
 there was the gloom of that fear of death which super- 
 stition nourished in him, ever growing more and more 
 terrible, leaving his name at last 
 
 " To point a moral and adorn a talc ;" 
 
 to be a watchword to those who would tie people to worn- 
 out superstitions, ami make them dwell in the shadow of 
 things gone by — regarding the rising of the sun, whether 
 of thought or political liberty, as owls and bats do the
 
 72 LECTURE V. 
 
 appearance of the luminary which sheds joy and bright- 
 ness over all creation. 
 
 I think it is worth while to illustrate somewhat further 
 the character of this celebrated person, and for that pur- 
 pose refer to some passages in his Lives of the Poets. Dr. 
 Johnson's Life of Milton has often been exposed and de- 
 servedly censured. It is full of passages which call for 
 animadversion, and which seem to have been dictated by 
 a bitter spirit of animosity, unmitigated by any strong per- 
 ception of the beauties and grandeur associated with the 
 name of Milton. 
 
 [The Lecturer then cited a number of passages from 
 Johnson's Lives of Milton, Akenside, and Thomson; point- 
 ing out manifold inconsistencies, prejudices, and perver- 
 sions. Dr. Johnson's avowed contempt for the physical 
 sciences was particularly noticed.] 
 
 This dislike of physical science is not uncommon 
 amongst those who are opposed to the progress of human 
 knowledge, and for a very obvious reason. It is by 
 advancement in physical science that the people have 
 bettered their position, and gained a greater abundance 
 of the means of supporting human life, and been enabled 
 to turn their thoughts toward the great principles of poli- 
 tical society, or the abstruse speculations of theology. It 
 is by the progress of physical science that maxims which 
 have been received through long ages have been corrected 
 and amended. It is by the material that the intellectual 
 has been advanced ; and if we look for a country and 
 people most to be relied on for their acquaintance with 
 what concerns justice, right, charity, and human advance- 
 ment, we find them in connexion with the most extensive 
 and accurate acquirements in the physical sciences in their 
 application to the common arts of life and the extension of 
 the means of human subsistence and enjoyment. 
 
 While Dr. Johnson advanced the commonest opinions 
 and prejudices for the sake of talk, he was continually ut- 
 tering the most paradoxical assertions. In the multiplicity 
 of his recorded dicta, which were received as the effusions 
 of an oracle, we find such outrageous statements as these: 
 that Dean Swift had very little humour ; that Sheridan 
 was dull : Foote was not a good mimic ; that Garrick's 
 personations of character upon the stage displayed less 
 of intellect than a common street ballad-singer; that Dr.
 
 MENTAL SLAVERY. 73 
 
 Price was not a person to sit down with in a room ; that 
 Thomson was a sensualist — Rousseau a rascal; and that 
 Shakspeare never wrote six lines without some fault. 
 Upon philosophical opinions he used the same regal license 
 of issuing his decrees. On the doctrine of philosophical 
 necessity — a question surely not of easy decision, or to be 
 disposed of summarily — he said, "Sir, we know we are 
 free; and there's an end on't." In education he considered 
 Greek and Latin as the great essentials, " because they 
 gave a man an advantage over others." He preferred 
 public schools to private, because there emulation could be 
 brought into play — the very reason why any sound mo- 
 ralist would have thought differently; and his profession 
 as to public interests was very characteristic: "Public 
 affairs vex no man : I have never slept an hour less, nor 
 ate an ounce less meat ; it is a mode of talking in society, 
 but don't think foolishly." 
 
 Such was the real character of a man whose praise has 
 been so loftily sung by the friends and supporters of what- 
 ever exists. There was a verse which Dr. Johnson was 
 disposed to criticise with great contempt — 
 
 "Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free." 
 
 He alleged that this language was as absurd as his own 
 parody of it — - 
 
 " Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat :" 
 
 but it little became the character of a critic to overlook 
 the circumstance, that want of fatness in the driver of the 
 oxen does not. incapacitate him from fulfilling his office, 
 but is some advantage; while most assuredly, in ruling 
 freemen, a participation in their freedom of spirit is not a 
 disqualification, but an essential. Let a slave; be placed in 
 command over freemen, and all their liberties, political, 
 religious, and intellectual, will be in jeopardy. A slave 
 cannot well rule even over slaves; and if Dr. Johnson was 
 in reality for a time mental king of England, as he has 
 sometimes been represented, why then it amounts to this — 
 that there was one slave-mind ruling over a multitude of 
 other slave-minds in virtue of the mere reflection and 
 magnilication of their own servility. 
 
 I have dwelt long upon this instance, because by the 
 books of a people the mind is either nourished or poisoned. 
 
 F
 
 74 LECTURE V. 
 
 There is no better method of invigorating the mental 
 powers, or rearing the soul to maturity, than the compa- 
 nionship of books written in a high, pure, free, and lofty 
 spirit. The warning of Cassias was well founded — 
 
 " Let noble minds keep ever with their like." 
 
 What had Brutus to do with companionship to Caesar? 
 The true and free intellect will have its chosen familiarity 
 with books of kindred spirit ; delighting to wander with 
 More in his Utopia, where he found refuge from the op- 
 pression of his time, and indulged in the anticipation of 
 what society should some day become; luxuriating with 
 universal Shakspeare in the world at large, with men of 
 all ranks and characters, in their diversities forming the 
 loftiest and truest harmony ; ascending with Milton to 
 " breathe empyrean air," and look down on the world from 
 an elevation to winch they alone can attain who dwell in an 
 atmosphere of truth, seeing how clear and bright all things 
 are, viewed through that transparent and elevated medium; 
 consorting with such young philosophers as Akenside, in 
 Ins first aspiration endeavouring to "breathe the soul of 
 Plato into British verse;" and recreating himself with the 
 lyrical strains of Burns, or the true-hearted Nicoll. Let 
 but the spirit of such men as these encompass the votary 
 of mental freedom, and he will live to some purpose in the 
 world. If these are his literary tastes, his political principles 
 will not be for measures which reduce five-sixths of the 
 country to the condition of a slave-class, and lay the whole 
 nation prostrate at the feet of a grasping aristocratical 
 clique. 
 
 One cannot but rejoice to see emancipation from men- 
 tal slavery in an American writer. We should be glad that, 
 with all the faults of that country, and the faults, somewhat 
 dissimilar, of this particular work, such books should be 
 printed there, and republished here, as the " Essays of 
 Emerson ;" probably the first genuine effusion of American 
 thought which has yet found utterance. How well he has 
 spoken upon the very subject on which I have been address- 
 ing you to-night ! how admirably he rebukes the. timid 
 spirit which looks fearfully around in society, and, before 
 it gives utterance to a thought, asks what one will think 
 and another will say if he employs such and such an ex- 
 pression. Emerson says :
 
 MENTAL SLAVERY. 
 
 " Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer uprigh 
 He dares not say, ' I think,' ' I am,' but quotes some saint or 
 ^age. He is ashamed before the blade of grass, or the blowing 
 rose. These roses under my window make no reference to 
 former roses or to better ones ; they are for what they are ; they 
 exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is 
 simply the rose ; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. 
 Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts ; in the full-blown 
 iiowcr there is no more ; in the leafless root there is no less. Its 
 nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. 
 There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers ; .he 
 does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the 
 past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tip- 
 toe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until 
 he too lies with nature in the present, above time. This should 
 he plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet 
 hear God himself, unless he speak in the phraseology of I know 
 not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always 
 set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like 
 children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tu- 
 tors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character 
 thev chance to see, painfully recollecting the exact words they 
 spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which 
 those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and 
 are willing to let the words go ; for, at any time, they can use 
 words as good, when occasion comes. So was it with us ; so 
 will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, we shall see truly. 
 It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the 
 weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall 
 gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures, as old 
 rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as 
 sweet as the murmur of the brook, and the rustle of the corn.''' 
 
 It is much better that Americans should write in the 
 style which Emerson has adopted, than imitate our Addi- 
 sons and Johnsons, or ape any thing that belongs to the 
 old world, and take their expressions from the language ot* 
 the literature produced in this country in other times, in- 
 stead of consulting their own impulses, forming their own 
 notions, and expressing their own aspirations. 
 
 The great deadweight upon, and hindrance to, the ex- 
 pansion of thought, and intellectual progress, is most gene- 
 rally found in the established priesthood of a country — in 
 mon who are themselves sworn to think, only certain things 
 which are set flown for them — who begin their lives with 
 subscription to articles and creeds, which subscription has 
 to be renewed with every preferment; so that their thoughts
 
 76 LECTURE V. 
 
 must keep on in the course marked out for them as long as 
 they have consciousness, and mean to retain their position. 
 There is something in this system not merely hostile to 
 progress in one particular thing, but opposed to progress in 
 any department whatever. It is inimical to political, scien- 
 tific, and moral truth ; it sets itself in array against what- 
 ever principles belong to the best interests of humanity ; 
 for those interests are bound up with its freedom and pro- 
 gress. Accordingly, it is always the endeavour of this class 
 of men to obtain possession of the education of the coun- 
 try, and by that means, to take the guidance of the popular 
 mind, and ensure its subserviency to their views. This 
 object is evidently contemplated in the present day by the 
 clergy. This is manifest from the jealousy with which all 
 educational movements are watched by them, in the privi- 
 leges which belong to such forms as have their approbation, 
 and the difficulties with which all other endeavours, how- 
 ever seriously made and useful in their promise, are sure 
 to encounter. But the attempt to effect the permanent 
 mental thraldom of this nation cannot ultimately succeed. 
 To enslave the mind and thought of this country is a gi- 
 gantic enterprise, and those who embark in it will be sure 
 eventually to find themselves mistaken. The mind of Eng- 
 land enslaved ! That mind which shewed its power in the 
 very commencement of our history ; which, in our Saxon 
 ancestors, prevailed over the feeble aborigines, and made 
 itself national — which quailed not to subsequent conquests, 
 but subdued the conquerors themselves — which, in \Vick- 
 liffe and Chaucer, created from a chaos of words the grand 
 language of this country, so capable of all modes of expres- 
 sion, the utmost depth of sensation, the most fervent glow 
 of poetry — which won at so early a period a then unri- 
 valled freedom of institutions, and the germ of the repre- 
 sentative system, while the rest of Europe still struggled 
 under the yoke of feudalism — which rebelled against des- 
 potism over conscience, and so reformed itself, even before 
 the outward adoption of the Protestant reformation ; nor 
 quietly bore even that as a yoke when it also became a 
 domination — which kindled up in the Elizabethan era that 
 magnificent constellation of poets and philosophers whose 
 light will beam upon the world through long coming ages 
 — which has originated the most ingenious mechanical in- 
 ventions, and applied them to the useful arts of life, laying,
 
 MENTAL SLAVERY. / , 
 
 as it were, a foundation for the future prosperity of the 
 country in its wealth, and subduing the earth to the good 
 of humanity — which even now, in spite of all difficulties and 
 obstaeles, of all cant and conventionalism, heaves and throbs 
 with the birth of new forms of civilisation, better adapted 
 to the wants of human nature — which, in due time, will 
 give them vitality, and cherish them to maturity, thus as- 
 serting the worth of its own freedom, and the extent of its 
 powers : — Enslave; that mind ! Could that be done, we 
 might well say, that 
 
 " The pillar'd firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble!"
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 
 
 There are three gradations of freedom, — the personal, 
 the political, and the mental ; and each is entitled to rank 
 amongst the best and dearest interests of humanity. 
 
 Personal freedom may perhaps, in some cases, require 
 experience of the contrast of constraint in order to its full 
 enjoyment ; and yet there are instances in which it is so 
 prized that men readily sacrifice for it many of the con- 
 veniences and advantages of society. Even Europeans 
 have described the enjoyment they felt in traversing the' 
 desert, mounted on some swift Arab steed, flying along 
 "with the rapidity of the wind, and seeming as though they 
 ■were one with the free elements of nature. The Indian 
 dives deep into the woods, ascends the lofty and rugged 
 mountain, or traces the stream from the place where it 
 flows broadly and grandly, with its rich fertilising power, 
 in the lowlands, to the remote scene of its comparatively 
 petty source. In his unshackled roamings and freedom 
 from the numerous restrictions which society imposes, he 
 has a mode of existence which even civilised individuals, 
 when they have tasted, have found so fraught with enjoy- 
 ment, as to return afterwards with reluctance and difficulty 
 to the thronged cities from which they had emerged. 
 
 Personal freedom is one of the elementary rights of our 
 being. Even men in the lowest stages of civilisation, who 
 have been doomed to undergo its loss, have usually i'elt 
 the deprivation bitterly. The African derives not the same 
 amount of enjoyment from the exercise of his native liberty 
 that is experienced by the Indian, for he possesses not his 
 wild and exclusive disposition ; yet where is the African 
 who, having been entrapped into the condition of a slave, 
 did not require long constraint and harsh usage before he 
 could be tamed to submission to his unnatural state, and 
 allow himself to be harnessed to his work ? Even many 
 of those who had not originally been born free, — who
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 79 
 
 knew the name of " Africa" only by tradition, — who had 
 been born and bred as slaves, — when, a few years ago, their 
 emancipation was granted, with what exuberance of delight 
 did they hail its accomplishment! They had been looking 
 to the attainment of their liberty for a long period, often 
 with the " hope deferred that maketh the heart sick.'' For 
 many a weary year they had caught the names of their 
 friends in this country, and had repeated that of " Wilber- 
 force," as a charm and presage of their future freedom. 
 They found preparations making for placing them upon a 
 level with other human beings ; and at length a definite 
 time was fixed, and a period named— to them an ever- 
 bright day in their calendar. We are told that as the time 
 approached, there was a nervous and feverish impatience 
 manifested by these poor creatures, as though some great 
 change were about to pass over even their very physical 
 frames. Those among them who had been collected into 
 religious iiocks by the missionaries gathered themselves 
 together in their chapels, and spent in devotional exercises 
 the last hours in which they were to be branded with the 
 epithet of " slave." Ever and anon, although the most im- 
 portant of topics were brought before their attention, they 
 cast their eyes upon the clock, listened to its tickings, 
 and anticipated with their earnestness its slow progress. 
 When the important minute at last arrived, and the stroke 
 of the bell told that they were slaves no longer, it is 
 stated that they burst out into an exuberance of joy; they 
 raised not merely their songs of thanksgiving, but their 
 shouts of gratitude and gratulation : they sang hosannahs 
 to the Deity and fraternal welcomes to their fellows ; they 
 threw themselves into each others' arms, exhibiting an over- 
 flow and almost frenzy of delight, indicating that to their 
 minds it was as though the dayspring from on high had 
 arisen upon the longest and darkest night. They had no 
 power of words or of Gesticulation sufficient to express the 
 strong pulsations of their hearts, and make their delight re- 
 verberate, until it should seem as though it were an echo 
 of the eternal music of the spheres, which still roll on in 
 the light, glory, and freedom with which they were origi- 
 nally endowed by the Creator. 
 
 But there are instances more familiar to our manners 
 and habits, where no such change as this has to be effected, 
 but where a considerable degree of personal liberty has
 
 80 LECTURE VI. 
 
 been enjoyed for years ; and yet how intense is the longing 
 which often arises for its exercise ! Mr. Francis Place, in 
 one of his tracts, on the condition of the working classes, 
 has described his own feelings when a workman, going day 
 after day to the same round of toil — the early morning 
 calling him to his labour, and only the late night dismissing 
 him from it ; until the monotony of his life became so 
 sickening, that neither body nor mind could bear it longer ; 
 and at last he one day started off, resolved to go to Hamp- 
 stead or to Rochester, or whithersoever his legs might 
 choose to carry him, desiring only to feel once more the 
 freedom of the man, to breathe the pure air, and traverse 
 the world something like the master of his own limbs and 
 movements. 
 
 Feelings arising from the same source as the emotions 
 I have been describing are at the bottom of the sensations 
 with which we contemplate certain institutions. It may 
 not, perhaps, come home to the bosoms of those who 
 dwell in this metropolis ; but who is there that has lived 
 upon the coast, and remembers a time of war, who does 
 not feel a thrill of horror at the very mention of that in- 
 strument of oppression and wrong, the press-gang ? Some 
 of us have seen men, whose garb should indicate them to 
 be champions of their country and its defenders from hos- 
 tile attacks, Iving in wait like wild beasts for their prey, 
 and beheld them springing upon an unguarded and unex- 
 pectant individual — one, perhaps, who had been bred to the 
 toil of the mercantile navy, and had for years gone through 
 numerous hardships and perils — just returned to the shores 
 of " his own country,'' as he fondly deemed it, that which 
 is so often called "the free," ay, " the freest" of countries 
 — probably in the very act of starting from the coast by 
 some coacli towards the inland town where he had left all 
 most dear to him — friends, relatives, wife, parents, children, 
 whom he had not seen for years — we have seen them sud- 
 denly seizing him by strong and ruffianly arms, and com- 
 pelling him by threats and blows to enter what is called 
 "the service of his country," sending him off upon another 
 long expedition, at the peril of life and limb, allowed no 
 rights, but, nominally in the cause of national liberty and 
 independence, doomed to the sacrifice of that freedom which 
 should belong to every human being in society. 
 
 The operation of our laws in various ways interferes
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 81 
 
 with the exercise of this natural love of personal liberty. 
 What, for instance, is more iniquitous than the practice; in 
 punishment for offences of giving to the individual the al- 
 ternative of pecuniary line or the loss of personal liberty? 
 Is there any comparison in severity of infliction between the 
 two? or ought tliev for a moment to be put into this anti- 
 thesis ? Is it not in effect providing that for certain offences 
 there sliall be one punishment for the wealthy, and another 
 for t.'ie poor? the payment of the heaviest fines inflicted on 
 the former beinjr merely the trouble of signing their names 
 to a cheek; while upon the poorer classes committing the 
 very same offences there falls one of the worst punishments, 
 one which should be reserved for greater crimes, requiring 
 more severe inflictions — the being immured within the walls 
 of a dungeon, and there pining away their time, debarred 
 from the light, air, and movement for winch they are crav- 
 ing. Still harder is it whim such restrictions are imposed 
 as banishment from the fair fields and open walks of the 
 country, and being immured from day to day within the walls 
 of what seems to them, and is in fact, a sort of fortification, 
 not as the punishment of crime, but of poverty ; when it 
 is the condition not of guilt, but necessity ; a restriction 
 added to the other indignities, privations, and wretchedness 
 of pauperism ; in order, if possible, by such extraordinary 
 ami artificial efforts, to reduce the state of the pauper below 
 the condition of the man who is called, as though in mockery, 
 "the independent labourer." Whatever be the merits or 
 demerits in the law regarding debtors, there cannot, I think, 
 be a human heart but must rejoice in the diminution of any 
 needless or vindictive restrictions upon personal freedom, 
 disabling a man from the pursuit of honest industry, be- 
 cause he happens to have been unsuccessful in his business. 
 Although there is some doubt thrown upon the circumstance 
 related in the biographies of Dryden, vet who can call to 
 mind the story, and at the same time trace the career of 
 that intellectually great man, who may be said to have given 
 the last touch of polish and grandeur to the English lan- 
 guage — who expatiated so widely and every where so 
 powerfully in the fields of literature — who is the parent of 
 poetical criticism in this country — who bowed the knee so 
 low before genius which he acknowledged to be superior 
 to his own, while he claimed with such innate dignity the 
 deference due to his own mental acquirements and vigour 
 
 f 2
 
 82 LECTURE VI. 
 
 — who through a long course of life set an example of 
 endeavouring, by the use of his pen, and the exertion of his 
 mental powers, to serve not only himself but others — who 
 in his last days, when seventy years of age, declared that 
 he was willing to die in harness, his mind still toiling from 
 day to day, and that not for his own sake, but for the bene- 
 fit of Ins children, whom he loved, and whose well-being he 
 was so anxious to promote — who, I say, can trace the his- 
 tory of this man, the author of some of the noblest com- 
 positions in the English language, without a thrill of shame 
 and horror at the tale which is related concerning him, 
 that when at length his course finished — when from a mor- 
 tal he had by his genius become one of the immortals of 
 earth — when honours were awaiting him, and the tomb was 
 opening for him in Westminster Abbey — that even at that 
 moment his corpse should have been arrested for a petty 
 debt, and such indignity inflicted even upon that uncon- 
 scious clay which had been the tenement of a spirit so 
 grand and aspiring? 
 
 Man's limbs are his own ; his personal freedom is one 
 of those primary rights which should only be interfered 
 with when he himself acts so as to prevent the liberty of 
 others. Within those limits law and custom should hold it 
 sacred. The well-being of mind and morals, not less than 
 that of the body, may depend upon its wholesome and judi- 
 cious exercise. 
 
 Political liberty is another gradation in the scale of free- 
 dom. A nation is not free which cannot avail itself im- 
 partially of the powers of all its subjects. A government is 
 a slave-government that is debarred from employing the 
 fittest agency, from any religious sect or denomination, or 
 from among any political party. A community, like an 
 individual, should be self-governed. The achievement of 
 political freedom has been marked, and deservedly, by out- 
 breaks as resplendent as those by which the feelings of 
 the negroes were characterised when they celebrated their 
 emancipation. The tale of William Tell and the deliverance 
 of Switzerland will make the young heart throb for many 
 a generation to come. We look back to the establishment 
 of American independence as the era of the triumph of a 
 great principle. Throughout those colonies they felt as 
 though they had attained to a condition of freedom beyond 
 their hopes, but from which they were anxiously expecting
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 83 
 
 to reap the noblest advantages. What an overflow of joy 
 there was, not only in France but in this country, and in all 
 well-constituted minds throughout Europe and the world, 
 when the Bastile fell, and freedom seemed to arise from its 
 ruins in a splendour and glory which promised a long en- 
 durance and an ever-extending progress ! 
 
 Political freedom is the charter of social good. It is 
 a mere fiction to say that any despot — though he were 
 an angel or archangel from heaven — could govern a free 
 country better than it would govern itself; for whatever 
 mistakes be made as to what is the common interest, Ave 
 may be well assured that in the long-run it will be pro- 
 moted, and that the delays which take place are useful, 
 inasmuch as they render more distinct to individual minds 
 the good which is sought for adoption by the community. 
 Let free states make their blunders, and adopt for a while 
 a false and erring policy, — let them even be ungrateful to, 
 and unappreciating of, the superior minds amongst them 
 who would lead them by a more direct path, — still, in the 
 very fact of their freedom and self-government they have 
 before them a means of progress which bears an analogy to 
 the gradual development of the human mind and body, and 
 which secures for them analogous results. This love of 
 liberty and desire for it aggrandises those who fail of its 
 attainment. Let a nation — it may be a small free state — 
 be crushed by external force; let it fall before barbarian 
 arms and numbers — still, even in its fall, it is dear to hu- 
 manity, in its own extinction it does something towards 
 the future existence of other free states. Its champions, 
 though they perish, are the world's martyrs: hearts will 
 throb with delight and beat quicker when their names are 
 repeated : their memory becomes a religion in the world : 
 the places where their heroism was evinced are hallowed 
 ground in all future times ; and with the cypresses around 
 their tombs shall be en wreathed and blended the laurels of 
 future victories, and the roses of peaceful enjoyment. 
 
 Mental freedom — the highest in this gradation — is less 
 noticeable in its attribute.-, and less capable of being traced 
 and recorded in its progress. It is very often achieved and 
 exercised in silence. It is a work which goes on in those 
 mental recesses which are more impervious to us than the 
 deepest solitude ; accomplished there by the disposition — 
 which, while it respects the authority of numbers, or of an-
 
 84 LECTURE VI. 
 
 tiquity, will not be bound by them : which holds itself at 
 liberty to investigate any topic whatever of human thought ; 
 which takes the exercise for granted of every power with 
 which it has been endowed by nature, as the rightful function 
 of its being: and which, unshackled by prejudice or interest 
 any more than by outward control, is still winning its way to 
 a higher, wiser, and purer state. Tins is a condition of be- 
 ing more fraught with blessedness, although less obvious to 
 notice, than any of those hitherto described. It is only in 
 such a state as this that mind does justice to itself; that it 
 accumulates truth after truth, ever enriching and enlarg- 
 ing its stores of knowledge ; that, by its honest exercise, it 
 acquires strength to discern, which at last becomes almost 
 intuitive, between the good and evil, the right and wrong, 
 the true and false ; and thus at length there arises within 
 itself an unboastful but deep and enduring sense of enjoy- 
 ment, such as can spring from no other source whatever. It 
 is a gladness which the heart of the individual alone knows, 
 but which, when he is once acquainted with, he would not 
 exchange for all that the world can offer. If we could sup- 
 pose the elements conscious, it partakes of that sense of 
 liberty which Tennyson has ascribed to the winds and the 
 waters : 
 
 " The winds, as at their hour of birth, 
 
 Leaning upon the ridged sea, 
 Breathed low around the rolling earth, 
 
 With mellow preludes, ' We are free!' 
 The streams, through many a lilied row, 
 
 Down carolling to the crisped sea, 
 Low tinkled with a bell-like flow 
 
 Atween the blossoms, ' We are free !' " 
 
 Thus the mind, liberated from ignorance and prejudice — 
 throwing off internal as well as external restraints — relying 
 upon its own excursiveness for action — does not go loudly 
 and boastfully abroad to proclaim this to the world ; but 
 to itself ever and anon there arises that low, musical, and 
 thrilling tone, which makes the individual feel that his lot 
 is a happy one, whatever maybe the disadvantages of his 
 external circumstances. This is the state described in some 
 well-known lines of Sir Henry Wotton, which, in their 
 quaintness, depict a feeling common to all times: 
 
 " How happy is he born and taught, 
 Who serveth not another's will ;
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 85 
 
 Whose armour is his honest thought, 
 And simple truth his only skill ! 
 
 This man is freed from servile hands 
 
 Of hope to rise or fear to fall ; 
 Lord of himself, though not of lands ; 
 
 And having nothing, yet hath all." 
 
 Such also lias been the experience of men who have felt 
 that 
 
 " Stone walls do not a dungeon make, 
 Nor prison-bars a cage." 
 
 The mind expatiates beyond the limits of its cell, and 
 all truth, beauty, goodness, and glory in the universe yet 
 remain in some degree its heritage. This is the most in- 
 alienable of human blessings. Many have possessed it to 
 whom tin; benefit of political freedom, and even personal 
 liberty, was denied. Plato, the greatest name in philosophy 
 — the free (ireek Plato — was once seized by the tyrant of 
 Syracuse, ami sold for a slave. lie was soon redeemed by 
 his admiring friends and disciples : but supposing this had 
 not been the ease, why, even in bonds the slave would have 
 been Plato still, his mind would, even under such circum- 
 stances, have retained its variety, loftiness, and grandeur; 
 it would have still possessed all those qualities which have 
 made him the dispenser of so much improvement and de- 
 light to the students of succeeding ages. There is that old 
 garrulous deformed .Psop, who still appears to talk in our 
 schools by his fables, telling his stories of speaking birds 
 ami beasts, and working out by their means so many shrewd 
 lessons for the government of human conduct — that old 
 philosopher was but a Phrygian slave ; and the chief notices 
 of his lite which remain to us are a list of the masters under 
 whose hands he passed, he having been sold from one to 
 another, and found no doubt by his owners to be a very 
 profitable property. Ppictetus, whose moral maxims com- 
 mend themselves so much to all who delight in that species 
 of study, was also but a slave. He taught, even while in 
 bonds, the worth of mental liberty, and experienced its 
 blessedness himself while he was teaching it to others. 
 Horace, whose odes are to this day so prominent a portion 
 of education, whose observations upon men and manners 
 have been such a treasure of pleasant philosophy, he, though 
 not himself actually a slave, was the descendant of one who
 
 86 LECTURE VI. 
 
 was elevated by an arbitrary act from that condition to be- 
 come a freeman. Virgil, the sweet singer of Roman times, 
 sang but like a bird in a cage, under the subjection to which 
 his country was then reduced. Even the very authors of 
 our religion were not politically free. Jews by birth, they 
 were the subjects of imperial Rome; and in this as in other 
 instances there has issued, even from amidst the dreariness 
 of extended domination, or the very depth of gaols and 
 dungeons, a voice to which the heart of man has responded, 
 because it breathed the accents of a liberty beyond the power 
 of despotism. 
 
 Mental emancipation must be an individual's own work ; 
 it is a liberty not to be achieved by one human being for 
 another, by the many for the individual, and still less by the 
 individual for the multitude. It is not a work to be com- 
 menced by convening great meetings ; no banners, drums, 
 or trumpets can herald its advance in the world. It is a 
 work of internal liberation. Mental freedom is not the mere 
 casting off with scorn what others venerate. It does not 
 consist in the simple belief or rejection of any tenet or 
 dogma whatsoever; it depends on the principle upon which 
 that rejection or reception is formed — upon a sincere and 
 heartfelt love of truth animating the breast in every intel- 
 lectual inquiry. There are those who think themselves 
 mentally free because they are very liberal in their censures 
 upon others ; looking down with scorn upon this as a pre- 
 judice and that as an error, when perhaps there may be at 
 the same time a large accumulation of gross and pernicious 
 matter pressing heavily upon their own mental faculties, 
 rendering them more enslaved than others at the very 
 period when they are boasting of their perfect liberty. It 
 consists not in the adoption of any form of bold language ; 
 for " free speaking," in the common sense of the word, is by 
 no means a sure indication of "free thinking." There are 
 many to whom we might well apply the language of Crabbe : 
 
 " They talk their minds ; we wish they'd mind their talk." 
 
 A deep and lasting love of truth is the first and most 
 vital condition of intellectual liberty — a principle which 
 leads its possessor to care little with whom he may agree or 
 differ in opinion, in what his mind receives or rejects ; but 
 which simply takes truth for its guiding star, and follows its 
 course, without any desire of pomp or show, in any path
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 87 
 
 whatsoever into which it may lead. But combined with 
 this love of truth there must also be constant diligence, 
 which in fact is the test of a love of truth. Little of that 
 love has he who makes no effort for its attainment, or who 
 is ever satisfied with any point at which he may have arrived. 
 Freedom without this! why, mind is wanting to make up 
 the completeness of the definition. There must be mind 
 as well as liberty to form the conjunction mental freedom. 
 Without earnest diligence and toil in the acquisition of 
 knowledge, freedom is but as the liberty of a straw, to shew 
 which way the wind is blowing it; but where there is this 
 conjunction, then the noblest boon is conferred upon society, 
 and the highest privilege enjoyed by the individual. 
 
 I endeavoured in last Sunday's lecture to work out, per- 
 haps some thought rather severely, a specimen of mental 
 slavery. It was necessary to place the picture in strong re- 
 lief. — although 1 trust it Mas not untruly painted, — and thus 
 to shew, even in a conspicuous teacher, a man so celebrated 
 as a moralist as Dr. Johnson, the characteristics of mental 
 slavery. It I Mere to select an instance of an extraordinary 
 intellect, extraordinary for its freedom, I know of no name 
 in our literary history to which I should more readily point 
 than that of John Milton, especially for the purpose of this 
 lecture and upon the present occasion, because his writings 
 and course of life are very generally known. The whole 
 career of that great man, his entire intellectual life, seems to 
 me to consist in successis-e assertions of his mental freedom. 
 Take him at the very commencement of his course in life, 
 and we find him a youth at college, aspiring to the rank of 
 a religious teacher, and regarding that as the noblest and 
 most serviceable work in which he could be engaged. With 
 every qualification for the office — far higher than those to 
 be found in the great majority of candidates — with every 
 requisite which should cause others to recognise in him a 
 fitness for the work, he finds that he must advance to this 
 office through the gateway of subscription. This is no dif- 
 ficulty in the way of the majority of theological students : 
 thousands and thousands were then, as now, signing their 
 adhesion to creeds and articles without the least scruple. 
 Yet tins ingenuous youth said to himself, "I will not sub- 
 scribe 'slave !' Dear as those prospects are to my heart, and 
 singular as my conduct may appear when viewed in contrast 
 witli the practice of others, yet here will I take my stand:
 
 S8 lecture vr. 
 
 my conscience is my own, and I will not allow it to bend 
 down before the mandates of bishops, councils, or churches !" 
 Here was an assertion of liberty on the part of Milton in 
 •one direction : what is the next conspicuous action of his 
 life? From his refusal of subscription, and the general 
 tenor of his religious opinions, he was led to connect him- 
 self with the puritan body of that time. He was one with 
 them politically, in their resistance to episcopal authority 
 and in his general desire of reform in Church and State- 
 But Milton saw the beauty of poetic composition : he felt 
 his own power of embodying, even in the dramatic form, 
 lessons of divine philosophy, which should charm the listen- 
 ing ear. He produced — no doubt to the horror and aversion 
 of his puritanical friends and connexions — his Masque of 
 ('omits, to tell to after ages, that whilst those about him were 
 endeavouring to overwhelm all that was graceful and beau- 
 tiful in the amusements and enjoyments of the people, he in 
 his own freedom of thought burst through their prejudices, 
 triumphed over other difficulties and obstacles, and embodied 
 practically his own sense of the worth of beauty and the 
 grace of humanity, as well as the value of religious freedom 
 and the rights of conscience. 
 
 Then he went to Italy, where he was honoured, caressed, 
 and courted by the learned, great, and beautiful, and where 
 his life was one career of enjoyment : and yet he refused to 
 give himself up to these pleasures when the liberty of his 
 native country was in danger. Back he returned to Eng- 
 land ; and, with a strength and energy which alone are 
 sufficient to stamp the character of the man, he betook him- 
 self to the comparative obscurity of the schoolmaster's oc- 
 cupation, but also to the noble celebrity of the assailant of 
 the worst corruptions in Church and State, over which he 
 was destined eventually to raise his song of triumph. At a 
 later period, when the domination of sect was substituted for 
 that of the Church, and when a new tyranny was endea- 
 voured to be established, as stringent as that which had been 
 exercised by those who were for a time pushed from their 
 stools — when it was proposed in the Parliament to continue 
 to take cognisance of books before they were published, by 
 a censorship of thought and language — then Milton came 
 forward, and produced that immortal protest which will re- 
 main a monument of his power of mind and nobility of 
 thought as lornr as the contest shall last in the world between
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 89 
 
 the enslavement of the press and the connexion of its libe- 
 ration and its freedom with whatever is most precious. The 
 same independence of mind and nobility of character were 
 displayed in his work upon divorce; in which he asserted 
 the great principle, that engagements which outlive their 
 proper utility and violate their own character should come 
 under the cognisance and amendment of law. Although 
 the common hangman was ordered to burn this work, yet 
 Milton wrote it under the influence of principles and hopes 
 which could not be thus cast down: he anticipated the ver- 
 dict of posterity ; he left his opinions on record; and many 
 in after generations have found in the condemned work a 
 truth and beauty which do honour to the man, and demon- 
 strate purity and wisdom where misrepresentation had taught 
 them to expect only an apology for license or caprice. 
 
 In the selection of subjects for his poems Milton de- 
 parted from the rules of the critics and the prevailing taste 
 of the learned. In his posthumous work upon theology, I 
 think he displays keenness, promptitude, and firmness, and a 
 logical acumen which anticipated many of the conclusions 
 of criticism in later times, and shews how much individual 
 intellect can effect: how it keeps not only on a par with the 
 advance of the genius of the human race, but anticipates its 
 course when exercised in honest liberty. 
 
 The freedom of the press, as the best security for intel- 
 lectual liberty in individuals, was one of the points which 
 Milton laboured to establish. While a strong mind may 
 work its own way, there can be no doubt of its being 
 affected, and that powerfully, by the mental atmosphere of 
 the region in which it dwells. That is formed by the 
 press: and the object of Milton's Areopagitica was to shew 
 that no sueh obstacle or impediment as that of a censor or 
 licenser ought to interpose between the speculations of the 
 author and the attention of the world. In one part of that 
 work he says : 
 
 "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book : who kills a 
 man, kills a reasonable creature — God's image ; but he who de- 
 stroys a good book, kills reason itself — kills the image of God, as 
 it were, in the eye. .Many a man lives a burden 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. It is true, no 
 age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; 
 and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected
 
 90 LECTURE vr. 
 
 truth, for the want of which whole nations fire the worse. We 
 .should 1)0 wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the 
 living labours of public men, how we spill that reasoned life of 
 man preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of 
 homicide may be thus committed, sometime.-, a martyrdom, and if 
 it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the 
 execution ends not in slaving of an elemental life, but strikes at 
 the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays 
 an immortality rather than a life." 
 
 I will read one other extract. I am now quoting from 
 a book with which many of you may be very familiar, for 
 the sake of others who, probably, arc not acquainted with 
 it. My desire is to stimulate those whom I address to a 
 familiarity with authors like ?Jilton ; esteeming that one 
 of the best ends which can be accomplished by these lec- 
 tures. Our author thus addresses himself to the parlia- 
 ment, who were at that time sanctioning this licensership 
 of the press : 
 
 "What should ye do, then, should ye suppress all this 
 flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet 
 springing daily in this city ? Should ye set an oligarchy of 
 twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds 
 again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to 
 us by their bushel : Believe it, lords and commons, they who 
 counsel ye to such a suppressing do a.^ good as bid ye sup- 
 press yourselves ; and I will soon shew how. If it be desired 
 to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free 
 speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, 
 and free, and humane government ; it is the liberty, lords and 
 commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have 
 purchased us; liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits; 
 this is that which hath rarified and enlightened our spirits, 
 like the influence of Heaven ; this is that which hath en- 
 franchised, enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions degrees 
 above themselves. Ye cannot make us now less capable, less 
 knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first 
 make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the 
 founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, 
 brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us ; but you, then, 
 must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbi- 
 trary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed 
 us." 
 
 Milton pleaded in vain to the " lords and commons," 
 then under sectarian influence. Notwithstanding this 
 mighty protest, they sanctioned the censorship. But
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 91 
 
 perhaps a more remarkable triumph than that of con- 
 vincing the legislature was in store for him ; tor it is 
 recorded, that, at no very great distance of time, the 
 influence of his Areopagitica was such as to convince the 
 very licenser himself, and cause the man of office to throw 
 up his functions, declaring that he would no longer be 
 concerned in a work so mischievous and wicked — he 
 retired from his situation for very shame. Perhaps, 
 under the circumstances, as a successor was not appointed, 
 to the many laurels Milton won as poet of Paradise Lost 
 and defender of the people of England, must be added 
 that of being practically the abolisher of the censorship of 
 the press. 
 
 But the press is not enslaved by a censorship alone, so 
 that it becomes rather a hindrance than a help to the at- 
 tainment of intellectual liberty in individual minds. The 
 press of this country, free in many respects, is very far 
 indeed from being so in other particulars. There can be 
 no thoroughly free press which is subject, like ours, to an 
 undefined law of libel, which specifies not the crime, but 
 can catch any thing within its capacious net that private 
 malignity or public oppression may be solicitous of putting 
 down. What person is there who has ever written half-a- 
 dozen pages for the public press, who has not written 
 something or other which, under certain circumstances, 
 might lead him to be accused, convicted, and punished 
 as a libeller? The best definition of a libel with which 
 I am acquainted is, any thing which may be offensive 
 to somebody or other. Those who cherish admiration of 
 the press should seek to strengthen the efforts made now 
 and then, not with the energy and perseverance one would 
 wish, to better this law by a distinct definition of the offence. 
 For my own part, I know none so simple, broad, and satis- 
 factory as that of truth. Let that be ever told, and men 
 be always free to proclaim it, whatever may be the conse- 
 quences. There may possibly be with the act a malignity 
 of motive; but what has the clumsy machinery of a law, 
 which has to be administered by judges, juries, sheriffs, and 
 gaolers, to do with an inquisition into motives? Upon ac- 
 tion it may decide ; for the determining of motives it is by 
 far too coarse a contrivance for the application of its tests 
 ever to be useful or satisfactory. I know there is a com- 
 mon objection to an alteration of the law as far as relates
 
 92 LECTURE VI. 
 
 to individual character, in which case, it is said, that telling 
 truth may proceed from malice, and be very injurious to 
 the individual respecting whom it is uttered. A case of 
 this description is always brought forward as an illustration : 
 supposing a person to have been guilty of some failure in 
 early life, followed by the punishment of the law; a man 
 afterwards, from mere malignity, brings up this story; 
 matter of fact although it be, the individual is unjustly 
 prejudiced by its publication. I reply, that the evil here 
 is in that weak, one-sided, conventional notion of morality 
 and character which, if a person has committed what is 
 offensive in early years, takes that as a test of his mental 
 and moral career through a long life which has since 
 elapsed ; judges by externals, and places a departure from 
 the rules of society, at whatever period of life it may have 
 taken place, in the balance against evidence of solid attain- 
 ment, mental worth, and social usefulness. It would be far 
 better that some incidental evil should be incurred in the 
 process than that this poor, pitiful, and fallacious mode of 
 estimating — this flaw in the morality/ of society, which 
 makes all sin to consist in being found out — should be ca- 
 nonised as a morality to be preserved ; and thus the oppor- 
 tunity lost of drawing a line so distinct and efficacious as 
 that between truth and falsehood, to mark a violation of 
 the law or the remaining under the broad shield of its 
 protection. 
 
 Together with the works which would more and more 
 abound in a country enjoying complete freedom of the press, 
 it is also desirable, as an external means of cherishing men- 
 tal freedom, that there should be an opportunity for practical 
 observation to a greater extent than is commonly found. 
 We are divided too much into classes — marked and ticketed. 
 There are, in this country, several descriptions of mind; 
 such as a working-class mind, a trading-class mind, an 
 aristocratical mind, a literary mind, and a clerical mind. 
 Men's minds are judged as you look at the uniform worn 
 by a soldier to ascertain to what regiment he belongs and 
 under what captain he serves ; and von forthwith are led 
 to believe that, by this means, you are let into the man's 
 thoughts, opinions, motives, and purposes. Thought will 
 never be what the interest of our nature requires until this 
 practice is, in some measure, broken down, and we use the 
 best means within our reach, and familiarise ourselves with
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 93 
 
 the feelings of those who belong to other classes, trace 
 their modes of thought, ascertain the principles upon 
 which their characters are formed, have somewhat of a 
 metempsychosis with them, by which our minds pass into 
 theirs, as we hope theirs would into ours, eliciting thereby 
 more of the common principles of the universal human 
 mind. I rejoice in all tiie means of locomotion which are 
 afforded in the present day, whether they be railway, 
 steam-vessel, or whatever else ; and I would have them 
 even cheaper and more abundant than they are now ; 
 because even to change; the objects which nature and art 
 present to our senses is useful ; and yet more to become 
 familiar, if country -bred, with the inhabitants of cities, 
 and, if nurtured in towns, with those of rural districts, 
 enabling each party, as it were, to change places for a 
 while, and receive new impressions. If this means of 
 mental knowledge could be still further enlarged, and 
 opportunities afforded of marking society in different 
 countries, under the influence of varied laws and institu- 
 tions, it would tend to help on the growth of that thought, 
 whose free progress is the herald of future improvement 
 and enjoyment. 
 
 Mental liberty tends to the advancement of every other 
 kind of freedom. The mind once accustomed to test things 
 by truth, reality, and utility, will not easily bend before 
 any conventionalism, however long it may have been con- 
 secrated. It will be for putting these old productions into 
 the crucible, for the purpose of seeing of what metal they 
 are made, and separating the gold from the dross. As this 
 disposition spreads, the people are on the high road towards 
 tht! reform of whatever is oppressive in their institutions, 
 and the formation of such as are free. It is from within 
 that this power ever comes. Look at some of the poorest, 
 as they seem, of nature's productions. Mark how the shell- 
 fish renews its coat of mail, its means of defence : it is 
 from within, and not from without. In the same way the 
 human mind derives its strength and defence. But al- 
 though it originates within, it does not stop there, but 
 develops itself externally, producing visible results, which 
 the world may contemplate. Any great number of well- 
 trained, boldly-exercised, truth-speaking minds would soon 
 compel reforms in institutions which now derive their chief 
 strength from the prejudices or interests of privileged
 
 94< LECTURE VI. 
 
 classes. Here is the worth of general education, of such 
 a training as gives the intellect a chance, stimulates it to 
 freedom, and administers wholesome and sound nutriment 
 whereon to feed. A portion of the people of Scotland 
 have recently been paying a just and honest tribute to the 
 memory of Robert Burns ; while others, no doubt, have 
 only been offering a hollow similitude of reverence, which 
 they would never have paid to the man himself. What 
 a test is applied to these expressions of opinion by the 
 publication of the poems of Thorn, the poor Aberdeen 
 weaver. Every body sees at once that here is a practical 
 test : is it admiration of Burns, the son of genius, or is it a 
 piece of hollow-heartedness and self-glorification ? Is it 
 paid really to the spirit and genius of the poet and the 
 man, or is it merely that those who offer it may honour 
 themselves, and gain credit for their taste and apprecia- 
 tion ? Why, every body points to the poor weaver, with 
 the spirit of Burns in him, with his songs all glowing, his 
 Scotch peculiarities, recommending his poetry to his fel- 
 low-countrymen, as it is recommended to all, by melodies 
 which go to the very depth of human nature. And yet, 
 there is the poor poet — a victim, in early life, to an accident 
 by the carriage of a peer, which made him a cripple, for 
 all his days ; a victim again subsequently to the change of 
 trade and the course of business, by means of which his 
 exertions at his solitary loom became no longer a means of 
 supporting himself and his family; there he is with his 
 poetry, merits, honesty, and moral worth, and his misfor- 
 tunes also, with every claim which should move those who 
 honour dead poets to shew themselves sincere in their 
 reverence bv care for the living poet, instead of postponing 
 their tribute of respect in tins case, as in the other, for a 
 long-after posthumous celebration. I trust that the anti- 
 cipated results will be fully accomplished in this case, and 
 that mere shame, if nothing else, may cause attention to 
 be given to the claims of the living. Why I adverted 
 to this instance, and have thus dwelt upon it, is this, that 
 it shews the power of speaking out a moral truth, and 
 proves what opinion, clearly and decidedly expressed, in 
 harmony with the genuine tendencies of our nature, is able 
 to accomplish. 
 
 When education becomes more general, and the work- 
 ing people can give vent to their thoughts, — when, in the
 
 MENTAL FREEDOM. 95 
 
 honesty of their nature, they call things by their right 
 names, — when they look through Church and State, and 
 say, " Here is an outworn piece of antiquity which is only 
 cumbering the world; here is a barren tree which only 
 blights the ground about it, why is it not cut down and 
 cast into the lire ? here is the germ of a future institu- 
 tion harmonising with the wants and spirit of the age; let 
 these changes be made, and let us come to such and such 
 results in our political institutions;" why, though no law- 
 may be passed to enfranchise them with political rights, — 
 although they may still be deprived of the suffrage, may, 
 for a period, remain what they have been properly called, as 
 all are who do not possess a voice in the affairs of the com- 
 munity, "a slave-class," — yet even if as slaves they speak 
 out, with intelligent and intelligible language, their know- 
 ledge of truth, there is in that voice a mental freedom and 
 power to which authority and station must bow, and to 
 whose dictates it must give way, or resist at the peril of its 
 own continuance in this world of ours. 
 
 Such is my faith in the power of mental freedom, that 
 I regard its promotion as the worthiest object to which the 
 continuous labours of a life can be directed. It has been 
 said by some, that I have occasionally made these lectures 
 the vehicle of theological or political partisanship. If I 
 know myself, whatever my opinions may be, either theo- 
 logically or politically, there is one thing which I prize a 
 thousand-fold more dearly, and would labour with ten thou- 
 sand times greater earnestness for its promotion in the world 
 — and that is, mental freedom. I came here as a lecturer 
 under no restrictions of any description. Opinions of various 
 kinds must frequently be involved in what is said in lec- 
 tures such as those which I have delivered here. I would 
 undertake no function in which any one thought which my 
 mind cherishes was proscribed and branded as a thing that 
 was not to shew itself there, nor ever have utterance from 
 my tongue. l>ut. in claiming this freedom of thought and 
 speech, I am not demanding for myself that which 1 would 
 not willingly — I will not say concede to others : for it is 
 what I cadi upon every one to assert and enjoy for them- 
 selves. 1 am anxious that they should think: compara- 
 tively I do not care whether they come to the same opi- 
 nion as I do, or to views diametrically opposite. I care 
 not for opinions ; my sympathy is less for any opinion
 
 96 LECTURE VI. 
 
 whatever, however long or firmly I may have held it, than 
 for the freedom which gives to opinions their individuality, 
 worth, and power in the mind, and there makes them the 
 elements of good in social life. This is the right which 
 I would lead all to exercise ; comparatively regardless 
 of consequences, so that I stir up the honest love of 
 liberty and truth. In that I have my recompense, and the 
 noblest to which I can aspire. I feel no danger in such a 
 mental freedom, and apprehend no evil results from its 
 exercise ; for I believe that the course of the human mind 
 is like that of the eagle ; and that, when unshackled by 
 restraint, and undeceived by appearances, it fixes an un- 
 dazzled eye, and soars with an untiring wing, towards the 
 great orb of truth.
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 ON A CHEAP EDITION OF BACON's ESSAYS (FIRST LECTURE). 
 [DELIVERED AT FIN'SBURY chapel.] 
 
 The subject of this lecture was suggested by my observ- 
 ing, in the numbers of one of the cheap sets of republica- 
 tions now going on, an edition of Bacon's Essays for eight- 
 pence. As tli is is one of tlie books which 1 have often 
 recommended as a most desirable companion in the for- 
 mation of the intellect and of the character, it naturally 
 occurred that it might be useful to throw out some sug- 
 gestions tending to shew how that may yield the most 
 profit to the mind which can now be obtained with so 
 little expense upon the purse. 
 
 In the material world the best gifts of Providence are 
 most common. Such are the natural elements that support 
 human existence, and that minister to the simplest forms 
 of human enjoyment, such as air, and light, and water, and 
 fire. These extend themselves over the whole region of 
 animated being. " The blue sky bends over all;'' it yields 
 to all the sense of beauty, the assurance of protection, the 
 stimulus of hope ; its glories are there, its sun by day, and 
 its moon by night, and its stars measuring out times and 
 seasons for humanity, and performing for us offices of the 
 most common and, as it were, mechanical utility, while 
 they also suggest the boldest and deepest speculations, and 
 lead u^ to tin 1 loftiest hopes. The rains descend and fer- 
 tilise the earth ; or if there be a soil like that of Egypt, 
 where the clouds gather not, where they assemble not 
 themselves in the air to call forth the richness of the soil 
 below, then the overflowing river takes up the work else- 
 where fulfilled by them, covers the neighbouring plains 
 with its fertilising inundations, and bids man still recog- 
 nise the principle of beneficence, conjoined with that of 
 power, in the operations of nature. Rivers every where, 
 the great arteries of the world, are subservient to the pro- 
 
 o
 
 9S LECTURE VII. 
 
 duction of fruitfulness in the soil, furnish the means of 
 communication to human beings, and in a thousand ways 
 bear their varying tributes to the same great principles 
 and purposes : while the very power that makes the torch 
 of the incendiary dreaded as the means of desolation in 
 peopled countries, is that to which we are indebted for the 
 ability to support ourselves through the cold of the return- 
 ing winter, by which man is enabled to prepare his food in 
 so many different modes as to minister to the enjoyment, 
 as well as simply to the support, of his frame ; and also 
 which aids in the working of metallic and other substances 
 so as to help us towards a high degree of civilisation from 
 the merest condition of savage existence. In all this the 
 Divine bounty flows evidently and indiscriminately over 
 the whole surface of being. The good gifts of God in 
 material existence are the most generally distributed. 
 
 In the moral world we are at first presented with what 
 seems a contrast. In the material world God's best gifts 
 are the most common. In the moral world God's best 
 gifts are the rarest. The tine organisation which gives to 
 every external object, by the sense of light and colour, of 
 form and beauty, of order and magnificence, its power of 
 operating most strongly upon the human system, this is 
 comparatively the inheritance of a few ; the great powers 
 of the mind by which man searches into the principle of 
 things, by which he arranges and classifies the innumerable 
 phenomena that are continually presenting themselves to 
 his observation, by which he ascends to the lofty views of 
 the philosopher, instead of dwelling on mere individual 
 objects and events, like the savage, — this is so uncommon 
 as rarely to fail of raising its possessor into intellectual 
 eminence. While, however general may be those disposi- 
 tions which tend to link us with others, to make the claims 
 to a certain extent recognised of affection, of trust, of gra- 
 titude, and of confidence — these, in their higher demon- 
 strations, in what makes the moral elements so mingle that 
 nature may stand up and say to the world, " This was a 
 man," — these, too, are of uncommon occurrence. We find 
 that eras are made and marked, and in after-times counted, 
 by illustrious individuals. Genius, the highest gift of God, 
 if taken in all that it is, that it implies, and that it produces 
 — genius does not belong to the continuous succession of a 
 class, but to that of individuals, at intervals. The law of its
 
 bacon's essays. 99 
 
 renewal seems not so much like that by which animated 
 beings multiply, as that of the fabled phoenix; there still 
 exists hut one: it expires, and renews itself for another age, 
 and then expires, and then renews itself again, still existing 
 as an individual, and not as a species. The world has seen 
 but. one Homer, but one Plato, but one Shakspeare. And 
 in tracing the world's history, we find the name of some 
 individual evermore as the fountain; the small, it may be 
 the comparatively unnoticed, fountain, but still the foun- 
 tain from which has flowed the wide and deep, the broad 
 and full stream that has afterwards attracted all mankind. 
 In the Mosaic account of the creation we find all the ele- 
 ments of chaos reduced to order and harmony; we find 
 the process of material existence going on to its comple- 
 tion, the sun shining above, and the stars are glittering 
 through the night, and the waters have retired to their 
 places, and the green fields, and hills, and mountains are 
 standing in their beautv, and vet even then we are told 
 ■• there was not a man to till the "round.." And so has it 
 ever been in the richest fields of human occupation. Long- 
 afterwards, how few were the human race ! how hard was 
 their conflict to subdue, and to replenish, and to possess 
 and enjoy the earth ! and how i'ew are they still, compared 
 with what that earth is capable of supporting, capable of 
 ministering to, not only the means of animal existence, but 
 all the higher attributes of spiritual being! And though 
 these few, in another view, seem almost countless multi- 
 tudes, vet how rare amongst them are those highest and 
 greatest gifts that constitute in man the noblest develop- 
 ment of his nature ! If there has been but one gifted with 
 the power- of high genius in almost every department, whe- 
 ther of external art or of inward feeling, whether of poetry 
 or of action, we find that it requires the lapse of ages even 
 to supply what may be owing to the feebleness and errors 
 of tiiat one man of genius, and another must be created in 
 order to bring his work to perfection ; and thus, as we find 
 Moses creating an enduring polity, Mahomet founding a 
 theological empire, Luther achieving a great intellectual 
 and religious reformation, so in the domain of philosophy 
 do we see Aristotle ruling with despotic sway, for about 
 two thousand vears. over the realms of philosophy; then 
 we find a Bacon originating a mode of philosophising, in 
 a way that, according to our conceptions, if it may not
 
 100 LECTURE VII. 
 
 suffice for, will essentially aid, the operations of the human 
 mind till the world's end. 
 
 But although there is this contrast to be noted, this 
 discrepancy between the world of matter and of mind, 
 that in the former the best gifts are the commonest, and 
 in the latter the best gifts are the rarest, yet we should ill 
 understand or appreciate the plan, so far as it can be traced 
 by us, on which the world is governed, if we left the con- 
 sideration there, and rested simply in the perception of the 
 contrast. It is not so. In the rarity of these higher gifts, 
 gifts of mental and of moral power — in the rarity of these 
 there is a tendency to become common, ay, as common as 
 the simplest elements of material well-being ; and it is the 
 process by which they become common that enhances their 
 worth, that makes them so much the more spiritual a min- 
 istry than they would be, were they, to the extent to which 
 they can be realised by all, the common heritage of all as 
 the condition of their existence. They cannot but become 
 known; they are generally diffusive; they stimulate the 
 power, and they form the faculty, of expression. Those 
 who possess these gifts go forth as it were out of them- 
 selves into the minds of others, by, we might almost say, 
 a divine impulse. And where there is not this tendency to 
 expression, where the dictate of a lofty intellect is rather 
 to soliloquy than to oratory, to meditation than to commu- 
 nication, still the tendency to diffusion is inherent in the 
 qualities themselves; and those who possess such attributes 
 of the mind and heart, those who are really raised above 
 the world in the capacity of their intelligence and in the 
 loftiness of their mind, they influence by their existence, 
 they act by being : the very fact of their living, breathing, 
 moving upon the earth, in the exercise of all these quali- 
 ties, makes them as the lights of heaven, that send forth 
 their emanations, and, without any action or exertion of 
 their own, still attract the gaze and fix the admiration, and 
 excite thoughts and feelings, and spread their influences 
 over human life and human prospects. Hence the beauty 
 and the power of education. Providence seems ever to 
 have Milled that mind should be the great trainer, in- 
 structor, and benefactor of mind. It has made no provi- 
 sion for independent existence. Its own influences arc 
 around us in nature, and it constitutes each generation that 
 possesses the earth the trainers in the education of the
 
 bacon's essays. 101 
 
 generations that are to follow, indicating that all know- 
 ledge, that all intelligence, that all thought, reason, feeling, 
 morality, religion, best flow through mind to mind, are 
 best felt and most amply and richly realised by being the 
 communication from one intelligent and feeling being to 
 another intelligent and feeling being, thus linking all to- 
 gether, uniting all in the relation of benefactors and reci- 
 pients, and realising the spiritual world which we may find 
 in the subordinate deities of the old mythology, or in the 
 worship of tutelary saints and angels, the guardian spirits 
 over nations and individuals, as exhibited in the forms of 
 Roman Catholic worship. They are types which have 
 their reality in the world of mind. And if this be the 
 beauty and power of education, whether in the school or 
 the household, so is it of national instruction ; and therein 
 do we perceive the inestimable privilege and the high glory 
 of our country in b( ing so rich as it is in a national litera- 
 ture. Oh, what volumes might be selected for the succes- 
 sive steps of training in an education properly national, 
 that would cast the minds of the rising generation in the 
 grandest moulds that nature ever formed, in which all hu- 
 manity might rejoice, whilst our country could distinctively 
 claim them as its own ! 
 
 Amongst these there are few, perhaps, that at once 
 assert for themselves a higher rank than Lord Bacon, or 
 whose works more deserve to find a place in the class of 
 cheap publications for general use. Indeed, it is to be la- 
 mented that in these cheap publications there is so little 
 discrimination as to the relative claims of different writers. 
 They blend together too often, in sad confusion, the useful 
 and the pernicious, the grand and the mean — that mere 
 twaddling in literature which springs not from good, nor 
 can ever tend to good, and the emanations of genius* which 
 is born to command tin 1 world. The inquiry of the book- 
 seller is not as to the claims of intellect, but as to the claims 
 of copyright; he brings out that the most cheaply which it 
 is most convenient for him to reprint; and thus people are 
 led to look rather to quantity than quality, to regard the 
 bushel of chaff as of more value than the few grains of 
 wheat, and to delight in the abundance of their heritage, 
 when the greater portion consists of ground totally un- 
 worthy of being cultivated by human skill. It is in order 
 to do something towards the supply of this want — it is to
 
 102 LFXTURE VII. 
 
 shew the way in which works should be selected, and in 
 which, when they are selected, we should still make a fur- 
 ther selection in them of that which appeals to our own 
 individuality, of that which can minister instruction to our 
 own minds from that which is incapable of doing so — it is, 
 I say, for this purpose that I have directed your attention 
 to such a subject as the present. I cannot regard with any 
 sort of complacency the levelling system of equalising the 
 rarest, and most precious works with those which are scarcely 
 worth gathering up were they gratuitously thrown in our 
 way : it is because I cannot regard with complacency this 
 levelling operation, that I would endeavour to excite some- 
 thing like intellectual action in your minds to produce the 
 requisite discrimination. They all come forth cheaply, and 
 are on the same level; just as the ploughshare levelled Je- 
 rusalem ; down went its streets and its market-places, its 
 palaces and hovels; the temple of the Lord and the cottage 
 of the beggar were both levelled by it ; they were both 
 made as cheap as dirt, and about as valuable. 
 
 It is in ourselves that the profit must be reaped. Lofty 
 genius will avail nothing if it pass by us as a mere raree- 
 show, — if we are only looking for adornments with which 
 to set forth our own speeches or writings, — if we arc only 
 seeking arguments to support our own opinions or our own 
 prejudices, — or if we are allowing the golden words of the 
 wise to pass before us in the very same manner and with 
 the same effect as we read over words which we may be 
 compelled to read, but which convey no information of in- 
 terest, suggest no truth of importance. We must become 
 co-operators; as, in the work of religion, the apostle told 
 those whom he addressed to become " fellow-workers with 
 Christ," so, to derive benefit from cheap publications, the 
 humblest student must become a fellow-worker with the 
 poetical genius of a -Milton or the philosophical genius of 
 a Bacon. 
 
 In order in some measure to stimulate this, the best 
 way that has occurred to me is, to take indiscriminately the 
 first essay in the series, and, by giving a brief and rapid 
 sketch of the way in which it acts on my own thoughts, to 
 point out the mode in which I think it should be read br- 
 others, if they would derive from it the precious influence 
 which it is capable of exercising. I do not take it as a 
 specimen of the Essays of Lord Bacon, because it relates
 
 bacon's essays. 103 
 
 to a moral abstraction. The subject of* the first essay is 
 "Truth;" and very few of his essays do relate to moral 
 abstractions, — only four or five at the most, — as this on 
 Truth, a fragment on Fame, those oti Atheism and on Su- 
 perstition. A large number, but still small compared with 
 the whole, relate to human passions and sufferings, — as 
 those of auger, of envy, of love, of death, and so on. The 
 greater number (nearly forty out of the sixty which com- 
 prise the publication) belong either to the different states 
 and conditions of human life or the providential guidance 
 of human conduct; while a l\\v, about four or five, relate 
 to masques and triumphs, gardens and plantations, to 
 the adornments of which his princely spirit so deeply felt 
 the beauty, and, in the days of his prosperity, with which 
 his princely spirit so gorgeously surrounded his own habi- 
 tation. 
 
 1 take, then, the first of these essays. The essay of 
 Truth consists of three portions, in the first of which he 
 assumes the common dislike of man for truth, and endea- 
 vours to account for the fact so assumed. In the second 
 portion of it he refers to the judgment of truth itself for 
 the real worth of truth; and setting forth that judgment 
 according to the nature of truth, he pronounces upon it 
 what is a most poetical as well as philosophical eulogy; 
 while, in the third portion, he descends to the business of 
 civil life, and shews very briefly and rapidly what truth 
 and falsehood are in the intercourse of human beings. 
 The first portion reads thus: 
 
 " ' What is truth ?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for 
 an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and 
 count it a bondage to fix a belief — affecting free-will in thinking 
 as well as in acting; and though the sects of philosophers of that 
 kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are 
 of the same vi ins, though there be not so much blood in them as 
 was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty 
 and labour which men take in finding out of truth ; nor, again, 
 that when it is found, it imposeth upon men thoughts — ^restrains 
 them, rules over them") — that doth bring lies in favour ; but a 
 natural, though corrupt, love of the lie itself. One of the later 
 schools of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand 
 to think what should be in it, that men 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. But I cannot tell : 
 this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew
 
 104 LECTURE VII. 
 
 the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so 
 stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may, perhaps, come 
 to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by clay ; but it will not 
 rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in 
 varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth 
 any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
 opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one 
 would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of 
 men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, 
 and unpleasing to themselves ? One of the fathers, in great se- 
 verity, called poesy 'the wine of demons' (vinum dcemouum), be- 
 cause it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow 
 of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but 
 the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such 
 as we spake of before." 
 
 This is the first portion that I mentioned in the ana- 
 lysis. It shews the turn of his mind, its familiarity with 
 Scripture, its tendency to generalise, that he selects at once 
 such a character as Pilate, and that he identifies him with 
 the principle, not of our inmost nature and constitution, 
 yet with one that is continually evolved in the combina- 
 tions of social life. They are numerous, these same Pila- 
 tians, in our day as well as his : there are few who can 
 have avoided observing them, even from an early period 
 of human life. They are not peculiarly a dissenting sect, 
 these Pilatians. We find from Paley's apology for sub- 
 scribing the Articles of the Established Church without 
 believing them, that they exist within the boundaries of 
 that recognised ecclesiastical constitution. There they are, 
 asking what is truth, asking it like ''jesting Pilate," as a 
 thing about which they need not seriously trouble them- 
 selves, if professional opinion be the passport to influence 
 and emolument. And do we not find this continually in 
 the exertions of men to fix themselves well in the world, 
 in what they deem a respectable position, by the accumu- 
 lation of wealth? Is not the truth which they deem un- 
 important, mere abstract truth, theories with which men 
 ought not to hamper themselves — is it not continually 
 shirked for the sake of what they call solid advantage? 
 Ask what men believe, even in matters of religion, and 
 how often will the question be decided simply by the sur- 
 vey of their external position, of their pecuniary relations, 
 of their patronage and dependencies; there is not in them 
 even the spirit, the semi-barbarian spirit, that was in the
 
 bacon's essays. 10.5 
 
 peers of Scotland at the time of the Reformation, who, 
 when the question was mooted about religious faith, with 
 coronets on their heads, and hands on their swords, said, 
 "We \\ill believe as our forefathers believed;" but these 
 people have no such claim of hereditary dignity — they be- 
 lieve as their friends and patrons believe. This disregard 
 extends through all the regions of literature or of institu- 
 tion in which men by struggle achieve external and worldly 
 good for themselves. What does the pleader care for truth, 
 if he can gain his cause by falsehood ? or the orator or 
 statesman, even if he is making his appeal to the great 
 principles of political order or political freedom, and when 
 he affects to regard the interests of his country as that 
 which should absorb his own individual being? Even the 
 arguments of the pulpit, even the sermons of grave and 
 reverend divines, preached and printed in order to promote 
 the cause of religion and morality, — the cause of both, in- 
 deed, as by law established. — very often contain trains of 
 thought and appearances of argument which are evidently 
 designed to work on the minds of others without being 
 recognised in the mind of the individual himself by whom 
 they are put forth. Thus it is that men ask with jesting 
 Pilate what is truth — -ask it with a careless and scornful 
 disregard, and then think that by some idle ceremony, as 
 he afterwards washed his hands in the public court to shew 
 that he had nothing to do with the death of Christ, — think 
 they can relieve themselves from all responsibility- — "a 
 little water rids us of this stain." He by whom these 
 words were uttered did not find it so, nor does humanity 
 find it so, when human feeling is once excited in the 
 bosom : water will not wash away that stain, nor will all 
 the worldly tinsel that can be gained by disregard of truth 
 atone for its presence. There will be the consciousness of 
 having exposed truth to the world's derision in the garb of 
 a malefactor or slave 1 , of having thus dishonoured that ema- 
 nation from tlu 1 Divine Spirit — of having, in fact, repeated 
 the fault which he committed, and connived at the cruci- 
 fixion of a Son of God. 
 
 Lord Bacon talks of a natural, though corrupt, love of 
 the lie itself. 1 cannot think tiie word 'natural' here 
 wisely or allowedly employed. If it be corrupt, it cannot 
 be natural. The most that can be meant by it is 'common- 
 ness,' or the operation of some other principle of our nature 
 
 G 2
 
 106 LECTURE VII. 
 
 which is thus perverted, but which cannot in itself deserve 
 in like manner the unqualified application of the term cor- 
 rupt. Not such are the indications, the impulses of our 
 moral being, although the life of Bacon was passed in 
 scenes where falsehood might unhappily be so common as 
 almost to impress his piercing intelligence with the feeling 
 that it belonged to human nature. Spending his days 
 amid the contentions of disputants stretched to the utmost 
 to assert their claims of property, or amid the din of fac- 
 tion or those who would have suppressed all faction in 
 despotism, or amongst the interminable and almost un- 
 fathomable falsehoods of successive courts, he might well 
 for a time forget nature, the truth and simplicity of ori- 
 ginal nature, in that factitious nature which was so inces- 
 santly before his contemplation. The real reasons are those 
 which he has afterwards given. They are to be found in 
 the known falsehood of the "mummeries" and " masques" 
 that impose upon mankind, in the suspicion, which those 
 most devoted to these vanities cannot repress, that they 
 are all false and hollow ; or in their exaggerated estimate 
 of themselves, they in like manner working in a vain show, 
 but in each instance willing to make out as good a case as 
 they can for the work to the world, and for themselves to 
 themselves. After adverting to the difficulties of truth, he 
 says with great and beautiful simplicity : 
 
 " But I cannot tell ;" (though he forthwith proceeds to tell 
 that which guides us to the deepest truth of the matter) — "this 
 same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the 
 masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so 
 stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may, perhaps, come 
 to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day; hut it will not 
 rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in 
 varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth 
 any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
 opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations, as one 
 would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number 
 of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposi- 
 tion, and unpleasing to themselves?" 
 
 On these two pillars rest the temple of falsehood — on 
 this willingness to be deceived with that of which we more 
 than half suspect the vanity and falsehood, and on the de- 
 sire to stand better with ourselves than at the bottom of 
 our souls we believe there is anv reason for. At first one
 
 bacon's essays. 107 
 
 feels that it was somewhat harsh in the philosopher, that 
 reference to the denunciation of a father of the Church, 
 one of those who knew no bounds to their superciliousness 
 and their bigotry when their theological dogma was at 
 stake — it seems hard that the father should be quoted who 
 called poesy '"the wine of demons;" but he reconciles us 
 with the qualification that it is only with " the shadow of 
 a lie." There can be no shadow until the sun is up, and 
 sending forth its beams above the horizon. There is no 
 shadow in darkness. The " shadow" implies that sunlight 
 of truth which is the soul of poetry : its imagery thus cor- 
 rects itself, if for one moment it leads the imagination 
 astray. And then with how true a reflection he concludes 
 this portion of the essay! '"It is not the lie that passeth 
 through the mind" — -not the phantasmagorical figure which 
 is thrown for the sake of contemplating its outline, or its 
 colouring, or its movements; it is not these, "but the lie 
 that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt" — a 
 sentiment well repeated by our great poet: 
 
 " Evil into the mind of God or man 
 -May come and go, so unapproved, and leave 
 No spot or blame behind." 
 
 It is not the contemplation of fiction, which must ever, 
 to be welcome and powerful fiction, have a soul of truth 
 enshrined in it and animating it — it is not this that can do 
 aught but good, it is the lie that becomes incorporate with 
 the being — the lie of man's soul to himself and of himself, 
 and of the world around him — the falsehood on which he 
 makes up his mind as a principle of action, which he en- 
 deavours to wield as a sword or sceptre of power, by which 
 la; thinks to conquer good for himself out of the weaknesses 
 of others, or it may be, even to canonise; his memory. 
 This sinking in, this fructifying of the mind, is the lie, 
 as thi' philosopher says, that doth the mischief. 
 
 We take now the second portion of this essay — his 
 illustration of the worth of truth from truth itself. 
 
 " but howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved 
 judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, 
 teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or 
 wooing of it — the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it 
 — and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying ot it — i-; the 
 sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in 
 the works of the davs, was the light of the sense, the last was the
 
 108 LECTURE VII. 
 
 light of reason, and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumi- 
 nation of his spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the 
 matter, or chaos ; then he breathed light into the face of man, 
 and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his 
 chosen. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise 
 inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, ' It is a pleasure to 
 stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea ; a 
 pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, 
 and the adventures thereof below ; but no pleasure is comparable 
 to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to 
 be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), 
 and to see the errors and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, 
 in the vale below;' so always that the prospect be with pity, 
 and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon 
 earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in Providence, 
 and turn upon the poles of truth." 
 
 The modern philosopher has attempted to indicate that 
 towards which we have recently contemplated the old 
 Hebrew sage groping, as it were, in the dark. Solomon 
 and Bacon both sought the sovereign good ; both were ex- 
 perimentalists in morals ; both tried the evil as well as the 
 good; both bad reason in their own experience to treasure 
 up the monitions that may serve to warn as well as to guide 
 and stimulate others. The sovereign good is here resolved 
 into truth ; and well may it be so resolved, if the world and 
 all that it contains — if the existing system, if time and eter- 
 nity, being as they are, external objective truth, to which 
 the mind of man has only to reply by reflection — if they be 
 indeed the work of power, of infinite wisdom, and of infinite 
 goodness. Into this the question therefore resolves itself. 
 How beautiful is his appeal to the Scripture ; how grand 
 the gradation by which he traces the light from its first 
 beaming upon unconscious matter to the nobler light of 
 reason, and to the yet more blessed light of spiritual life 
 and love ! How well does the mythos serve to illustrate his 
 purposes; and in these how truly did he trace the tendency 
 ofa great mind ! Familiarity with Scripture is the stimulus 
 of genius, and it may almost be made a characteristic of 
 genius. In the formation of the human spirit, nature ever 
 works by the synthesis of the past, and the only training by 
 which that nature, as it exists in our own times and in our 
 own climate, can attain to its grand elevation is, by amal- 
 gamation with that oriental imagery? with that richness and 
 profusion, and with that great perception of moral truth,
 
 bacon's essays. 109 
 
 by which ttie Scriptures of the Old and New Testament 
 must ever be distinguished as a book, apart from all other 
 claims on the admiration of intelligence. 
 
 Philosophers are the best expositors. The use which 
 such a writer as Bacon makes of Scripture — the way in 
 which he connects it with the advance of the human mind, 
 and the prospects and powers of the human mind, is worth 
 whole volumes of textual and theological commentary. 
 How beautiful is his addition to the philosophy of the Epi- 
 curean poet. He cannot stop, as Lucretius does, with the 
 pleasure of contemplating from some secure and elevated 
 retreat the storms, and conflicts, and mists, and wanderings 
 in the vale below : with his own ampler prospect, there is 
 also a deeper feeling. " So always," he adds, as if by the 
 irresistible impulse and emanation of his own heart — " so 
 alwavs that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling 
 or pride." He seems almost prophetically to be contem- 
 plating himself his own attainments, his own grandeur, not 
 vet realised to its amplest extent, his own fall, not yet an- 
 ticipated even in the slightest conception or the faintest 
 imagination : he seems (for this was written in compara- 
 tively early life), he seems to have realised the age that 
 should follow on when they should have sunk from realities 
 into vanities that had passed away ; and now summoned 
 before his mind, he passes judgment on them, and therein 
 on himself, he being, as he says of truth, his own best judge. 
 The state seems to be realised in him which is suggested 
 by tin 1 statue on his monument. There he sits, Ins robes 
 of office around him, his Lord Chancellor's robes, although 
 the age of the face and of the frame, and its completely 
 subdued expression, would lead us to believe that the like- 
 ness belonged to a time when he was no longer allowed to 
 Avear them ; but his mind had always on its robes of judg- 
 ment; that mind always held its state, sat on its throne 
 dispensing truth and justice, — the world and all posterity 
 recognising the wisdom of its decrees: there he sits, the 
 limbs at ease, falling unconsciously, as it were, the man of 
 contemplation and of action, while in that capacious brow 
 it is evident that activity, the grandest, most influential in 
 its results, as well as the noblest in its character, is going 
 on, in might and majesty ; there he sits, as in life he sat 
 (" sic sedebat") making us feel that the reflection with 
 which this portion of the essay ends might describe his
 
 110 LECTURE VII. 
 
 perpetuated external semblance — "Certainly it is heaven 
 upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in 
 Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." 
 
 The essay concludes with a brief admonition, in the 
 conduct of civil life, as to the rigid truth which is there 
 due from every one who would not palter with his own 
 conscience. " There is no vice that doth so cover a man 
 with shame as to be found false and perfidious ; and there- 
 fore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason 
 why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and 
 such an odious charge, ' If it be well weighed, to say that 
 a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards 
 God, and a coward towards men : for a lie faces God, and 
 shrinks from man.' " 
 
 One can only wish, as to this brief admonition, that he 
 had somewhat more enlarged on the responsibility to one's 
 self, and the fact that the lie, though it may make, as he 
 says, the metal work with more facility, yet embaseth it. 
 What is there more awful than this consciousness of em- 
 basement? The "lie" from another has been held, as he here 
 intimates, such a deadly stain, that it could only be washed 
 out in blood; but a man's own blood cannot wash out the 
 stain of which he is conscious to himself: he need not look 
 onward for the excitement of terror to the time foretold 
 in scripture, when Christ cometh to judgment. Judgment 
 is come, in his mind, when this feeling is aroused. The 
 throne of God is then erected within him: "the judgment 
 is set, and the books are opened." What is there that 
 human nature should recoil from with a stronger deter- 
 mination to pursue the opposite course than that which 
 leads man into such a condition of judgment and con- 
 demnation as this? Great in courts, familiar with their 
 inmates, with their flatterers, their fawnings, and their 
 falsehoods, from his earliest years — taught, as the supreme 
 lesson of life, to win his way to external honours and 
 splendours; first the tool of courts and then their victim — 
 he was sacrificed for offences by which others benefited 
 more than himself, in which his very servants rose by the 
 means by winch he fell — sacrificed for offences that had 
 probably been committed to a greater extent by every 
 one who had filled his high position; thrown overboard, 
 willingly thrown overboard, by a heartless monarch, to 
 appease the storm of public indignation, which could not
 
 BACON S ESSAYS. Ill 
 
 at last bo pro vented from beating against the throne itself, 
 and for a time overwhelming that throne. The defects of 
 the: morale, of Bacon may be easily imagined ; the possi- 
 bility of their tainting his philosophical and moral writings 
 must otter itself to every mind; but there is not the 
 slightest danger in the case, as the antidote is stronger 
 than the poison ; and the knowledge of his life is much 
 greater in its effect upon the mind than could possibly be 
 needed as a corrective of any traces of this worldly weak- 
 ness that we ma-,' find in his works. Such traces there 
 are, no doubt, to bo found in some of these Essays, but 
 they are faint and few; and the great occasion for warn- 
 ing to the student rather is, that he should not allow too 
 much than that he should not allow enough to what is 
 on record of the ott'enees and the fall of the philosophical 
 Lord Chancellor. The celebrated line of Pope — 
 
 "The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," 
 
 is absolute nonsense. There are no such moral monsters — 
 they cannot exist. The " meanness" was only the echo of 
 public vituperation. The wisdom and the greatness were 
 such as to preclude the existence of any quality deserving 
 to be so called ; and they are qualities whose lustre is con- 
 tinually before us, commanding admiration and reverence 
 even in the slightest productions of his pen. But, as I 
 said, the profit to be reaped must be reaped by the student 
 who exercises his faculties to discriminate between the 
 true and the false, the good and the evil, the worldly wise 
 and the spiritually enlightened. This must each one do, 
 securing, as his means and opportunities allow, at frequent 
 intervals, some retreat, however brief, from the turmoil of 
 human occupation and interests — securing it, that then 
 the great spirits which, by the multiplication of a cheap 
 pres<, aiv thus sent forth to walk through the land, may 
 come to his abode as the angels came to the tents of the 
 patriarchs, there enlightening him with visions glorious 
 and true — visions of futurity, which, while they point the 
 path of duty, invigorate him with a power that shall 
 ensure its practice. In such visitations the students, the. 
 recipients of the wisdom of writers like Bacon, are making 
 themselves fitting temples for the spirit of philosophy, of 
 reflection, and of humanity, which is indeed the spirit of 
 religion and of God.
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 ON A CHEAP EDITION OF BACON'S ESSAYS (SECOND 
 LECTURE). 
 
 [delivered at finsbury chapel.] 
 
 In introducing the remarks which have been suggested 
 by the recent publication of a very cheap edition of the 
 Essays of Lord Bacon, I directed attention to the circum- 
 stance, that in the material world the best gifts of God 
 are the commonest, while in the intellectual world the best 
 gifts of God are the rarest. In the first we see " the com- 
 mon sun, the air, the skies :" they are over all, and for all. 
 Man everywhere enjoys some portion of the good which 
 nature has provided in her ample distribution. The fruits 
 of the earth may be increased ; the constellations of heaven 
 cannot be restrained; everywhere they shine on men's 
 eyes ; and the wide ocean is the common highway of 
 humanity. The elements which most effectually minister 
 to human power and enjoyment are those which belong to 
 the entire system — restrained to no country, appropriated 
 by no sovereignty. But, on the other hand, the refine- 
 ment of intellect which perceives the nicest distinctions ; 
 the elevation of intellect that takes the broadest and 
 grandest views ; the moral science that grows out of phi- 
 losophical perception and appreciation, and that discrimi- 
 nates at once between good and evil, and raises humanity 
 towards the enjoyment of good; all that brings man on- 
 ward in his course, or elevates him above the inferior 
 principles of his nature, giving their due preponderance to 
 the most exalted, and thus advancing him towards the 
 perfection of his nature — all these are comparatively rare. 
 They belong to individuals, who sometimes leave their own 
 names as the impress and characteristic mark of the age in 
 which they r live, and who often, by their institutions or 
 works, establish an action over the minds, thoughts, feel- 
 ings, conduct of men, which, dating from them, yet pursues 
 its course thenceforward, like the everlasting rivers, that
 
 BACON'S ESSAYS. 113 
 
 shall hold on till all be engulfed in a common eternity. 
 But I went on to shew that, notwithstanding this contrast, 
 notwithstanding the fact, that the best gifts of God in the 
 material world are the commonest, and the best gifts of 
 God in the intellectual world the rarest, yet that there is 
 a ceaseless tendency in these rare gifts to become com- 
 mon — that the very existence of mental and moral excel- 
 lence generates an atmosphere around it — that even by 
 the mere fact of being, it exercises an influence, if there 
 be no tendency towards expression ; but that commonly 
 there is a tendency towards expression — that those who 
 possess such qualities have also with them that energy, that 
 activity which characterises Him who never wearieth — that 
 it is the quality of these distinctive characteristics to diffuse 
 themselves, and to spread wider and yet wider in society, 
 until they approximate towards becoming the common 
 portion and heritage of the human race. And it was also 
 noted, that it is in this agency or operation of diffusing 
 knowledge — it is in the ever-increasing and multiplying 
 excitement of intelligence — it is in the act of elevating 
 the human mind from its state of apathy, indifference, 
 grossness, absorption in the minor things of life — it is in 
 the agency itself that so much good consists, and that the 
 education of the human race is carried on, and human 
 nature trained towards its predestined maturity. There 
 was one circumstance which I did not then notice, but 
 which should not be forgotten in tracing this change, viz. 
 that the commonest material endowments are subservient 
 to, and intimately connected with, the spread of the rarest 
 intellectual and spiritual finalities : for instance, printing 
 has been the great means by which this operation has been 
 carried on. And what is requisite lor printing? What 
 are the external requirements and materials by which such 
 a mighty process is sustained and extended in the world? 
 ^Ye might, looking at such a thing, if only the results were 
 known to us, have expected that some rare qualities of 
 material substance, only to be found in this or that highly- 
 favoured climate — that some rare qualities also of indi- 
 vidual power in the human beings employed, would have 
 been needful: but, instead of this, in reality we find the 
 commonest materials, the commonest process, the very 
 commonest agencies that can be named, are all that is 
 essential. What a blessing would the press have been to
 
 114 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 the world even if every type had been cast in pure gold ! 
 If, instead of the commonest materials that are used for 
 the purpose by the type-founder, they had only been sub- 
 stances so rare that men must have perilled their lives and 
 spent long years in accumulating a sufficient quantity and 
 of a sufficient fineness; had it been needful, instead of 
 the oil and ink that are employed, that the very costliest 
 liquids should have been used ; had it been necessarv that 
 the finest textures and richest silks, instead of the mere 
 cast-off old rags of common wear, should have been requi- 
 site for the paper; still we must have regarded such an 
 agency as an extraordinary blessing of Providence bestowed 
 upon man — we must have felt there was worth and power 
 in its ability to perpetuate the effusions of genius, and the 
 discoveries and principles of philosophy, and the stimuli 
 and hopes of religion. But as it is, we see whatever is 
 most common and humble is all that is required for this 
 grand work ; and that in the world of mind, that in the 
 extension of moral and spiritual life, that in bringing 
 genius into the most intimate relation with the common 
 heart of humanity, Providence has only rendered necessary 
 that which humanity may commonly command. I have 
 adverted to this topic, which was omitted then, in order 
 to exhibit, as far as one can in such incidental connexion 
 with the subjects that come before us, the beneficence of 
 that agency by which all things material and spiritual are 
 alike regulated : and in coming again to the cheap publi- 
 cation before us, and which has occasioned these Lectures, 
 as in the former Lecture I took a single example, selected 
 only one essay, that of Truth — shewed the way in which, 
 as it seemed to me, this paper should be read in order to 
 derive from it the thoughts, and feelings, and impulses 
 which it is capable of communicating — so now I would 
 take the other course of illustration, and, instead of fixing 
 upon some one single paper, endeavour to indicate the 
 results of passing over the whole of this publication, and 
 seeing in it what strings of pearls there are worthy of 
 being enshrined in the memory, and of becoming part and 
 pared of the intellectual and moral existence of human 
 beings. 
 
 The Essays of Lord. Bacon are sixty in number, and 
 may be classified, as I said, under five divisions. The first 
 class (five essays) is that of moral abstractions; as Truth,
 
 bacon's essays. 115 
 
 Unity in Religion, Atheism, Superstition, Fame. The 
 second class (thirteen essays) is that of human passions 
 and sufferings; as Love, Envy, Death, ami so on. The 
 third (twenty essays) that of human conditions and state 
 of being ; as Riches, Great Place, Youth and Age, and 
 the like. The fourth (nineteen essays) are of a prudential 
 character for the guidance of man's exertion in life ; as of 
 Boldness, of Study, of Cunning, and so on. And the last 
 (of three essays) is artistical, referring to Masques and 
 Triumphs, Buildings and Gardens. 
 
 The essay on Truth, the whole of which I read last 
 Sunday, belongs to the first of these classes — moral abstrac- 
 tions ; all the subjects of this class I have just named. The 
 essays are all remarkable as shewing the amazing superi- 
 ority of the writer to that mental one-sidedness which is so 
 very common, and which so especially prevails in whatever 
 is connected with religious subjects. He was indeed pro- 
 perly entitled to the epithet of many-minded, if we may 
 not call him, like the great poet, myriad-minded. From 
 the position which he occupied mentally, he saw the whole 
 of things, and though lie writes on religion he does not 
 write dogmatically. There is a remarkable absence, not 
 only of the tone of dogma, but of the introduction of 
 dogma, in his essays connected with religious topics; an 
 abstinence which is rare, but as desirable as it is rare. 
 Religion was not imparted to the world merely that a man 
 might string together his peculiar propositions, raise these 
 up, and command the world to acknowledge, to bow down, 
 and to do homage to the unconscious idol. Religion was 
 not given to the world that it might be thus exhibited in a 
 set of cut and dried propositions ; it should be, as it was 
 with him, a matter of thought — of deep, and strong, and 
 clear, but at the same time of free and bold thought: then 
 is it that, it best identifies itself, and that its light shines 
 through the clearest and purest atmosphere. Another in- 
 stance of his inany-mindedness in these? essays is that, as 
 in that of Truth for instance, while pursuing the truth, he 
 penetrates to and probes tin 1 very heart of falsehood — 
 while shewing how desirable, how lovely and grand, truth 
 is. he lavs bare the dispositions which make men shut their 
 eyes to it, ami love in preference that " candle-light'' by 
 which the vain '' masques and mummeries" of the world 
 appear more gaudy and glittering.
 
 116 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 In the essays on Superstition and Atheism he gives us 
 different phases of the human mind contemplating similar 
 objects. There is at first an apparent incongruity, as there 
 always must be in the productions of the mind that endea- 
 vours to realise two different states; and accordingly the 
 sentence with which each commences — the declaration in 
 the one case, that " It were better to have no opinion of God 
 at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of him ;" and in 
 the other, that " I had rather believe all the fables in the 
 Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this 
 universal frame is without a Mind " — these have been not 
 merely treated as incongruities, but partisans, writing on 
 different sides, have eagerly cited the one or the other as 
 it answered their purpose : and this is one merit of the pro- 
 ductions of great writers, that they furnish materials for 
 both sides in controversial warfare, though each partisan, 
 looking with his own little penetration for his own little 
 purpose, finds there what he thinks is exclusively adapted 
 to him, while the rich and capacious mind that gave that, 
 gave also that which is equally true of the mind in a 
 different state, contemplating the same object from a diffe- 
 rent position. Instead of picking out these limited views, 
 better were it to aspire towards that breadth of capacity 
 ■which in him saw alike the feeling that impelled to venera- 
 tion as most congenial to the character of man, and the 
 feeling also which was ready to recognise in those in 
 whom that quality had not been developed the good which 
 humanity had imparted nevertheless, and its power guiding 
 them through various scenes where others would inevitably 
 have failed. How good his distinction between unity and 
 uniformity, and how much deeper than divines generally 
 discern ! The most indignant passage in his works is, per- 
 haps, that against persecution, in the essay on Unity in 
 lteligion. It is a grand denunciation. He calls up Lucre- 
 tius from the dead to reprobate a worse sacrifice than that 
 of Iphigenia. How bold his conception of Hying Opinion, 
 " Fame," like a hawk. So far from being a mere anti- 
 theory, practical man, he saw that the grandest and most 
 lasting government is that of Opinion. He would work 
 it as we do steam, and with like regard for the laws of 
 nature. 
 
 The next class of essays belongs to human passions and 
 sufferings. There are thirteen essays of this description,
 
 bacon's essays. 117 
 
 in almost every one of which is something worthy of be- 
 ing remembered ; such expressions as these : "There is no 
 passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and mas- 
 ters the fear of death ;" and again, " The sweetest canticle 
 is 'Nunc dimittis,' when a man hath obtained worthy ends 
 and expectations." The paper on Revenge commences 
 with an expression that has passed into a common maxim, 
 an axiom in political and civil legislation, that " Revenge 
 is a kind of wild justice ;" and though it be a simple 
 and obvious thought, yet the truth ever recommends itself 
 to us when he says, that " in taking revenge a man is but 
 even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior." 
 The whole of the essay on Adversity is of such truth and 
 beauty, that it would be scarcely possible to make any 
 selection from it. Even in its quotations we find that se- 
 lected which others had overlooked, but which when once 
 indicated it seems strange that anybody should have dis- 
 regarded ; as in the citation from Seneca, the "good things 
 which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good 
 things that belong to adversity are to be admired;" and 
 again, that " it is true greatness to have in one the frailty 
 of a man and the security of a god ;" while how beautiful 
 is that which he derives from one of the most ancient of 
 legends, that "Hercules, when he went to unbind Prome- 
 theus (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the 
 length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher, — 
 lively describing Christian resolution, that saileth in the 
 frail bark of the Mesh through the waves of the world." 
 " The virtue of prosperity (he says) is temperance, the 
 virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more 
 heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testa- 
 ment, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth 
 the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's 
 favour. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to 
 David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as 
 carols ; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured 
 more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities 
 of Solomon." In the essay on Envy, what exceeding 
 beautv there is in the similitude that " envy is as the 
 sunbeams, that beat hotter upon a bank, or steep rising 
 ground, than upon a flat;" and what a general truth in 
 the enunciation that "pity ever healeth envy." The essay 
 on Goodness ami Goodness of Nature is one of those
 
 118 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 which go to the very soul of his moral philosophy and of 
 all philosophy. " Goodness (he says) answers to the theo- 
 logical virtue charity, and admits no excess but error;" a 
 truth which, once admitted, clears away a whole regiment 
 of fallacies, and all the pernicious and cowardly cant of 
 the excess of great and good qualities, as if sucli a thing 
 could ever exist: by the single distinction he marks that it 
 is not excess, but error ; error, in which they lose their 
 proper quality, and are not themselves in excess, but are 
 something intermingled with other dispositions. There is 
 a sarcastic shrewdness, perhaps not common with him in 
 speaking of constituted authority, in the second observation 
 on kings, that, " of all kinds of men, God is the least be- 
 holden unto them ; for he doth most for them, and they do 
 ordinarily least for him." The next essay of this class is 
 that on Friendship, where he says, in language which a 
 modern poet has amplified without increasing its force or 
 beauty, that " little do men perceive what solitude is, and 
 how far it extendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and 
 faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling 
 cymbal, where there is no love ;" and then he describes 
 how, in connexion with others, by putting thoughts into 
 words, by looking at them, as it were, from without, as an 
 independent discourse, and no longer a part of himself, a 
 man finally " waxeth wiser than himself."' In the essay on 
 .Suspicion there is a wonderful felicity in the expression, 
 that " suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst 
 birds, they ever fly by twilight;" nor are we without fre- 
 quent occasion for the truth that " there is nothing makes 
 a man suspect much, more than to know little." In the 
 paper on Ambition, an observation which may teach us to 
 form a true and sound estimate of some whose names gain 
 an undue proportion of public notice in their day, is, that 
 " he that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a 
 great ta<k, but that is ever good for the public ; but he 
 that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is tiie de- 
 cay of a whole age." The paper on Fortune declares that 
 "the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands;" and 
 that " if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see 
 Fortune ; for though she be blind, vet she is not invisible." 
 In the essay on Praise there is an observation which re- 
 quires sonic limitation, and which, to make it a permanent 
 truth, would need the addition of a metaphor of an oppo-
 
 BACON'S ESSAYS. 119 
 
 site description. He says, "Fame is like a river, that 
 beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things 
 weighty and solid :" for a while it may be; but the time 
 comes when the rivers change their courses, or when their 
 beds are searched, and their treasures are brought up again 
 to the sight, and that which had been lost to the world for 
 a time, it may be for ages, is recognised and settled in 
 its due sphere. A deep lesson too there is in the simple 
 expression, that '-the odours of ointments are more durable 
 than those of flowers." From these papers I shall only cite 
 one more — on Vain Glory, — that " vain-glorious men are 
 the scorn of wise men, the admiration of fools, the idols of 
 parasites, and the slaves of their own vaunts." 
 
 If, from the quotations which I have now read — marked, 
 in reading through the Fssays, as those who study such 
 papers are accustomed to do — J were to select one as par- 
 ticularly to he dwelt upon rather more at large, it would 
 be that which describes the power of passion as opposed to 
 the fear of death : " It is worthy the observing, that there 
 is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and 
 masters the fear of death."' This may be called a brave 
 sentiment: it is one which, in its application, tumbles down 
 o!i what piles of i'alse religion, false philosophy, false mo- 
 rality and legislation ; for all are founded upon cowardice 
 — the exaggerated fear of death. This has been the bane 
 of man in almost all his undertakings, and it is this which 
 we trace so largely in some systems of religion, which 
 appeal to what they find of it, and aggravate what they do 
 find of it tenfold : it is this which has made men people 
 the world beyond the grave with such fearful shapes, such 
 horrid phantoms, such enduring torments ; it is this which 
 has made them imagine the divine vindictiveness pouring 
 forth all its stores of torture,' — accumulating, as it were, 
 all conceivable malignity in Omnipotence for the infliction 
 of the most excruciating agony; it is this which, in order 
 to counteract such horrible dogmas, has raised up other 
 dogmas equally preposterous, and has supposed divine jus- 
 tice placated by the suffering of innocence — of innocence 
 identified, even in suffering, with the Godhead ; it is this 
 which leads friends and fellow-worshippers, as it were, to 
 endeavour to run after the soul to the other world, to 
 follow it there with their religious agency, and to throw 
 over the naked and shrivelled spirit, in the presence of its
 
 120 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 Maker, the veil of their own devotions ; it is this which 
 leads to the construction of Offices for the Visitation of the 
 Sick, and seems to imply that one person, invested by arti- 
 ficial rite and ceremony with the sacred character, is the 
 necessary attendant at the death-bed of another, in order to 
 ward off evil agencies and foul spirits, and commend the 
 soul on its way on that journey which must of necessity 
 at last be performed alone ; it is this which makes the mind 
 surround death and the grave with such fearful shadows, 
 black plumes, and mournful processions, and the aggrava- 
 tion of all that can strike chillily upon the mind, and press 
 down the thoughts, and present a contrast to those who in 
 other times have chosen rather to crown death with flowers, 
 and sweeten him with perfumes : all these paraphernalia 
 are but a homage to the dark tyrant, to the great king 
 of the grave ; they are a bowing before him of what is 
 noblest in human nature. This cowardice has been in 
 philosophy as well as in religion, — in systems of specula- 
 tion, like that of Hobbes, for the vindication of the com- 
 pletest despotism that human government can exercise ; 
 and it is this which, in politics, in history, makes reigns of 
 terror, and, to the apprehension of one man for his life, 
 sacrifices the lives of hundreds and thousands. The eleva- 
 tion of the mind of Bacon was incapable of this baseness : 
 he saw the ability of man to grapple with death ; he saw 
 that human nature was a grander thing in itself than this 
 grand negation ; and not only human nature in the maturity 
 of its powers and the plenitude of its acquirements, but 
 he says, "there is no passion in the mind of man so weak," 
 (even pity, he instances, as the gentlest of feelings,) but 
 what, when fairly put to the proof, has shewn itself fully 
 able to grapple with this king of terrors, and despoil him 
 of some of his victory and glory. 
 
 The third class of essays relates to human condition, to 
 the different social and relative states in which we exist ; 
 and this also, in the different subjects in which it is evolved, 
 offers a variety of truths equally deserving to be noted and 
 preserved; such as that in the paper of Great Place: "in 
 evil, the best condition is not to will, the second not to can. 
 But power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspir- 
 ing/' " Imitation," he says, " is a globe of precepts ; and 
 after a time set before thee thine own example, and examine 
 thyself strictly whether thou didst not best at first." '• It
 
 bacon's essays. 121 
 
 is an assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom 
 honour amends — for honour is, or should be, the place of 
 
 virtue. — and as in nature things move violently to their 
 place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is 
 violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great 
 place is bv a winding stair" — a truth which he had proved 
 himself, as have others less able to recover their fall from that 
 ascent. In the paper on Seditions and Troubles there is a 
 maxim which it were desirable that rulers would ever heed : 
 " the surest way to prevent sedition (if the times do bear 
 it) is to take away the matter of them" — a much better 
 course than the oppressiveness of coercion. '"The matter 
 of sedition is of two kinds — much poverty, and much dis- 
 contentment;"' "if this poverty and broken estate in the 
 better sort, in 1 joined with a want and necessity in the 
 mean pi ople, the danger is imminent and great — for the 
 rebellions of the belly are the worst." In the same paper 
 he savs afterwards, " Money is like muck, not good except 
 it be spread." Of Empires, he observes, "It is a miserable 
 state of mind to have lew things to desire, and many things 
 to fear." In the essay on Plantations, the planting of colo- 
 nies that is. he makes one remark as to the <:ood which those 
 wiio went forth to cultivate the wilderness might reap, 
 which indicates that his penetrating mind had been watch- 
 ful of those first dawnings of religious liberty in the settle- 
 ments of America : he savs, '• Above all, let men make 
 that profit of being in the wilderness, as they have God 
 always and his service before their eyes." Of Riches, he 
 says. •• ] cannot call riches better than the baggage of 
 virtue; for as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to 
 virtue: it cannot be spared nor be left behind but it 
 hindei'i'th the march." " Of great riches there is no real 
 use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but con- 
 ceit." " (Treat riches have sold more men than they have 
 bought out. Seek not. proud riches, but such as thou 
 mavest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and 
 leave contentedly." " The ways, ' he says, " to enrich are 
 many, and most of them foul." In the paper on Youth 
 and Age he has noted the growing effect in too many in- 
 stances upon age of a worldly spirit, and says, '-The more 
 a man drinketh of the world, the more it iutoxicateth." 
 Of Ueautv he remarks, that " in beauty, that of favour is 
 more than that of colour, and that of decent and gracious 
 
 u
 
 122 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 motion more than that of favour." " There is no excellent 
 beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." 
 In the essay on Ceremonies and Respects, I find this expres- 
 sion noted : " Some men's behavour is like a verse, wherein 
 every syllable is measured." Of Honour and Reputation 
 he remarks, that " the winning of honour is but the re- 
 vealing of a man's virtue and worth without disadvantage." 
 The paper on Judicature contains observations by the car- 
 rying of which into their practical bearings the more nu- 
 merous classes would be sure to benefit: he says, "Judges 
 ought to be more learned than witty, more reverend than 
 plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all 
 things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue." " The 
 mislayer of a mere stone is to blame." Of Law, " Injustice 
 maketh it bitter, and delays make it sour." In a beauti- 
 ful paper on the Vicissitudes of Things, the last of this 
 class, he says, " The river of Lethe runneth as well above 
 ground as below." If from this class of papers, as from the 
 other, I were to select a single expression to dwell upon, it 
 would be not one of those which I have read, but one from 
 the paper on Marriage and Single Life, where he says, 
 " Wives arc young men's mistresses, companions for mid- 
 dle age, and old men's nurses." Now, judged superficially, 
 this has been esteemed a slighting testimony of the worth 
 of woman in social life ; but I believe this to be only a 
 superficial interpretation, and that it is really a true de- 
 scription and a complete summary of woman's mission ; 
 because let the homely terms in which it is expressed be 
 analysed, what is the nursing in which old age — the old 
 age, we must remember, of such a man as Bacon — finds 
 its repose and rest ; its best opportunity for looking back 
 on the world, and looking forward to futurity ? How 
 much is implied in that homely phrase — how much, not 
 merely of external attention, but how much of mind, of 
 observation, of thoughtful tenderness — how much that leads 
 us naturally back to what he says of the preceding period, 
 "companions for middle age;" that is, with the intellect so 
 cultivated, with the faculties so aroused and exercised, with 
 mental energy and vigour so strong, that they are capable 
 of companionship in man's busiest and most arduous time, 
 when lie has to engage in worldly conflicts, when he has 
 to put flown resistance, to triumph over passion, to win the 
 way for truth and goodness, in despite of men's prejudices
 
 bacon's essays. 123 
 
 and the ceaseless collision of their passions and interests. 
 Companionship in all this marks acquirement, cultivation, 
 strength; it marks qualities that belong to the highest at- 
 tributes of human nature. And again, taking his descrip- 
 tion back still from this nursing of old age and companion- 
 ship of middle age to the time when he tells us ' : wives are 
 young men's mistresses," the phrase intimates that the af- 
 fection of early life is a mere fancy, an evanescent shadow — 
 that it is a thing even of peril as to future good and com- 
 fort — unless there be the germs of those mental and moral 
 qualities that prepare for companionship in the world's strife, 
 and for tenderness in the closing scene of individual being. 
 I come now to the set of essays which relate to the 
 conduct of life — the way in which man may best consult 
 his own proper interests and purposes, and gain that good 
 which he has to achieve for himself. In the paper on 
 Delays, he says, " Dangers are no more light, if they once 
 seem light ; and more dangers have deceived men than 
 forced them." " Nothing," he says, in the paper on Cun- 
 ning, " doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men 
 pass for wise." In the paper on Wisdom for a Man's Self 
 is a description of that sore of earthly wisdom which men 
 rate so highly. " It is a poor centre of a man's actions, 
 himself. It is right earth, for that only stands fast upon 
 Ins own centre; whereas all things that have affinity with 
 the heavens move upon the centre of another, which they 
 beneHt. " The allusion here, indeed, is to a false system of 
 astronomy; it is to the exploded theory which makes the 
 earth the centre round which the heavenly bodies revolve; 
 but out of this falsehood his philosophic mind educes 
 truth, — truth which will live as long as the truest system 
 of astronomy. The earnestness and severity of this essay 
 are remarkable, as they are directed against the very errors 
 imputed to the author ; but as to which there is good rea- 
 son to believe him "a man more sinned against than sin- 
 ning." His language is that not only of censure, but satire. 
 
 " Certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will 
 set a house on fire an it were but to roast their eggs ; and yet 
 these men manv times hold credit with their masters, because 
 their studv is but to please them, and profit themselves ; and for 
 either respect they will abandon the good of their affairs. Wis- 
 dom for a man's self is in many branches thereof a depraved 
 thing : it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house
 
 124- lectuke viii. 
 
 some time before it fall : it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts 
 out the badger, who digged and made room for him : it is the 
 ■wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. 
 But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as 
 Cicero says of Pompey) are, 'sui.amantes sine rivali,' are many 
 times unfortunate ; and whereas they have all their time sacrificed 
 to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the 
 inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought by their self- 
 wisdom to have pinioned." 
 
 Of Innovation he remarks, in language which by cita- 
 tion in political conflicts is rendered familiar : " Surely 
 every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not ap- 
 ply new remedies must expect new evils : for time is the 
 greatest innovator ; and if time of course alter things to 
 the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to 
 the better, what shall be the end?" "A froward reten- 
 tion of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation ; 
 and they that reverence too much old times are but a scorn 
 to the new." Reasoning on Despatch, he says, " It is one 
 thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting oil'." 
 " To choose time is to save time." And with singular 
 felicity of expression, he concludes the essay by reminding 
 us of the advantage of plans, and projects, and reasoning ; 
 even though they should not be immediately and practi- 
 cally adopted, others capable of being so may spring out 
 of them : " That negative," he says, " is more pregnant of 
 direction than an indefinite, as ashes are more generative 
 than dust." The commencement of his essay of Discourse 
 is one which should be especially laid to heart by those 
 in whom the talent of addressing others is early developed, 
 and who are ever so exceedingly liable to be led astray 
 with the pursuit of triumph rather than of truth. " Some 
 in their discourse desire rather commendation of wit, in 
 being able to hold all arguments, than of judgment in 
 discerning what is true ; as if it were a praise to know 
 what might be said, and not what should be thought." Of 
 Nature in Man, he says, it is " often hidden, sometimes 
 overcome, seldom extinguished. Force maketh nature 
 more violent in the return, doctrine and discourse maketh 
 nature less importune, but custom only doth alter and sub- 
 due nature." Of Custom, " Men's thoughts are much 
 according to their inclination ; their discourse and speeches 
 according to their learning and infused opinions ; but their
 
 bacon's essays. 12.3 
 
 deeds are after as they have been accustomed." " lulu- 
 cation is, in effect, but an early custom." Speaking of 
 collegiate institutions, "If the force of custom simple and 
 separate be great, the force of custom copulate and con- 
 joined and collegiate is far greater ; for there example 
 teacheth, company comfortetli, emulation quickeneth, glory 
 raiseth ; so as in such places the force of custom is in its 
 exaltation." Of study, he enjoins : " Read not to contradict 
 and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to 
 find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some 
 books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to 
 be chewed and digested." " Heading maketh a full man, 
 conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." This, 
 too, is one of the expressions that has passed, as it deserved 
 to pass, into a maxim. 
 
 Iu dismissing these Essays, and taking, as I have taken 
 before, a single passage from the rest for dwelling upon, I 
 would point you to that which says, " Education is, in 
 effect, but an early custom." That is the true philosophy 
 of education, and it guides to the right mode of pursuing 
 the extension of education. It is not in the quantity of 
 knowledge communicated to the child by the teacher. In 
 the course of a very few months' reading afterwards, any one 
 may acquire more information than is lodged permanently 
 in the mind through years of school-instruction. It is not 
 in the notion, although that was so commonly cherished, of 
 instilling and incorporating with the being sound principles, 
 for these too may become shrivelled and worthless, or they 
 may exist in the mind as a formula to which an external 
 deference is paid, without their belonging to the real moral 
 being. It is a custom that is induced in education on the 
 original nature, the habit of exercising the faculties, of 
 noting the communications which are made to the child, of 
 attending to the conveniences and enjoyments and interests 
 of others, of prescribing to ourselves certain rules best 
 adapted to its own nature, and of adhering to these rules; 
 it is in guiding its way into modes of action, that the real 
 power and real worth of education consists ; that is to say, 
 '• early custom" requiring iu the teacher consummate prac- 
 tical skill, and an intimate acquaintance with human nature, 
 and the ready means of employing tin; different powers 
 which can best operate upon human nature while yet in its 
 tender state.
 
 ]26 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 The remaining essays, on Masques and Triumphs, on 
 Buildings and on Gardens, are full of artistry in their 
 spirit and execution, as well as in the subjects. I shall not 
 cite from them, although there are passages in them, and 
 in that on Gardens especially, which might well be placed 
 side by side with some of the richest passages in the richest 
 poems. They are as if, taking the books of Genesis and 
 Revelation in their literal sense, he would embody the 
 Paradise of the one and the New Jerusalem of the other. 
 They are such as if the Creator, working by inferior spirits, 
 had intended in the genius of Bacon to form a mind ca- 
 pable of planting an Eden, which no temptation should be 
 sufficient to induce an Adam to vacate, or in the event of 
 his doing so, rearing a palace in the New Jerusalem worthy 
 of being the abode of redeemed man in his glory and his 
 grandeur. On this subject of artistry I cannot help making 
 one suggestion, and that is, whatever be the worth of cheap 
 literature, and however glad we are to see publications of 
 this description, they yet do not satisfy the eye as artistical 
 productions in the way of printing ; nor can we always 
 rely upon them for correctness. There are, in the edition 
 to which I have referred, some errors affecting the sense, 
 and occasioning delay and trouble in order to extricate the 
 real meaning, which in editions more carefully prepared 
 would not occur. One regards them with great pleasure 1 as 
 good seed thrown abroad with a lavish and unsparing hand, 
 some of which may fail, but other portions of which will 
 take root and spring up, but not as constituting in them- 
 selves all that can satisfy the mind when once the mind is 
 stimulated. Indeed, in that case I think it requires some- 
 thing for the eye as well as the mind : until a man is satis- 
 fied with the coarsest food that will support existence ; 
 until a man is satisfied with the coarsest kind of clothing 
 that will shield him from the vicissitudes of the weather; 
 until a man is satisfied with the poorest shelter that will 
 suffice to form a dwelling, and screen him from the storm ; 
 it is not reasonable nor desirable that he should be satisfied 
 with the very coarsest and cheapest kind of printing and of 
 publication. He will desire something more on which the 
 eye may rest with satisfaction, and which may help truth to 
 find its way with more facility and gracefulness into the 
 intellect. But, however that may be, I rejoice, as I said, in 
 this agency of the press, throwing down the barriers between
 
 bacon's essays. 127 
 
 the different states, not only of earthly condition, but of 
 mental disparity, bringing the highest amongst the lowest, 
 and rendering familiar, if he will, even to the inhabitant of 
 the humblest hovel or cottage, the effusions of that great 
 mind, of which it was the highest and purest honour, not 
 that in the reign of such sovereigns as Elizabeth and James 
 he held the office of Lord High Chancellor of England, 
 but that his mental attributes and honours constituted his 
 country's glory. They render him a visitant who should 
 be welcome to all. And he is brought to them by an 
 agency that also enables the poor man, at a comparatively 
 small expense, to inform himself of the result of the most 
 recondite researches into science; to acquaint himself with 
 the construction of our globe and the distances and order 
 of the stars; to realise past ages, and bring the heroes of 
 history before him, their names familiar in his mouth as 
 household words; to use the means of knowing all that is 
 knowablo of the lives and conduct, of the thoughts and 
 feelings even, of the greatest men that have lived on the 
 face of the earth ; and which enables him to hold commu- 
 nication with the lively Frenchman or the learned German, 
 or with those old Greeks, the guides and glory of the 
 world's earlier ages. All this is brought near to him, to 
 raise him into that mental and moral sphere; and in such a 
 work who is there that should not rejoice? And so ought 
 to be noted that other work which the press also carries 
 on ; for while by its means the voice of those the most 
 elevated of our race descends to the many, by its means 
 also the voice of the many ascends to those who, in some 
 particulars, may be their superiors. As there; are scarcely 
 any below the operation and agency of the press, or who 
 may not, through its instrumentality, be reached by those 
 who are above them, so the number is continually increas- 
 ing and multiplying of those whose voice may ascend 
 through its means, and make itself heard in new regions, 
 where, though its accents may at first seem strange, they 
 must ultimately demand the attention which is their due. 
 The suffering millions no longer surf r in silence. There 
 is a science, there is a history, there is a polities and poetry 
 of the poor : their thoughts, their wants, their claims are 
 made known by that same agency that eommonises the 
 reflections of the philosopher. The miracle of Christ is 
 repeated : the dumb speak, they suffer in silence no longer:
 
 128 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 and if, contemplating the multiplication and cheapness of 
 the grandest works that have been produced by the favoured 
 individuals of our race, we have to say, " I heard a voice 
 that spake from heaven," so, on the other hand, a voice 
 ascends from the earth, ascends to the palaces and thrones 
 of the mortal gods of the earth, and, if unheeded there, 
 ascends to the very heaven of heavens.
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE VICISSITUDE OF THE SEASONS ON 
 THE MENTAL AND MORAL CONSTITUTION. 
 
 [DELIVERED AT FINSBUHY CHAPEL.] 
 
 The best conception of Revelation — that, at least, which 
 approves itself to my mind as the simplest and clearest, the 
 grandest and most comprehensive — is that developed by 
 Lessing, in his Century of Thoughts on. the. Education of 
 the Human Race. It explains a multitude of obscurities, 
 supersedes a multitude of controversies, harmonises a mul- 
 titude of apparent incongruities; and while it renders the 
 notion of revelation much more worthy of a rational being 
 than it has generally appeared in the creeds of theologians, 
 is also adapted to make religion bear its best fruits in the 
 advancement of knowledge, peace, hope, and active good- 
 ness. 
 
 " Revelation," says Lessing, " is to the whole race of 
 mankind what Education is to the individual person. Edu- 
 cation is a revelation made to a single man ; and revelation 
 is the education of the whole race of mankind, which has 
 taken place, and still continues to take place." He con- 
 sidered it as a training — by diversity of means and through, 
 a long succession of ages, by apparent wonders, or by a 
 beautiful arrangement of the most common occurrences ; 
 by the influence of minds, capable of ascending to the lofti- 
 est heights of poetry, or of applying themselves to the daily 
 concerns of individuals, or the political relations of their 
 country ; by those who dictated their wisdom with the 
 influence of royal station, or by the peasant and the fisher- 
 man speaking in the plainest language truths that belong 
 to the common heart of humanity — a training, by these 
 various motles, of one peculiar race, in order that that one 
 race might become the instructors of the world in a loftier 
 theology, a purer morality, and brighter expectations than 
 the world had before possessed. 
 
 i
 
 130 LECTURE IX. 
 
 All history, properly written and studied, tends to the 
 same end : it is another portion of the providential educa- 
 tion of humanity. Seldom, indeed, has history been written 
 in harmony with this object ; seldom have its lessons been 
 so carefully conned, or so judiciously applied, as to make it 
 answer this purpose, instead of stimulating the wild ambition 
 of conquerors, or leading statesmen or churchmen astray in 
 the endeavour to render perpetual that which in its own 
 nature could only be transitory, and must give way before 
 the advancing power of knowledge. But in proportion as 
 history is thus written and thus studied ; in proportion as 
 we go to it, not for the vain legends of times where truth 
 is altogether undiscernible ; not to cull arguments to sup- 
 port this or that form of government or polity ; not to dwell 
 upon individuals whose names have become objects of a 
 veneration which, tried by the test of a sound morality, 
 they may ill deserve ; but to trace the growth of the human 
 mind, to observe society groping its way, fashioning its 
 first rude institutions, and through various trials growing 
 up to some perception of the mode and of the blessings 
 of self-government, and the dignity of communities as of 
 individuals ; in that proportion do we find history alike 
 worthy of Providence to bestow and of humanity to receive, 
 and capable of becoming a rich fountain of instruction. 
 
 Material nature co-operates in this extensive plan. As 
 the Bible and other records of past ages speak to us in 
 their warning or their cheering vuice, so does the material 
 world become vocal : " Day unto day uttcreth speech, 
 night unto night sheweth forth knowledge." There is no 
 speech nor language where the voice is not heard of those 
 mute yet eloquent teachers, not merely of the praises of 
 their Creator, but of his purposes with regard to his rational 
 creatures : they unite, and that most harmoniously, to im- 
 press their lesson on our senses, on our understanding, on 
 our hearts : they are a permanent source of the purest 
 wisdom, created for the purposes of intelligence, having 
 no worth in themselves, whatever their multitude or their 
 brightness, whatever the nicety of their construction or the 
 beauty of their display : existing but for the sake of in- 
 telligence, they ever minister to intelligence according to 
 their mission ; they call upon man to see in them what it 
 is the business, the function of the mind to trace in that 
 which is not itself possessed of mind, and thus to rise
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS. 131 
 
 through matter to the contemplation of the all-pervading 
 Spirit. 
 
 From amongst these diversified and impressive lessons, 
 a single one is selected on the present occasion, which 
 assuredly has its worth, and bears its part in this magnifi- 
 cent and extended scheme. I am not about to discourse 
 on the Seasons, to attempt any description of their pheno- 
 mena, to trace the causes or distinguish the characteristics 
 of their different influences; but merely to consider the 
 result on the mind of their vicissitude, of that change and 
 that orderly succession which are repeated from year to 
 year, continually calling us to a renewed repetition of their 
 instructions, yet which in their repetition never present us 
 with a sameness that palls upon the senses or attention. 
 
 This vicissitude is an universal impulse to thought ; it 
 commences with the earliest period of life ; it appeals to 
 those the most unfavourably situated. The savage is not 
 too untutored for its lessons, nor the child too young. 
 Wherever consciousness exists, wherever the faintest spark 
 of intelligence has been kindled, thither does it come and 
 there does it reside. I know tiiat mind must ever be the 
 strongest agency upon mind. The inhabitants of the most 
 beautiful regions may yet be unconscious of beauty, and 
 those who are in the sublimest scenery may yet have gro- 
 velling souls. Genius has burst forth in its brightest 
 splendour from localities that we should have deemed the 
 most unfavourable lor its production, or for cherishing it 
 towards maturity. The power of man over man is more 
 than that of all material and unconscious beings. It is 
 part of tin; prerogative of mind to have this influence even 
 in its debasement, and the ignorant, erring, vicious com- 
 panions of youth may do, and generally will do, far more 
 with them than the flowers in all their loveliness, or the 
 stars in all their splendour. Nature is nevertheless an ele- 
 ment of the universal education of human beings; an ele- 
 ment which cannot be excluded ; an element to which, in 
 proportion as we extend its sphere, there accrues an exten- 
 # sion of usefulness and a higher degree; of power, such as we 
 may well desire to see realised. The child born in the very 
 wretchedest circumstances, nursed and nurtured; if nurture 
 it may be called, in the darkest hovel of the densest court 
 of a crowded city; surrounded with objects of vileness and 
 degradation, both mental and moral ; even he is not totally
 
 132 LECTURE IX. 
 
 beyond the reach of this beautiful and instructive lesson of 
 vicissitude. It comes to him in the change of light and of 
 darkness, and in the variations of temperature that cannot 
 anywhere be escaped ; and if it only act upon him indirectly 
 and remoteh', in the coarse contrivances which are resorted 
 to for mitigating the heat of summer, or for excluding some 
 of the cold of winter, or for removing the evils of darkness, 
 still even thus it contributes somewhat towards the sharpen- 
 ing of his intellect — somewhat towards that keenness and 
 shrewdness which belong to the characteristics of town- 
 bred childhood, as distinguished from that of the country. 
 
 But there must be more than this ; and he will not 
 ramble far, the poor denizen of the city cannot ramble far, 
 without perceiving something of the changes which Nature 
 is ever carrying on : he will see the tree at one time 
 covered with rich foliage, and at another stripped bare of 
 all its leafy adornment ; he will hear the air at one time 
 vocal with the song of such timorous birds as may venture 
 into the localities lie frequents, and at other times hushed 
 in that stillness which winter imposes on their music ; he 
 will sometimes find the heavens covered with clouds, and 
 the atmosphere thick with fogs, and at other times he will 
 behold something of the brightness and splendour of a blue 
 sky or a starry night; he Mill see the field green or covered 
 with snow; the flowing or the frozen stream ; and the form 
 of the waxing or the waning moon. And surely in all this 
 diversity there must be something to excite though it be 
 the feeblest of the thinking faculties, — there must be some- 
 thing to beam in a ray, however faint, of the conception of 
 beauty and of good into his benighted soul. Happier are 
 they who live where free course is allowed to the influences 
 with which creative power has benignantly surrounded us. 
 Happy they (as all should be ; for when a nation under- 
 stands its duties to the rising generation, — when a free and 
 strong government has the sense to perceive and the will 
 to realise a system of national instruction, sound in its 
 character and universal in its comprehension, then such 
 will be the common lot of childhood) who are located in 
 the true infant-school of God and Nature; on whom this 
 grand moving panorama sheds all its changing lights, and 
 bestows all its successive scenes ; who watch the revolving 
 stars, and the progression of bright constellations, in no 
 bounded horizon ; for whom there are the infinite effects,
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS. 1"3 
 
 daily and nightly, of sunlight and moonlight over hill and 
 plain, — better still if the vast ocean add its shifting colours 
 and the accompaniment of its continuous and resounding 
 anthem; to whom a hundred birds and plants, in rapid 
 succession, tell of advancing spring ; wlio.se months the 
 ilowers calendar; whose autumn is infallibly marked by 
 the ripened grain and the sheaves of joyous harvest; who 
 make an era in the few years of their chronology by some 
 more memorable storm or severer frost ; and who change 
 their sports and occupations with changing nature, receiv- 
 ing through every inlet the influences of God's Spirit, and 
 rejoicing in all. Not that children can feel the beauty or 
 the grandeur, still less dive; into the wisdom of this mighty 
 scheme of things, but the stimulus is on them, the novelty 
 is adapted to and excites them ; Nature has her way within 
 them as well as parents and teachers ; and the senses do 
 such duty as in the crowded city school-room they never 
 yet performed nor ever can. And thus they go on from 
 infancy to youth, growing in the best knowledge of hu- 
 manity ; a knowledge of the world in which God has 
 placed them ; and thereby becoming fit to grapple with 
 the difficulties and triumph in the moral conflicts that will 
 present themselves in maturer life, as they come into the 
 world that man has fashioned. 
 
 The influence of seasonal vicissitude is felt even by the 
 savage ; for what has he but the universal natural educa- 
 tion of God's rational creatures? If he is not civilised 
 thereby — if he does not start on that interminable pro- 
 gression which seems to be the general destiny of humanity 
 — it is because he is awaiting another operation, which is 
 an essential portion of the providential scheme. The savage 
 i> too low to achieve for himself any great advance in 
 civilisation : he awaits the impulse from iiis more highly 
 gifted brethren. We ever rind in the historv of the world, 
 that when tribes or nations have sunk into the savage state, 
 there they remain until commerce, or conquest, or coloni- 
 sation, give them intercourse with those who have made 
 considerable progress, ami thin. unles<. as often happens, 
 the inferior race becomes extinct, raise them towards the 
 same condition, and qualify them in turn for similar actions 
 upon others. But Nature (iocs something for him ; trains 
 his limbs, quickens his sen-es. guides his wanderings, and 
 in the first rude forethought that stores up food against the
 
 134 LECTURE IX. 
 
 termination of the fishing or the hunting season, kindles a 
 glimpse of the intelligence that realises a remote futurity ; 
 and when once the great career of nations is commenced, 
 how efficient are her interpositions ! It was at a very early 
 period that necessity laid the foundation of the most recon- 
 dite science. The periodical overflowings of the Nile are 
 said to have generated the science, of geometry ; its first 
 principles were thus indicated by the occasion, and, these 
 being understood, men went, on accumulating truth upon 
 truth, until the power was matured by which from this our 
 earth we measure the planets and map the heavens. 
 
 The influence of natural vicissitude on the young is 
 adverted to in a work which has by no means attracted the 
 notice it deserves: " The Outline of a System of National 
 Education," published anonymously in the year 1834, and 
 avowed as by Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx in a second 
 edition, 1837- It is one of the best books on the subject 
 with which I am acquainted. The author suggests that 
 schools should be located on the principle I have just de- 
 scribed ; and in pursuing his argument for this and other 
 novelties he thus reasons : 
 
 " Children are idle — not indolent. By idleness, I mean, that 
 almost instant weariness of the same occupation, that fretful desire 
 of change, that craving after variety, which characterise the age 
 of childhood ; and for good and wise reasons. Is not a universe 
 before the child ? Yet to gain acquaintance with its capabilities 
 and its wonders, a few years only are allotted him. Did he linger 
 over every new pleasure, and rest in contemplation at even,' ac- 
 cession of knowledge, he would grow up with a narrowed ex- 
 perience, and become old and ripe for the grave ere he had 
 gathered material for useful and scientific reflection. It has been 
 otherwise ordered. The child hurries on amidst the ever-varied 
 novelty which surrounds him, and at every step strengthens all 
 unconsciously his powers of perception and discernment. Nor 
 has Nature set herself in opposition to his tastes and the best 
 interests of man. The alternations of the visible world have 
 saved us from a ' numb stupidity of soul.' Did the sun immov- 
 able ever shine from the same unclouded heaven on this verdant 
 earth, ever wearing the same beauteous face, and cooled ever by 
 the same pleasant airs, and washed too by the same waters sleep- 
 ing ever on the same shores — and did ail living nature, unknow- 
 ing of* succession, and not to be disturbed by decay, or broken in 
 upon by animal violence, still exist as when, at the hearing of 
 the Almighty ' fiat,' it first burst into creation — man had lived 
 an ornament of the world perhaps, but his soul had never been
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS. 135 
 
 enlarged with highest knowledge, and had never raised itself from 
 the study of God's works to the deep and intimate feeling of 
 God's presence. It is variety, the sense of difference, which first 
 stimulates inquiry ; and it is inquiry persevered in, and judicious, 
 which leads to philosophy." 
 
 He then refers to the sports to which children habitually 
 betake themselves. The first, of these are imitations. 
 
 " Look at the games of children. What are ' the blisses of 
 the six years' darling of a pigmy size V 
 
 ' Some little plan or chart, 
 Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
 Shaped by himself with newly learned art ; 
 
 A wedding or a festival, 
 
 A mourning or a funeral ; 
 
 As if his whole vocation 
 
 Were endless imitation.' 
 
 But of the dull and staid part of man the child is soon wea- 
 ried ; he longs to be of use ; he asks for occupation. With wild 
 and buoyant spirits, he rushes to labour. How eager is he in 
 his toil, how indefatigable in his efforts to heap up a mighty 
 snowball ; how cunning in his skill to erect some mud-fort for 
 mimic warfare, or to weave the leafy arbour where he is first to 
 enjoy all the rights and privileges of property ! 
 
 " It was but this morning that I watched a young Lazzaroni 
 while he sought to make his little crazy boat lie straight and 
 steady upon the water. How fertile was he in expedients ; how- 
 ingenious in contrivances ; how resolute against despair ! First 
 were the waves too strong ; he sought out, therefore, a more 
 sheltered spot ; he next adjusted the ballast, and furled the sails 
 — still without success. He then looked around him in much 
 perplexity, till some of that long sea-weed which is scattered 
 over the coast after a storm caught his eye ; this he seized ea- 
 gerly, and peeling it into long strips, he tied with them his little 
 boat to a stone (his sheet anchor) ; and then wading far out as 
 the sea-weed would permit, and so shaping his course that a 
 neighbouring jetty might afford him smooth and tranquil water, 
 he again placed his boat upon the sea. There he stood breath- 
 less, his hands busied with his burdens, his shirt tucked up and 
 held by his teeth, but still half Hoating in the water, and his face 
 troubled a- though with his last hope. One moment he seemed 
 to have succeeded ; the next, and his boat again lay with its 
 side upon the waves ; he did not, however, even then despair, but 
 sat himself on the beach with an old nail and a stone to devise 
 some other remedy." 
 
 After some admonition to the teacher, he recurs to the
 
 336 LECTURE IX. 
 
 species of novelty with which it is desirable to familiarise 
 and exercise the juvenile intellect. 
 
 "The novelty lie makes them acquainted with, to which he 
 calls their attention, must be the ever-during novelty of nature. 
 Its beauty and sublimity they cannot yet feel ; but they mav gather 
 its wild flowers, and replant them in their little gardens. To 
 procure food for their rabbits and fowls, &c. they will learn the 
 properties and uses of many herbs ; and thus, by giving them 
 an interest in its productions, i. e. by following and imitating the 
 course of Providence in the education of mankind, we may hope 
 gradually to develop in our pupils the love of nature." 
 
 And develop it, he might have added, according to the 
 mode of instruction which Nature herself adopts, and adopts 
 with impartiality towards all the children of humanity; for 
 thus is science taught, and has been from the beginning. 
 
 What experimental apparatus, what laboratory, what 
 arrangement of materials and agencies, is to be compared 
 with that of Nature ? What taught the old Egyptians 
 astronomy ? "What led them, not only to measure the earth 
 after the overflowing of the Nile, but to note the heavenly 
 bodies, to calculate their movements, and to connect the 
 phenomena of the stars with those of this our globe 
 through all the changing signs of the zodiac ? What but 
 the continual suggestions of vicissitude — what but the hints 
 and admonitions and stimuli thus given to the best prepared 
 minds amongst them, were the source of that knowledge, of 
 which wc retain the poetical and mythological shadow in the 
 mon:>trous forms of their Pantheon, and in the legends that 
 cluster around those of Isis and Osiris, where the truths of 
 primeval science dimly appear in the extravagant forms of 
 ancient fable? 
 
 What is the process of the philosopher ? Pie culls a (e\v 
 isolated substances from the great storehouse of nature : he 
 subjects these to different temperatures and combinations. 
 Nature is doing the same thing from year to year, from 
 season to season, daily and nightly, upon an almost infinite 
 scale. The world is her great lecture ; and there are the 
 experiments which may most profitably be studied. Every 
 substance, animate and inanimate, is exposed every year to 
 certain vicissitudes of temperature and circumstance. The 
 influence is exhibited on things conscious and unconscious, 
 on earths and minerals, on the vegetable races in all their 
 variety, on animal life ; it works directly and indirectly in a
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS. 137 
 
 thousand ways, and then it calls the man of science to con- 
 template the whole, to trace the golden chain of cause 
 and effect running through all, to see how manifold is 
 Nature in its resources, how rigid in its logic; ami in that 
 school, that best institute, to store his own mind, to 
 strengthen his own reasoning powers, and by beholding the 
 order, the principle, the plan that runs through the whole, 
 to rise from science to philosophy, from the regions of 
 understanding, and memory, ami classification, into those 
 of feeling and thought, of imagination, of poetry, and of 
 religion. 
 
 The seasons act in their vicissitude on the imagination 
 as powerfully as on mere intelligence; they mature the 
 poet as well as the man of science. And perhaps a region 
 like ours, with its strongly marked vicissitudes, with the 
 broad contrasts that in the course of the revolving year 
 are presented, with phenomena sometimes darkly shaded 
 and marked from each other in the species of beauty they 
 present, and with the imposing grandeur not un frequently 
 realised ; perhaps such a region as this is more favourable 
 to the poetic spirit than those which have more brightness, 
 but more of uniformity also. The glowing regions of the 
 East boast i'cw productions that have been recognised as 
 genuine poetry by the world at large through a succession 
 of generations; the glow of their sunshine and their foliage 
 is over the works of their fancy, which with us are prover- 
 bial for extravagance. In old Greece, indeed, the beauty 
 of their climate yet had change enough to minister to the 
 poetic spirit; and their free institutions, their luxuriant 
 social condition, and the deep wisdom of their philosophers, 
 co-operated also to produce those imperishable monuments 
 of grandeur and beauty before which the genius of huma- 
 nity still bends in reverence. But our own country, and 
 the kindred regions of Germany, have in their seemingly 
 less favoured climates ofttimes that depth of gloom which 
 is said to characterise the northern spirit, ami in which 
 external nature has shewn itself in harmony with the men- 
 tal constitution, acting upon that constitution to elicit its 
 noblest efforts ; and they have, with their daily vicissitudes 
 and their fluctuating seasons, those tints and hues of au- 
 tumnal beauty, those dimly shrouding mists yet rendering 
 objects far more lovely, that eminently harmonise with those 
 who realise the invisible, who perceive the spiritual, who
 
 13S LECTURE IX. 
 
 unite both worlds in the comprehensive grasp of their imagi- 
 nations, and who render real that which to others is most 
 remote and shadowy ; as shadowy as to them, in turn, ap- 
 pear the material realities in which others rest. 
 
 The construction of Nature is wonderfully adapted 
 to harmonise with the minds of all classes, to minister its 
 most peculiar and fitting aliment to each, and yet to impress 
 on all the necessity of that proportionate cultivation of the 
 different powers, that harmony of the various faculties of 
 our nature, without which its highest dignity never can be 
 achieved. It gives to the poet what has formed so re- 
 markable a characteristic of our national poetry, the com- 
 bination of strength and nerve with delicacy, fineness, 
 gentleness, and grace. The changing skies and tinting 
 mists that generated whatever was most dark and most 
 fanciful in mythology are the food of poetry. 
 
 And are there not in this ever-moving panorama hints 
 and intimations by which not only the philosopher may 
 bring home to his own mind and that of others the con- 
 ception of a universal plan and a universal Creator, but by 
 which, pushing his speculations beyond the bounds of strict 
 demonstration, he may find analogies and suggestions that 
 carry him onwards, and enable him, not less certainly per- 
 haps than the severest logic, to penetrate into spiritual 
 realities ? 
 
 Are not the different phases of the human mind pictured 
 forth in the different seasons? Has not Winter the clear- 
 ness, the precision of outline, the strength of contrast, that 
 characterise the matured judgment? Has not Spring the 
 promise, the bounding impulse, the constant and obvious 
 advancement, that prefigures aspiration, a hope, a growing 
 hope, pointing towards the infinite and everlasting, and 
 filling man's soul with the power that impels him onward 
 towards the true and beautiful, the "reat and <jood ? Is 
 not Summer a condition of rich and matured enjoyment, of 
 the luxurious fruition of stores accumulated by previous 
 industry, the season of full content, when the soul takes its 
 rest in its possessions? And when this glides into the 
 many-tinted scenery of Autumn, is there not in its length- 
 ening glooms and softening mists, and in its combination of 
 the latest productions of earth's fruitfulness with the gra- 
 dual fading away, lovely in decay, of the splendours that 
 Summer boasted, a shading off towards the dimness — but a
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS. 139 
 
 dimness not without tenderness, not without anticipation — 
 of the grave itself? But there are million modes of" thought 
 and feeling that change with the changing earth, and re- 
 flect the variations of skiey influences. The self-observer, 
 in noting them, seems at different times to have been differ- 
 ent beings. He is startled at the uncongenialities that have 
 been linked together by his own identity. He learns the 
 highest lesson of moral philosophy. He metempsychosises 
 with others ; respects in his own experience their individu- 
 ality ; sees through how wide a range humanity may vary, 
 and strives to understand its phases, instead of judging all 
 by some arbitrary standard of his own adoption. And have 
 there not always been perceived in Nature hints, indirect 
 suggestions from its Author, of revived being? lias not 
 man ever imaged forth Ins future destiny by the crawling 
 insect transformed into a winged one ; or by the growth of 
 a seed, its reappearance after it seemed dead in the ground, 
 its springing up into new life and ampler richness of being? 
 Has not the moral argument for immortality always been 
 arrayed in material adornment ? Nay, have not strong 
 presumptions grown out of recent speculations, founded on 
 the vicissitude of our seasons, as a circumstance peculiar to 
 planetary existence ? The sun has no vicissitude of sea- 
 sons, no change of day or night, of summer or winter; nor, 
 with the exception of the planetary bodies, have any of the 
 myriad host of stars that present themselves to our nightly 
 gaze. They are ah distinguished from planets and satellites 
 by that circumstance. As all analogy leads us to infer 
 that they are inhabited, the same reasoning by analogy 
 tends to evince that they cannot be inhabited by beings 
 whose condition, like our own, is to go through alternate 
 seasons of excitement and of rest, who need to be recruited 
 by repose, whose being is dependent upon a succession of 
 stimulus and of relaxation, and who are therefore formed in 
 their present state for eventual dissolution. In those orbs 
 there is no such alternation. It cannot be required by 
 their inhabitants. Every planetary world is fitly framed for 
 beings "'whose little life i^ rounded with a sleep;" its revo- 
 lution implies the cradle, the pillow, and the grave: but the 
 self-illumining central worlds make no such provision ; they 
 are as fitly framed for the abodes of immortals. They ren- 
 der the fact of immortality all but visible to our senses. By 
 their own adaptation, they inscribe it on the heavens ; and if
 
 140 LECTURE IX. 
 
 there be immortality in the universe which God our Father 
 lias created, may we not hope to be its destined inheritors ? 
 The constant impulse which Nature gives to the recog- 
 nition of its Author has been frequently noticed by divines. 
 Poets, feeling it more deeply, have exhibited it in a manner 
 more touching and impressive; and I cannot dismiss the 
 present subject without citing the lines in which Words- 
 worth has described the inefficiency of all the means and 
 appliances of art, for sustaining the spirit of religion, as 
 compared with the ever-renewed adornment of that endur- 
 ing temple erected by God himself, in which we feel most 
 assured that man will permanently and devoutly worship. 
 
 " The sanctities combined 
 By art to unsensualise the mind 
 Decay and languish ; or, as creeds 
 And humours change, are spurned like weeds ; 
 The solemn rites, the awful forms, 
 Founder amid fanatic storms ; 
 The priests are from their altars thrust, 
 The temples levelled with the dust : 
 Yet evermore, through years renewed 
 In undisturbed vicissitude 
 Of seasons balancing their flight 
 On the swift wings of day and night, 
 Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door 
 "Wide open for the scattered poor, 
 Where flower-breathed incense to the skies 
 Is wafted in mute harmonies ; 
 And ground fresh cloven by the plough 
 Is fragrant with a humbler vow ; 
 Where birds and brooks from leafy dells 
 Chime forth unwearied canticles, 
 And vapours magnify and spread 
 The glory of the sun's bright head; 
 Still constant in her worship, still 
 Conforming to the Almighty will, 
 Whether men sow or reap the fields, 
 Her admonitions Nature yields ; 
 That not by bread alone we live, 
 Or what a hand of flesh can give ; 
 That every day should leave some part 
 Free for a Sabbath of the heart ; 
 So shall the seventh be truly blest, 
 From morn to eve, with hallowed rest." 
 
 And thus does Nature consecrate her Sabbaths, musical
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEASONS. 141 
 
 with her undying anthems, in the cheerful songs of spring- 
 tide, or in the Mailing of wintry winds, or the deep accom- 
 paniment of the resounding ocean ; the varying sounds 
 harmonised into one eternal hymn of gratitude ami love. 
 That continuous strain is the welcome of those who are 
 born, and the requiem of those who die. Man fades like 
 the leaf; but his days are "linked by natural sympathy ;'* 
 he fulfils in his life the lesson of the seasons ; and with 
 mind matured to the strength and clearness of winter, rich 
 and ample as the glowing summer, and not losing even in 
 decline the crescent hopefulness of spring, he shall gently 
 sink, as amid the tenderest and mellowest shades of an au- 
 tumnal evening, and " come to his grave in full age," full, 
 though not perhaps of years, yet of all that makes it life to 
 live, " like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season."
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 ROBERT BURNS, TiiE FIRST POET OF THE POOR. 
 
 Upon this day, (the 21st of July,) in the year 1796, in 
 only the 37th year of his age, died, amid circumstances of 
 great depression and privation, Robert Burns, the first pott 
 of the poor. 
 
 I must give some explanation of the meaning I wish to 
 convey by the phrase "poet of the poor."' Poetry has no 
 natural relation to poverty, any more than it has to wealth. 
 It relates to humanity, and appeals to brain, heart, fancy, 
 and feeling, and not to dividends or rent-rolls. Wherever 
 the flame of genius is kindled up by Heaven — be it in the 
 bosom of peer or peasant — there is poetry ; and its appre- 
 ciation is as independent of class as its production. There 
 is no sort of poetry which we may call specifically the poetry 
 of the poor, any more than there is a sunshine, a spring-time, 
 or rivcns and oceans of the poor exclusively. The sunlight, 
 indeed, produces a different effect upon the eye, as it passes 
 through the broad glass of palatial edifices, or the storied 
 window, richly dight, of the cathedral, from that which it 
 has when it passes through the dingy pane of the cottage 
 window. The flowing stream may have different hues and 
 colours upon its surface, reflected from the blue sky or the 
 elomls which Hit along in the atmosphere ; but sky, stream, 
 and sunlight are in themselves the same — God's gift to 
 humanity, without respect to class or station. 
 
 Homer, Milton, Shakspeare, and all great poets, are 
 poets of the poor, just as they are of everybody else. They 
 an; the world's poets ; the expounders of those great truths 
 and emotions winch belong to universal nature; and there 
 is no more distinction, either as to the producers or those 
 who are acted upon, than that which nature makes in the 
 finer construction of some frames than others. — giving to 
 one a painter's eye, to another a musical ear, and to a third 
 more linelv strung nerves, which vibrate with greater emo-
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 14-3 
 
 tion. Wherever this is done, there is poetry in the pro- 
 ducer and the recipient ; the same all the world over, 
 through all ages; and oftentimes, as in the representation 
 of some great drama, overpowering all distinctions of class, 
 causing tears to flow from every eye, making every heart 
 throb more violently, and eliciting from all that conjoint 
 acknowledgment of the great magician's power which is 
 acting on them, and which shews that there is in that which 
 is common to man something much more beautiful, grand, 
 and typical of the Divine Power in which we exist, than all 
 the pomps and forms of society which wealth can purchase, 
 or power command or bestow upon its favoured votaries- 
 All that poverty can do is just that which wealth can 
 also do, and which different purposes in the poet's mind can 
 effect; and that is, to modify the external form and expres- 
 sion of poetry. Of this there is much which the critic can 
 trace, and which every intelligent, and thoughtful writer will 
 be pretty sure of perceiving. Sometimes the poet writes 
 with a specific purpose. Homer was the poet of Greek 
 union. Amid all the diversified imagery of his poems, with 
 all his graphic descriptions of conflicts single or multitudi- 
 nous, there is still this one pervading idea — the mischief 
 which accrued to Greece from the division of its chieftains; 
 when 
 
 " For the king's offence the people died." 
 
 It is evident, that whatever other influences might be acting 
 on him, tins was constantly present to "the blind old man 
 of Scio's rocky isle." So, again, Milton had ever one great 
 practical perception in his mind. In his correspondence, a 
 person who had written to him praised his " policy." He 
 disclaimed the term: he replied that it was not policy upon 
 which he acted, but religious patriotism. This was a prin- 
 ciple which was ever with him: it was his conscience: and 
 it \\as in perfect harmony with his character, that, having at 
 one time selected King Arthur for the subject of an epic 
 poem, he soon discarded that topic, and took to representing 
 the fortunes of the human race as embodied in that of their 
 first ancestors; and even in that he shewed the love of 
 freedom and democracy beating strongly in his heart, and 
 guiding the course of his lofty imaginations. 
 
 So, if we take the writers who portray the poorer classes 
 of society, although it be only incidentally, you may as-
 
 144 LECTURE X. 
 
 certain their feelings and sympathies. How different, for 
 instance, are the subordinate characters in the stories of Sir 
 Walter Scott from those in the works of Charles Dickens ! 
 Both have given many very striking delineations of persons 
 in inferior conditions of life ; but what is the prevailing 
 character in each ? You find Scott's virtuous poor men dis- 
 tinguished mainly for their fidelity to some master or chief- 
 tain. "Loyalty" is their primary virtue. They are " true 
 to the death" for those whom they regard as their natural 
 leaders; and this is ever the most striking feature in their 
 characters. On the other hand, if you look to Dickens's 
 poor men, when he means to elevate them by his description, 
 you Avill perceive that they are those who practise self-reli- 
 ance, who have a keen wit, and keep a sharp look-out, and 
 hold on their way, having independence and self-confidence 
 — qualities which work well in society, and eventually gain 
 for the individual his rightful position there. The sympa- 
 thies of Charles Dickens are more popular than those of Sir 
 Walter Scott. That &Tistocrat\ca\ penchant, which was the 
 plague of Scott's life, misled him whenever he erred, and 
 made him endeavour to become not only the idol of his 
 country and of other nations, as a most felicitous painter 
 of character and incident, but, what he thought as great, a 
 Scotch laird. Although this taint was in his mind, nature 
 and truth struggled witli it, and sometimes — for such is the 
 power of nature and truth over the genuine poet, that 
 they will force his mind against its own sympathies — 
 sometimes made him command the world's admiration for 
 that which had scarcely secured his own, and, as in the case 
 of his Puritans and Covenanters, caused him, while mean- 
 ing no good, to make the world do homage to their memo- 
 ries, and reverence the firmness, energy, and devotedness 
 with which they sustained their struggle for the rights of 
 conscience. 
 
 Happy will the time be for literature, as well as for 
 material prosperity and political right, when these distinc- 
 tions shall be much more levelled down than they have ever 
 been yet. They modify poetry, but do not improve it. 
 They are rather specks and blemishes than beauties. These 
 indications are curious, as enabling us to trace character : as 
 giving us the power to say. even of an old book, whose 
 author has been forgotten for ages, that "this book was 
 written by a priest or layman, by a rich man or a poor one."
 
 ROBERT BURN'S. 145 
 
 But well will it be for literature when such distinctiveness 
 no longer eats away the souls of writers, or narrows the 
 sympathies of readers; but when a greater equality of con- 
 dition in society, a more extensive acknowledgment of 
 the attributes which belong to humanity, shall leave poetry 
 to deal only with them, and shew their superior grandeur 
 to all the distinctions of man's creation. 
 
 I call Robert Burns the poet of the poor — not on 
 account of his having specially described that class, lor 
 this has been done much more largely by other writers, 
 both before and since his time. What leads me to apply 
 that phrase to him is, that he speaks not o^them, but in them, 
 and as being one of them. In some of his best compositions 
 he has embodied the poor man's feelings upon external 
 objects. You will find much more minute descriptions of 
 poor houses and poor people, their labours and occupa- 
 tions, in the writings of Crabbe, who sets about the 
 task like a Dutch painter, who gives you every broken 
 pane of glass in the window, and the colour of every 
 rag with which they are filled. You will find in Words- 
 worth one who philosophises upon the poor — who reasons 
 about and around them — who gives you his views of their 
 condition, and the feelings they should cherish, and the 
 course in which they should advance; and in this sense 
 either Crabbe or Wordsworth may be called "poets of 
 the poor." These are not the qualities which have led me 
 to apply this phrase to Burns; but it is because he de- 
 lineated the poor man's feelings ami opinions, — speaking, 
 feeling, thinking, and writing, as only the poor man can, 
 and for which kind of writing only the man of great genius 
 can obtain a hearing from the world at large. No one 
 in any rank of society could have written that dirge, " Man 
 was made to mourn," unless he had himself known what it 
 was to toil for his daily bread; and more than that, unless 
 he had also been made aware by experience what it was 
 to be looking for work, the wages of which were essential 
 to his existence, and yet not to find employment within his 
 
 1 * " See yonder poor, o'orlabour'd wight, 
 
 So abject, mean, and vile, 
 Who begs a brother of the earth 
 
 To give him leave to toil ; 
 And see his lordly fellow-worm 
 
 The poor petition spurn." 
 
 K
 
 146 LECTURE X. 
 
 I say> there is no other class of society, or form of expe- 
 rience, which would have dictated that stanza to the mind 
 of a poet. And then again : 
 
 " Is there for honest poverty, 
 
 That hangs his head, and a' that? 
 The coward loon we pass him by — 
 We dare be poor for a' that." 
 
 Tliat well-known song, which a like-minded man may adopt 
 in any station of society, in its commencement bears the 
 broad stamp of poverty, and shews how his soul had risen 
 against the pressure of circumstances. It emanated from 
 the mind of a man who, while he did not blush for his sta- 
 tion, yet could hurl defiance in the face: of fortune, throw 
 down his gauntlet, and challenge society to shew that po- 
 verty was a crime or a dishonourable thing. 
 
 This is the spirit which runs through the writings, and 
 characterised the life of Burns. I shall refrain to-night 
 from quotation from his works. It is not my purpose in 
 this lecture to criticise his poems : they are, I hope, known 
 to almost, or quite, all those who now hear me ; and are, I 
 trust, appreciated as well as known : for where have they 
 not made their way, and found their echo ? What heart 
 or imagination have they not touched? How varied and 
 wondrous is their power ! But I take that power for 
 granted, as an established thing. I look at the man and 
 his writings in the specific relation indicated by the sub- 
 ject of the lecture, and suggested by the day of his 
 death. But look at him in every point of view : take his 
 style, his mode of composition. The absence of affecta- 
 tion proves him to be one of the i'vw Scotchmen — com- 
 paratively very i^.w in the time of Burns — who did not 
 dream of building a reputation upon the fineness and 
 correctness of their English. He made his natural mode 
 of speech the vehicle of his poetical expression, and has 
 thereby given to that mode of speech an established exist- 
 ence in the world. Scotland had produced great writers 
 before Burns; but iaw of them attempted to do this, or 
 thought of writing Scotch. Smollett did a little of it in one 
 or two of his novels. A kind of Scotch brogue was some- 
 times put into the mouth of a dramatic character, merely 
 to cause fun in a farce; but beyond that, it was utterly ne- 
 glected, was not recognised as a language, and as regards 
 literature would in a short time have fairly died out, leaving
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 147 
 
 little besides Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd for its monu- 
 ment. Burns, finding that his native thoughts came out 
 most freely, and were embodied most clearly and strongly, 
 in his native words, without hesitation adopted this dialect, 
 and did what no man had dared to do before, and in which 
 it was some time before Sir Walter Scott ventured to follow 
 him afterwards ; and even then, Scott attempted it, not in 
 his poems, but only when he began novel-writing. 
 
 In the simple subjects and elementary feeling to which 
 lie appeals, and upon which he throws himself so unhesitat- 
 ingly — in all this we see the same superiority to affecta- 
 tion. He never adopted conventional words or thoughts; 
 or if he did, his own better judgment was sure to correct 
 itself afterwards. In some of his songs he admitted such 
 names as " Chloe ;" but of this he afterwards expressed 
 himself ashamed, and said that he should have stuck to 
 genuine honest Scotch names as the proper things for 
 Scotch 'pastorals. Most true is that verse in his "La- 
 ment :" 
 
 " No idlv feigiu i poetic pains 
 
 My sad love-lorn lamenting* claim ; 
 Xo shepherd's pine — Arcadian strains ; 
 
 Xo fabled tortures quaint and tame : 
 The plighted faith, the mutual (iame, 
 
 Ihe oft-attested L'owers above, 
 The promised Father's tender name — 
 
 These were the pledges of my love." 
 
 And they were the gem of his song also. 
 
 Then again, take the manners of Burns — his conduct 
 in society. He was made a sort of raree-show in Edin- 
 burgh; ami the poet- ploughman was hawked about as a 
 wonder. But notwithstanding, he submitted to no indig- 
 nity. He had not gone to Edinburgh to make an exhibi- 
 tion of himself A ladv of title once wanted to have him 
 as a lion at one of her parties. She was not authorised by 
 the common usages of society in sending for him in that 
 wav ; and lie sent her back a very polite answer, stating 
 that he would come, provided she engaged the learned pig 
 for the same exhibition. The great men of Edinburgh, its 
 'polished society and literary clique, found at once that they 
 had to deal with a man whose intellect could grapple with 
 theirs. They fit that if they possessed taste, discernment, 
 observation, and thought, so did he. He was then' to give,
 
 148 LECTURE X. 
 
 as well as to receive. He made the best and highest of 
 them, without obtrusiveness, insolence, or awkwardness, feel 
 that he was their ec|ual ; and then, what perhaps grieved 
 them more than all, he would leave that society for a hum- 
 bler party of boon-companions, — be there as witty and as 
 wise as he had been with the greatest and most learned 
 of the Scotch metropolis, charming their hearts and minds, 
 as he had done those of his superiors in station ; and thus 
 shewing that genius in the bosom of the ploughman ren- 
 dered him more superior to the world than as if he had 
 borne the highest titles, or been in the possession of the 
 largest estates. 
 
 Probably there Mas the triumph of a vindictive little- 
 ness, when those irregularities, about which so much has 
 been said of Burns, gave some of these upstart and ser- 
 vilely-aspiring people an opportunity of being uncourteous 
 to him. It was characteristic of such minds to seize upon 
 a circumstance of this nature. I have no intention hereto 
 palliate or extenuate the fact which Burns records of him- 
 self, and which he wrote for his own epitaph, that 
 
 " Thoughtless follies laid him low, 
 And stained his name." 
 
 Let these failings of Burns be a warning to self-culti- 
 vated minds, to those who have to work their own way 
 through the world ; but let us not make more of them 
 in him than in others. The world has been made to ring 
 with accounts of Burns's intemperance and irregularities. 
 Why, he was not thirty-seven when he died! If he had 
 been a nobleman, the apology would have been made for 
 him that he had "not quite sown his wild oats;" and it 
 Mould all have been dismissed with coolness and almost 
 tenderness of expression. His irregularities Mould have been 
 forgotten, if he had taken to the law, and risen to be a 
 judge ; or if he had entered the army, and attained the rank 
 of general ; or even had he adopted the church for his pro- 
 fession, and been advanced to the dignity of a bishop. 
 But in the peasant-poet they Mere neither to be forgotten 
 nor forgiven. Thus the little gentry of the neighbourhood 
 shirked him when he came to the Dumfries county-hall : 
 those who had been his associates passed him by ; and he 
 Mas treated rudely even by the little shopkeepers in the 
 place. The one debt for which he Mas apprehensive of
 
 KOBEKT BURNS. 149 
 
 being; arrested and sent to jail when he was in the agonies 
 of death — a debt contracted for a little haberdashery — was 
 all he owed; but that creditor, with the rest of the trades- 
 men and gentry, had his opportunity of insulting over him 
 whose genius had elevated him so much above all the 
 clique ; and thus was one of the finest, grandest, and loftiest 
 minds, and conjoined therewith the acutest sensibility of 
 feeling, subjected to external degradation and insult from 
 those who afterwards would have held it a high privilege to 
 be allowed to subscribe their mite towards his monument. 
 
 Then look at Burns in the different relations of his 
 mind to the great topics of society ; and you find him still 
 the same man. One critic upon his life has expressed an- 
 noyance that he should have taken part with "the newlight 
 clergy,'' and have hurled his sarcasms on the predominant 
 and therefore orthodox, and by a natural association, the 
 persecuting portion of the Church of Scotland. It is said 
 that these were merely things of a particular time, and that 
 poets should look to ail time ; but is it not true that he 
 does the work of all time best who applies his powers to 
 the work of the present day most efficiently ? Tins division 
 of the church into old and new lights was in Burns's day 
 a thing of practical importance : it entered into all the 
 feelings of society, dividing families and neighbourhoods: 
 and when the poet took part in it, when he held up to 
 ridicule and odium the persecuting party, it was not that 
 he was a votary of Arianism, or any other " ism,"— although 
 he had a perfect right to his own "ism," if he chose to 
 have one, — but it was because he was against the worst 
 of all ••isms." that of persecution. He sided with the 
 weakest party in numbers, but the most rational in thought; 
 those who would allow at least some play for the human 
 mind, some free scope for tin? intellect in matters of 
 theologv. It was not their dogmas, but liberty, that bound 
 him to them, and made him hold up in " Holy Wil lie's 
 Prayer" to withering scorn, in the eves of all humanity, 
 the hvpocrisy which so often disgraces religious parties, 
 and which there had a lesson administered by the poet 
 which may well make its flesh crawl upon its bones. 
 
 In political opinion Burns never could lower his spirit 
 to his circumstances. All the fanfaronade of .Scotch pa- 
 tronage ended in getting him into the Excise ; and the 
 maximum of his emolument there, onlv attained after some
 
 150 LECTURE X. 
 
 service, was just 70/. a year; and yet for this paltry sum it 
 was intended to keep the spirit of Burns in a state of abject 
 dependence. Against tins attempt ins mind was continually 
 battling, and in connexion with tins subject he has thrown 
 out the strongest indications of his feelings. One day he 
 was at a party where the health of William Pitt was pro- 
 posed, " His master and theirs." He refused to drink the 
 toast, turned down his glass, and said. " I will give you the 
 health of a greater and better man — George Washington !' ? 
 In that grandest of warlike lyrics, his heroic appeal of 
 Robert. Bruce to his army — 
 
 " Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled/' — 
 
 in the composition of that song, he has put on record not 
 only the recollection of the ancient struggle for freedom, 
 but his sympathy with contests for liberty of a much more 
 modern date than that. In the first copy of that address 
 he wrote, " Ever may Almighty God thus bless the cause 
 of truth and freedom !" Before the French war broke out, 
 he had been engaged in taking a smuggling vessel, and 
 received, as his own trophies, lour brass carronades. He 
 sent them as a present to the French Convention. Shortly 
 afterwards, when war was declared by this country, he did 
 an act which caused his conduct to be inquired into and 
 censured, and led to the prospect of suspension being held 
 over him by the Commissioners of Excise. This was his 
 giving as a toast, " May our success in the present war cor- 
 respond with the justice of our cause. 1 ' It by no means 
 suited the authors and promoters of that war — neither the 
 sovereign under whom it was waged, the parliament which 
 voted the supplies for carrying it on, nor the aristocracy 
 whose interests are so often connected with war, which to 
 them is a source of advantage, nor the bishops, priests, and 
 deacons, who were wearying Heaven with prayers for vic- 
 tory- — I say, it did not suit any or all of these parties that 
 our success in that war should be only in proportion to the 
 justice of our cause. 
 
 Thus, through trying circumstances, labouring for his 
 bread as long as his strength would allow, died Robert 
 Burns, the Scotch peasant ; worthy, 1 think, upon the 
 grounds I have endeavoured to describe, of being pre- 
 eminently called "the poet of the poor." Thus he pursued 
 his course ; and much as has been said of his irregularities,
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 15 L 
 
 yet he did not die in debt. His constitution was broken 
 down, his sufferings were great, and his struggle had been 
 hard and prolonged. For those noble contributions of his 
 to Thompson's "Collection of Scottish Songs," which were 
 then coming out, and which wen; all gratuitous, he only 
 asked a tew days before his death a ol. note, and even this 
 he onlv asked for when the prospect of a jail was before 
 him for the one debt he owed. He paid that one debt, and 
 died with no incumbrance, under the dominion of that 
 " heaven -born minister," whose health he refused to drink, 
 and who some ten years afterwards came to /lis grave, leav- 
 ing what many would call, compared with Burns's memory, 
 a virtuous, spotless character, and 50,000/. of debt for the 
 public to pay from their hard earnings. 
 
 The example of Burns, both in his poetry and life, 
 teaches us that there are elements of poetry which belong 
 to humanity, in poverty, as fresh and rife as in any other 
 station. There they are; and even the peculiarities of his 
 condition are capable of that idealised and intense expres- 
 sion which specially belongs to poetry. Since the days of 
 Burns, other writers have illustrated this fact; and one es- 
 pecially ( Robert Nicoll), upon whom, if on any man, the 
 mantle of Burns has fallen. That writer has dedicated a 
 poem to the memory of the great bard who went before 
 him, which embodies the feelings that every poor man 
 should entertain in reference to the effect of the writings of 
 Burns upon his position. The piece to which I allude was 
 written upon the anniversary — not of the death, which we 
 are now holding, but of the birth-day, of Robert Burns. 
 
 STANZAS ON Till: BIRTH-DAY OF BURNS. 
 
 " This is the natal dav of him 
 
 Who, horn in want and povertv, 
 Durst from his fetters, and arose 
 The freest of the free ;■ — 
 
 Arose to tell the watching earth 
 
 What lowly men could feel and do, — 
 To shew that mighty, heaven-like souis 
 I.', cottage hamlets grew. 
 
 Burns! thou hast given us a name 
 
 To shield us from the taunts of scorn ; — • 
 
 The plant that creeps amid the soil 
 A glorious flower hath borne.
 
 152 LECTUKE X. 
 
 Before the proudest of the earth 
 
 We stand with an uplifted brow ; 
 Like us, thou wast a toil-worn man, 
 
 And we are noble now ! 
 
 Inspired by thee, the lowly hind 
 
 All soul-degrading meanness spurns ; 
 
 Our teacher, saviour, saint, art thou, 
 Immortal Robert Burns." 
 
 Ebenezer Elliott, another noble poet of the poor, has 
 shewn how poetical some modes of work may be made. 
 There are few compositions with which his Gan be brought 
 into comparison, more grand, than what he has done for 
 the compositor and pressman, in the hymn which he wrote 
 for the annual meeting of the printers of Sheffield. 
 
 HYMN WRITTEN FOR THE PRINTERS OF SHEFFIELD. 
 
 " Lord ! taught by Thee, when Caxton bade 
 His silent words for ever speak ; 
 A grave for tyrants then was made, 
 
 Then crack d the chain which yet shall break. 
 
 For bread, for bread, the all scorn'd man, 
 With study worn, his press prepared ; 
 
 And knew not, Lord, thy wondrous plan ; 
 Nor what he did, nor what he dared. 
 
 When first the might of deathless thought 
 
 Impress'd his all-instructing page, 
 Unconscious giant ! how he smote 
 
 The fraud and force of many an age ! 
 
 Pale wax'd the harlot, fear'd of thrones, 
 
 And they who bought her harlotry : 
 He shook the thron'd on dead men's bones, 
 
 He shakes — all evil yet to be. 
 
 The power he grasp'd let none disdain ; 
 
 It conquer'd once and conquers still ; 
 By fraud and force assail'd in vain, 
 
 It conquer'd erst, and ever will. 
 
 It conquers here ! the fight is won ! 
 
 We thank thee, Lord, with many a tear ! 
 Lor many a not unworthy son 
 
 Of Caxton does thy bidding here.
 
 HUBERT BURNS. 153 
 
 We help ourselves, thy cause we aid ; 
 
 We build for heaven beneath the skies : 
 And bless thee, Lord, that thou hast made 
 
 Our daily bread of tyrants' sighs." 
 
 Not inertly is the ibrlornness and destitution of honest 
 employment in this and other avocations capable or' being 
 made poetical, but even that which is drearier than both 
 — that, too, may elicit " words that breathe and thoughts 
 that burn ;" even the poorhouse itself, seen by a poet's eye, 
 throws out a genuine lustre of imaginative composition. 
 As 1 am giving these two or three specimens of what there 
 is in the avocations of work also which is susceptible of 
 poetic illustration, nay, which may itself become inspira- 
 tion, I will add to what I have read from Elliott, part of a 
 song upon the poorhouse, by one whom 1 take to be amongst 
 the very truest, purest, and finest, if not himself the most 
 so, of English song- writers, — I mean the author whose 
 works are published under the well-known name of Barry 
 Cornwall. 
 
 THE POORHOUSE. 
 
 " Close at the edge of a busv town 
 
 A huge quadrangular mansion stands; 
 Its rooms are all tilled with the parish poor — 
 
 Its walls are all built by pauper hands ; 
 And the pauper old and the pauper young 
 
 Peer out, through the gates, in sullen bands. 
 
 Behind is a patch of earth, by thorns 
 
 Fenced in from the moor's wide marshy plains; 
 
 By the side is a gloomy lane, that steals 
 To a quarry now filled with years of rains : 
 
 But within, within ! there Poverty scowls, 
 Nursing in wrath her brood of pains. 
 
 Enter and look ! in the high- walled yards 
 fierce men are pacing the barren ground : 
 
 Enter the long bare chambers — girls 
 
 And women are sewing, without a sound; 
 
 Sewing from dawn till the dismal eve, 
 And not a laugh or a song goes round. 
 
 No communion, no kind thought, 
 
 Dwells in the pauper's breast of care; 
 Nothing but pain in the grievous past ; 
 
 Nothing to come but the black despair — 
 Of bread in prison, bereft of friends, 
 
 Or huntrer, out in the open air! 
 K ^
 
 ISi LECTL'RE X. 
 
 Where is the bright-haired girl, that once 
 With her peasant sire was used to play ? 
 
 Where is the boy whom his mother blessed, 
 Whose eyes were a light on her weary way ? 
 
 Apart— barred out (so the law ordains) : 
 
 Barred out from each other by night and day. 
 
 Letters they teach in their infant schools ; 
 
 But where are the lessons of great God taught? 
 Lessons that child to the parent bind — 
 
 Habits of duty — love unbought ? 
 Alas ! small good will be learned in schools 
 
 Where Nature is trampled and turned to nought. 
 
 Seventeen summers, and where the girl 
 Who never grew up at her father's knee? 
 
 Twenty autumnal storms have nursed 
 The pauper's boyhood, and where is he .' 
 
 She earneth her bread in the midnight lanes : 
 He toileth in chains by the southern sea. 
 
 O Power! O Prudence! Law! look down 
 
 Prom your heights on the pining poor below ! 
 
 Oh, sever not hearts which God hath joined 
 Together on earth for weal and woe ! 
 
 O senators grave, grave truths may be, 
 
 Which ye have not learned, or deigned to know. 
 
 O Wealth, come forth with an open hand ! 
 
 O Charity, speak with a softer sound ! 
 Yield pity to age — to tender youth — 
 
 To love, wherever its home be found ! . . . . 
 But I cease, — for I hear, in the night to come, 
 The cannon's blast, and the rebel drum, 
 
 Shaking the firm-set English ground." 
 
 There is yet one other short poem upon the self-same 
 subject of the poorhouse, which I wish to read. It is from 
 a volume entitled, Studies of Sensation and Event, by 
 Ebenezer Jones. He calls this portion of his work " a com- 
 ing cry ;" and such a cry most assuredly is "coming," 
 if the dominant classes of society do not rule more wisely 
 and justly. 
 
 a coming cnv. 
 
 " The few to whom popes' kino;s have given the earth God sh v~ 
 
 to all 
 Do tell u>, that for them alone its fruits increase and fall ; 
 They tell us, that by labour we may earn our daily bread ; 
 But thev take the labour for their cmrines that work on unfed :
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 15.5 
 
 And so we starve ; and now the few have published a decree, — 
 Starve on, or eat in workhouses the crumbs of charity ; 
 Perhaps it's better than starvation, — once we'll pray, and then 
 We'll all go building workhouses, million, million men ! 
 
 We'll all go building workhouses, — million, million hands, 
 So jointed wondrously by God, to work love's wise commands ; 
 We'll all go building workhouses, — million, million minds, 
 By great God chartered to condemn whatever harms or binds ; 
 The God-given mind shall image, the God-given hand shall build, 
 The prisons for God's children, by the earth-lords willed; 
 Perhaps it's better than starvation, — once we'll pray, and then 
 We'll all go building workhouses, million, million men. 
 
 What'll we do with the workhouses .' million, million men ! 
 Shall we all lie down and madden, each in his lonely den ? 
 What! we whose sire? made Cressy! we, men of Nelson's mould! 
 "We, of the Russell's country, — Cod's Englishmen the bold! 
 Will we, at earth's lords' bidding, build ourselves dishonoured 
 
 graves : 
 Will we, who've made this England, endure to be its slaves r 
 Thrones totter before the answer ! — once we'll pray, and then 
 We'll all go building workhouses, — million, million men." 
 
 I trust 1 shall be accused of no invidiousness in these 
 selections ; there are many other writers and compositions 
 which might serve my purpose for illustration, but I have 
 taken these because they were nearest to hand, and most 
 familiar to my own mind. They are quite enough to shew 
 what i desire to illustrate, which is, that there must be 
 something wrong in institutions, customs, and prejudices. 
 which tend to fetter the intellectual power, and to degrade, 
 pervert, or restrict its dominion, if it conies into the world 
 in connexion with poverty. Genius, poetry, and the highest 
 endowments of the mind, have no respect for rich or poor; 
 but wherever they are, it is to the world's interest that they 
 should have fair play and free course. Burns was a man 
 of self-culture, and many who have had the highest advan- 
 tages of education would vainly indeed strive at anything 
 like competition with him; but it cannot be supposed that 
 Burns would have reaped no benefit from better means and 
 appliances in the original formation and storing of his in- 
 tellect. In a country which possesses the means and re- 
 sources which we have in this land, it is a disregard of the 
 brightest and best gifts of Providence that thev should not 
 have their fair chance in society. Literature and poetrv
 
 156 LECTURE X. 
 
 will then most flourish when all have from early life that 
 which all might have without any sacrifice on the part of 
 individuals. We have funds applied now to various pur- 
 poses, but legitimately applicable to intellectual and moral 
 culture ; they should never have left any such man as 
 Burns, or any individual whatever, without a fair prospect 
 of a full development of the power of talent and genius, if 
 there be such in him. But of these means aristocracy 
 takes the lion's share, leaving to be doled out to other 
 classes, in ways which they also endeavour to influence and 
 very often misdirect, some few scraps and crumbs of learn- 
 ing. 1 say, this is not dealing fairly or justly with society. 
 What can our universities do in creating genius? They 
 cannot produce or make such persons as Ave have been de- 
 scribing. Were the Duke of Wellington, as Chancellor of 
 the University of Oxford, to send an order down there for 
 twelve Robert Burnses to be produced, how long would 
 it take the university, with all its desire to be obedient to 
 the great duke, to comply with any such requisition ? But 
 here Providence threw such a gift — a thing which cannot 
 be created or made to order — liberally and freely on the 
 world, casting it into a Scotch form, and saying, "There it 
 is ; man, make the most of it." What do we do with it ? 
 We make the man a gauger, and let him die in apprehen- 
 sion of a jail for a paltry debt. 
 
 Politics and religion also have their connexion with 
 poetry and with poverty, though the aspirations of the one, 
 and the institutions of the other, should forward, and not 
 impede, the labours of those who are like this Scotch pea- 
 sant. But with all the obstacles thrown in the way — with 
 all that those powers who seem to love darkness rather 
 than light did to quench it- — how brightly shone that 
 genius ! When he chose to take up the Scottish dialect 
 — a mere provincial language — to write in, people were 
 obliged to submit to learn it, uncouth as it might seem to 
 them originally ; and he has made it a classical language, 
 and society has done homage to its power. In his native 
 tongue has the world humbly bowed before the power of 
 genius, and learnt Scotch that it might enjoy the poetry of 
 Burns. 
 
 If such triumphs can be rarely achieved, they are of 
 worth, because they asserted a nationality in a portion of 
 the empire analogous to the establishment of English as
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 157 
 
 our language, which the Norman conquerors kept down 
 for several generations. It is the badge of freedom of 
 existence. But although genius may rarely win such vic- 
 tories as this, how much may be achieved at all times by 
 those who look at this self-taught man, and who resolve 
 to build his best monument in their own minds — a more 
 magnificent monument than that which the nobles and 
 gentry either of Scotland or England can ever raise to his 
 memory — the cherishing of a similar spirit of diligence, 
 observation, and independence of thought. The books 
 which Burns read were very few in number, and some 
 of them not of the best description ; but scantv as was his 
 stock of volumes, he did not read for the mere purpose of 
 passing away an idle hour — not to train his own mind to 
 follow in the course; which others have marked out, — but 
 all was intended, with him, to furnish food for thought and 
 observation ; whatever good was to be gained from them 
 lie turned over and over in his mind, realised and made 
 it entirely and intensely his own ; and thus he exercised 
 the power which through life gave out original thoughts, 
 "like jewels dropping from a fairy's mouth," until those 
 who had had all the advantages of education and Iearnin<r 
 stood aghast in mute admiration to hear what this seem- 
 ingly inspired peasant could do, simply because he had 
 just followed nature, and given to his every faculty fair 
 play and full exercise. A course like this is open to ali : 
 so to read that we are not merely cramming the mind, and 
 getting materials for talk — that we are not treating the 
 memory as a great warehouse where packages are stored 
 away ; but are exercising the senses and the mind conti- 
 nually, judging between good and evil, realising every 
 thing, taking it out of its shell and husk of verbiage — so to 
 look to all matters of private and public concernment, as 
 one in whose breast the principles of truth, sincerity, and 
 justice are consecrated and held most sacred, who has no 
 morbid hankering anxiety as to what this or that person 
 may think, but ever driving directly towards the true, 
 good, and great. Thus did Burns ; and thus any man can 
 do : this is the self-culture which will raise the working 
 classes to a point of elevation far beyond that of wealth or 
 station ; which will in due time command whatever their 
 political necessities may require, and still do much bevond 
 that — giving them the full enjoyment of our nature in
 
 158 LECTURE X. 
 
 the circumstances in which Providence has placed man- 
 kind. Towards this glorious result does mental culture 
 point. The development of mind, the growth of individual 
 character, the extension of social good, the realising more 
 and more of the highest enjoyments of which our beings are 
 susceptible — this belongs, not to the outer circumstances, 
 but to the inner spirit. It is by freedom in political ar- 
 rangements, by overturning the domination of prejudice in 
 society, by rising above the servility which marks so large 
 a portion of mankind in this country, that we are to attain 
 this measure of our moral being, and in that whatever is 
 best for us is realised ; for 
 
 "Mind, mind alone, bear witness Earth and Heaven, 
 The living fountain in itself contains 
 Of beauteous and sublime."
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. 
 
 "Young England" is old Toryism with a new face — it 
 is Toryism philosophising, Toryism moralising, and Tory- 
 ism popularising. The Conservatives are a party without 
 a principle, and Young England offers to provide them 
 with one. The principle which it puts forth it lias dug 
 out of the dust of ages, and now proposes to furbish into 
 brightness for present use. 
 
 Young England hates expediency, and would go to 
 the rule of right ; and it finds that rule of right in things 
 which common sense has made obsolete. It professes great 
 regard for the aristocracy, and would make "our old no- 
 bility" our brightest treasure. It professes much zeal for 
 monarchy ; in fact, it proposes to set monarchy above law. 
 The Morning Post openly stated, the other day, that in 
 order to secure good government, and impart its real value 
 to law itself, the prerogatives of the monarchy ought to be 
 superior to the law. That paper, as well as the Times, 
 very frequently speaks in the language of Young England. 
 There is indeed a difference in their mode of speaking it: 
 the Post lets the matter out more plainly : the Times pre- 
 sents it to the world more plausibly. The difference is 
 much the same as that between Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek 
 and Sir Toby, in respect to their fooling. " He," says Sir 
 Andrew, ■■ does it with a better grace; but I do it more 
 natural." Young England would be good to the poor — it 
 tells us it cares greatly for the multitude ; it would give 
 the people less work, without, at the same time, taking care 
 that they should not have less wages, or that their money 
 should not buv them less food than it ought. It would make 
 the labourers keep holiday on Ascension Day; giving 
 them, in fact, as the great benefits of their system, saints' 
 davs, alms' baskets, ami May-poles. It would confer upon 
 them any thing but the power of procuring their rights, 
 and securing the continuance of those rights by their poli-
 
 160 LECTURE XI. 
 
 tical influence. Young England looks upon the present 
 age as something to be shaped and fashioned by the times 
 winch are gone by. In religion, it inclines towards Pusey- 
 ism, professing to demolish sectarianism by establishing the 
 universal supremacy of the Church — "the one universal 
 Church:" that is to say, by the empire of a priesthood. 
 The view of the world which Young England takes is 
 founded upon the assumption that the age of chivalry has 
 not yet gone by ; and perhaps its own chivalrous addic- 
 tiveness to obsolete notions is the best proof which can 
 be rendered of its assertion. It seeks for the principle of 
 national regeneration where Frankenstein, in the romance, 
 sought for the principle of life — in the charnel-house; 
 there, groping for vitality in the midst of corruption, 
 putting together limbs belonging to different bodies, and 
 thus forming what it would set before the world as a na- 
 tional existence, from an odd compound of legs, arms, and 
 eyes, belonging to others who have been all long since 
 dismissed from the stage of life. It then would send forth 
 this galvanised corpse — or rather picnic of different dead 
 bodies — into the world; and say, "Here is regenerate 
 Britain !" presenting only a monster from which all would 
 turn away with disgust — fearful and mischievous, but 
 doomed soon to perish, either by the exertions of hu- 
 manity to be quit of such a nuisance, or by the justice 
 of Providence ridding the world of a monster which has 
 no right to exist in the present age. 
 
 To prove that I am not misrepresenting or caricaturing 
 the writers attached to this political section, I must draw 
 upon your patience while I read sundry extracts, respecting 
 their character and pretensions. The advocacy of Young 
 England in the Times newspaper is the main thing which 
 gives the party importance. In noticing Mr. Disraeli's 
 Coningsby, the Tinies thus sums up its view of the aim 
 and purposes of the class to which that gentleman belongs : 
 
 " England at the present day is a gathering of sects, and 
 classes, and factions, all equally selfish, equally blind. The 
 power of the monarch, in whose person the wisdom of the past 
 ever recognised the leader of the people, gone; the universality 
 of the church, pervading every rank, and alone equalising all by 
 a dignified isopolity, a thing unknown ; and in its stead a re- 
 spectable establishment, frigid, latitudinarian, alarmed, decorous ; 
 composed of priests who write books on algebra and Greek
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. 161 
 
 metres, but powerless to mould the conscience and touch the 
 feelings of the rugged multitude ; and, lastly, a peasantry, 
 estranged from church, and monarch, and aristocracy, by the 
 suicidal neglect of all — consigned alternately to the dreary walls 
 of grim bastilles and the dreary consolations of infidelity and 
 Chartism. Such are the elements of our social state. To res- 
 cue the country from a position so dangerous — to substitute 
 principles acknowledged in men's hearts for words which are 
 but as a lie — to renovate by restitution, and to conserve by 
 shrinking from concession — to destroy for ever that painful 
 medley of selfish exelusiveness and ponderous mediocrity which 
 for many years weighed on England like a nightmare, under the 
 assumed name of Tory statesmanship — a statesmanship of blun- 
 ders, and expedients, and restrictions — these are put forth as 
 the objects of men whom youth may have made too bold and 
 confident of success, but whom history has taught not to despair 
 while there is aught of private virtue or national character re- 
 maining among us — as long as forms remain to inspire reverence, 
 and opinion to influence conduct." 
 
 Tin: description of the evils of our present social state 
 is here very pointed ; the remedy is not so distinctly 
 marked. 
 
 The next extract is illustrative of the view which the 
 author of Coningsby entertains of the Tory and Whig 
 parties : 
 
 " Exclusive principles in the constitution, and restrictive prin- 
 ciples in commerce, have grown up together ; and have really 
 nothing in common with the ancient character of our political 
 settlement, or the manners and customs of the English people. 
 Confidence in the loyalty of the nation, testified by munificent 
 grants of rights and franchises, and favour to an expansive svs- 
 tem of traffic, were distinctive qualities of the English sovereigntv, 
 until the House of Commons usurped the better portion of its 
 prerogatives. A widening of our electoral scheme, great facili- 
 ties to commerce, and the rescue of our Roman Catholic fellow- 
 subjects from tlie Puritanic yoke, from fetters which have been 
 fastened on them by English Parliaments in spite of the protests 
 and exertions of English sovereigns ; these were the three great 
 elements and fundamental truths of the real Pitt system, — a 
 system founded on the traditions of our monarchy, and caught 
 from the writings, the speeches, the counsels, of those who, for 
 the sake of these and analogous benefits, had ever been anxious 
 that tlie sovereign of England should never be degraded into the 
 position of a Venetian Doge. It is in the plunder of the Church 
 that we must seek tor the primary cause of our political exclu- 
 sion, and our commercial restraint," &c. £cc.
 
 162 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 
 An illustration of their appreciation of character I will 
 take from the poems of Lord John Manners. Stratford 
 and Laud — a tyrannical minister and a persecuting priest, 
 who worthily expiated their crimes upon the scaffold, at 
 a period when justice was for a while done on illustrious 
 culprits — these are the saints, heroes, ami martyrs of Young 
 England : 
 
 " Still do I love to learn from those who died 
 Rebellion's victims and their country's pride, 
 How to despise bold Reason's ceaseless din, 
 And reign omnipotent myself within. 
 Fast on the Rock that has for ages stood 
 The tempest's howling, and the ocean's flood, 
 My faith in my dear Mother Church I fix, 
 And scorn Religion's modern politics." 
 
 One further extract will finish this class of citations : it 
 is that in which the Tunes sums up its view of the theory 
 of Mr. Disraeli in Coningsby : 
 
 " Does the reader wish to know what an old Tory was, and 
 where Mr. Disraeli goes to get his type of one? We should 
 advise him to save time, and take a plunge at once into two 
 centuries back. Toryism had succeeded then to the position 
 toward the poorer classes that the Church had exclusively occu- 
 pied in former times. It interested itself heartily and "frankly 
 in the welfare, and comfort, and pleasures of the poor. 
 
 "No one can read the accounts of those, or dip into the 
 numerous biographies that have come down to them, without 
 seeing the very close and intimate connexion that there was then 
 between the higher and lower ranks. What hospitality in the 
 hall — what visits from the hall! They did not seem then to 
 think it part of charity to send the objects of it out of sight — to 
 erect fortresses, and enclose the poor of whole districts in them, 
 as if the further they were off, and the more the whole mass of 
 poverty was squeezed up together, the better. Toryism did not 
 do this in former times ; Toryism had the popular element in it 
 then. The poor, as such, were considered objects of reiiard, and 
 were understood to have a right to sympathy on account of their 
 station. They came under the protection of the chivalrous sys- 
 tem, which took all weakness and helplessness, as such, to have 
 a call upon it. "Whether that weakness and dependence was 
 that of sex or station, the principle was the same. All that 
 wanted assistance were considered to have a claim upon it. The 
 great mass of society, the people, always must be poor, and want 
 help. The people, then — yes, the people — the crowd — the mob, 
 if you choose to call it so — were, as such, the objects of old Tory
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. 163 
 
 and chivalrous sympathy. On this broad principle Toryism was 
 essentially a popular political system. 
 
 " It is a »haiue that this connexion has ever been given up. 
 There was no reason whatever for doing so, and the Tory cause 
 has lost much of its strength and solidity ever since. Mr. 
 Disraeli wishes to revive this union — to make the true Democrat 
 and the true Tory one again. True Democrat, we say. We are 
 democratical enough now-a-days, in our own way. We allow 
 the people all the benefit of the most perfect and brilliant demo- 
 cratical theory. Yes, they are free and citizens, and are the 
 equals of lords and dukes in the eve of the Constitution, and of 
 De Lolme upon the Constitution. But where is the substantial 
 democracy of a system that allows the people to starve, or shuts 
 them in prison upon the simple crime of their being the people 
 — i. c. being poor .' Our system now is a mixture of licentious- 
 ness in the lower orders and oppression in the higher. The 
 people are encouraged to take wild and visionary views of their 
 political rights ; the aristocracy are quite content if they only 
 are allowed to keep their money in their pockets. It is demo- 
 cracy versus oligarchy — freedom against the close purse. Each 
 party stands upon its own rights in their most obnoxious form. 
 ' I have a right to my riots and chartism,' says the people ; and 
 ' I have a right to the money in my pocket,' says the aristocrat. 
 Thus a high theoretical democracy is raised upon a basis of sel- 
 fishness and disunion, each side claiming its rights on the selfish 
 principle. True democracy is one not so much of right as of 
 feeling, or power as of sympathy. Shew us the country where 
 the poor are well off, and have the attention paid them that 
 should be, and you have a country in which the popular element: 
 is fir more really anil soundly developed than it is where the 
 people are Chartists without bread, and parade the country like 
 the gaunt skeletons and ghosts of liberty, rather than her true- 
 born son-." 
 
 Such is the kind of democracy which Young England 
 wishes to restore in connexion witli aristocracy — a demo- 
 cracy not of right, hut of sufferance — not of independence, 
 but of charity — a sort of well-fed slavery, in which the 
 people, like tame animals, should lick the hand that ca- 
 ressed then), and obey the bidding of their masters, upon 
 whatever errand they may be sent. 
 
 It. is not merely contentment, but satisfaction and pride 
 in ignorance, which this aristocratic spirit would induce. 
 The object is to make, thorn forget whatever belongs to 
 them as human beings and citizens of a free country; it 
 is to convert their virtues into the servility of the grateful 
 serf, ever ready to magnify his master's dignity, meanly to
 
 164 LECTURE XI. 
 
 accept his master's alms, cringe beneath his owner's rod, 
 seeking nothing beyond this, no, not even his own intelli- 
 gence — foregoing political existence and social position — 
 giving up even mind and soul themselves — making it their 
 boast that they know nothing — hoping and glorying that 
 this ignorance may never be displaced. To such a state as 
 this may the great mass of the English people never, never 
 be reduced ! 
 
 In parliamentary conduct there is little to be said of 
 Young England, because it does not distinguish itself by 
 proposing any great and peculiar measure, tending either 
 to civil or religious freedom, or to the production of na- 
 tional good, either English or Irish. It has its especial 
 regards for Don Carlos. It studies and advocates some of 
 the lesser humanities and minor morals ; but no one great 
 question, which appeals to the mind and heart of the nation, 
 does it set forth with any strength or power. It has had 
 its own reward for being insubordinate. They refused the 
 other day to join that majority of the House of Commons 
 which a i'ew days before had been the minority of that 
 assembly, but underwent a sudden transformation. This 
 brought upon them the rebuke of some who are very for- 
 ward in the ranks of those who profess to advocate the 
 maintenance of our institutions in Church and State. This 
 slight insurrection of Young England was thus punished 
 by the Standard newspaper : 
 
 " Mr. Benjamin Disraeli was pleased to talk of the servility 
 of the Conservative party — of men (as the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer happily remarked) ' at least Mr. Disraeli's equals in 
 point of rank, station, and birth, and in the consideration of the 
 country.' They had need to be that certainly, if they did not 
 first see the light in Houndsditch, obtain their education in an 
 obscure attorney's office, and seek to win a discreditable liveli- 
 hood by writing wretched novels. But enough of this person; 
 we hope that last night has finished him."/?/ 
 
 Notwithstanding all the exceptions which one may take 
 to the conduct of .Mr. Disraeli and his friends as politi- 
 cians — as the founders in their own desire of a new era, by 
 the revival of old principles — this is not the way in which 
 one can tolerate their being attacked. Here is the enume- 
 ration of his crimes and misdemeanours — having been born 
 in Houndsditch, having been articled to an attorney, and 
 writing novels to earn Ids livelihood. These are the crimes
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. ] 6f> 
 
 alleged against Young England by the party which they 
 are vainly striving to coax and polish into something like 
 philosophy and humanity. After all, this is nothing more 
 than that insolent aristocratical spirit in Church and State 
 which will run down a man on account of his station — 
 which takes the merest accident of birth, which makes a 
 crime of any thing that has the epithet of vulgarity at- 
 tached to it — which sees no good qualities arising out of 
 the great mass of humanity, ami thinks to put them all clown 
 with the flippant sneer of a dainty dandy. This article in 
 the Standard should be a lesson to men of talent like Mr. 
 D'Israeli, and some of those who associate with him ; 
 teaching them that they can work no good in the direction 
 in which they have hitherto been striving, nor with such 
 materials as they have chosen: that if they must indulge 
 the philosophical tendencies which are in them, they must 
 take a wider view of the world, and its resources and pro- 
 spects, bursting the fetters of this aristocratical reverence, 
 and learn that the reverence which best becomes a man is 
 esteem for the moral worth and real grandeur of human 
 nature. 
 
 What are the golden ages to which they would turn 
 back the wheels of time? J low did their favourite system 
 work, and what is the reason that it passed away ? These 
 are questions which it well behoves Young England to an- 
 swer. There is not much agreement in the references to 
 this period in their writings. One passage which I read 
 from Coningsby tells us of the Pitt system. Thev eulogise 
 that statesman's commercial liberality, Iris desire to free the 
 Catholic from the yoke of Puritanism, and his sympathy 
 witli the extension of political rights. It is a strange sort 
 of regard for the name and memory of Pitt which revives 
 topics like these. Yes, it is true that Pitt was in his early 
 life an advocate for the extension of the franchise: — from 
 the cause of reform it is notorious that he apostatised, and 
 persecuted those who had adopted his own opinions, seek- 
 ing even to take tin 1 lives of men who did nothing more 
 than reassert his own solemnly declared principles. As to 
 commercial liberality, why he understood not the very ele- 
 ments of political economy, and seldom or never inter- 
 meddled with trading interests (except, indeed, in his French 
 Treaty of 17S(>), but by his blundering lie plunged the 
 country deeper and deeper into a false system. With re-
 
 166 LECTURE XI. 
 
 spect to striking off the yoke from the Catholics of Ireland, 
 if he promised them emancipation, lie never acquitted him- 
 self of the obligation. He bribed them to the union ; but 
 the bribe was not paid. He set himself up as a statesman 
 who was pledged to the freedom of that unhappy country, 
 and then, at the bidding of George the Third, he was con- 
 tent to forego his promise, to sacrifice his character, and 
 forfeit all consistency upon a point which should have 
 been mo^t essential to him, and came back again into 
 power, and was again appointed prime-minister, which he 
 remained until his death, leaving the Catholics under the 
 yoke from which he had promised to free them, but from 
 which they were only delivered by upwards of twenty years 
 of hard agitation. What was he as a financier ? What 
 was that famous sinking fund, which for several years was 
 so much glorified ? A system by which, while he was run- 
 ning the country into debt by millions — scores and hun- 
 dreds of millions. — the very debt was augmented five per 
 cent on each loan, in order that this extra debt, at com- 
 pound interest, might eventually pay off the other debt — a 
 recipe something like this : " You are in great want of 20/. ; 
 borrow 20 guineas; put the extra 20s. out at compound 
 interest, and it will at some future day repay the original 
 sum you borrowed, and you will be all the better for hav- 
 ing gone rather further into debt than you need have 
 done." 
 
 Well, that period will not do ; and we will now take the 
 direction of the Tunes, which says, "Plunge into two cen- 
 turies back."' That is a very awkward chronological date 
 — a strange time in which to look for the standard of true 
 aristocracy. At that time Laud, by the sentences of the 
 Star Chamber, had been amusing himself bv slitting noses 
 and cropping ears in the pillory. Are we to return to the 
 period when England rose in arms against oppression, and 
 when Cromwell marched from victory to victory in his 
 road towards an ungarnished throne ? Why, the age to 
 which they have here referred us is only a demonstration 
 that Toryism in old times was as intolerable as it has been 
 in modern days — that it is a thing to be borne as long only 
 as there is no strength to shake off the yoke ; but then, by 
 whatever power the nation possesses, it should — and will, 
 as the natural result — rid itself of an oppressive incubus. 
 
 i his having failed, are we to take another direction of
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. 167 
 
 the past? Mr. Disraeli dates the rising of the Whig aris- 
 tocracy, and the commencement of the " factitious " con- 
 dition of things, from the spoliation of the Church ; that is, 
 from the good old times of Harry the Eighth. We are to 
 look, yet further into the night of history, in order to find 
 that ideal social existence which he proposes to revivify ; 
 that is, in a time when serfdom was in the land, and when 
 the only remonstrances were such as Jack Cade and Wat 
 Tyler afforded ; when the sale of slaves was a very common 
 thing ; times when we are told that the Abbot of Dunstable 
 bought a man, his wife, and his whole family for 13s. Ad., 
 and did not consider them a very cheap bargain at that 
 price ; or times when, as in a yet earlier period, from the 
 reign of William the First to that of John, the slave-market 
 in Ireland was so overstocked, that the article was worth 
 altogether nothing as a matter of commerce. Since that 
 time the home-produce has been so multiplied in Ireland, 
 that there is no occasion for importations. It is said that 
 tiiere was not a cottage in Scotland then, which had not an 
 English slave at work in it. These circumstances, surely, 
 have nothing in them so attractive that we should desire to 
 brine: them back. They passed away because in the order 
 of events it was inevitable that they should. The nobility 
 had wasted their strength in their crusading expeditions, 
 and lost their hold of the land in order to gain possession 
 of the Sepulchre, — "sold the pasture to buy the horse;" 
 and burghers grew rich on their spoils. With the increas- 
 ing wealth of the citizens came intelligence and political 
 influence, and the power of the House of Commons arose. 
 Tho^e classes who were the foremost in the march en- 
 franchised themselves, setting a worthy example for their 
 successors to follow ; and that tide of things began to How 
 which shall never ebb until it land us on the broad shores 
 of a complete and enduring democracy. 
 
 Disguise it as we may in words, the question of Aris- 
 tocracy is the real question of Young England. It comes 
 to this as its essential point. Aristocracy in society — the 
 great and rich with the poor around them, whom, thev say, 
 they will make very happy ; but it is quite plain that they 
 wiii keep them very dependent. What is aristocracy ? 
 Air. Disraeli talks of the Whigs, and those who were en- 
 riched by the spoil of the Church, as a " factitious aristo- 
 cracv :" but what is his own, and what are all existing
 
 168 LECTURE XI. 
 
 aristocracies, but factitious? There is, indeed, an aristo- 
 cracy of nature ; as, for example, one is born with firmer 
 muscles, stouter bones, and the rudiments of stronger limbs, 
 than another, and that superiority may render him valuable 
 to society ; he may become a hero of physical force — a 
 worker in the world for his own advantage, and through 
 that for the benefit of others. In some there are, again, 
 finer senses, more nicely strung nerves, eyes which are 
 more alive to the sense of colour, ears which drink in more 
 readily harmonious sounds. They also belong to the na- 
 tural aristocracy. This superiority makes the artist and 
 the minstrel, whose song< charm mankind, and draw from 
 them that meed which he most prizes- — of sympathy in 
 others' hearts and the applause of others' voices. There is 
 also a power of combination, and measuring the capability 
 of forces — seeing how they can be arranged so as to pro- 
 duce the greatest result; and tins, it it be in material 
 substances, forms tin 1 mechanician : if it be in moral and 
 intellectual matters, it is the governing and ruling power. 
 And, in addition to all these, tiiere are those loftier and 
 grander qualities which mark out the poet and the philoso- 
 pher. In all these diversities I recognise a natural aristo- 
 cracy, and do it homage, and should be glad to see it ever 
 recognised. But then there are two characters about Na- 
 ture's aristocracy in every department, which belong to no 
 factitious aristocracy : and those two qualities are, that they 
 are always useful to society, and are never or rarely here- 
 ditary. In fact, it appear.- as though Nature purposely 
 threw scorn upon this not ion of hereditary nobilitv. Mere 
 learning may he acquire d almost mechanically ; but, with 
 only two or three exception- in history, you never find that 
 men renowned for learning are the sons of learned men. 
 The poet's son is no poet himself, nor the son of the artist 
 an artist. There is e\ery where a breaking down of this 
 elevation which had been rai-ed tor the common good : 
 and from generation to generation Nature renews her so- 
 lemn declaration — the charter o! human rights — (dl arc 
 born free and equal. And so admirable is this provision 
 for the social constitution, that it is actually seen in any 
 number of persons, however imli-crinunately taken. Seize 
 upon the first ,500 persons coming over London Bridge, 
 and send them off to some distant colony. In a very short 
 time there will arise from anion"' them those who have the
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. 169 
 
 combining- power of mechanicians ; others who possess the 
 artistical faculty. There will be found engineers, teachers, 
 rulers ; there will be all in them which society needs. Hu- 
 manity is ever self-sufficient ; and least of all can it be ren- 
 dered dependent on those paltry artificial contrivances to 
 make rank and legislative authority descend from generation 
 to generation, calling upon us to reverence them as makers 
 of the laws, to which they have no title whatever, except 
 that their great-great-great-grandfather had, perhaps by 
 corruption, recommended himself to some minister for a 
 peerage. 
 
 This artificial aristocracy has been tried in all its forms, 
 and has been always found wanting. It first existed in old 
 Egypt as a priestly aristocracy. Their lands were un- 
 touched when those of the rest of the inhabitants were 
 taken in payment for food in the years of famine. They 
 had the command of the wealth, and they were the masters 
 of all the knowledge which could be obtained. The super- 
 natural character was strong in them, and the people did 
 them homage as representatives of the Deity. They pro- 
 fessed to work miracles, and played off their tricks of 
 jugglery, until it was believed that they could hurl the 
 lightning and roll the thunders of Heaven. But what 
 became of Egypt? It sank into the meanest, the most de- 
 spised, and the basest of nations, leaving only its pyramids 
 and temples to attest the grandeur of the past, while its 
 people exhibited the moral degradation of the present. 
 
 Aristocracy was tried again in old Rome. The patri- 
 cians there were the possessors of the public funds ; they 
 had all the power and authority. The aristocracy of Rome 
 were the first great usurers, and severe ones they were too. 
 By their laws they established the right even of hewing a 
 debtor to pieces by his several creditors, without any pro- 
 vision that they should merely cut slices in proportion to 
 their debt, shewing themselves more merciless even than 
 the Jew Shylock. They sold for slaves those whom their 
 own system had ruined by exorbitant usury, and by a 
 variety of arts kept the people in such a state of wretched- 
 ness, that they sought deliverance by joining the first enemy 
 of the state. Thus the old Roman republic terminated in 
 the despotism of the Caesars, and all the vices, luxury, and 
 degradation of that imperial dynasty were introduced. 
 
 L
 
 170 LECTURE XI. 
 
 Aristocracy was tried again in the feudal times ; and 
 Guizot, in his work on Civilisation, says, that feudalism is 
 not remembered in any country of Europe without execra- 
 tion on its memory. He speaks of " that almost universal, 
 invincible hatred which country people have at all times 
 borne to the feudal system, to every remnant of it, to its 
 very name. We are not without examples of men having 
 submitted to the heavy yoke of despotism, of their having 
 become accustomed to it, nay, more, of their having freely 
 accepted it. Religious despotism, monarchical despotism, 
 have more than once obtained the sanction, almost the 
 love, of the population -which they governed. But feudal 
 
 despotism has always been repulsed, always hateful 
 
 This, perhaps, is the only tyranny to which man, much to 
 his honour, never will submit. Wherever, in a ruler or 
 master, lie sees but the individual man; the moment that 
 the authority which presses upon him is no more than an 
 individual, a human will, one like his own, he feels morti- 
 fied and indignant, and struggles against the yoke which he 
 is compelled to bear. Such was the true, the distinctive 
 character of the feudal power, and such was the origin of 
 the hatred which it has never ceased to inspire.'" In this 
 land it proved as bad a system as elsewhere. The feudal 
 chieftain built his castle on a hill, the huts of his vassals clus- 
 tering round the base : there he exercised even tiie powers 
 of sovereignty — he was king, lord, and judge in his domi- 
 nions. He sallied forth with ins rude retainers, a mere 
 banditti, to plunder others. He enjoyed most atrocious and 
 disgusting privileges. His deep dungeons were without any 
 appeal for those who were immured therein. And at last 
 this subsided, and left its names, forms, and titles to another 
 class, with less ferocity but scarcely more dignity — to the 
 earls, marquises, and dukes of modern times — no warlike 
 barons they — but continuing the titles whilst they have got 
 rid of the duties, keeping estates which they no longer 
 allow to be taxed for the support of the army or the cur- 
 rent expenditure of the realm, but making use of the legis- 
 lative power which they inherit to carry on their own 
 business as traders — trading in the land becpieathed from 
 their ancestors — dealing in the food of the people, and in 
 the very fish of the rivers ; trading, in fact, in everything 
 which they can get hold of, and putting an artificial value
 
 YOUNG ENGLAND. 171 
 
 upon all the articles in which they deal, by means of their 
 parliamentary preponderance. 
 
 This is the last form of aristocracy ; and I see nothing 
 in its character which should give it a better title to pro- 
 longed existence than its predecessors. We have heard of 
 Young Germany, Young France, and Young Italy ; and 
 there is one difference between all these parlies and the 
 section called Young England. Young England looks 
 only to the past; all the others look to the future. The 
 golden acre of Young England is no where to be found. 
 We have repeatedly glanced at history, and find there no 
 such thing. Young England, if honestly seeking this im- 
 practicable state of society, is like the boy running back- 
 wards to catch the rainbow. There is no provision for 
 the revival of the past state of things; and there is no- 
 thing which would render such a retrogression desirable, if 
 it were possible. But the heart of Young England is in 
 what has gone by, while the youth of every other nation 
 has its millennium to come. Every other sees the golden 
 age in the future, not in the past ; it traces progress in the 
 history of mankind ; it believes that new principles must 
 c ime into play in the world, as new emergencies arise; 
 that whenever any agency of civilisation has done its work, 
 it must pass away from the world, and give place to some- 
 thing better; that the hopes of humanity rest not on our 
 going backwards, bur. onwards; growing up to maturity as 
 the child docs, realising the rights, privileges, and enjoy- 
 ments of manhood. 
 
 ^ oung England is an entire 1 misnomer. Decrepit old 
 age, vamped up in a gay and glittering suit, is not youth, 
 and vainly attempts to pass for such on the world. There 
 c u he no Young England in the attempt to revive dead or 
 dying aristocracy ". but where' there are true hearts, loving 
 the right, and throbbing for its attainment — wherever there 
 is a craving for knowledge, and a disposition to use it 
 when attained as the mean-- of good — wherever the mind 
 aspires towards the full development of the faculties with 
 which it ha- been endowed by God and Xaturt — wherever 
 and in whatever cki>s or rank of society there is an intense 
 love of truth and sincerity, scorning all falsehood and equi- 
 vocation, which will not palter with the world's convention- 
 alism, bra calls things by their true names, whatever those 
 names may be — wherever there is the claim of humanity
 
 172 LECTURE XI. 
 
 for the rights of humanity, and a determination to aid in 
 every good word and work, until the world is again " set 
 smooth revolving," until industry can earn its food by the 
 sweat of its brow, until the student can attain to learning 
 by his diligence, even though he may have been born in 
 poverty, and be surrounded by no advantages of scholastic 
 or collegiate instruction, — there is Young England, growing 
 up in the promise of a noble maturity, in due time to enter 
 upon its heritage of knowledge, freedom, prosperity, and 
 happiness.
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 ON THE MORAL PRINCIPLES IMPLIED IN "THE PEOPLE'S 
 CHARTER," AND THE APPLICATION OF THOSE PRINCI- 
 PLES TO THE CONCERNS OF DAILY LIFE. 
 
 (LECTURE THE FIRST.) 
 
 The Morality of the " People s Charter" That is my 
 subject for to-night — an elucidation of the moral principles 
 contained in that document, and their application to the 
 concerns of private and daily life. Every political theory 
 implies a moral system, and every moral system implies a 
 political theory. When an author presents to the world a 
 treatise on morals, one of the best tests of its character is 
 to turn to his chapter on civil government, and ascertain 
 whether that is written in the spirit of a freeman or of a 
 slave ; whether it has been penned for the purpose of 
 cherishing self-respect in the minds of all, or merely with 
 a view of subjugating the understandings and consciences 
 of a large portion of the community to the dictates and 
 interests of the few. Whatever be the arrangements which 
 are drawn out as a plan for ruling the community, they 
 must imply certain principles of action between individuals. 
 They involve; the feelings and objects with which we inter- 
 mingle in the most common and every -day concerns of 
 life. That which best regulates a state — in its principle, if 
 not in the details of its machinery — will also best promote 
 good of any kind, that of the neighbourhood or of the 
 household. 
 
 Some i'ew weeks ago I lectured here upon a work re- 
 cently published by Professor Sewell of Oxford, entitled 
 Christian Politics. That book was avowedly intended as 
 a political system. The author taught certain notions 
 concerning the necessity of monarchy, and the rights be- 
 longing thereto. In one passage winch 1 read, he ex- 
 pressed his high approval of the Persians who perished to 
 save the life of the despot Xerxes upon his retreat from 
 Greece, in preference to tin; self-devotion of the Greeks,
 
 174 LECTURE XII. 
 
 who fell defending their own rights, liberties, lives, families, 
 and country. Now what does this mean? What does 
 this idea of the political relationship of subject and sove- 
 reign imply ? Why, that morality is a thing of authority ; 
 that it resolves itself simply into command and obedience. 
 If we look into the same professor's work on Christian 
 Morals we find this principle wrought out. There is a 
 perfect correspondence between the two : as are the poli- 
 tics, such are the morals. He teaches us that the only 
 path of duty for the child is to be obedient to its parent up 
 to the point at which the authority of the parent is inter- 
 fered with by that of the king. The child or person is 
 then enjoined to be, obedient to the monarch up to the 
 limit at which regal authority comes into collision with the 
 supremacy of the Church ; and then it is broadly laid down 
 that every one must be submissive to the Church, without 
 any limitation whatsoever. Now it is very clear what sort 
 of politicians such a morality would make, as in the pre- 
 vious work it had been equally plain what kind of morals 
 his Christian Politics would engender. In such a state of 
 things, with the Church claiming as its prerogative to be 
 the great source of education, and former of character for 
 the people, it would merely have to prepare its results for 
 the use of the State, The king recjuires subjects who will 
 not question his acts; soldiers who will execute any com- 
 mand, and ministers and agents who will do any dirty 
 work: the Church volunteers to furnish a sufficiency of 
 these characters by the operation of her principle of un- 
 limited obedience. if it can accomplish such a work, 
 then the Church goes to the State, and says, " Here are so 
 many hundred-;, thousands, or millions of tools, ready to 
 obey any command and to perform any task : they will be 
 perfectly subservient to ail your wants and wishes so long 
 as von do not interfere with us. We have made these tools 
 ready for your use ; hand us over the tithes in payment." 
 The bargain is soon struck ; and this factory of tools and 
 puppets by the Church for the State may go on without 
 any stoppage of the machinery or ten-hours limitation : it 
 works night and day, summer and winter. 
 
 I should much like to see a state formed upon sound 
 moral principles. There has been, and is, a great deal of 
 talk about '• Christian states." Can any one point out 
 upon the whole face of the earth a real Christian state or
 
 THE PEOPLES CHARTER. 
 
 government? No form of authority which recognises 
 slavery in a community can be entitled to that appellation ; 
 for 1 think it must at all events he admitted, that whatever 
 else may be disputable in Christianity, there is one princi- 
 ple belonging to it which stands out most prominent in its 
 character; and that is, to ;< do unto others as we would that 
 they should do unto us." There is no rule in Christianity 
 which can justify me in making my fellow-creature a slave. 
 No man is desirous of being a slave, except perhaps under 
 very particular and extraordinary circumstances. Unhap- 
 pily there are conditions of life which generate this wish. 
 I can, for instance, imagine in this country a labourer, poor 
 and old; his days are now declining towards the shades of 
 night and death ; his form is wasted by many successive 
 year.; of toil, and by exposure to a variety of hardships ; 
 his strength fails him; his muscles and bones refuse to do 
 the bidding of a mind which would still, if it could, task 
 them for more and more toil. Such a man, probably, in 
 the bitterness of his heart, with only the prospect of a re- 
 moval from his wretched hovel to the yet more repulsive 
 poorhouso, and from that to the cold grave — why, he 
 might, in the agony of his soul, wish to Heaven that he had 
 been a slave, in which ease there would at least have been 
 the condition imposed upon his master of preserving him 
 from nakedness and starvation in his latter days. Shew me 
 institutions and their administration which can produce 
 sueii a reeling as this in the human heart, and what a mass 
 of wretchedness on the one hand, and abuse of authority 
 on the other, will you find in that state of society. But, 
 apart from this or any other extreme case, every man 
 recoils from the notion of slavery. It cannot be a thing 
 which he would ik wish to be done unto him ;" and if, there- 
 fore. Christianity be brought into the question — for the ride 
 in the New Testament applies to the state as well as to 
 individuals — the man must stand self-condemned and con- 
 victed of inconsistency, who wishes to make others slaves, 
 or to keep them in such a degraded condition if they are 
 so already. But I repeat my former question- — Where 
 does there exist a Christian state? We boast much, and 
 plume ourselves upon hustings and at meetings of having 
 abolished the slave-trade and slavery, without remembering 
 at the same time, how long this country sustained and de- 
 fended those diabolical institutions. Wliv, it is not very
 
 176 LECTURE XII. 
 
 many years ago since the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel in Foreign Parts derived a portion of its reve- 
 nues from a slave-estate in one of the West Indian islands. 
 Even at the present time it is not uncommon in America for 
 churches and chapels to be endowed with property in land 
 which is cultivated by slaves. There are official persons 
 ■who are paid, from Sunday to Sunday, by the produce of 
 the labour of slaves, for declaring in words that all men are 
 brethren, and that we should render unto others as we 
 would that they should do unto us. Christianity is said to 
 be " part and parcel of the law of the land." I wish this 
 principle of Christianity, at least, were really part and par- 
 cel of the law of all lands. But in this respect a false mo- 
 rality is taught : mankind, in fact, are demoralised ; slavery 
 perhaps condemned in words, while in fact it is held up as 
 a thing consistent with individual relations and human 
 nature, thus violating not merely the principles and precepts 
 of Christianity, but the spirit of all religion, morality, and 
 humanity. 
 
 If it be as I stated at the commencement of this lec- 
 ture, that every political system implies a moral principle, 
 and every moral theory includes a political system, then it 
 follows that the distinction which is so frequently made 
 between political and personal character is altogether fac- 
 titious. Character is " one and indivisible," much more so 
 than the French republic was. The truth and goodness 
 of one portion of it will infuse themselves into the rest. 
 There is no such contrast or disjunction between what 
 is moral in the more limited sense, and that which is politi- 
 cal, as is consistent with a difference of spirit in the indi- 
 vidual in relation to those two. I know that this theory of 
 separating the parts of character is a favourite one ; but 
 I am also aware that it is capable of being applied to the 
 most pernicious purposes ; and it may, therefore, be worth 
 while to glance at it in our course, and endeavour to ex- 
 pose its fallacy. This doctrine was applied in this country 
 in two successive reigns, but upon very different occasions. 
 When George the Third was on the throne, there were 
 many who could not by any means defend much that was 
 to be found in his government of the country, and in his 
 character as monarch of Great Britain : but it was said by 
 these apologists, " Oh, but still, what a good man he is : 
 how regularlv he goes to church ; how audibly he reads
 
 the people's charter. 177 
 
 responses ; how devoutly he repeats the creeds ; and what 
 respect he shews upon all occasions for the external forms 
 of religion." Thus it was thought at that time that a 
 good man might yet be a bad king. Similar principles 
 were also applied to the character and conduct of the 
 then Prince of Wales. The aberrations of that royal 
 personage; in his early days were pretty notorious ; but 
 they were excused. It was admitted that he was wild, 
 and according to their own estimate of things, in some 
 important points unmoral ; but all this, it was alleged, 
 might be quite consistent with his being a good and a 
 great king. Well, now what becomes of this double set 
 of supposed compatibilities? Who can now strictly ana- 
 lyse George the. Third without perceiving him to have 
 been of an obstinate, intriguing, tyrannical, and deceitful 
 disposition, which, if there be any meaning at all in the 
 word "character," must fix the brand of " bad" upon his 
 character for ever. As to the goodness of George the 
 Fourth as a king, the very first thing which be did upon 
 obtaining the regency was to shew how little care he had 
 for either old principles or friends: he cast them otf with 
 ease the first moment that it became convenient so to do. 
 In the words of his celebrated Epistle upon that occasion, 
 as versified by Thomas Moore, 
 
 " I am proud to declare I have no predilections ; 
 My heart is a sieve where some finer affections 
 Are just danced about for a moment or two, 
 And the finer they are, the more sure to go through." 
 
 This unmeaning distinction between the personal and the 
 political in character is very often used to excuse wrong, 
 and patch up quarrels amongst parliamentary people. For 
 example, a man commits bribery. That is to say, by the 
 most sordid temptation he entices a fellow-creature into 
 guilt : he becomes a companion in falsehood, and what 
 in its results is perjury and treason to the country. All 
 this is no blemish upon his character ; he committed the 
 act as a politician, and not as a man. lie breaks his pro- 
 mises, and the most solemn declarations which he made 
 at the hustings; all his professions pass away like idle 
 wind which he regards nor. Sometimes he is taxed with 
 this falsehood, and if he resent it. and the accuser be 
 not disposed to take the ordinary course of giving what 
 L 2
 
 178 LECTURE XII. 
 
 is called "the satisfaction of a gentleman'" — which it re- 
 quires a very strange notion of morality to be at all sa- 
 tisfied with, whatever may be the result — why then the 
 explanation given is, " Oh, it was said of him politically, 
 and not personally." " The words were used in their 
 parliamentary meaning ;" which means just as much as 
 though they declared upon their honour that the language 
 was only employed in i*s Pickwickian sense. Let me see 
 the man who carries into his whole public career the same 
 regard for his word and the spotlessness of his actions that 
 he preserves in the most private transactions of lii'e, and 
 there is the man who is a good character. Talk of " the 
 honour of a gentleman!" What is "honour?" There 
 may be honour amongst thieves, and of quite as good a 
 description as that honour which does not demand the 
 fulfilment of promises to the poorer classes as well as to 
 the richer — to the electors as well as the elected — to all 
 classes of societv with whom he comes into contact, as 
 well as those who belong to his own particular clique or 
 class in the community. 
 
 It is true that in the great cooperation of political 
 movements there will very often be different characters 
 associated together and marching under the same banner. 
 The vicious will often assert just and true principles: it is 
 the homage winch they pay to virtue. The squcamishness 
 appears to me to be altogether out oi' place, which would 
 lead an individual to set up an inquisition of character 
 before joining this or that movement, and say, ; ' Dear me, 
 no ! I cannot take part in that agitation. It is true it is 
 lor a great and noble purpose ; but then there is Mr. 
 Such-an-one, whom somebody suspects of having done 
 something which somebody else thought was not right 
 some years ago ; and it would dirty my fingers to move 
 with him in working out such a purpose, even although 
 it be just and right." All these pretences are nothing 
 more in a man than a paltry excuse for flinching from his 
 duly : nothing more or less. Awav with these hypocritical 
 pretexts ! Let each one answer for himself. Let him go 
 straight forward in a cause which is fair, true, honest, and 
 honourable ; and he will receive no contamination, even 
 thongl] the devil himself stood at his elbow. But whilst 
 there h this inevitable blending of the good and the bad, 
 an'i inconsistencv is found in all human things to so larce
 
 Tin: people's charter. J 79 
 
 an extent, nevertheless it would be a bad symptom of any 
 cause that it Mas chiefly supported by the worthless and 
 depraved ; such a cause would not only have suspicion 
 cast upon it as regards its rectitude, but it would also 
 display one mark of weakness ; for persons of bad cha- 
 racter when associated together can never trust one an- 
 other. When a period conies which tries men's souls, it 
 is those who are honest and truehearted, and know each 
 other to he the same, who alone can act with that firmness 
 which proceeds from mutual reliance ; who in a season 
 of peril, when persecution is abroad, and laws are enforced 
 in a sanguinary and vindictive, rather than an impartial, 
 spirit, and the sword is drawn for a " vigour beyond the 
 lav," — it is those who have such a knowledge: of each 
 other's truthfulness who will then stand shoulder to shoulder, 
 ami meet and brave the storm, and eventually triumph 
 over it ; for although there may for such a band of men 
 be martyrdom in the career, there cannot be defeat or 
 disgrace at its termination. 
 
 -> The People's Charter" is a subject which may give 
 rise to many questions of great interest and deep import- 
 ance : — questions connected with the principles on which 
 it is founded, and the mode in which those principles are 
 wrought out; questions connected with the details of its 
 arrangement, and the best means for causing it to become 
 the' law of the land ; and questions connected with the 
 probable results which will follow from its adoption. ft is 
 no.: my purpose to-night to enter into the consideration of 
 these 1 topics; there are other and fitting times and places 
 for their discussion. My business with the " People's 
 Charter" in this h cture is, to elucidate the morality therein 
 contained or implied. The very history of that document 
 — tiie mode in which it was concocted — the time, care, 
 and thou<ihtfulness which were bestowed upon it — the ad- 
 vice which was called in, respectfully attended to, and in 
 many cases accepted — the revision to which since that 
 period it has been subjected- — all these circumstances teach 
 a great moral lesson in the most emphatical manner. In 
 all these circumstances there is a clear and manifest im- 
 plication that men's rights and duties arc topics for thought- 
 fulness, careful consideration, and mature, deliberation. 
 The morality of tiie Charter is not the morality of heed- 
 lessness, imprudence, mere impulse, and contented ignor-
 
 180 LECTURE XII. 
 
 ance. It repudiates all these qualities, and teaches that 
 the exercise of the understanding and the information of 
 the mind are the bounden duties of men in all stations of 
 life. Every man who says, "I am a friend to the Char- 
 ter," thereby declares, " I am an advocate for thoughtful- 
 ness ; for the people looking before and after ; for their 
 weighing arguments and propositions, and the consequences 
 of public measures; for their carrying into all the concerns 
 of life that spirit which becomes a being gifted with reason 
 and understanding, and who is to guide his course by their 
 constant exercise." There are those who connect all ideas 
 of morality with impulse, and say, " My heart bade me do 
 this or that;" but which is very likely merely to mean, 
 that the state of their nerves and digestive organs gave 
 them an impulse in this or that direction at a particular 
 time ; but who refuse to enter into the question of the 
 principles on which a man's conduct is founded, or the 
 consequences towards which they directly lead. A mo- 
 rality of this description, proceeding from mere impulse, 
 is unworthy of a thinking being. It frequently ends in 
 subjection to the grosser animal impulses of our nature, 
 and thereby in the degradation of humanity. 
 
 Nor does the Charter inculcate a morality of ignorance. 
 Its founders did not run for direction to the clergyman of 
 the parish, or request the authority of the bishop of the 
 diocese, as to the line of principle they were to adopt; they 
 fell back upon their own thoughts ; they gathered together 
 information in order that those thoughts might proceed 
 clearly and soundly. The morality of knowledge as op- 
 posed to that of ignorance was in their view; and adopted 
 as it is in the history of the document which was then pro- 
 duced, it should distinguish every one who adheres to it 
 and professes to be its supporter. 
 
 This morality of knowledge in opposition to that of 
 ignorance is very unlike that which it answers the purpose 
 of certain teachers to recommend. When we want a speci- 
 men of accommodation to things as they are, of submission 
 without being over nice to the requirements of those who 
 for the time being are vested with power, I do not know 
 a moralist who supplies the want more readily than Dr. 
 Paley. In Ids Moral and Political Philosophy there is a 
 chapter upon the Duty of Submission to Civil Govern- 
 ments, which seems to bear the marks of a most demo-
 
 the people's charter. 181 
 
 ralising tendency. The passage to which I refer runs 
 thus : 
 
 "As ignorance of union, and want of communication, appear 
 amongst the principal preservatives of civil authority, it behoves 
 every state to keep its subjects in this want and ignorance, not 
 only by vigilance in guarding against actual confederacies and 
 combinations, but by a timely care to prevent great collections 
 of nun of any separate party or religion, or of like occupation or 
 profession," — that is to say, any monster meeting of Irish Ca- 
 tholics or Trades' Unions, — " or in any way connected by a 
 participation of interest or passion, from being assembled in the 
 same vicinity. A Protestant Establishment in this country may 
 have little to fear from its Popish subjects, scattered, as they are, 
 throughout the kingdom, and intermixed with the Protestant in- 
 habitants, which yet might think them a formidable body if they 
 were gathered together into one country." 
 
 The ease put here as a supposition is actually realised 
 in Ireland. 
 
 " The most frequent and desperate riots are those which break 
 out amongst men of the same profession, as weavers, miners, 
 sailors. This circumstance makes a mutiny of soldiers more to 
 be dreaded than any other insurrection. Hence, also, one dan- 
 ger of an overgrown metropolis, and of those great cities and 
 crowded districts into which the inhabitants of trading countries 
 are commonly collected. The worst effect of popular tumults 
 consists in this, that they discover to the insurgents the secret 
 of their own strength, teach them to depend upon it against a 
 future occasion, and both produce and diffuse sentiments of con- 
 fidence in one another, and assurances of mutual support. 
 Leagues thus formed and strengthened may overawe or overset 
 the power of any state ; and the danger is greater in proportion 
 as, from the propinquity of habitation and intercourse of em- 
 ployment, the passions and counsels of a party can be circulated 
 with ease and rapidity. It is by these means, and in such situa- 
 tions, that the minds of men are so affected and prepared, that 
 the most dreadful uproars often arise from the slightest provoca- 
 tion-. When the train is laid, a spark will produce the explo- 
 sion." 
 
 These principles, carried out to their legitimate extent, 
 would have forbidden this country in all ages the enjoy- 
 ment and convenience of the penny postage. It would 
 have put down all combined exertions of workmen to pro- 
 cure higher wages, and stopped all such meetings a* have 
 been held in Ireland, and many also which have been con- 
 vened in this country. All this would have been done
 
 182 LECTURE XII. 
 
 simply on the principle of " keeping the people in ignor- 
 ance, that they might not know the secret of their own 
 strength." It would be much better for governments to 
 deal with their subjects as the " People's Charter" would 
 lead them to do — on the principles of knowledge instead 
 of ignorance ; causing them to know their own strength, 
 but making them feel at the same time that they are well 
 governed, — that their rights, wants, and interests, are at- 
 tended to and secured ; and having done that, the more 
 they know of their own strength, the more both they and 
 their rulers will feel satisfied of the safety of the state, and 
 its superiority to any alarms, as well as the extent to which 
 it may be depended upon for its own defence, and the cer- 
 tainty that opens before it of future union, prosperity, and 
 enjoyment. Not that so trimming a writer as Dr. Paley 
 could allow the doctrine of obedience to civil government 
 to rest in the passage I have just read. Attached as he was 
 to the Whigs, and connected as that party was with a revo- 
 lution which implied th<3 right of resistance in the people, 
 his system required that he should balance the boat by 
 something of an opposite nature, which might serve as a 
 set-off, and be equally applicable to the one side of the 
 question as what I have just read is to the other. In a 
 very few pages afterwards he treats of the right of resist- 
 ance, lie says : 
 
 "This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular 
 case of resistance is" — not decided by authority, and superseded 
 by the government keeping its subjects in ignorance and dis- 
 united, but the case of resistance is — "reduced to a computa- 
 tion of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, 
 and of tiie probability and expense of redressing it on the other." 
 — " No usage, law, or authority whatever, is so binding that it 
 need or ought to be continued, when it may be changed with 
 advantage to the community. The family of the prince, the 
 order of succession, the prerogative of the crown, the form and 
 part; of the legislature, together with the respective powers, 
 office, duration, and mutual dependency of the several parts, are 
 all only so many laws, mutable like other laws, whenever expe- 
 diency requires, either by the ordinary act of the legislature, or,, 
 if the occasion deserve it, by the interposition of the people." 
 
 Here is the doctrine of resistance plainly stated- — hen 
 is what the French revolutionary authorities used to call 
 '• the sacred right of insurrection" laid down in the most 
 distinct tonus. lie then proceeds:
 
 the people's charter. 183 
 
 " These points are wont to be approached with a kind of 
 awe ; they are presented to the mind as principles of the con- 
 stitution settled by our ancestors, and, being settled, to be no 
 more committed to innovation or debate ; as foundations never 
 to be stirred ; as the terms and conditions of the social com- 
 pact, to which every citizen of the state has engaged his fidelity 
 by virtue of a promise which lie cannot now recall. Such 
 reasons have no place in our system ; to us, if there be any 
 good reason for treating these with more deference and respect 
 than other laws, it is, either the advantage of the present consti- 
 tution of government (which reason must be of different force in 
 different countries), or because in all countries it is of import- 
 ance that the form and usage of governing be acknowledged and. 
 understood as well by the governors as by the governed, and 
 because the seldomer it is changed the more perfectly it will be 
 known by both sides." 
 
 This is all very true and sound ; but then how 
 strangely does it contrast with his doctrine of political 
 ignorance ! Surely, if there be a question which should 
 have, not ignorant, but wise men, to decide upon it — if 
 there be a point which should be determined, not by the 
 impulse of the moment, but after the calmest delibera- 
 tion — if there be a subject which requires, not the fervour 
 of passion, but keenness and continued careful thought — 
 it is this question of resistance to established institutions. 
 It should ever be approached with sobriety of mind. For 
 poop!;; to be kept, as Paley recommends in the former 
 passage, in a state of ignorance, and yet be entrusted 
 with this most important right, is simply like children 
 playing with thunderbolts, and scattering desolation over 
 a country. 
 
 The •• People's Charter" not only recommends thought- 
 fulness, and the acquisition of knowledge, by the fact and 
 mode of its formation; but also, in the universality of 
 suffrage, which it places foremost among its articles, am! 
 that most deservedly, it inculcates and proclaims respect 
 for liiiiiiaii nature. I hold a reverence for humanity, both 
 in ourselves and others, to be one of the most vital prin- 
 ciples of a sound morality. J "he very proposition which 
 declares, that as all are bound by law. so should thev have 
 a voice bv representation in its formation, tells us also that 
 humanity is a true, line, noble, and trustworthy thing. It 
 deals with the citizen as a man. When any one comes 
 forward and makes this claim, asserting his own right to
 
 184 LECTURE XII. 
 
 a vote upon the principle of universal suffrage, it is as 
 though he presented himself to society, and made his pre- 
 tensions known after the following manner : " I know and 
 feel that I am too good by nature to be a serf or mere beast 
 of burden. I have a mind to think, a heart to feel, and a 
 character in process of formation. I exercise thoughtful- 
 ness in my own concerns, and am not indifferent to the 
 interests of others. As I assert my own rights, so I re- 
 spect my neighbour's. I even cast my view beyond the 
 limits of my own country. I desire not to belong to a 
 community which should do wrong to other nations and 
 people, or attempt to thrive by injustice to the world. I 
 was born a native of tins land ; I am a sharer in its 
 burdens, and a contributor to its prosperity. I possess the 
 qualifications for a citizen, and before heaven and earth I 
 demand the rights of a citizen. Allow my claim to the 
 privileges of a man, and treat me as a member of this 
 community." 
 
 The political system which prompts such an appeal as 
 this necessarily inculcates self-respect. Take any other 
 political theory, and place it in contrast with this; such, 
 for instance, as the law of this country as it now stands. 
 The Charter leads humanity to reverence itself; the law 
 tells it, on the other hand, to respect houses which pay 
 10/. a-year rent. The one system inculcates a great reve- 
 rence for brains, and the other for bricks. Let a man 
 present himself at the polling-booth — such a man as Wil- 
 liam Thorn, of Aberdeen, the poet — with a volume of 
 poems in his hand, and say, " Here is the proof of my 
 qualification ; this is what I can do ; here is what I have 
 thought and written :" and let another man come after 
 him, with an overseer's receipt in his hand ; and then it 
 will be immediately seen that, according to our present 
 law, the receipt constitutes the citizen, the poetry and 
 philosophy go for nothing. What is this but placing the 
 bricklayer and landlord in rivalry with Providence itself? 
 Providence creates human beings ; the landlord and brick- 
 layer together build a 10/. house; the law says the brick- 
 layer's creation is better than that of Providence. Call 
 this morality indeed ! To fix our respect upon what is 
 accidental and not essential — upon the external and not 
 the internal — upon a mass of unconscious matter dignified 
 by the name of " property," and turn away that respect
 
 the people's charter. 1S5 
 
 from the very qualities which raise man above the whole 
 animal creation, and place him only " a little lower than 
 the angels .'" 
 
 This, then, is an important principle in the political 
 system we have now under review — that Chartist morality 
 most strongly engenders self-respect. Let every member 
 of the body remember this fact. He should carry it 
 with him to his home, and into his daily life and conduct. 
 A man cannot have much respect for himself who is seen 
 staggering through the streets in a state of drunkenness. 
 An individual has no right to sneer at the folly of the law 
 inculcating reverence for a 10/. house who is himself taken 
 justly to a station-house. There can be no self-respect in 
 a father appearing as a beast before his own children. 
 The Spartans used to make their helots drunk in order to 
 disgust their children with the vice of intoxication — one 
 of the cruellest impositions ever practised upon man even 
 in a state of slavery. Alas for him who makes that exhi- 
 bition voluntarily, and yet professes to aspire to the dig- 
 nity of a freeman ! Nor can there be any self-respect 
 if your conscience can talk to you in this manner: "You 
 pass for honest in the eyes of men, but in reality you are a 
 knave. In your business you have cheated, overcharged, 
 and deceived. Other people cannot discover your real 
 character, but you cannot help finding yourself out. I>y 
 what means will you avoid the conscious degradation 
 which is thus fixed upon you ? How dare you go into 
 society, rai^e your voice like honest men, as one of them, 
 and say, ' I claim a right to assist in making laws for my- 
 self and others ?' " 
 
 There is no self-respect in leaving the powers of the 
 mind uncultivated, in being contented with ignorance, and 
 careless about acquisitions which tend not only to the for- 
 mation of a clear judgment in political matters, but which 
 are of continual application in the concerns of life, consti- 
 tuting all the difference between a wise man and a fool — a 
 difference which soon expands itself into that between the 
 upright and the wicked, disgraced, and demoralised. Over 
 the whole circle of man's concerns does the doctrine of self- 
 respect, inculcated by the " People's Charter," spread its< If. 
 In all this it claims a consistent, moral, and dignified con- 
 duct, which shall uphold the man. It will give his heart 
 and voice strength ; and were it a physical struggle, it
 
 186 LECTURE XII. 
 
 would give his arm nerve also for the assertion of right for 
 himself and others, when he is conscious of rectitude in 
 those private and personal dealings which are exclusively 
 his own concerns. 
 
 This principle of respect for human nature applies not 
 only to ourselves, but to others likewise. The Charter con- 
 joins a claim for universal suffrage with a demand for the 
 ballot. Here it at once recognises the rights of others as 
 equal to our own, and asserts their individuality and right 
 of following their own course, without our even knowing 
 what it may be. It is enough for the true Chartist that a 
 man wishes to vote in any particular manner; his answer 
 is, " So let him. I would not even pry into what another 
 man may, for any reason whatever, wish to keep to him- 
 self; if such is his desire, let him follow his inclination; 
 he is as free to take his own course as I am to take mine." 
 This spirit of universal tolerance, which places others upon 
 the same footing with ourselves, — this desire that every 
 person should have equal latitude for the operation of his 
 opinion and the conduct which results therefrom, so long 
 as it does not interfere with the rights of others, — this 
 true feeling of mutual tolerance is also a high, valuable, 
 pure, and precious principle of moral conduct, and one 
 which society has very great need of learning. We con- 
 tinually find in society an intolerance of the opinion of 
 others. The language of men, if not expressed, at least 
 implied, is, " We are in the right and they are in the 
 wrong." We say, at least by implication if not in words, 
 what Bishop Horsley said in the House of Lords, when 
 some nobleman — 1 think, Lord King — inquired of him wdiat 
 was the meaning of "orthodoxy" and "heterodoxy" — 
 terms in very common use amongst gentlemen of the cleri- 
 cal profession — "My Lord," replied the bishop, "ortho- 
 doxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is another man's doxy." 
 With the man who really respects human nature, every 
 other opinion is as orthodox as his own, however much 
 they may differ. He does not shun another on account of 
 such difference, neither does he indulge an evil tongue, 
 scatter suspicions, or excite injurious feelings against any 
 one on that account ; he rather rejoices to see that it is 
 in humanity as in nature, where each plant grows by itself 
 in the sunshine or the shade, the thistle giving no laws to 
 the convolvulus or daisy. He is glad to see some people
 
 THE PEOPLE S CHARTER. 1ST 
 
 think one way and some another; to find that there is in 
 humanity the same unbounded diversity of individual ten- 
 dency which exists in the tribes of the field and the 
 plain ; and that it has the mark of that variety which great 
 Nature has produced from tin; brightest stars of heaven 
 down to the lowliest flower of the valley. There \vas the 
 poet Shelley — one of the purest, gentlest, and kindliest of 
 beings, absolutely hunted like a wild beast in his early life, 
 solely on account of the freedom of his opinions — regarded 
 as a sort oi monster: while with failing health, during his 
 retirement in Hertfordshire, lie was unwearied in his atten- 
 tion to the poor of the village in which he resided — while 
 he went about among them to alleviate their condition of 
 want and suffering, relieving their necessities to the utmost 
 of his ability, and even himself contracting disease by going 
 into their cottages — at that very time he was regarded with 
 malignity and suspicion, and calumnies were invented and 
 circulated against him. Shunned in society, and at last 
 hurried., as it were, out of the kingdom — the very law itself 
 interposing between him and the objects of his paternal 
 affection, and taking Ins two children from under his own 
 guardianship — Lord Eldon — that everlasting doubter — 
 foregoing his doubts upon that occasion, although he shed 
 tears over them, as he always did when they were passing 
 away — anil deciding that this man was not fit to be en- 
 trusted even with the care and formation of his own chil- 
 dr< u's minds and characters. This atrocious case of cruelty 
 so weighed on Shelley's mind that it almost threw him into 
 a fever. lie had a younger son, with whom he feared a 
 similar attempt would have been made ; and he therefore ac- 
 tually contemplated flying in haste from the country with this 
 child, in order that a portion of his family at least might be 
 secure from the clutches of an unnatural and tyrannical law. 
 Mrs. Shelley, in a note to the edition of his works which 
 she edited, savs : 
 
 "At nee time, while the question was still pending, the ( 'han- 
 cellor had said seme words that seemed to intimate that Shelley 
 should nut he permitted the care of any of his children, and for 
 a moment he feared thai our infant son would be torn from us. 
 Pie did not hesitate to resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon 
 country, fortune, everything, and to escape with his child; and 
 I find sonic unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom after- 
 wards we lost e.t Home, written under the idea that we micrh'.
 
 188 LECTURE XII. 
 
 suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This 
 poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not written to 
 exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the spon- 
 taneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and 
 woes, and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the 
 uncontrollable emotions of his heart." 
 
 I will read some verses from this poem: 
 
 The billows on the beach are leaping around it, 
 
 The bark is weak and frail, 
 The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it 
 
 Darkly strew the gale. 
 Come with me, thou delightful child ; 
 Come with me, though the wave is wild, 
 And the winds are loose, we must not stay, 
 Or the slaves of law may rend thee away. 
 
 They have taken thy brother and sister dear ; 
 
 They have made them unfit for thee ; 
 Thev have wither'd the smile and dried the tear, 
 
 Which should have been sacred to me. 
 To a blighted faith and a cause of crime 
 They have bound them slaves in youthly time ; 
 And the)' will curse my name and thee, 
 Because we fearless arc and free. 
 
 Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever, 
 
 Or the priests of the evil faith ; 
 They stand on the brink of that raging river 
 
 Whose waves they have tainted with death. 
 It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells, 
 Around them it foams, and rages, and swells; 
 And their swords and their sceptres 1 floating see, 
 Like wrecks on the surge of eternity." 
 
 Ay ! they will float there as " wrecks ;" but before such 
 laws and institutions go to wreck, public opinion must be 
 reformed, and the intolerance which was manifested by 
 such a separation of parent and child must be banished 
 from every mind ; and we must all learn to give to others 
 the same latitude which we claim for ourselves. "Truth," 
 said Home Tooke, quoting from the words of Christ, as 
 reported in the Gospel of Nicodemus, "is that which a man 
 troweth ;" that which another thinks is as true to him as 
 what I think is true to me ; and wc should feel that we all 
 stand upon the same level, and, in respect for our common 
 humanity, allow no proscription or persecution whatever on 
 account of opinions, whether religious, political, or social.
 
 the people's charter. 189 
 
 It lias, indeed, been said, that the ballot — which I men- 
 tioned in introducing this portion of the subject — is pro- 
 motive of falsehood and cowardice. Those who make such 
 accusations should first of all look at the circumstances 
 which have occasioned any cry in favour of the ballot. 
 Whatever could it have been which put the idea of secret 
 voting into any one's head ? It clearly intimates a fore- 
 gone conclusion, that the ballot is not only a machinery for 
 preserving freedom, but is also a memorial of preceding 
 tyranny. So natural is it for man to do openly that which 
 his principles dictate, and so much of propriety and honour 
 is there in a citizen discharging his duty in the choice of 
 representatives, that no one would ever have dreamed of 
 secrecy had there not been an interference with this right, 
 and a criminal violation of the noblest privileges that the 
 laws of a country can recognise. Point me out a town, 
 county, or electoral district, in which the notion of the bal- 
 lot has entered into any man's head, and you shew me a 
 district, county, or town in which injustice, oppression, and 
 cruelty must have been practised, otherwise the thought 
 would never have been generated. Wherever the cry for 
 the ballot is loud and general, injustice has been exten- 
 sively practised beforehand. It is a certain proof of there 
 having been the interference of the strong with the weak, 
 the influential with the dependent, the tyranny of those 
 who have much property over those who have little, — of 
 men who spend over those who toil to earn. It is an indis- 
 putable attestation of the fact that in past times tradesmen 
 have been injured, workmen turned out of employment, 
 tenants exposed to threats and ruin, and iniquity and 
 wrong of various kinds perpetrated again and again, before 
 the people would exclaim, " Give us in this respect the 
 security of secrecy." The ballot is a shield against injury 
 and oppression, and it is claimed only as such. I venerate 
 the man who flinches not from becoming a martyr, — who 
 says boldly and manfully, " I will give my voice openly, in 
 spite of greatness, tyranny, and thunder. There is my vote, 
 for such are my principles." Hut I respect his heroism still 
 more if he does not endeavour to make; others martyrs as 
 well as himself, and if, while claiming individually the 
 glory of standing forth, and bearing the pelting of the 
 pitiless storm, he yet pleads for others, and, as a general 
 right, — for it must be general to be a protection, — that
 
 190 LECTURE XII. 
 
 what he would glory in doing publicly might be done by 
 them in secrecy, that the injury which he defies may be 
 escaped by them, that the weak shall not be crushed be- 
 cause he is strong, and not a spark of patriotism be quenched 
 because in his bosom the flame is burning brightly. This 
 consideration for others dignifies his character ; it blends 
 beautifully with more energetic qualities, and shews that he 
 can feel for the timid, helpless, and hesitating, while, at the 
 same time, he himself is above all compromise, and moves 
 straight onward in his course with bold decision. 
 
 Prudence — a fair, just, and reasonable care of a man's 
 property, and the means of commanding the desirable things 
 of life, if not degenerating into a gross and exclusive self- 
 ishness — is undoubtedly a virtuous quality. This is also 
 implied in principles which unite the protection of the bal- 
 lot with the universality of the suffrage. Those, then, who 
 profess such principles should look ahead in their own con- 
 cerns. In the voyage of life they should not be so regard- 
 less as to run suddenly upon a rock in the way. They 
 should think of the next week and the coming year: in their 
 strength they should prepare for the failing and closing 
 vears of life, and see what provision can be laid up for its 
 necessities. Their families should be as one with them. On 
 this account they should first be just before they are gene- 
 rous ; not to the exclusion of liberality, but as the no- 
 blest and surest basis upon which generosity can be founded. 
 Thus they become 
 
 "Beings breathing thoughtful breath, 
 Travellers betwixt life and death," 
 
 caring for things in the way, and not merging the future in 
 a blind endeavour to make the most that possibly can be 
 made of the passing enjoyments of the present. 
 
 I only profess to go into a portion of the morality of the 
 '• People's Charter" this evening, intending to resume it again 
 next Sunday ; and both time and strength admonish me to 
 have it now at. this point. But just let us review the 
 ground we have gone over — the morality of thoughtful- 
 ness ; the thankful reception of friendly counsel ; the care- 
 fid revision ; the respect for human nature both in ourselves 
 and others; the abstaining from all injuriousness on account 
 of difference of opinion or conduct; and taking constant 
 care for the future as well as the present — these are the
 
 the people's charter. 191 
 
 moral precepts or qualities which are suggested by the 
 " People's Charter," and are impliedly recommended by it. 
 Now these are the very qualities which some of the aristo- 
 cratical patrons of the poorer classes profess to be anxious 
 that they should cultivate. We have religious tracts dis- 
 seminated for the promotion of these qualities — sermons 
 are preached in chapels and churches for the same purpose 
 — institutions are formed, secretaries and treasurers ap- 
 pointed, reports drawn up, meetings held, and subscriptions 
 collected, for their furtherance amongst the poor. There are 
 great gatherings, eloquent speeches, loud applauses, and wa- 
 ving enthusiasm at Exeter Hall, to carry out these objects. 
 Then I say, why do not all the people who belong to these va- 
 rious charities having this one common object, lend their 
 countenance to that which really docs, in such a striking 
 manner, tend to bring about the end they profess to be de- 
 sirous of accomplishing ? Why do they not help to advance 
 the means which I have shewn conduce so powerfully to 
 effect their avowed purpose? Why have we not religionists 
 issuing tracts recommending the Charter? Why do not 
 bishops give charges to their clergy to advocate it in their 
 several parishes ? Why have we not meetings held, with 
 Prince Albert in the chair, supported by the dignitaries of 
 Church and State, in Exeter Hall, for taking measures for 
 carrving into effect this moral agency? Why have we not 
 the paraphernalia of subscriptions, societies, annual meet- 
 ings, and great exertions, to give the Charter an onward 
 impetus, that it may realise this morality ? Why will not 
 these classes take this road towards the very end which 
 they profess so much to desire? I will tell you in one 
 word — because, sincerely as they may desire the advance- 
 ment of the very morality inculcated by the Charter, that 
 document tends to introduce another element to which they 
 are not friendly, although it is one which gives worth, 
 safety, and growth, to all the rest, and without which they 
 can have: but a short-lived existence, a poor and compar- 
 atively useless being in the minds, hearts, and characters of 
 men; and that element is, independence, — personal, social, 
 and political. This is the strength of virtue in the human 
 soul, which it has when grafted there by principle, and 
 aided by that intensity of feeling and purpose which arises 
 from blending a great political movement with the every- 
 day concerns of private life. This is the charm and power
 
 192 LECTURE XII. 
 
 of all the rest, without which they are but as the factitious 
 results of hot-bed culture, their colours faint, and flourish- 
 ing but for a brief while ; but with it, resembling rather the 
 well-planted tree, upon which the sun shines and the rains 
 fall, which puts forth its ample foliage in the summer, and 
 preserves its vitality unhurt and safe for another spring 
 through all the frosts of winter, which gives its shade and 
 fruit in due season, and is even more deeply rooted and 
 more firmly fixed by the wild raging of the storm and 
 temj)est.
 
 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 ON THE MORAL PRINCIPLES IMPLIED IN "THE PEOPLE'S 
 CHARTER," AND THE APPLICATION OF THOSE PRINCI- 
 PLES TO THE CONCERNS OF DAILY LIFE. 
 
 (lecture the second.) 
 
 In the lecture already delivered upon the morality of the 
 "People's Charter," I endeavoured to illustrate the tend- 
 ency of its principles to make men thoughtful, prudent, 
 tolerant, and teach them respect for humanity in their 
 own persons, rights, and interests, and in those of others. 
 While it asserts the claims of freemen, it at the same time 
 tends to make them worthy of freedom ; to generate the 
 virtues which belong to an advanced stage of political 
 liberty, and thus, by acting and reacting from the public 
 principle to the business of private life, to promote at once 
 the prosperity of the nation and the happiness of the in- 
 dividual. For most assuredly that which induces man to 
 look ahead in life, and consider for the morrow and com- 
 ing months and years — that which makes him tolerant 
 of his neighbour's opinion, not apt to regard contradiction 
 as an insult, nor any disproof of the notions he may hold 
 as an infringement upon his property — that which, while 
 it obliges him to come forward in tin; i'ace of society and 
 demand what rightfully belongs to him as a member of the 
 community, also stimulates him to rentier kind and gene- 
 rous service to his fellow-countrymen and the world — 
 must be an agency of goodness, and be valuable, not only 
 as a declaration of public right, but as a promoter of pri- 
 vate morals ami good conduct in the household and the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 The voluntary profession of adherence to such a doc- 
 trine, and the assertion of its principles and claims, appeals 
 to a man tor consistency in his daily conduct more power- 
 fully than can any persuasion. To him it is the most 
 cogent of all motives, involving his own consistency, not 
 only in the sight of others, but. in the apprehension of his 
 
 M
 
 194* LECTURE XIII. 
 
 own conscience. It reproaches him when he acts in a 
 different and injurious manner ; but bestows praise upon 
 him when lie adheres to the course which he has de- 
 liberately marked out for himself as a citizen : and thus, 
 witli a command more potent than that of any master, a 
 voice more persuasive than that of any preacher, and a 
 strictness more pervading than that of any pledge, does a 
 genuine attachment to the " People's Charter" imply also 
 practical adhesion to the great principles of individual and 
 social morality. 
 
 It is in self-respect that many of the virtues of Hie have 
 their origin. The old maxim of philosophy, ' : Reverence 
 thyself," is likewise a precept of this modern declaration 
 of rights. It teaches man to value himself for that which 
 belongs to his nature, and not that which is merely the 
 result of accident and external circumstance. It calls 
 upon him to venerate human nature in himself: and as- 
 suredly this is not a vain or worthless object, and still less 
 is it an impracticable one. How early in life may the 
 child be taught to exercise that self-respect which arises 
 only from adventitious circumstances ! How often do we 
 find consciousness, almost in the very infant, of the ad- 
 vantages of birth, wealth, and station ! It is related in 
 Campbell's Life of Mrs. Siddons, that when that great 
 actress was in the habit of attending the court of George 
 the Third, to amuse the royal family with her dramatic 
 readings, one of the princesses, then quite a child, had 
 frequently been observed by her in the anteroom as 
 she passed to the royal audience, and having noticed 
 that the child appeared pleased with her, one day, by a 
 natural impulse. Mrs. Siddons was going to kiss her; the 
 royal infant drew back its head, and held out its hand. 
 It had already learned to respect royalty in its own little 
 self. Surely if the most factitious feeling can thus be 
 generated and wrought into the being in early life, the 
 natural reverence which belongs to humanity may be 
 nurtured into strength, and become, not only the directory 
 of political principle, but also of private life. The peasant 
 may come 
 
 '• his rights to scan, 
 And learn to venerate himself as man ;" 
 
 and bv that veneration adorn the course of life, and rcn-
 
 the people's charter. 195 
 
 dev it worth vet more and more as an expression of the 
 attributes and qualities which can be contemplated with 
 conrplacencv, and have their assigned mission of utility 
 and beneficence in the world. 
 
 Proceeding with the different moral principles incul- 
 cated in the Charter, the next which offers itself to our 
 notice is that of responsibility. This, indeed, is put for- 
 ward in the preamble to the document, and represented 
 as the irreat aim and object of the whole : 
 
 " Whereas to insure, in as far as it is possible by human 
 forethought and wisdom, the just government of the people, 
 it is necessary to subject those who have the power of making 
 the laws to a wholesome and strict responsibility to those whose 
 dutv it is to obey them when made : And whereas this responsi- 
 bility is best enforced through the instrumentality of a body 
 which emanates directly from, and is itself immediately subject 
 to, the whole people, and which completely represents their 
 feelings and their interests: And whereas, as the Commons 
 House of Parliament now exercises, in the name and on the 
 -apposed behalf of the people, the power of making the laws, 
 : t ought, in order to fulfil with wisdom and with honestv the 
 great duties imposed on it, to be made the faithful and accurate 
 representation of the people's wishes, feelings, and interests: 
 Be it therefore enacted," &c. 
 
 To secure this object, the frequency of elections, and 
 rendering parliaments annual, is insisted upon in the enact- 
 ments which form the body of the " People's Charter;" 
 that is to sav, the doctrine of responsibility is distinctly 
 and stringently laid down. 
 
 But if responsibility be a political principle, it is equally 
 caoabic of a moral application. A man may ascertain it 
 in n ferenee to his representative, and moreover in respect 
 of himself. He cannot fairly avoid practising that which 
 he is endeavouring to impose on others. He may sav that 
 he is not assuming the task of being the representative 
 of others. True: : but nevertheless he represents a portion 
 of human nature — of the common mind, intelligence, and 
 heart of humanity : and to generate a sense of responsi- 
 bility and dutv in his own bosom should be one of the 
 ibjects of his most earnest endeavour. It is only in pro- 
 011 as there exists this sense of duty that we find men 
 restraining themselves from those present enjoyments which 
 would be followed by future bitterness: it is only as an 
 ■ndividual is influenced bv such a feeling that he lives a
 
 196 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 thoughtful and dignified life; that he realises the interest 
 of others, and considers their well-being as an object ever 
 to be held sacred, not less so than his own. In whatever 
 manner men come by this idea — and they arrive at it in 
 various ways — still its operation is beneficial. Some de- 
 rive it from their religion, — the sanctions and precepts 
 which they regard as constituting the great outline of 
 morality, and the future rewards or punishments con- 
 nected therewith. Others arrive at it by a calculation of 
 consequences : they perceive that the natural result of 
 one line of conduct is enjoyment and good, while that of 
 another is evil, injustice, and suffering. Many imbibe 
 the same principle in a different manner from either of 
 these : they form to themselves an ideal conception of 
 what human nature and perfected humanity ought to be ; 
 with this standard they compare themselves, and aim at 
 making continual approximation towards it, blaming them- 
 selves for their failures, and rejoicing in their successes ; 
 and so placing this model continually before them, they 
 grow into the same likeness. In these — and it may be 
 various other — ways, men realise a sense of duty, which, 
 once infixed in the mind, becomes a most valuable guide 
 through life. Even in the political responsibility of a 
 representative of the people, we ask something beyond 
 a mere dogged obedience to that which he knows, if 
 neglected, will be followed by dismission from his office,. 
 Vv'e look to him for something more than a line-and-rule 
 responsibility, just extending so far as is absolutely essen- 
 tial to maintain his position in popular favour. A man 
 may do all this, and plead that he is unexceptionable ; 
 but he conciliates no attachment, he wins no admiration. 
 We require a moral responsibility in his mind, which will 
 impel him by higher motives than this — by a strong desire- 
 to do whatever he can for the advantage of those who 
 have placed him in the position of a legislator — by a sense 
 of the right and true, which will elevate him above all 
 mere apprehension of losing his standing as a represent- 
 ative, and by an aspiration after a far nobler reward than 
 can arise from any increase of that popular approval 
 which is his external recompense : that is to say, he must 
 have a responsibility which will lead him to perform pa- 
 triotic deeds in a truthful and patriotic spirit. You want 
 in him the possession of a similar spirit to that which
 
 the people's charter. 197 
 
 existed in old Rome; where the senators retained their 
 places in the Capitol even when the Gauls were storming 
 the city, and sat there in their senatorial state, as though 
 the world around them had been all at peace, and they 
 had but, as heretofore, to enact their laws in order that 
 they might instantly be obeyed; unmoved by barbarian 
 menace and the dread of massacre. You require men ani- 
 mated by a spirit like that which inspired the Commons of 
 England in the reign of Charles the First; who, when their 
 Speaker was about to subserve the tyrannical will of the 
 monarch, by vacating the chair, and thereby dissolving their 
 assembly, held him down in his seat, until they had pro- 
 posed and passed resolutions in behalf of the public rights 
 and liberties. You want men like Mirabeau and the Trench 
 deputies, who, when they were called upon by royal autho- 
 rity to dissolve their meeting, boldly declared their sittings 
 permanent, and fearlessly asserted that they were convened 
 there by the voice of the people, and that nothing but 
 the force of the bayonet should drive them thence. The 
 true feeling of the people's representative is one which 
 goes beyond the letter of all requirements, which cannot 
 have its path marked out like a railroad upon a map, but 
 regards the great principle which the individual is put 
 into the position of a legislator to carry out, and by high 
 and noble efforts which might not be expected of him 
 •or anticipated bv others, shews that ho cherishes morally 
 as well as politically, inwardly as well as externally, the 
 sense of responsibility. 
 
 One of the best patterns which history affords of this 
 spirit of truthfulness and trustworthiness in a represent- 
 ative is that of Andrew Jfarvel, the honest member for 
 Hull in the parliament of Charles the Second ; who faith- 
 fully served his country under the restored Stuarts as he 
 had previously done under the Protectorate of Cromwell, 
 to whom he was Latin secretary jointly with John [Milton. 
 Marvel was an honest man to tin 1 very backbone : he flinched 
 from no question, however ticklish in reference to Court 
 wishes or interests, and, amid all the corruption by which 
 he was surrounded, held on his steady and even course. 
 He set the example of reporting to his constituents from 
 time to time the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, 
 an example which perhaps has never been followed to any 
 very great extent bv any man until the same thing was
 
 198 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 done, not many years ago, by another member for the 
 same town — one who was worthy to occupy the seat and 
 to follow the pattern of such a predecessor, Colonel 
 Thompson. Through all this period, let it be remembered, 
 — especially by those who consider such a practice a de- 
 gradation — Andrew Marvel was a paid member, and pro- 
 bably the last of the English House of Commons who 
 received remuneration for his services from his constituents. 
 I do not mean, the last who was paid at all ; for many 
 members of our legislature, who profess to laugh to scorn 
 the idea of being paid by constituents, take good care, 
 in some way or other, to reimburse themselves from the 
 Treasury, and make patronage do that which they pretend 
 would be a disgrace if done by justice and the popular 
 will. 
 
 The integrity of Marvel was admitted, and the power 
 of his rebuke deprecated, even by the Court. The Lord 
 Treasurer Danby was sent by Charles the Second to make 
 him ample offers in the event of his silence and subserviency. 
 The Treasurer found out Marvel's lodgings, which were in 
 a court in the Strand, where he had to ascend two pair 
 of stairs. He offered the poor patriot a round sum oi 
 money, 1000/. at once; and it is said made golden pro- 
 mises of future advantages in the event of his compliance 
 with the monarch's will. Marvel dismissed the applicant 
 and his mission very unceremoniously, and then sat down 
 to dine upon his cold mutton, being under the necessitv oi 
 sending out to a friend to borrow a guinea for the relief 
 of his immediate necessities. When Marvel died, the 
 people of Hull raised a sum of money lor the erection of 
 a monument. He was buried in London, at the church 
 of St. Giles-in-the-Fields : the vicar received the corpse 
 into the church, allowed the monument to be put up, 
 and then exercised his clerical veto against tin; intended 
 inscription, commemorating the patriotism of the deceased. 
 But though no epitaph was allowed to Marvel in the 
 church, in the literature of our country his name has 
 been immortalised ; and the exertions which he made, 
 not merely in Parliament but through the press — tor he 
 was a Tree, ready, bold, and witty writer, and it Mas pro- 
 bably his satirical productions, much more than his honest 
 conduct in the House of Commons, which rendered him 
 so formidable to the Court — were permanently recorded.
 
 the people's charter. 199 
 
 Maso;:. in his Ode to Independence, thus apostrophises 
 him : 
 
 " In awful poverty, his honest Muse 
 
 Walks forth vindictive through a venal land ; 
 
 In vain Corruption sheds her golden dews, 
 
 In vain Oppression lifts her iron hand : 
 
 lie scorns them both, and ann'd with Truth alone, 
 
 Bids Vice and Folly tremble on the throne." 
 
 To carry this principle beyond politics into every-dav 
 concerns, I would say, how well does it become the voting, 
 entering upon this busy stage of life, to call themselves to 
 account, consider what they are, the work which they have 
 to perform, and mark the extent to which circumstances 
 enable them to cultivate their intellectual powers. Let 
 them ascertain whether in the years which have already 
 rolled over their heads they have made the most of their 
 time. Early in life they should establish within their own 
 bosoms a tribunal, before which they should summon 
 their weeks, months, and years, — make them answer, and 
 put tin m on their responsibility, determining what have 
 been their short-comings, and wherein they have laid up 
 a good treasure of knowledge and sound principles for 
 exercise in future times. In this manner should a young 
 man take himself to task; and thus become a being full 
 of integrity, walking according to the rule which he has 
 laid down for his own guidance, and the defined object 
 at which he aims ; not going on in a mere careless flut- 
 tering way, seeking amusement in this or that direction, 
 and caring for nothing except just how to get over the 
 time. As life advances, and towards its close, again and 
 a<;aiii should the individual call himself to account, and 
 become his own judge, ami, where there is occasion for 
 it, his own accuser; causing all the various relations in 
 which he stands to others to pass before: him, that he 
 may ascertain whether in any wav he has failed in ob- 
 taining good which it was within his power to realise. 
 We are all connected with each other in a thousand 
 different wavs. Although the comet is the most erratic 
 in its course of all the heavenly bodies, still it acts, and 
 is reacted on, by the principle of gravitation, and not 
 onlv the central power of the sun, but every planet near 
 whose orbit it passes, has an effect on its course. So also 
 in life; not merely those relations which belong imme-
 
 200 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 diately to the household, but those of neighbourhood, 
 politics, or business — combinations in which we are linked 
 — all imply certain rights, and impose particular duties ; 
 and in them should man be ever careful over himself, 
 that while he is in tlie situation — and a proud one it is — 
 of calling his parliamentary representative to account, he 
 may also as a moral being, in a capacity where there is 
 no external compulsion over him, call himself to account, 
 and try his conduct by those eternal principles of truth 
 and justice upon which alone should be pronounced his 
 acquittal or his condemnation. 
 
 That portion of the Charter which relates to the form- 
 ation of electoral districts upon the principle of population, 
 disregarding existing demarcations, however ancient they 
 may be, and setting them aside because they serve not 
 the purpose of a fair and proportionate representation, 
 suggests the principle — of which, indeed, it is one applica- 
 tion — that the ancient and customary should ever give 
 way to the just and useful. A blind reverence for anti- 
 quity may be appropriate in the mouth of an ignorant 
 and obstinate peasant, who trudges round a long and dirty 
 way to church, instead of availing himself of a new. short, 
 and convenient road. It may do for such people as the 
 old barons of Scotland, who, when the doctrines of the 
 Reformation were proposed to them, met and settled the 
 whole question at once by saying, " We will believe as 
 our forefathers believed !" It may suit home-secretaries, 
 court-chamberlains, and people of that description, like 
 those who a few years ago refused to admit a deputation 
 of the working classes to present an address to her Ma- 
 jesty, unless they put on that monkeyfied costume called 
 a " court-dress :" but, " It has always been so, and there- 
 fore must continue to be so," will not suffice as an answer 
 by or to a Chartist. In no one relation of life, or with 
 reference to any practice of social business or communi- 
 cation, is this deemed enough : there a man is pledged 
 to the principles of justice and utility in preference to all 
 custom, however ancient; and if any mode of behaviour 
 or manner of living can be shewn to be injurious, why 
 the principles of the Chartist call upon him to take the 
 straightforward course ; to remember that he has in some 
 respects an advantage over those who lived earlier in the 
 world; that what we call "old times" were indeed but.
 
 the people's charter. 201 
 
 the world's youth; that the best and noblest portions of 
 the conduct of our ancestors were those in which, for the 
 sake of the true and useful, they innovated upon the 
 custom of their progenitors; and our best compliment 
 to their wisdom is to shew that we also dare to innovate, 
 wherever any great and useful object is thereby to be 
 accomplished. 
 
 There really is a great deal to be done in this way. 
 What a number of the inconveniences to which many 
 are subjected in their dwellings and modes of living arises 
 from an obstinate retention of old practices, and from a 
 neglect of the advantages which a well-arranged system 
 of co-operation would bestow upon them. From this 
 disregard to conveniences which, by small savings and 
 strenuous exertions, might be realised, and tend much to 
 the comfort of themselves and families, has arisen a be- 
 lief among weak-minded people in the upper classes, that 
 the operatives of this country actually love dirt, and that 
 the reason why so manv wretched habitations are found 
 among the dwellings of the poor is, in part at least, 
 from the taste and preference of the human beings who 
 are doomed to inhabit them. There is a palpable ab- 
 surdity in this statement ; but it is nevertheless true that 
 habit verv often reconciles people to inconveniences, and 
 even degradations, from which, by a little clear-sightedness, 
 carefulness, and resolution, they might effect their emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 To that which is right or useful, whether new or old, 
 it is the dictate of the Charter that men should adhere. It 
 is in harmony with the thoughts and feelings of a writer 
 to whose work I have had previous occasion to refer dur- 
 ing these Lectures, — I allude to the Essays of Emerson, 
 the American, and who in this respect breathes; the very 
 spirit which should animate the literature of that great 
 country. Our author says : 
 
 " And truly it demands something sodlike in him who has cast 
 oil" tin' common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust 
 himself for a task-master. High he his heart, faithful his will, 
 clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, 
 law to himself; that a simple purpose may he to him as strong 
 as iron necessity is to others. If any man consider the present 
 aspects of what is called by distinction Society, he will see the 
 need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be 
 M 2
 
 202 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. 
 We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and 
 afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect per- 
 sons. We want men and women who shall renovate iife and 
 our social state ; but we see that most natures are insolvent ; 
 cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all 
 proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day 
 and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant ; our 
 arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not 
 chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. 
 The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun. 
 If our young men miscarry of their first enterprises, they lose 
 all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. 
 If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not 
 installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities 
 or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and 
 to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in com- 
 plaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire 
 or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams 
 it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, 
 goes to congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive 
 years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hun- 
 dred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and 
 feels no shame in not ' studying a profession/ for he does not 
 postpone his life, but lives already. lie lias not one chance, but 
 a hundred chances. Let a stoic arise who shall reveal the re- 
 sources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but 
 can and must detach themselves ; that with the exercise of self- 
 trust, new powers shall appear ; that a man is the word made 
 flesh, born to -bed healing to the nations ; that he should be 
 ashamed of our compassion; and that the moment he acts from 
 himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out 
 of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him ; 
 — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendour, 
 and make his name dear to all history." 
 
 Here is language worthy to echo from America to 
 this country. Such is the lesson of self-dependence to 
 which an individual pledges himself by adhesion to the 
 principles of the ''People's Charter," and which makes a 
 man of him in so doing ; walking like a free and inde- 
 pendent being, where others are proud of their shackles, 
 or else, murmuring unavailing]}-, continue to wear them 
 through all their lives. 
 
 Another principle implied in the "People's Charter" is, 
 that the labourer is worthy of his hire. It proposes to 
 have workin*: members of the House of Commons, and
 
 the people's CHARTER. 20.') 
 
 to pay them for their services. Herein is contained a 
 very proper recognition of the fact, that there is other 
 labour to be done in the world besides that which is 
 accomplished by the mere physical strength of bone and 
 sinew. Brain-work, as well as hand-work, goes to make 
 up the sum of the conveniences, enjoyments, and progress 
 winch lender it life to live. There have been many who 
 have demurred to a recognition of the rights of mental 
 exertion, winch perhaps in their results were only a means 
 of amusement to others, but which still have their worth, 
 and in having a value to society, have also their rights and 
 claims. For instance, the discussions which have taken 
 place of late years relative to the copyright of books 
 developed in many respects a grudging disposition among 
 men with respect to the rights of mental labour. There 
 was much stress laid upon the large sums which two or 
 three writers of great, name had made, and a disinclination 
 was shewn to consider the creations of the brain as the 
 property of an individual, in the same way as by general 
 consent is admitted of the productions of the hand. But. 
 assuredly that which implies toil, and is a source of useful- 
 ness, has its rights, which should be held as sacred as any 
 other. 1 am opposed to any scheme that would tie up 
 from the world thoughts by which mankind are benefited. 
 I apprehend that the true ami just plan to adopt between 
 the author and the public would be this : When a man's 
 thoughts are once given forth to the world, let the world 
 be perfectly free to use them — let any bookseller lie at. 
 liberty to publish them; but in the repetition of such 
 publications let the author be considered, and some fair 
 mid proportionate remuneration be awarded to him who 
 thought the thoughts, and gave them a living existence, 
 as well as to those who have merely put together the 
 types, and impressed them upon the paper. I have known 
 personally many instances of gross injustice from a neglect 
 of this principle; and. several which arose from the want 
 of a system of national copyright between this country 
 and America. 1 knew a case of a very valuable work 
 which the author published in England, and the publica- 
 tion of which cost him a considerable sum. That verv 
 book ran through four editions in America, each of which 
 was a source of profit to the publisher by whom it was 
 there brought out : but by which the loss sustained bv
 
 201" LECTURE XIII. 
 
 the author in the original publication in this country 
 was never diminished one single farthing. These are 
 cases of injustice which should not be allowed to exist. 
 The same rule should be applied to all kinds of ex- 
 ertion by -which society is benefited. Many persons 
 present will, perhaps, recollect that sweet singer Miss 
 Stephens, who at one time rendered herself unpopular 
 by refusing to sing for charities gratuitously ; but the 
 refusal was based upon tin; soundest principles : her an- 
 swer was this : " You remunerate me according to the 
 customary terms, and I will contribute to the charity 
 that which I think it deserves." If I recollect right, 
 Mrs. Siddons was hissed for two or three weeks at one 
 period of her professional career, at Drury Lane, for 
 having declined to play gratuitously for a charitable in- 
 stitution. But what right has society over the services 
 of such persons, although their labour may only be for 
 the amusement of others ? What just claim has a country 
 to the unremunerated labour of those who work by the 
 intellect or as artists, any more than it has to the pro- 
 duce of the industry of the rest of the members of the 
 community ? They demand of them a day's exertion. 
 Why, society has just as much right to go to the Duke 
 of Devonshire or the Marquis of Yv'estminster, and de- 
 mand of them a day's produce of their rental. All toil 
 should be respected, all which, in its various forms and pur- 
 poses, renders men useful. That which subserves merely 
 the purpose of amusement exists because man craves for 
 enjoyment, and there are those whose appropriate work it 
 is to satisfy this want. An acknowledgment of this prin- 
 ciple is a good preparation for the progress which I trust 
 the supporters of the Charter will make towards claiming 
 all over the country, and among all classes, a just remune- 
 ration for their labour. Not that any law can by its enact- 
 ments ensure such a remuneration ; at most, it could only 
 effect a temporary relief to some classes, by perhaps the 
 permanent injury of other portions of the community : 
 but by compelling an abstinence from injustice; by repeal- 
 ing every undue interference ; by ceasing to obstruct the 
 producer at home or abroad ; by making the burden of 
 taxation fall where it ought, upon superfluous property, 
 and not on the necessaries of life; in such ways as these 
 may the legislature — and a parliament elected by universal
 
 THE people's charter. 20.5 
 
 suffrage, I think, would adopt such means — promote our 
 advancement towards the time when " a fair day's wages 
 for a fair day's work" shall be the motto of every operative 
 establishment in the country. 
 
 Another lesson put forth by the Charter is, that we 
 should regard worth rather than wealth ; that our respect 
 should be for the qualities of the head and heart, and 
 not the fulness of the pocket. This tendency of the Char- 
 ter is evinced in its proposal to destroy the property-quali- 
 fication of members of the House of Commons : and a 
 most righteous proposition it is; for what does that quali- 
 fication amount to ? A declaration that the representa- 
 tives of tite people in their multitudinous gradations in 
 society shall nevertheless be selected from one class only : 
 that the industrious shall be represented by the idle, the 
 poor by the rich, and those who live by their toil by those 
 who haw: an interest in land. That is to say, that the 
 legal qualification shall often be really a moral disquali- 
 fication. It requires a different set of thoughts, feelings, 
 principles, and motives altogether in the nominal repre- 
 sentative from those who are, or ought to be, the re- 
 presented. In reference to this unjust and absurd system 
 the Charter says : 
 
 "Let the public everywhere be free to choose. If they find 
 a man whose principles are understood, and who is acquainted 
 with their wants and wishes, then let him he their member, re- 
 gardless of adventitious circumstances. There is the qualifica- 
 tion, of which they, and they alone, are the absolute judges." 
 
 The law, as it exists, only stands in the way of there 
 being any such thing as a real representation of the ma- 
 jority of the classes into which this country is divided. 
 The pretext for its maintenance is, that it ensures respect- 
 able men; an awkward compliment to Scotland, of whose 
 members no qualification is required. Ever since Thur- 
 tell's trial, the definition of " respectability" has been, a 
 man's keeping a gig. It was well remarked by Hazlitt, that 
 we never compliment a man by calling him " respectable" if 
 it is possible for us to call him any thing else. Is he a writer 
 of verses? If they are good ones, we say that lie is a poet. 
 If he reasons out the deductions of physical science — if he 
 is great as to his knowledge of the properties of circles and 
 triangles — we call him a mathematician. If he has cone
 
 206 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 deeply into the consideration of the various causes which 
 tend to produce the wealth or the poverty of nations, we call 
 him a political economist. If he is remarkable for extreme 
 care and nicety in his dress, we designate him a dandy. 
 In fact, we go through the whole round of qualities, frivol- 
 ous as well as solid, and it is only as a last desperate 
 resource that we are driven to the use of this word ' : re- 
 spectable,"' which it is the object of the existing law to 
 make the characteristic of the House of Commons. Oh, 
 these property-qualifications are bad, both in Church and 
 State. What a blessing it would be both for the Church 
 of England and the country, if in the lapse of centuries 
 there could but once be a very poor Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury — a man content to live like an American bishop upon 
 some 200/. or 300/. a year, and even out of that find some- 
 thing to spare for the purpose of charity, — a man who. dis- 
 regarding all nephews and cousins of every degree, should 
 never look to relationship in the distribution of patronage, 
 but, passing by family considerations, might also be strong 
 and bold to set at nought the claims of political influence, 
 and refuse to do the bidding of the minister of the dav 
 as to the nomination of those whom he should invest 
 with the cure of souls. Such a man would speak with 
 an independent voice to the country ; there would be 
 something like life and spirituality under his guidance. 
 The Church would shake off some of its formality in re- 
 ligion, and manv of its demands on people's pockets, ac- 
 quiring moral influence instead. Then; would be a bright 
 and glorious page in its history. Then our supposed 
 Archbishop of Canterbury would die and be gathered 
 to Ins fathers ; the old game would begin afresh ; the old 
 ascendancy and worship of wealth would be re-established, 
 and eventually there would be again the full tide of cor- 
 ruption and abuse under which the land lias groaned so 
 long. 
 
 There is one weak point which, in the Charter itself, 
 or at least in the introductory remarks prefixed to it, is 
 marked out for attention. I allude to a passage in the 
 introduction, which consists of an address from the Work- 
 ing Men's Association to the Radical Reformers of Great 
 Britain and Ireland. Referring to the suggestions which 
 had been made to them by various bodies in the country 
 thev sav :
 
 the people's charter. '207 
 
 "Anion:'; the suggestions we received for improving this 
 Charter is one for including women among the possessors of 
 the franchise. Against this reasonable proposition we have 
 no just argument to adduce, but only to express our fears of 
 entertaining it, lest the false estimate man entertains for this 
 half of the Iranian family may cause his ignorance and prejudice 
 to be enlisted to retard the progress of his own freedom. And 
 therefore we deem it far better to lay down just principles, and 
 look forward to the rational improvement of society, than to 
 entertain propositions which may retard the measure we wish 
 to promote." 
 
 •• Retard" it. no doubt such a version of the electoral 
 suffrage would : hut. if tin; trainers of the Charter had been 
 as scrupulous about every point which might occasion 
 obstruction, I suspect that there are sundry others which, 
 upon a similar ground, might also have been emitted. A 
 declaration of principle is one thing : consulting the ex- 
 pediency of the times another. But although this ques- 
 tion of right is waved for a time in the Charter, it is 
 accompanied by a reservation of the; principle, and a con- 
 fession of the injustice at present committed, and that. 
 too. in a respectful and becoming manner, which is in 
 strong contrast with the mode in which women are too 
 often alluded to when introduced in public discussion. 
 When I remember the debate in the Mouse of Commons 
 upon Mr. Grantley Berkeley's motion for allowing women 
 to be present at the discussions in that assembly — when 
 I recollect the affected and tinsel gallantry with which it 
 was advocated, the carelessness with which it v. as received, 
 and the hollowuess and faetitiousness of the whole pro- 
 ceeding- — the want on all sides of any real respect for 
 woman — I cannot but feel the immense superiority in 
 this respect of the working classes of this country, and 
 the manner in which they have dealt with the subject, 
 and in which they have shewn the most genuine respect 
 which can be offered to woman — that of not trifling with 
 her judgment, or supposing, as is too generally done, 
 that she is a poor, vain, fickle creature, to be flattered 
 this way or that, but giving her credit for thoughtfulness, 
 moral si use and something like the dignity of human 
 nature, and as being destined in due course of time to 
 enter upon rights and privileges, which we may be assured, 
 as they exist for the public good, will not be rendered 
 pernicious by their extension to the whole human family.
 
 20S LECTURE XIII. 
 
 I know not whether in this matter a fear of ridicule 
 operated upon the minds of the framers of the Charter; 
 but if so, it is vain for them to be apprehensive upon 
 that score. Both ridicule and abuse will be cast even 
 upon such names as those of Godwin, Bentham, Bailey, 
 the author of The Rationale of Representative Govern- 
 ment — all great names, and worthy to be cited as authori- 
 ties ; but even theirs will not protect from sarcasm those 
 who assert principles whicli nevertheless are eventually 
 sure to triumph. 
 
 Why are women not allowed to vote in parliamentary 
 elections? What is the excuse for their exclusion from 
 the franchise ? Is it from want of intellect, or the security 
 of their interests without their own interposition ? " Secu- 
 rity of interests !" Why, that is just what the upper and 
 many of the middle classes tell the operatives of England, 
 that they may rest contented with. They say, " We will 
 take care of you ; you are represented virtually in our 
 votes." But the working classes think — and surely women 
 may form a similar opinion — that interests are better in- 
 trusted to their own keeping than to that of others. Be- 
 sides, in many cases the interests of men and women are 
 not the same. They are not so in the case of a married wo- 
 man earning money, and who, like Mrs. Siddons, after hav- 
 ing accumulated a fortune by her exertions, may yet have 
 no legal right or power in the disposal of the fruits of 
 her own industry and genius ; but, like that great actress, 
 be obliged to ask a husband, who has been living upon 
 the results of her laborious exertions, not to leave her 
 dependent after his death. The interests of man and 
 woman are not always the same ; for how long it took, 
 and what a number of times the bill had to be intro- 
 duced, in consequence of the interference between Mrs. 
 Norton and her children, which should allow a woman 
 access to her child even of eight years of age, when se- 
 parated from her husband; and with what qualifications 
 and superfluous carefulness was this privilege at length 
 granted ! It is evident that there is in many; respects a 
 collision of interests between the two sexes, and the 
 stronger party will be sure to merge the interests of the 
 weaker in its own until the less powerful has at least a 
 proportionate share of the representative government of 
 the countrv.
 
 the people's charter. 209 
 
 Want of intellect — will that be alleged as an exclusion 
 of woman from political privilege? If so, shame upon 
 those who have so mismanaged the great institutions of the 
 country, that the streams of knowledge have not been made 
 to flow in the direction of the female mind, but have al- 
 lowed one-half of the human intellect to remain unculti- 
 vated ! But can we with truth say much about this mental 
 inferiority of woman, when the most popular expounder of 
 political economy in our own country is Harriet Martiueau 
 — when the finest of critics upon the female character in 
 Shakspeare's dramas is Mrs. Jamieson, in her Cltaructer- 
 istics — when the ablest review of the sciences in their 
 mutual connexion is found in the work of Mrs. Somerville 
 — and when education even yet has produced no works 
 which have superseded those of Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. 
 Hamilton ? One would imagine that here at least was 
 sufficient evidence of the mental capacity of women ; that 
 tin 1 class to which these writers belong had at least in- 
 tellect enough to judge of the qualifications of a candidate 
 for a seat in parliament. I say nothing of the policy or 
 wisdom of this omission from the Charter: I do not pro- 
 pose, on this occasion, to interfere with that document as a 
 political instrument. They have gone farther in this mat- 
 ter than any other body. I look with gratification to the 
 respectful way in which women are alluded to in the in- 
 troductory address, from which I quoted ; and hereafter, 
 when all this nonsense shall have passed away- — when those 
 who even now vote not only in parochial contests, but at the 
 East India House upon matters affecting the government 
 of many millions of human beings, will also exercise the 
 same right in the election of members of the British Parlia- 
 ment — when the plea of exposure to tumult will be done 
 away by tiiat abolition of canvassing which you propose, 
 and the adoption of such arrangements as will make it as 
 peaceable and orderlv a thing to go to vote for members 
 of parliament as it is now to go and say your prayers at 
 church : when all this is accomplished, and the world 
 reaps the benefit which will How therefrom, I believe 
 there will then be a grateful recollection of the fact, that at 
 a period when this question was only mentioned by other 
 bodies with contempt and scorn, the working classes of 
 Great Britain treated it respectfully, heralded the way for 
 its free ami fair discussion, and its sjrave and righteous
 
 210 LECTURE XIII. 
 
 decision. At any rate, I think every advocate of the Char- 
 ter pledges himself by his political principles to give what 
 facilities of improvement he can to those with whom family 
 or other ties connect him : he should endeavour to abolish 
 the exclusive character of institutions, and to obtain for 
 women the advantages which are furnished in so many 
 ways for men, for acquaintance with literature, history, or 
 the current topics of the day. lie should be neither the 
 flatterer nor the brute ; but recognising in women moral 
 beings entitled to political rights, he should demean himself 
 accordinglv, in all gentleness and kindness, appreciating 
 the good done to him while he endeavours to work for 
 others, and thus conforming with that harmonious system 
 upon which nature tends to construct society, a combina- 
 tion of the strength which is to toil and the grace which is 
 to adorn. 
 
 In concluding this lecture, having endeavoured to shew 
 how far the advocates of the Charter j:>ledge themselves 
 to moral conduct in their several situations in society bv 
 their adhesion to that document, I would now for a mo- 
 ment turn from them to other classes, and say, Surely 
 here is something which requires your attention. Amongst 
 the signs of the times, the " People's Charter," the adhe- 
 sion of its followers to it, and the way even in which its 
 advocates receive the moral admonitions resulting there- 
 from, which others might be disposed to receive indig- 
 nantly, are all circumstances which ought not to be over- 
 looked. I would say, Look from your loftier positions — if 
 indeed they are more elevated — upon the people who are 
 thus claiming their political rights. Mark them well, you 
 who occupy more conspicuous stations in society. Arc: 
 they not possessors of brain, heart, and a living soul, all 
 working out their results, and constituting the grandeur 
 and dignity of human nature? See how much they have 
 acquired; compare their mental attainments with the de- 
 gree of intelligence in this country a few generations back; 
 how far they have progressed beyond that point, not only 
 which the classes just above them had reached, but even 
 the highest ranks of society had then attained. Observe 
 what writers have risen up amongst them — poets and phi- 
 losophers, whose names in future ages will be identified 
 with our country's literary glory. Note their willing toil 
 and patient endurance — how they work from day to dav,
 
 THE PEOFLE's CHARTER. 211 
 
 and year to year — how the heat and burden of the day 
 falls upon them — how taxation derives its enormous 
 amount of revenue from their industry — how fleets and 
 armies are manned from their n umbers— how they consti- 
 tute that great working army who have won for us so 
 many victories over the powers of material nature. See 
 what they produce as the results of their ceaseless exer- 
 tions ; every thing — your splendid houses, stately man- 
 sions, gorgeous robes, and finest delicacies. Why, you 
 are but their pensioners, deriving from them whatever 
 enhances the worth of your property, and then turning 
 it to account in the conveniences and luxuries of life. 
 Behold them in their growing numbers, stern decision, 
 enlightened claims of the right, and their undaunted re- 
 solve that that right shall be achieved. Look to them, 
 all classes, and say whether this is not a matter for serious 
 thought, which ought to win your attention, and excite you 
 to a cairn, dispassionate, and 1 think favourable judgment. 
 Look to them, religionists, — you who think public morals 
 depend upon the building of new churches and the dis- 
 tribution of your millions of tracts. To do the people real 
 good, you must get into their minds, know their thoughts, 
 watch the workings of their hearts, and see what the men 
 of England are, what they desire ; and then you will 
 learn that in asserting their rights as citizens there is no 
 hostility to the interests of religion implied, but a portion 
 of the work of religion itself is done in their minds. Look 
 to them, capitalists, whose wealth they enable you to turn 
 to account. They are the connecting link between your 
 capital and your profits ; their labour is the chain which 
 connects the one with the other. They are like the fertile 
 soil from winch the farmer obtains his harvests, and the 
 landlord derives his rent, bike that soil, in order to its 
 fertility, oh, how often first to be cut by the ploughshare, 
 and torn by the harrow ! Look to them, philosophers, 
 and men of mental renown. Do not resolve yourselves 
 into a mere intellectual clique : reflect that others have 
 some share in what is the common human mind, as well 
 as in what is the property here and there: of individuals. 
 Trace in them the working- and heavings of that spirit of 
 intelligence which may win its way to heights far above 
 your philosophy, and earn intellectual good for future 
 times, of which you have no conception. Look to those
 
 212 LECTURE xnr. 
 
 working' classes, Whigs ! who placed you in power, and 
 enabled you to be reformers ; who, when you raised that 
 watch-word, answered your cry with a glorious prompti- 
 tude ; who rallied round you when the tergiversation of 
 a sovereign disabled you for accomplishing your promise; 
 who then rushed in, and bore you back to power as it were 
 on their shoulders, and gave you the ability to fulfil the 
 word which else you must have broken, and thus have 
 gone down stamped with disgrace to all future times. 
 Hear them, ye Tories, as well as Whigs ! It was their 
 being above the combinations of faction — their turning 
 with apathy and disgust from the Whigs when that body 
 had disappointed and deserted them ; it Mas from their 
 looking on instead of joining in the strife of party, that you 
 were enabled to l^eturn to that political power which now 
 you ought to wield for the purposes of justice and a righte- 
 ous judgment on their claims. Hear these working men, 
 and give heed to their Charter, Lords and Commons of the 
 country. You were instituted for the service of the peo- 
 ple ; and as to any legitimate legislative authority, you 
 only exist by the people. If your institution is in any way 
 to be venerated, you must regard the reforms which they 
 propose, listen to their suggestions, and recognise their 
 claims. Hear them, Queen of this country; for no splen- 
 dour, however gorgeous : no family, however numerous, 
 will ensure the prolongation of your dynasty, unless there 
 be a truthful heart, a strong arm, a general interest, and 
 feeling of well-being among those numerous classes who 
 are identified with all that constitutes a nation happy, 
 great, and glorious. Hear them, all powers of the earth ; 
 for the voice of an oppressed people against the wrong 
 done them ascends above earth and all its powers; it enters 
 even into the ear of Almighty God, by whom kings, nations, 
 and worlds, are created and destroyed.
 
 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 ANNIVERSARY OF THE STORMING OF THE BASTILE. 
 [Delivered July 14th, 1844.] 
 
 A busy day in Paris was this 14th of July in the year 
 17S9. Every body was up and out early in the morning. 
 Those who had pikes and muskets shouldered them, and 
 those who had not, rummaged all sorts of places, likely 
 and unlikely, to rind some. The populace collected any 
 thing like weapons upon which they could lay their hands. 
 Together with the arms used in modern warfare were 
 mingled some which they had found belonging to long 
 past ages. Plumes of chivalric helmets were nodding over 
 the heads of a few ; others wielded knightly swords, or 
 grasped lances that had been couched in tilts and tourna- 
 ments. Every where the cry was for arms. At tin; Hotel 
 des Invalides they found some 28,000 muskets ; and happy 
 men were they who obtained possession of them. In their 
 gathering they were joined by the French Guards, three 
 thousand and odd strong, bringing over with them to the 
 popular cause their artillery, and every thing connected 
 with their calling, — except their officers. Still as the 
 day advanced the crowd swelled ; the tri-color was then 
 hoisted for the first time ; the cry arose, ,; To the lias- 
 tile !" and towards that building they poured, in their tre- 
 mendous numbers, and after four hours' blazing of cannon 
 and musketry, that old fortress and prison — the type of 
 despotism in France and all over the world — surrendered 
 to their power : to use phraseology which subsequently 
 became very familiar in this country — a form, indeed, 
 which naval and military commanders adopted — "It 
 pleased Almighty God to bless - ' the national arms with 
 a signal victory over the stronghold of oppression. But a 
 short time elapsed before the Bastile was utterly demo- 
 lished ; and complete was the triumph over "the king's 
 castle'' bv the arms of the nation.
 
 214 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 In looking brick upon past events, every person is apt 
 to measure tliem by some other standard than that of their 
 real historical importance. We have each of us our asso- 
 ciations with occurrences according to the impression they 
 made upon us, and circumstances very often assume a 
 prominence in one mind which is by no means attributed 
 to them in others. I will state fairly to this meeting, that 
 if any person thinks I am exaggerating the importance of 
 the transaction of which this day brings round the anni- 
 versary — if they imagine that there have been feelings ex- 
 cited in my mind of greater strength than properly belong 
 to the event we are considering, calmly viewed through 
 the long vista of years, I will give them this advantage, or 
 reason, for such a supposition — an acknowledgment that, 
 from extrinsic circumstances, the French revolution did in 
 early life make a very lively and lasting impression upon 
 my mind. I was too young to remember the first reports 
 of the event itself; but there is one occurrence which I re- 
 collect well, and which I suppose almost every person who 
 has been similarly circumstanced recollects also — and that 
 is, the first time I was ever taken to a theatre. 
 
 I must have been but a mere child, not more than 
 live or six years old. It was before the French revolution 
 had become a proscribed subject in this country ; before 
 the time when an expression of sympathy in that great 
 national movement exposed individuals to persecution. 
 Amidst the magic wonders which passed before my young 
 eyes upon that evening of my first play, there was a scenic 
 interlude designed to honour and commemorate the taking 
 of the Bastile, containing a representation of the Temple 
 of Liberty rising out of the ruins of the destroyed prison. 
 This scene burst upon my mind with all the fascination 
 which usually attends a first visit to a theatre. I beheld 
 — grand to me as reality itself, or even grander — those 
 frowning and gloomy towers ; I saw their massive strength 
 giving way as at the touch of a magician's wand ; I heard 
 the terrific explosion by which they seemed to be shat- 
 tered ; I saw the huge dark masses tumbling about in all 
 directions. In the place which the dark prison had occu- 
 pied, there arose, bright and beaming, a fair Greek tem- 
 ple, with its harmonious and well-proportioned columns, in 
 the midst of which was the statue of Liberty, surrounded 
 by ail her usual insignia, joyous and smiling; and my heart
 
 THE STORMING OF THE CASTILE. 215 
 
 thrilled at the scene. It spoke through young senses to 
 young feelings : it gave me, from that time, a lively sensa- 
 tion connected with every struggle for liberty, wherever or 
 by whomsoever carried on : it was as though there had 
 been in that representation a power which has made mv 
 heart thrill ever since,— and it will continue to do so to 
 my dying day, wherever the energy of human nature puts 
 itself forth against the power of oppression wherever 
 tyranny, though sanctioned by long ages, is made to bow 
 before the uprising force of the common principles of our 
 nature — wherever in the struggle, the everlasting univer- 
 sal struggle, of the injured against the wrong-doers, of the 
 oppressed aspiring for their rights against oppressors — 
 wherever they obtain their victory, ant! Bastiles are demo- 
 lished, whether civil or ecclesiastical, literal or mental — 
 /here, from that moment to this, have been and will be mv 
 sympathies, as though a vow had then passed my young 
 lips always to rejoice where humanity prevailed ; thrill 
 anxiously during its conflict ; join in the hailing and gra- 
 tulating shout, for its victory ; and invariably, whenever 
 my mind's powers could lend any aid whatever, to give 
 them, heart and soul, in that great world's struggle, hoping 
 that eventually, in tiiis and all lauds, humanity would as- 
 sert its own dignity, and, in spite of the oppression of long 
 ages, enter into the possession of its rights. 
 
 I do not believe, however, that this extraneous incident 
 has in truth caused me to overrate the importance of that 
 great and glorious event. So far as I can now judge, it 
 well deserved the prominent place which it then received, 
 and has since occupied, in my imagination. It occurred 
 at a most critical time ; it was a turning point in French 
 history. Peril most imminent was brooding over the re- 
 generation of France. There Mas falsehood on every side 
 in the administration of affairs. The troops in large num- 
 bers — from 80,000 to 50,000, mainly foreigners — were 
 gathered in and about Paris. The court evidently medi- 
 tated a crushing blow. The military had been fetid at 
 Versailles; they had been encouraged by the expressed 
 svmpathies of the roval family. Emigrants were plotting 
 abroad, and the noblesse at home. Xecker, the people's 
 minister, had just been dismissed. Put a few davs before, 
 the National Assembly — which the king never called by 
 that name till after the storming of the Bastile — menaced
 
 216 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 by intrigue and cajolery, had determined upon their per- 
 manent sitting. The memorable rebuke had been admi- 
 nistered by Mirabeau to the royal messengers, " Go back 
 to those who sent you hither, and tell them that we are 
 here by the will of the people, and that nothing shall drive 
 us hence but the force of the bayonet." It Mas in the midst 
 of this confusion that the people of Paris perceived how 
 dependent every thing was upon their own exertions. It 
 was " now or never !" with them. Their spirit was roused, 
 and the hope which had been cherished within their breasts 
 gave animation to their hearts and nerve to their arms ; 
 and they well did the work of the day, — a work Avhose 
 results were long felt in France, which has not yet termi- 
 nated, but has fixed its abiding seal on the progress of the 
 French revolution. 
 
 Soon after this, the National Assembly, encouraged by 
 what had passed — feeling that with the nation at its back 
 it could make head against king and court — commenced its 
 great task of abolishing ancient abuses. It was upon the 
 4th of August, shortly after this period, that in one night a 
 blow was struck at the very root of feudalism, from which 
 it never recovered. Much has been said about that 4th of 
 August. A great deal of sneering has been indulged in at 
 the enthusiasm which led the assembly to pass so many de- 
 crees at a single sitting, and at the fervour with which the 
 privileged gave up their privileges, and the titled their 
 dignities. This act of the Assembly has been a favourite 
 subject with many for enlarging upon the headlong cha- 
 racter of Frenchmen, their rashness and precipitancy, and 
 for doing such important things in breathless haste. Let 
 us look at the circumstance without regarding sarcasms of 
 this kind, and then it may be fairly asked, What night is 
 there in the world's history which better deserves reveren- 
 tial mention and joyous commemoration ? According to 
 the history of Thiers, in that one night of the 4th of August, 
 the following acquisitions to liberty were obtained : 
 
 "The abolition of the quality of serf; the faculty of reim- 
 bursing the rights of lordships ; the abolition of seigniory juris- 
 dictions ; the suppression of the exclusive rights of the chase, of 
 pigeon-houses and wairens, &c. ; the redemption of tithes ; the 
 equalisation of taxes; the admission of all citizens to civil and 
 military employments; the abolition of the practice of selling 
 officer.; the destruction of all the privileges of cities and pro-
 
 THE .STORMING OF THE BASTILE. 217 
 
 vinccs ; the reformation of wardenships ; and the suppression of 
 pensions obtained without services." 
 
 All this was a reality, and not a mere effervescence of 
 words : those are not mere striking and abstract proposi- 
 tions, although many endeavoured to throw them back to 
 that condition afterwards; notwithstanding there; was much 
 blustering and shuffling, and every trick was tried by men 
 of the privileged classes, in order to recover something of 
 the wreck ; though they shewed how much in mere words 
 they had exhausted their magnanimity ; nevertheless, those 
 results were substantially realised, and have continued in 
 existence from that day to this, forming the substance of* 
 the great, inestimable, and lasting good, which, in spite of 
 all changes, retrogradations, and diversities in the form of 
 government, has still been conferred upon the French by 
 the revolution. 
 
 And as to the alleged suddenness of the event. Even if 
 the words were then first uttered, were the thoughts then 
 first conceived, or the feelings first felt? No; all this had 
 been gathering and growing in the minds of the people long 
 before. The principles of the revolution had instilled them- 
 selves as truths into their hearts, although perchance man 
 ventured not to proclaim them to man. Let those who are 
 interested in the support of institutions founded upon false- 
 hood and wrong, lay this fact to heart — that though they 
 may suppress the strong declaration of opinion against 
 themselves, making it a crime to accuse men in power of 
 the wrongs which they commit — although by these means 
 a show of hollow service may be maintained, which they 
 may represent as solid and lasting, and not, therefore, en- 
 dure contradiction — yet if all this be founded in false- 
 hood and tvrannv, truth mav, notwithstanding, work from 
 mind to mind, passing as by an electric chain, until a 
 period arrives when some individual, bolder than the rest, 
 speaks out the thought which is within his heart, and in- 
 stantly thousands and millions of voices re-echo his words; 
 and the silence once broken, all join in acclamations in 
 behalf of that which they have long secretly cherished as 
 the best rights of their nature. The event which has 
 happened may occur again and again — that one word of 
 an individual man, spoken at the right time, shall change 
 the whole face of the world. 
 
 After this assault upon the Bastile, a succession of in- 
 x
 
 218 
 
 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 surrections took place in Paris, not by any means to be 
 regarded with similar complacency. In fact, there was for 
 a considerable time a government by insurrection, or more 
 correctly speaking, a government with insurrection i'or its 
 check — a barbarous state of tilings, similar to that which 
 used to exist in Turkey, where the insurrections of the 
 Janissaries were the only limits to the absolute power of 
 the Sultan. This is not a condition of society which fits 
 with a civilised country, or accords either with freedom 
 or democracy. Assuredly these insurrections are not con- 
 sistent with democracy, for the greater portion of them 
 were an appeal to violence by the minority against the 
 majority — a gross violation of the democratic principle. 
 Tried separately, we might say that the people were some- 
 times wrong and sometimes right. The most justifiable of 
 all these outbreaks was that of the 10th of August, 1792, 
 when the king, who had endeavoured to make his escape 
 to the frontiers, was taken and brought back, and again 
 installed into regal authority ; although they were obliged 
 to \vatch him day and night, lest he should run away again. 
 Subsequently he interposed his veto upon almost every 
 proposition which the legislature thought necessary for the 
 safety of the country. It was a poor and pitiful thing of 
 the Convention to endeavour to keep up the forms of 
 royalty alter that. The citizens of Paris took a sound 
 view of the matter in declaring that this was all a farce 
 and a sham, and that it was better to come fit once to a 
 Republic, a result which was clearly inevitable; but for 
 the very reason that it was clearly inevitable, violence was 
 unnecessary. Such a form of government must have been 
 arrived at in no very long course of time; and France paid 
 dearly for the efforts by which its coming was expedited. 
 
 Connected with those outbreaks there were many crimes. 
 There was no unity to bind them together, as there was in 
 the rebellion of 1G4-1 in this country, or in that appeal to 
 arms bv which American independence was established: 
 their proceedings were often aimless, generally cruel, and 
 left impressions which no time can efface : yet notwith- 
 standing, in spite of them all — for the wonder is that the 
 revolution was not utterly ruined by them — the intense 
 good effected by that conquest of the Bastile yet remained; 
 it shone brightly through those collisions and convulsions 
 in that time of darkness and blood ; it remained to exhibit
 
 THE STORMING OF THE CASTILE. 219 
 
 a similar spirit in the three days of July 1830; and it is 
 . ssentially connected with the advantages, enjoyment.*, and 
 moans of human happiness which are so largely distributed 
 over a great part of the soil of France to the present day. 
 
 In expressing this opinion of the conduct of the people 
 of Paris subsequent to the taking of the Basti'.e, I am by 
 ;;o nipans presuming to condemn what they did as acts of 
 extraordinary and unaccountable guilt: I am stating^cfe 
 not fulfils. What were even the worst excesses of tlie re- 
 volution in Paris but inevitable consequences of the utter 
 heedlessness shewn bv those who had previously possessed 
 the ruling power, of any arguments except those of insur- 
 rection and bloodshed? They were the results of the un- 
 skilful administration of rulers who proved themselves in- 
 adequate to the task of supplying the people's wants, while 
 they were talking loudlv of the people's rights. They were 
 the fruits of that bitterness of spirit which the sense of long 
 oppression leaves rankling in the human heart — of ignor- 
 ance which had been rendered more deep and dark by the 
 inefficiency and hypocrisy of their church-authorities — of 
 that infatuation of their nobility, who would take warning 
 by no lessons, however severe, but who remained to the 
 very last hopeful of recovering the most odious privileges, 
 and of again exercising the most abominable despotism: 
 they were the consequences of the character of their king 
 — a man of faithlessness and imbecility most incorrigible — 
 who could neither abdicate nor rule; who would neither 
 go along with the revolution, and put himself at its head, 
 nor honestly compromise with it, and make a compact 
 which he would keep; who was continually plotting and 
 failing in Ids plots, "letting '1 dare not' wait upon ' I 
 would,' like the poor cat i' th' adage," exhibiting to the 
 neople at once his purposes and his cowardice: who, with 
 the red cap on his head, had the scaffold in his heart for 
 those who put it there; who struggled with the headsman 
 upon the guillotine, as he had struggled previously with 
 the nation upon the throne ; in fact, just the man for a 
 long line of despots to terminate in — infatuated, imbecile, 
 obstinate, deceptive — the precise personage who in such a 
 state of tilings was sure to become the central figure in the 
 scene of collision, strife, turmoil, and bloodshed, a figure 
 which was destined to be trained in the woodwork of the 
 guillotine.
 
 220 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 I attempt no description of the event which this day 
 brings to mind, or of the circumstances connected with it ; 
 because there is the most graphic of all descriptions in a 
 well-known and deservedly popular work — I refer to 
 Mr. Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, where the 
 movements of the people are so placed before our eyes that 
 we seem actually to behold the most stirring and magic 
 scenes of that memorable time. When I thus mention 
 that work, I am also bound to add, — read it for its graphic 
 descriptions, and not for its philosophy ; at least, not with- 
 out a sharp look-out; for while as a description of events 
 and movements it has no rival — scarcely anything approach- 
 ing to it in this respect in the whole round of works called 
 histories — there are, I apprehend, some very material ob- 
 jections to its philosophy : at least, I shall mention some 
 which strike my own mind as well-founded. 
 
 The first objection to Ml". Carlyle is the tone in 
 which he always speaks of popular rights ; his sneer at 
 the watchword of the French revolution ; his sarcasms 
 upon the Gospel according to Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
 which, politically, is the everlasting gospel of humanity. 
 Liberty, fraternity, and equality, have been man's right, 
 at least from the time of the Christian era, and beyond 
 all question, co-extensive with a real and heartfelt re- 
 spect for the moral and social principles of the Chris- 
 tian religion. " Rights arc mights," says this author, 
 and he appears desirous of making them co-extensive. 
 " Rights are mights in the long-run," and too frequently 
 it is a very lovg rim indeed. And what, word are we 
 to use in the interval before the " right" has become 
 "might?" Is there no injustice to the weak, no wrong 
 upon the helpless ? Are men entitled to nothing but that 
 which they can vindicate by their own strong arms ? Is 
 power to have no reference whatever to the dictates of 
 undying justice ? Had the Catholics of Ireland no right 
 to emancipation until they themselves had achieved that 
 redemption ? They had no need then to plead for it as 
 a "right,'' for it was a thing in their own safe possession. 
 It is by the sense of right that might is generated in the 
 human heart : suppress the one, and you indefinitely post- 
 pone the other. They who only believe they have lights 
 equal to their mights will find their mights diminishing 
 most rapidly, and their rights following in the same path,.
 
 THE STOHMIXG OF THE BASTILE. 221 
 
 until they are plunged altogether into the degradation of 
 slavery. It is by perceiving that, whatever power may 
 sanction, notwithstanding all that states and churches may 
 decree, there is something in man's own nature, and his 
 relationship to his fellow-man, that entitles him to tread 
 the earth with equal firmness, and to look up to heaven 
 with equal confidence — that declares him to be not the 
 property of another, not the slave of man, but his equal 
 and brother; there is something in the conviction that we 
 are to be dealt with fairly and justly — to have the measure 
 of our earnings awarded us, in the protection of law 
 over us, and a voice in the dealings of the community of 
 which we form a portion : there is something in all this, 
 I say, that, when it. implants itself in the human heart, 
 growing there into a strong sense of right, will sooner or 
 later end in generating might ; but which feeling must yet 
 precede it, and be the agency of its production. These 
 doctrines in the mind, of the political gospel, become the 
 realities of government in social life. 
 
 A second objection to Mr. Carlyle's History is his 
 contempt for discussion, debate, and oratory, whether of 
 the French National Assembly or of its popular leaders. 
 Every thing of this kind is passed by very sarcastically. 
 He tells u» that they " orated" and '" perorated," but he 
 preserves nothing of their speeches — no, not even of the 
 tremendous eloquence of Mirabeau — beyond two or three 
 ejaculatory expressions. By so doing, in my opinion, he 
 underrates the connexion between words and deeds, and 
 forgets tiie power which speech ever exercises, and that 
 most extensively in times of great excitement and na- 
 tional convulsion — a power needful to account for many 
 of the outbreaks that occurred among the citizens of 
 Paris, without a due consideration of which, their move- 
 ments must appear most, capricious, when otherwise clear 
 and definable causes might easily have been traced. 
 The Parisians read or heard the speeches in the Conven- 
 tion or National Assembly, though the author of the work 
 of which we are speaking records them not. To them 
 they were great principles and truths; the nation was look- 
 ing on and listening; and many of the words then and 
 there uttered rang through the world. He mav have 
 imbibed this feeling from the manner in which he regards 
 our legislature; although, to some, extent, I apprehend it
 
 Ill LECTURE XIV. 
 
 ■would be misplaced there also. Tiresome and meaningless 
 enough, no doubt, are most of the discussions which there 
 take place ; so much so, that I have known a man of an 
 imaginative turn of mind, possessed of considerable lite- 
 rary power, but in great distress, who had an offer of a 
 connexion with a newspaper in a situation which would 
 have imposed upon him the necessity of reading the par- 
 liamentary debates: the offer was at once rejected by him 
 as an advantage coupled with the most intolerable condi- 
 tions ; and having presented before him for his selection 
 the three houses most conspicuous in the land — those of 
 the Lords, Commons, and the Union "Workhouse — he 
 deemed the last by far the most tolerable, and would 
 rather have become an inmate of that than have employed 
 his mind upon the deliberations of the legislature : and yet 
 even in those assemblies, at times, how much is said which 
 is as important as that which is done ! The life of a law is 
 in the opinions, sentiments, and arguments of the statesmen 
 by whom that law is propounded. What though it may 
 be a dead letter — so much parchment ! Look, for in- 
 stance, at the measure to which I have been alluding — 
 Catholic emancipation — a measure crippled of all its power 
 and vitality, robbed of all its fruit, by this one circum- 
 stance, that it is not administered in the spirit of universal 
 religious liberty ; for class distinctions in society are kept 
 up, and a sectarian spirit in religion maintained, the tone 
 of which is given by jealousy of the Roman Catholics, 
 nothing being heard but ' ; intrusion." " innovation/' quib- 
 bling about oaths and the like This tone is caught by 
 magistrates and underlings, and so spreads through the 
 country: and thus the spirit of the old law still continues 
 under the nominal dominion of the new law ; and what 
 should have been a charter of religious freedom and 
 equality may, by the mere power of words, he reconciled 
 with the endurance of all that i^ faulty and most oppressive 
 in religious inequality. 
 
 Another objection I have to Mr. Carlyle's History is 
 the very restricted limit within winch he comprises what 
 he calls the French revolution, lie regards it as com- 
 mencing with the storming of the Bastile, and ending 
 when the sections of Paris were routed by Napoleon on 
 the .jth of October, 1795. Within this narrow bound he 
 circumscribes that event, as though the French revolution
 
 Till: STORMING Or THE BASTILE. 223 
 
 were synonymous with Parisian insurrection; as ii' it were 
 not a change which had been prepared by philosophers 
 and patriots through a long course, of years — a revolution 
 in which the world partook with France: as though it had 
 not stimulated a spirit there, which is not yet dead nor 
 will die, but which prolonged and supported itself long 
 after October 1795, shewing itself in July 1830, ami now 
 manifesting symptoms that it will produce yet more effects 
 in France; displaying itself here in our Reform Bill, in 
 the insurrections of Greece, Belgium, and Spain; shewing 
 itself in a form and principle which has now bucoine un- 
 questionable in France, and which is making its way 
 throughout tiie entire European mind ; evincing its exist- 
 ence in improvements which are yet to be effected there, 
 her;', and everywhere; working like the elements of na- 
 ture, and taking possession of those who think, in all coun- 
 tries ; having introduced light into the world which cannot 
 be extinguished, but which will ever and anon blaze out 
 again, until we may rank it among the operative causes 
 in the world's improvement. And be assured, that when, 
 ages hence, socictv shall have been regenerated — when go- 
 vernments shall exist by and for the people, and political 
 freedom extending to all shall have swept the last badge 
 of slavery from the face of the earth — when liberty shall 
 have brought dignity of character and prosperity of cir- 
 cumstance s — that then, when men shall look around them 
 and say, " Where are tiie 'powers which wrought this great 
 and glorious change in the world's condition r" Heaven 
 and Earth shall replv, ' : Amongst those powers — yea, fore- 
 most in its energy ami efficacy — was the glorious spirit 
 of the French revolution." 
 
 My last criticism upon .Mr. Carlyle's book is, that his 
 general philosophy is not in harmony with that conviction 
 of human progress which I regard as the most valuable 
 result to be gained from history. His notion of the des- 
 tiny of humanity i-, rather that it revolves in the circle, 
 than that ii ascends in tiie spiral. lie regards the French 
 revolution as an outbreak which may come round again 
 in the lanse of ages : and thinks that long future genera- 
 tions may be still in the same condition, liable to the self- 
 same mistakes, and ready to plunge into the same extrava- 
 gances. In this notion. I think he reads not aright the 
 pane of human history, or the nroohecv of man's destiny.
 
 224? LECTURE xrv. 
 
 This, however, is not so much a criticism on his work, 
 as a general dissent from the philosophy upon which it 
 is apparently founded. 
 
 On the 14-th of July 1791, a few persons at Birming- 
 ham met and dined together, to commemorate the destruc- 
 tion of the Bastile. They were not a large party ; and Dr. 
 Priestley, the most celebrated man in Birmingham, whose 
 name was subsequently most closely mixed up with the 
 transaction, was not one of them. They ate their dinner, 
 drank their toasts, delivered their speeches, cheered their 
 cheers, and then quietly separated ; doing no harm, that I 
 ever heard of, to any one. Soon after they had broken up 
 there was a great stir in the streets of Birmingham. Peo- 
 ple were gathered together in numbers, the majority of 
 them evidently very poor, but some of them undoubtedly 
 not very poor or low in station. The windows of the 
 hotel at which the party had dined were speedily demo- 
 lished. A cry was raised to burn Dr. Priestley's chapel, 
 and also his house. The residences of many of his friends 
 shared the same fate. The sky was illuminated for miles 
 round by the blaze they kindled that night. Dr. Priestley's 
 valuable philosophical apparatus was dashed to pieces, and 
 his house was what is called " gutted." His books were 
 strewed on the ground for half a mile distance. His letters 
 and papers were picked up and pocketed — many of them 
 by clergymen, and some of them were sent from one 
 clergyman to another, to be read for their amusement. 
 These letters, it will be observed, were not put into the 
 post-office, but notwithstanding that, they were read. All 
 this was done, accompanied by cries of "Church and King 
 for ever !" Such was the character of the rioters, that at 
 Dr. Priestley's house, where the fires had all been extin- 
 guished a very short time before their arrival, two guineas 
 were offered for a lighted candle to set the house on fire, 
 and some of the mob were skilful enough to endeavour 
 to accomplish the object, by getting a spark from the 
 Doctor's electrical machine. For this gross injury, the 
 most paltry damages were all which could be obtained 
 from the courts of law. The worst of the rioters were 
 sheltered from all punishment whatever ; one after another 
 was acquitted, in the face of tin; clearest evidence, until 
 those juries became a proverb: and when the remark was 
 made, ' ; Nothing can save such a one," the reply was,
 
 TUK STORMING OF Till". BASTILE. 225 
 
 "Do not you think a Birmingham jury might?" History 
 lays all these charges to clergymen and men in station ; for 
 clergymen and men connected with the magistracy were 
 seen and heard about the streets when all this was going 
 on. Driven from Birmingham to London, no sooner had 
 Dr. Priestley arrived in Hackney, where he intended to 
 take up his abode, than a very religious Church-and-State 
 placard was immediately put forth, to excite the inha- 
 bitants of that place to hoot and pelt him as he walked 
 the streets. Tins religious placard was couehed in terms 
 making it sufficiently a curiosity to read, even at this 
 distance of time. It rati thus : 
 
 " Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy to the political 
 and religious constitution of this country, a fellow of a treason- 
 able mind, consequently a bad Christian ; fur it is not only our 
 duty, but the glorious ambition of every good Christian, to fear 
 God ami honour the King." 
 
 This placard did not altogether succeed in its intention, 
 but notwithstanding, in one way or another, such a harass- 
 ment was kept up, that one of the most simple-minded and 
 amiable men that ever lived, whose name was an honour 
 to his country for his scientific discoveries — who is now 
 in England tiie object of honourable commemoration by 
 its scientific men, and by those occupying high positions 
 in ov.v universities — this man found there was no safety 
 for him in law, no protection against injustice, and he 
 could therefore onlv bid a long farewell to Ids country, 
 and l:o forth to lav his bones in America. It may be asked 
 why I refer to tins event, — why connect it witli the taking 
 of the Bastile, and the events of the French revolution? 
 1 will tell you my reason. It confirms the moral I wish 
 to deduce from what has been said here to-night. The 
 outbreaks of the Parisians, and the riots of Birmingham, 
 concur in teaching one lesson which cannot be too i're- 
 quentlv repi ated. or too strongly impressed on the minds 
 of the people of this country; and that is. that a National 
 Church is not an efficient trustworthy means for educating 
 ami moralising the population. They had that institution 
 in France, and we have it here ; and what lias it done, and 
 what left undone, in both countries? Talk of the excesses 
 and crimes of tin; French revolution ! That outbreak was 
 an impulse of human nature ; and if we impure where the 
 guilt and crimes of it ought to be laid, I reply, it should 
 
 \ 2
 
 22G LECTURE XIV. 
 
 be upon that institution which enjoyed so much power, so 
 immense an establishment, with long ages of influence, 
 and vet, after all, had left the people subject to this dark 
 ignorance, and liable to these violent impulses. In this 
 country the neglect is, if possible, still worse ; for if the 
 Parisians erred, it was in striving after improvement: they 
 might have struck blindly and taken a wrong course, but 
 it was a march from wrong, to grope or force their way 
 towards right, and good was, in the main, the purpose of 
 their hearts. But the object of those who stimulated the 
 Birmingham riots was simply to uphold abuses, and to 
 make a mark for persecution of whoever dared to expose 
 established error and protest against established wrong. 
 What has either institution wanted of the means which 
 society could furnish ? Have they not had land, money, 
 and influence sufficient? Have they not had numbers 
 enough in their own corps, covering the country, as it 
 Mere, with those whom we are called upon to reverence as 
 teachers? With all these means and appliances they have 
 not produced the requisite degree of information, moral 
 attainment, peaceful habits, and of doing by all classes to 
 others as they would that others should do unto them, 
 either in England or Trance — the Romish Church or the 
 Protestant ; they have not enlightened and reformed the 
 aristocracy of either country ; but in every respect, from 
 the highest rank of society down to the lowest, their 
 course proclaims, in characters which he who runs may 
 read, that as an agency of good, a means of morality, a 
 source of real kindliness of spirit, and truthful aspiration 
 towards the beautiful, the fair, and the good, Church esta- 
 blishments are utter and irremediable failures. 
 
 There is one fact which renders this failure still more 
 glaring. The tendency of society generally is to improve- 
 ment. I do not believe that the excesses of the Trench 
 revolution could possibly be perpetrated at Paris at the 
 present day, although I trust there would be found among 
 its people spirit enough to gain other triumphs, and once 
 more to put down new Bastiles. In this country, Birming- 
 ham was long shamed by the remains of the houses de- 
 stroyed at that time, until at length their proprietors felt 
 that the time was come when such memorials should be 
 obliterated. Hackney, where the decent placard just read 
 to you was put forth, and where the boys were incited to
 
 THE STORMING OF THE BASTILE. '227 
 
 hoot after Dr. Priestley whenever lie left his house, — in that 
 very locality of West Hackney where that ill-used man 
 resided, the parishioners the day before yesterday, by a 
 large majority, refused to sanction a church-rate. The 
 riots which occurred years ago will not be repeated now. 
 Society improves: the Church, by its own description of 
 itself, according to the foundation of its pretensions, can- 
 not improve. It is " the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
 ever.' - Tor what is the claim put forth by the Church? 
 It tells you that it is no human institution ; that it owes 
 nothing to science for its discoveries ; it partakes not of 
 the progress of your civilisation; it holds its own charter 
 from Heaven, and has a kind of divinity about it. Ac- 
 cording to their pretensions, the Spirit is given by episcopal 
 hands: it communicates all needful knowledge; and if the 
 Church improve with the advancement of society, by the 
 very fact of that change it gives the lie to its own pre- 
 tensions. The Church ought always to be, and to have 
 been, in advance of society. If bishops really give, and 
 priests and deacons actually receive at their hands, this 
 divine afflatus, what need have they of the world's know- 
 ledge or science ? All moral truth must be already in 
 them, and should have been manifested by them genera- 
 tions and centuries back. They should always have been 
 the controlling power of the world, making it moral, long 
 before any of those events occurred, to which they point 
 as evidences of its depravity, and regard as testimonies 
 of its fallen nature. Dr. Pusey tells us, that if the Church 
 of Koine errs, it is in this circumstance, that it allows the 
 wickedness of the priest to destroy the effect of the ordi- 
 nances which he administers — a doctrine which, according 
 to him, is a failure of orthodoxy, inasmuch as those ordi- 
 nances ought to be of the same eflicacy, whatever be the 
 character of the clergyman by whom they are ministered. 
 Thus, in all times, if the Church be what it claims to be, 
 its ministers should have been the purest, holiest, mildest, 
 gentlest, and wisest of human beings, and should have 
 also possessed the power to bring society into a similar 
 condition. They should have been — not the ringleaders 
 of a persecuting mob, but the authors of '■ peace on 
 earth, and good will among men," by the power of their 
 own teaching, and the force of their own example. Every 
 Avav Church establishment is a failure; and the more
 
 228 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 clearly this truth is recognised, the better chance have 
 the people for working their way into a state of real 
 morality and intellectual freedom, as well as of political 
 right. 
 
 In speaking of the French revolution, I have adverted 
 to one outbreak as glorious, and to others as beacons for 
 warning ; they may all teach us one thing, — that it is 
 alike absurd, either to abjure force upon all occasions 
 whatever which may or can arise, or to have recourse to 
 it upon any opportunity that offers. We cannot lay down 
 either the one or the other as an universal principle. The 
 application of the best powers of the mind upon each oc- 
 casion must decide ; that which is at one time criminal, 
 at another may be honourable and useful. The people 
 who should have it in their power by one great effort to 
 establish the reign of law and right upon the ruins of 
 oppression and wrong, would be most culpable, and I 
 think guilty, before posterity, — and to their own consci- 
 ences, upon reflection, — if they let such an opportunity 
 pass by : while, on the other hand, in the dream of the 
 minority constraining the majority by force, or of an armed 
 multitude, under ordinary circumstances, striving with the 
 power of military discipline — there is only a vain vision ; 
 a delusion which leads to useless bloodshed and prolonged 
 subjugation. It was well said by Charles Fox, that in no 
 other case so much as in this, do the dictates of morality 
 and prudence coincide ; and that " the doctrine of resistance 
 is one that it should be wished the people should remember 
 rarely and the rulers forget never." In truth, those who 
 favour and aid in the progress of political and social right 
 in this country have means in their own hands worth a 
 world of muskets and bayonets, in an honourable and 
 peaceable form, where the conflict is by argument and 
 reason, by the effect of a wise co-operation. There is a 
 lair and wide field before us. What, for instance, might 
 not the working classes of this country achieve by co- 
 operation, if a quarter of a million of them would give 
 their weekly pence for one year? Why, the very first 
 week's subscription would realise enough to enable them 
 to engage Covent Garden for one year, there systemati- 
 cally to teach democracy, as the Anti-Corn-Law League 
 is now teaching free-trade principles. Three or four 
 weeks' subscription would suffice for the establishment
 
 THE STORMING OF THE BASTILE. 229 
 
 of an independent and honest daily paper — an object 
 which I think would be well worth exertion. Three 
 months, or thereabouts, would realise a fund sufficient to 
 provide places for meetings and lectures in most or all the 
 large towns throughout the country ; and the money 
 raised during the remainder of the year might secure them 
 at least a dozen representatives in Parliament, of their own 
 class — asserting their claims, expressing their desires, and 
 preparing the way for the great abolition of class-distinc- 
 tions, and the common recognition of human rights. I 
 trust the time is coming, when, in this manner, the many 
 will win their peaceful, honourable, and useful victory 
 over the lew, benefiting those whom they conquer, and 
 raising them from the real disgrace of being privileged 
 classes, into the higher dignity of members of a free com- 
 munity. 
 
 Meanwhile, let every individual remember this — that 
 though the storming of a royal castle must be a rare event 
 in history, there are other strongholds of oppression and 
 error which require to be put down ; and he who frees his 
 own thoughts from the captivity of creeds ami prejudices, 
 who will not allow within the precincts of his own mind, 
 where he is king, sympathy to be confined within narrow 
 and restricted limits — -who will permit no old erection 
 there, however firmly fixed, if it be an abuse, but will raze 
 it to the ground and erect something better in its stead — 
 he who is continually clearing away what is unsightly 
 from his own notions and imaginings — is truly destroying 
 one of the worst Bastiies. and erecting in its place a tem- 
 ple of liberty wherein his soul mav rejoice and be glad, 
 as long as he shall live. In this way are those formed 
 amongst the toiling classes who are worthy of their trust, 
 and worthy of leading those classes. I have no faith in the 
 patronage of elevated men. Charitable societies will never 
 make the people comfortable ; and charity-schools and 
 similar missions will never, I think, make them either wise 
 or moral. It is from amongst themselves this power must 
 arise: and there is developing among them an energy 
 adequate to do this ; there is growing up a literature which 
 the people want, as rising from their own thoughts and 
 sensations, and reacting upon them with a power they 
 do not acknowledge in productions professedly put forth 
 for their benefit. While the irreat masters of intellect
 
 230 LECTURE XIV. 
 
 in our language, our imaginative and logical writers, 
 proudly trample clown all distinctions of class in their 
 appeal to the common human mind and heart, speaking 
 alike to all, whatever their gradation in society, there is 
 also a literature for the day, reflecting the sentiments that 
 prevail in the quarter where they originate, and touching 
 the human heart by the words of a brother rather than 
 the authoritative voice of the teacher ; and the more this 
 is multiplied and extended, the better it will be for those 
 classes, who will thus work their own way and clear 
 their path toward the loftiest heights of science, and the 
 best lights of* moral philosophy.
 
 LECTURE XV. 
 
 OX THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 
 
 (DELIVERED ON THE SUNDAY DEFORE THE ANNIVERSARY OT THE 
 BATTLE OF WATERLOO, IS 11.) 
 
 Twenty-nine years have rendered the battle of Waterloo 
 sufficiently remote for its character and consequences to 
 be justly appreciated. Those of us who remember that 
 event seem thereby to belong to another generation. The 
 veterans who celebrate its anniversary are now thinned in 
 their ranks from year to year. The passions and triumphs, 
 hopes and tears, of that period have passed away ; the 
 writer of fiction weaves the event into his composition for 
 effect ; the historian compares documents, calls up his best 
 power of narrative, and tries his skill in philosophising ; 
 the various interests and combinations of partisanery which 
 then divided the world have become faint and dim ; the 
 schoolmaster points to the battle in his chronological table, 
 and instincts his pupil ; the mother finds it in her tale-book, 
 and recounts it to her child. And how should the battle 
 of Waterloo be recounted ? With what lessons and appli- 
 cation should it be told? How should parents of the 
 working class present it to their children's minds, so as to 
 " point a moral" as well as '■ adorn a tale," transmit historic 
 truth faithfully, reap wisdom from tin 4 event, and preserve 
 the sense of that responsibility under which we teach what- 
 ever tends to the formation of character and to the guid- 
 ance of future conduct ; building up the young in the truth- 
 fulness, honesty, and patriotism, by which they shall render 
 service in their generation, and do their part faithfully for 
 the world's improvement? 
 
 This is what 1 will endeavour to shew in the present 
 lecture. With what feelings and tendencies should parents 
 instruct their children in the events of those eventful times; 
 how best make them subservient to that which is the great 
 object of all education — the guidance of the mind in the
 
 C ZJ C Z LECTURE XV. 
 
 way in which it should go — the formation of character 
 according to the truest and noblest principles ? 
 
 Now, in the first instance, it is desirable that the child 
 should be well made to understand what the battle of Water- 
 loo was: and what all battles are. It should not be al- 
 lowed to rest in a mere collocation of words ; the thing it- 
 self should be realised to the mind, that tremendous thing 
 of twenty-nine years ago. The imagination of the child 
 should be stimulated ; he should have pictures placed be- 
 fore his fancy; he should see there the sights and sounds 
 of that awful day. The picture should be presented in its 
 completeness. The ground should be traced to him. The 
 valley, with the opposing hills, upon the one side crowned 
 with wood ; the mansion, the industrial farmhouse, the 
 land covered with the ripening corn — he should see them 
 all as the sun was shining upon them a day or two before 
 the battle. He should be taught to behold the gathering 
 of those mighty armies, from 150,000 to 200,000, upon 
 the opposite sides, in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of 
 war — their neighing steeds and ponderous artillery, their 
 waving plumes and banners — the glittering array on either 
 side, their pride in their leader, their eagerness for tiie con- 
 flict, and the care and caution with winch, by both parties, 
 every arrangement was made for the opening of that fear- 
 ful scene. The rainy night, the dull and heavy morning — 
 the ceaseless roar of the cannon — the impetuous charge — 
 the rapid retreat — the artillery ranged at different points, 
 and dealing havoc and destruction — the clang of martial 
 music — the shouts of the victors — the screams of the 
 Avounded — all, all should be realised, down to the last great 
 struggle — the defeat — the hot pursuit, and death dealt on 
 every side upon those who were flying from the field of 
 battle ; and then the outburst of victory — the messengers 
 speeded to all parts of Europe; — the ringing of bells — the 
 glare of illuminations — the shouting of the congregated 
 multitude for the fortune of the world decided upon that 
 tremendous day. 
 
 Yes, the child should realise all this, and should not 
 stop here. The battle should be looked at with the pri- 
 vate soldier's eye, as well as with that of the officer. He 
 should be informed of the feeling of those who, through 
 that long drenching night, were shivering, ibodless, and 
 wearied — so exhausted that even at the noontide of the
 
 THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 233 
 
 following day, when they were ordered to lie down that 
 the cannon-shot might pass over them, some of them fell 
 into dee]) slumber upon the moist corn-field, amid all the 
 roar of the buttle, from which they awoke in the very 
 agonies of death. He should see the Held strewed with 
 some 10,000 corpses, heaped together indiscriminately, — 
 men of all nations — English, French, Germans, Prussians, 
 Poles — all blended there ; and then behold the wounded, 
 with shattered limbs, crawling along upon the ranks and 
 piles of dead. He should then be taken to the temporary 
 hospitals, and there behold the knife of the surgeon as 
 busily at work as had been the sword of the soldier, the 
 task of amputating limbs, extracting bullets, and binding 
 wounds, proceeding for eight davs upon that blood-stained 
 field. {!<> should see the roads from the scene of conflict, 
 in the direction of France at least, marked by the corpses 
 of those who were cut down as they fled, scattered here 
 and there, their blood and brains seeming, as it were, in- 
 scriptions telling that " This is the march to Paris of the 
 vast armies that professed to be banded for the independ- 
 ence of nations.'' From this his mind should pass to the 
 bereaved families bv thousands and tens of thousands — the 
 starving orphans and children, the broken-hearted widows 
 — the consequences entailed upon so many by all the ruinous 
 adjuncts of war. lie should imagine, in contrast with the 
 glittering procession — the troops crowned with laurel — the 
 bands playing "Sec the conquering hero comes!" — the 
 gratulating cheers of the multitudes awaiting their return — 
 another long procession of sable-garbed mourners, with 
 the bitter tears streaming down their cheeks: he should 
 witness the ruined families, the crowded workhouses, jails, 
 and graves — all these, too, beins; monuments of the great 
 battle, the glorious victory, of Waterloo. 
 
 The parent should blink to his child no portion of truth 
 connected with such events; he should give him no partial 
 or one-sided view of the matter. Look at the field of battle 
 all around. Trace all its consequences from that gloomy 
 centre, which, as an orb of darkness and misery, radiates 
 over so manv nations, lie should impress all this upon 
 the mind of the vouth ; lie should bring together the suffer- 
 ings of those who perished by hundreds and thousands of 
 fatigue and famine, more numerous than those who fell 
 upon the battle-field. Thus, having assembled all these
 
 234 LECTURE XV. 
 
 attendant circumstances of the battle together, he should 
 bid the child think upon them. He should say to him, 
 " This is battle ! such is war ! and such was Waterloo ! 
 Understand the event, and then you may proceed to 
 moralise upon its causes and consequences." 
 
 " And what was all this for:"' will be the natural ques- 
 tion of the child. I presume the parent can make no better 
 answer than that this was the completion of a succession of 
 efforts to put down the French Revolution — for the second 
 French war was the continuation of the first in spirit and 
 purpose. This was the object at the outset. This was the 
 aim at last, to replace the Bourbons upon the throne of 
 France ; to bring that country into the condition in which 
 it had been before the revolution ; to wipe that event out 
 of history ; to sponge it, as it were, from any record in the 
 living and actual state of France and Europe, and make 
 them as much as possible what they would have been had 
 that event never occurred. That aim was thought to be 
 accomplished. The victory at "Waterloo was deemed the 
 triumphant completion of the war against the French re- 
 volution. 
 
 But what was, in reality, the French revolution, that 
 nations should have fought against it, or that England 
 especially should have sought its utter extinction ? ■ What, 
 I say, was the French revolution ? The outbreak of a 
 people down-trodden, starved, insulted, spurned, and scorned, 
 till humanity could bear no more. Any just delineation 
 of the state of France before the revolution — the wretched- 
 ness of its peasantry, the grinding imposts to which they 
 were subjected, the horrible insults to which they Mere 
 compelled to submit, the licentiousness of its court, the 
 hypocrisy of its church, and the insolence of its nobles; 
 any true picture of France before the revolution is a full 
 justification of the revolution. Apologise for that event! 
 Why, France would infinitely more have needed an apology 
 had there been no revolution. We should have had to find 
 excuse for a people utterly divesting themselves of the best 
 attributes of our nature ; submitting to be worse than bru- 
 talized ; and with the form of man indicating nothing of 
 that divine spirit within, by which he asserts the dignity of 
 his being, claims his rights, and will not be like the poor 
 worm — -or worse than that — trodden upon even without 
 writhing under and against the foot bv which he is crushed.
 
 THE CATTLE OF WATERLOO. 235 
 
 Apologise for the French revolution ! I say, \vc must have 
 apologised not only for France, but for human nature, for 
 the course of events, for the plan of the world, and for Divine 
 Providence itself, had there been no French revolution. 
 
 It was to quell this just and inevitable outbreak, to ex- 
 punge it from history, to reverse all that it had done, to 
 turn back the wheels of time: for this it was that Europe 
 fought; for this did Britain expend its wealth and people ; 
 and for this did Wellington triumph at Waterloo. 
 
 But then it is said, a mild revolution — a moderate re- 
 form — might have been a very good thing in the then 
 existing circumstances of the French nation ; but they were 
 so violent, so headlong, and committed so many outrageous 
 deeds, that the gentleness of many classes in this country 
 utterly recoils from the exhibition under any circumstances 
 whatever. We frequently meet with people who seem to feel 
 like the dandy when he saw the man broken upon the wheel; a 
 cruel punishment, by which in some states a criminal was tied 
 to a large wheel, and the executioner with a massive bludgeon 
 stood over him, banging on his body, a bone cracking at 
 every blow, and the sufferer uttering excruciating groans and 
 yells. ' : Peace, my dear fellow," said the dandy; "your lot 
 is very hard ; but the noise you make is quite vulgar and 
 outrageous." In like manner would these sensitive indi- 
 viduals have had the French people bear their wrongs, and 
 make their changes as tenderly and gingerly, as if a mere 
 turnpike-bill had been the sum and substance of the whole 
 matter in discussion, and they could have afforded to set 
 forth ii! the coolest and calmest manner the wrongs they 
 had endured, and the rights which, as human beings, they 
 desired and claimed. It is not in the nature of things that 
 such should have been the case. The French revolution 
 was a natural reaction, the result of the principles of our 
 being, which work as infallibly under such circumstances 
 as do the mighty powers and elements of the material world 
 in their combination, when the liquid metals and liberated 
 gases are commingling and exploding in tin 1 bowels of the 
 earth. When the volcano roars and the earthquake shakes 
 down towns and cities, you cannot then interpose, and say 
 to Nature. •■ Be moderate, and effect your changes and re- 
 volutions more gently than tins !'' It is not in the elements 
 of things, or in their laws, that such should be the case: 
 nor is it in those of our own beimr- when the tyranny ol
 
 336 LECTURE XV. 
 
 ages is to be heaved off from the breast of a nation that it 
 may breathe freely ; when humanity starts up to a full sense 
 of the enjoyment of its rights and dignity from a state of 
 degradation — it is not, I say, in the nature of man that this 
 should be done quietly : 
 
 " Great evils ask great passions to redress them, 
 And whirlwinds ritliest scatter pestilence." 
 
 Had the French taken counsel of more moderate per- 
 sons, they would have made a nice little revolution, like 
 that which occurred in England in 168S. Great care 
 would have been taken with the change of persons to change 
 no principles. One set of people, perhaps, would have 
 moved off from the possession of good things, and another 
 set would have moved into their enjoyment, unless, indeed, 
 the same parties had maintained their standing just by the 
 change and transfer of their allegiance. There might have 
 been a little incidental massacre, like that at Glencoe ; or a 
 bit of civil war, like that which occured in Ireland, con- 
 cluding with a treaty only made to be violated. A little 
 toleration might have been established, and a good deal of 
 penalty inflicted by the side of that toleration. The plan 
 might have been introduced of ruling a country through a 
 Parliament, instead of the old plan, without a Parliament. 
 A very gentle land-tax might have been laid by the aris- 
 tocracy upon their own ample estates ; a system of corrup- 
 tion and influence might have been substituted for one of 
 prerogative, and that mode of having recourse to public 
 eredit been resorted to, by which one generation makes all 
 succeeding generations pay for its own lollies, madness, and 
 extravagance. 
 
 But then the bad principles of the French revolution 
 rendered it, we are told, a thing to be guarded against. 
 War against principle is at all times a very hopeful under- 
 taking ; it will succeed when you can knock down argu- 
 ment with a cannon-ball, and when you can pierce a pro- 
 position with a bayonet : but until that happens, war 
 against principle is more likely to lead to the confirmation 
 of such principle than anything else. 
 
 But we are told much of the anarchy and atheism of 
 that period. What does that charge mean? Why, take 
 the most far-going and free-writing authors who preceded 
 the revolution — were Voltaire and Rousseau anarchists
 
 THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 237 
 
 and atheists? Those who say so know nothing about 
 their writings, or read them with that purblind prejudice 
 which sees what it intends to see, and not what is really 
 before it. Both of those writers did as much against 
 atheism, and with as much effect, as any man that ever 
 graced our bench of bishops. 
 
 And then as to the charge of disregard of the rights of 
 property at that time. Why, in the creed even of the; 
 Mountain faction, property was a foremost article. Pro- 
 perty was as sacred in France through the revolutionary 
 times as it now is in this country ; and more sacred than 
 it is at this moment here, if the property in question con- 
 r-ists of labour. 
 
 In looking at the French revolution, one thing should 
 never be forgotten. The people were driven to it in the 
 first instance. The principles which they laid down were 
 the simplest and the broadest; such as human nature, left 
 to itself, everywhere recognises. 
 
 " A man's a man for a' that," 
 
 we often say and sing, and no class objects at present to 
 our doing so; and yet that was the principle of the French 
 revolution. " Alive are brethren"' is a Christian doctrine; 
 and yet that was the principle of the French revolution. 
 Clothe them in hateful colours as you may, you cannot 
 strip from the eye of posterity the fact that the principles 
 of tin: French revolution — the principles of liberty, equa- 
 lity, and human rights — are sacred and eternal principles, 
 belonging to all morality and religion. They were so 
 judged at the time by men who had eyes to see and hearts 
 to feel ; by nun like that pure, noble-minded, genuine 
 Christian philanthropist, Roscoe of Liverpool, who hailed 
 the annunciation of such principles with the whole fervour 
 of his soul ; and when the National Convention put forth 
 its celebrated Declaration of Rights, invoked all the powers 
 of nature to give it sanction. 
 
 " Oh, catch its high import, ye winds as ye blow, 
 Oh, hoar i;, ve waxes, us ye roll ; 
 From the nations that feel the sun's vertical glow 
 
 To the farthest extremes of the pole. 
 Equal rights, equal laws to the nations around, 
 
 Peace and freedom, its precepts impart; 
 And wherever the footsteps of man can he found, 
 Mav he bind the decree on his heart!"
 
 238 LECTURE XV. 
 
 Crimes, no doubt, there Mere — sanguinary and enor- 
 mous crimes — perpetrated during the course of the French 
 revolution. But, be it remembered, that these acts were 
 done in self-defence. The revolution itself was completed 
 peacefully, and no proof whatever is capable of being ad- 
 duced that a peaceably accomplished event it would not 
 have remained had it been let alone. But the fact is, 
 there was a ceaseless struggle for a counter-revolution — a 
 struggle carried on continually within, and stimulated from 
 without. The revolution was never secure for a day ; 
 there were always persons in different ranks of society 
 plotting. Foreign gold was circulating there to bribe do- 
 mestic treason ; and all Furopc in arms was thundering on 
 the frontiers. Is it wonderful that crimes were committed 
 in self-defence in the circumstances in which they were 
 placed ? Blockade a man in his own house — bribe his 
 servants — put gunpowder under his bed — set fire to his 
 dwelling, already surrounded by banditti — and then you 
 must not lie surprised if his conduct is ratlter extravagant, 
 and he becomes somewhat violent. Let there be no ex- 
 aggeration here. In describing this event we speak as 
 though the streets of Paris had for years and years Mowed 
 with blood. Much there was indeed shed of real noble 
 blood; many fell under the guillotine who deserved statues 
 raised to their honour, and a niche in history — many who, 
 if they had lived in this country, at no great distance of 
 time, would have had their chance of being hanged under 
 the reign of terror of William Pitt; for if the French 
 literary, philosophic, and patriotic men suffered, we must 
 not forget that our honest Hardy, and not only men of the 
 shoemaking class, but that our Holcrofts, and Thelwalls, 
 and Home Tookes — our men of philosophy, literature, 
 art, and genius — were also perilled : and it was by no vir- 
 tue of the then ruling power that we did not commit some 
 crimes as foul as any of those that stained the progress of 
 the French revolution. 
 
 And then as to the number who fell during the revolu- 
 tion. Mr. Carlyle has gone into this subject in his cele- 
 brated work. When the reign of terror was over, the au- 
 thentic returns stated the victims to amount to '2000; and 
 even the emigrants, who took exception to the accuracy of 
 that return, have not calculated more; than double the 
 number. Many of the sufferers were distinguished per-
 
 THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 239 
 
 sons, and therefore the crime made a noise all over Europe. 
 But be the number of the victims either 2000 or 1000, 
 there have been periods when, by the operation of the corn- 
 law monopoly in this country, in one single year as much 
 human life has been destroyed as was sacrificed by the 
 guillotine in the French revolution. The victims of the 
 corn-law are not only more numerous than those of the 
 French revolution, but the kind of death — the abridgment 
 of food, the sinking of the heart, the breaking down into 
 abject poverty — the falling almost from moral compulsion 
 into crime, with all the horrible sensations and agencies 
 that belong to it — oh ! these art; ten thousand times worse 
 than the sudden stroke of the guillotine which at once de- 
 stroys sensation. 
 
 Well, it was this French revolution which the battle 
 of Waterloo was intended to put down ; and the attempt 
 was not made till its state of horror and disorder had 
 oassed away. The country had been reduced to inter- 
 nal peace ; there was no more breaking open of prisons, 
 and the massacres had ceased. The pretext had been re- 
 moved that France had not a sufficiently strong govern- 
 ment. Republicanism had sunk into imperialism ; it had 
 a ruler allied with royalty- — a ruler, too, who had adopted 
 the great British doctrine of protection, and applied it by 
 his Milan and Berlin decrees. There was everything which 
 should have been considered as taking the sting out of the 
 French revolution, reconciling the legitimacy of Europe to 
 the continuance of the French government, in the form it 
 had then assumed. However, we battled with it, and 
 boasted that we had put it down. 
 
 The child should here be taught that it is the cause 
 makes the hero. No doubt the battle of Waterloo was 
 won by the exercise of consummate skill ; I think it would 
 be absurd to question that point: equally ridiculous to 
 doubt tiiat, most materially and essentially, it was won by 
 the calm endurance and tin; stoical bearing of whatever 
 privations were inflicted, by the British soldiery. Let these 
 qualities have their due recommendation to the mind of the 
 youth ; teach him to prize skill, whether it win the game 
 of warfare or a game of chess — the talent, perhaps, being 
 not much less in the latter instance than in tin' former, and 
 far more innocent, as the pawns do not 1'eel when they are 
 moved irom the board. Let him appreciate the power of
 
 21-0 LECTURE XV. 
 
 endurance which so many men exhibited in that dreary 
 night, and through that day of tremendous struggle; and 
 then let him be told that justice, honour, human good in 
 the results to be achieved, all must be proved to have been 
 elements of the act before the laurel can be adjudged ; and 
 that as old Rome granted no triumphs for victories in civil 
 warfare, so should modern civilisation adjudge no glory for 
 any military skill and prowess which is employed against 
 human rights, and in furtherance of oppression and des- 
 potism. 
 
 Our supposed teacher of youth should then advert to 
 the immediate object of that battle — to the extraordinary 
 spectacle which was exhibited of the world in arms against 
 one man. He should learn the morality of angry sove- 
 reigns from the declaration which the allied potentates 
 issued against Napoleon Bonaparte ; a declaration with- 
 out a parallel in the history of public documents; a decla- 
 ration which at this time of day it really does seem extra- 
 ordinary that any set of men could have made themselves 
 responsible for, whatever the dignities they held, and how- 
 ever much of peril was environing their maintenance. By 
 the manifesto of the allied sovereigns issued at Vienna it 
 was resolved : 
 
 " That Napoleon Buonaparte, by breaking the Convention 
 which established him at Elba, had placed himself out of the 
 pale of civil and social relations ; and as an enemy and disturber 
 of the world, had rendered himself liable to public vengeance." 
 
 What this document means I know not, unless it be a 
 royal incentive to assassination. And when this man sur- 
 rendered to us, whom he had bearded in the field, we 
 seized upon him as if he was just a stray wild beast caught 
 in the forest, and without more ado consigned him to what 
 was in fact a lingering death upon the distant rock of St. 
 Helena, making ourselves the fitting executioners of the 
 will of this assassinating despotism. 
 
 There was another accompanying circumstance, which 
 that young student should be told to note. Paris capitu- 
 lated with 50,000 armed men within its walls, and of course 
 not without making terms. The terms of that capitulation 
 were very distinct, and especially the second article, which 
 ran thus : 
 
 "That Paris should be evacuated in three days by the French 
 army, which should retire bevond the Loire ; and all individuals
 
 THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 24-1 
 
 now resident in the capital should enjoy their rights and liberties, 
 without being disturbed or called to account, either for the situa- 
 tions they may have held, or as to their conduct or political 
 opinions." 
 
 The Bourbons were replaced absolutely on the throne 
 of France ; the allied army of 150,000 men left as garrison; 
 the invaders declared they had nothing more to do with 
 the matter, — they had made the bargain, got the city and 
 the kingdom, and handed them over to legitimate royalty ; 
 and then, no one having any thing to do with it, Marshal 
 Ney was just shot. I should have very much respected 
 the man who at that time would have had the moral truth- 
 fulness and courage to say, "I can and will prevent this! 
 I know of nothing which should bribe me to be a party to 
 this transaction after the recent treaty, not even though 
 princely estates and titles be awarded me in every country 
 in Europe, though orders should be showered down upon 
 me until they would cover the Monument, though royalty 
 should own its fellowship with so distinguished a subject, 
 and though the consequence of the act should be to place 
 me in one of the highest positions in the world, and event- 
 ually in the actual mastership of the British Empire, — 
 there is nothing in all these, twenty times told, which could 
 repay me for allowing such an execution after that treaty." 
 I say, I should have respected the man who had spoken 
 thus ; but there was no man who said any such thing ! 
 
 Having thus reviewed the war as antagonistic of the 
 French revolution, and having regarded the events which 
 were adjuncts to it, the child will naturally inquire after 
 its consequences. " What Mas the use of this grand vic- 
 tory ?" wdl be the question put to the teacher. Well, the 
 battle of Waterloo replaced the Bourbons; and where are 
 they now ? The son of Monsieur Egalite is upon the 
 throne of France, and sits there nominally as ' ; the citizen 
 king." by the voice of the people, and not "by the grace 
 of God." The Bourbons reigned fifteen years, and those 
 fifteen years of Bourbon rule required twenty-three years of 
 hard lighting to obtain. For every hour which they reigned 
 over France 100 lives had been sacrificed upon the battle- 
 field, to say nothing of the tears and miseries and the 
 horrors that attend a state of war, and the wretchedness 
 which it propagates to the remotest distances. The reign 
 
 o
 
 242 LECTURE XV. 
 
 of an archangel would have been dearly purchased at such 
 a cost as that. 
 
 Well, it is said they triumphed over French principles 
 by the battle of Waterloo. I should like to know ichat 
 principles they conquered. They have not triumphed 
 over my opinion or yours ; they have not destroyed the 
 thoughts and tendencies of the people of France. Civil 
 equality is established there, and exists there in a higher 
 degree than in any other country on the face of the earth. 
 There the cabman, if insulted by the marshal, may take his 
 honourable revenge for the insult — this, too, in a land 
 where Voltaire Mas beaten by hired menials, and refused 
 what was called the satisfaction of a gentleman because he 
 was not of noble origin. Civil equality exists there, and 
 an open career for talents, which may rise, and that too 
 without the accommodations and subserviency which are 
 often so necessary in this country to attain distinction. 
 The prime-minister there may live upon a third-Moor, and 
 be thought none the worse on that account. They have 
 liberty of speech — far more so than the prejudices of 
 society which are fostered here will allow. In France, if 
 a man prefers Socrates to Jesus Christ, he says so, and 
 nobody thinks of banishing him from society for so doing. 
 Here, if a man is poor and zealous, and rather rough in 
 declaring his principles, he gets himself into a jail ; and 
 if he is in higher circumstances, why then he holds his 
 tongue, and protests against being identified with any thing 
 so atrocious ; perhaps takes part in encouragement of the 
 prosecution which makes a jail the recompense of the opi- 
 nions he holds in his heart. Besides all this, they have 
 in France — and this is the grand barrier against counter- 
 revolutions — a landed proprietary of 4.000, 000 people. 
 They have eighty times the number of owners of the 
 soil which we have ; of course not upon so large a scale, 
 with such enormous wealth, nor individually possessed 
 of a similar extent of political inMuence. They have a 
 sense of independence arising from property in land, which 
 perhaps scarcely any thing else in the world can give to 
 the same degree or extent. They have a numerous, 
 comfortable, bold, independent body of men, neither very 
 rich nor very poor, but able to hold their own, and to 
 transmit it to posterity. And the fear of the political 
 economist, that property should be subdivided until they
 
 THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 213 
 
 get to the state of the Irish cotter, never disturbs them ; 
 for nothing of the sort takes place, because they have 
 nut to compete in their rent to an absentee landlord ; they 
 have not to starve themselves in order to get the shelter of 
 a fortress against starvation in their little bit of land; but 
 they have the world before them, being shareholders in the 
 soil upon which they tread, and are just the sort of people, 
 if their laud be assailed, to defend it to the last <^asp. 
 
 Well, then, the French revolution is not put down after 
 all. Its principles survive; many of its practical results 
 are enjoyed, and that to an extent which makes it no very 
 dear bargain that the country paid for them with long 
 years of trouble and a great deal of bloodshed. For how 
 much good, of far less amount, not to be brought for an 
 instant into comparison with the blessings we have enume- 
 rated, have wars been waged, treasure lavished,, blood shed, 
 the country kept in commotion, and the tide of civilisation 
 and improvement been thrown back ! The battle of Wa- 
 terloo was a remarkable instance of the combination of 
 military triumph with political discomfiture. That war 
 was permanently to settle Europe, and a pretty settlement 
 it was. Spain is not quite tranquil yet. Greece was soon 
 settled in a different way from what the allied sovereigns 
 then intended. Holland was settled by the; separation of 
 Belgium from it. Ireland was so settled, that the very 
 champions of intolerance themselves had to concede Ca- 
 tholic emancipation. England was settled in a way winch 
 n quired the massacre in the north, and which led to the 
 incendiary ism of the south — which necessitated the Reform 
 Dili, and which will demand greater changes yet. The 
 struggle, which was maintained with camion and massacre 
 abroad, not only failed there, but fails here. From day to 
 day we see indubitable proofs that that strife is not ter- 
 minated, that the fancied victory is not gained. Although 
 its hero may have most judiciously disposed his troops in 
 Ireland, the spirit of agitation there — Heaven prosper it! 
 — :- working its way peacefully, legally, but determinately, 
 towards what I think is due to Ireland— not, separation, but 
 justice; freedom, and any degree of legislative independ- 
 ence which it is the will of that nation to require, and 
 which 1 believe it will obtain — exhibiting the spectacle of 
 the victor of Napoleon becoming the vanquished of Daniel 
 ' ^Council.
 
 244 LECTURE XV. 
 
 After a review of the facts and bearings of that memor- 
 able time, the parent, I think, will do well to lead his child 
 to moralise upon war and the military jwofession. I an- 
 swer for no one but myself; and, in fact, what I say here 
 I wish ever to be understood not only as being merely my 
 own personal opinion, but as thrown out not for reception, 
 but for investigation. But in my opinion — and, therefore, 
 I should like that point seriously considered by the parent 
 in training his child — the military profession is not an hon- 
 est one. Christianity, or any other system of morality, ill 
 deserves such a name, if it allows the hiring-out of physical 
 strength for the shedding of human blood, at the bidding 
 of others, without having one's own conscience in the mat- 
 ter. Let the parent, if he see the question in this light, 
 instil into his child's mind these principles, that he may 
 never be likely to become a red-coated slave to others ; that 
 he may consider it as the privilege of humanity that we 
 are moral beings — that conscience is inalienable, and that 
 the general, the government, and the monarch, cannot hold 
 that for us, nor dispense with our obedience to its sacred 
 iecrees. There is the first obligation of our being — the 
 very soul of duty ; and he who puts it out of his power to 
 judge of the justice of the cause in which he is performing 
 " the duties," as they are called, of a soldier, parts with all 
 that divides man from the brute, driven by the agency and 
 the will of another: he places himself in a position so 
 degraded, that we may well blush to see humanity brought 
 down to that level. 
 
 The cost of wars, and their results in impeding the ad- 
 vancement of civilisation, will form another branch of mo- 
 ral disquisition, which the parent should study for himself, 
 and throw light upon for his child. This same French 
 war cost us an addition to our debt of 600,000,000/. ster- 
 ling, and has burdened us with 30,000,000/. annually of 
 permanent taxes. The very lirst year after the establish- 
 ment of peace all over the world, by this great victory of 
 Waterloo, the estimates were for 170,000 soldiers, to be 
 kept on foot by this country as a standing army. A stand- 
 ing army ! What have free states to do with such a thing 
 as that ? When I denounce the military profession as un- 
 christian, I may, perhaps, be asked, " Are you, then, for 
 unarming the nation?" No; I would arm the nation. 
 It should indeed be the nation. Under such circum-
 
 THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 245 
 
 stances, if the country was in danger of invasion, every 
 man would turn out at once with Ins musket upon his 
 shoulder. Give the people institutions which attract their 
 veneration and love; give them laws which administer jus- 
 tice to the millions, and bring it to the door of the poor 
 man's cottage ; give them establishments and improve- 
 ments which secure to all the remuneration of their toil 
 and services to the community — making them as happy as 
 a rightful distribution of the produce and the wealth of a 
 nation can render humanity — and you will have an invin- 
 cible people, before whom all hireling bands will be scat- 
 tered as chatf before '.he wind. 
 
 Teach your children lessons such as these, growing out 
 of the events which may be laid before them in all varieties 
 and forms. It is time to turn them to such account. 
 Truth, goodness, and wisdom — even these may grow as if 
 manured with the blood shed at Waterloo. The evils of 
 the past are fruitful of blessings for the future. Let the 
 page of history be turned with a careful hand — let it be 
 read with an observant eye — pondered with a reflective 
 mind ; and rich will the fruit become in stores with which 
 he may endow his son — a noble and worthy heritage, teach- 
 ing him to judge better than his fathers did of the merit 
 which nations should recompense, and the crimes which 
 they should denounce. Oh, there are those, by their in- 
 ventions, mitigating toil, who have multiplied the means of 
 enjoyment upon the face of the earth — who, by their dis- 
 coveries, have aided the advance of science, and let in the 
 light of heaven where all had been as dark as the dungeon. 
 Then there are those whose writings form our intellectual 
 heritage and enrichment. There are the philanthropists 
 who have led society onward, healing the wounded, and 
 strengthening the right-minded. They are the world's 
 benefactors and heroes — those who, by their disinterested 
 exertions, their long and painful study, and their noble 
 sacrifices, have conquered good for humanity. These are 
 the men to whom statues ami pillars should be raised — 
 theirs the times around whose record the pen of the histo- 
 rian should glow with unwonted eloquence — these should 
 the voice of public gratulation hail, awarding to them a 
 higher meed of public and lasting gratitude than the best 
 services of the warrior in the held of battle ever won, or 
 ever could possibly deserve. Battles cannot win good of
 
 246 LECTURE XV. 
 
 this description : it is by peaceful arts that society ad- 
 vances ; it is by the powers of mind, in their benign influ- 
 ence upon the arrangements of life, public institutions, and 
 private character; it is by these that the world gets its 
 good ; it is in reference to these that the youthful mind 
 should be trained. As generation after generation sees 
 this matter more clearly, and appreciates more justly the 
 achievements of the distinguished — the peacefully distin- 
 guished — in that proportion will honour be awarded to the 
 worthiest ; the nation Avill look back on its train of bene- 
 factors with unfeigned veneration, and the anniversaries it 
 will celebrate will be those in which some great discovery 
 or invention has been made for the good of society, or 
 some important advance effected in political liberty, giving 
 to those benefits their permanence and security.
 
 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 THE INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 
 
 (DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF THE METROPOLITAN" DRAPERS' 
 ASSOCIATION.) 
 
 Th3 frequency of excessive toil requires no proof. We 
 are an overworked population, the young and the old ; the 
 empiovers as well as the employed ; and those whose efforts 
 arc intellectual, as well as those whose toil is merely me- 
 chanical. The whip of necessity is upon them all, and 
 laid on as mercilessly as that of the slave-driver; and 
 where the motive is not the necessity of procuring the 
 means of bodily subsistence, a factitious necessity conies in 
 its place, and witli ecnial urgency impels the individual to 
 overstrained efforts. We cannot look around us in town 
 or ccuntry without finding indications of the injurious 
 effect.- of this excessive toil upon body and mind, manners 
 and Morals. The traces of its influence are plain and 
 broad; the evil is formidable and stupendous; and a large 
 portion of this fair isle — which ought to be an Eden of 
 peace and contentment — is, by the mere pressure of exces- 
 sive physical exertion upon a numerous body of the com- 
 muiii.v, deprived of its benignant character; a gloom is 
 cost over it, from which the eye recoils; and when we 
 leok about us for scenes of human comfort, prosperity, and 
 progress, we too often have only to gaze upon 
 
 " Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
 And rest can never dwell, hope never comes, 
 That comes to all ; hut torture without end 
 Still urges ;" 
 
 md a land which might be a paradise is thus almost con- 
 verted into the semblance of a hell, until we look up and 
 iround, and ask of God and man, " Must these things be ? 
 How long shall they continue?" 
 
 ' ; Excessive toil " is a comparative expression. An 
 amount of labour which is " excessive " for one is not so
 
 24S LECTURE XVI. 
 
 for another. That which is light for man is overpowering 
 for woman. Toil which may not be too much for the ma- 
 ture frame may yet overwhelm the feebleness of old age or 
 childhood. Even in persons of ecpial years there are dif- 
 ferences which extend through many degrees. Some can 
 support an amount of labour which would be altogether in- 
 tolerable to others ; nor is length of time by any means the 
 only, or perhaps the best, test upon this point. Coleridge 
 says : 
 
 " 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 into the mere animal. It is a 
 mockery of our fellow-creatures' wrongs to call them equal in 
 rights, when, by bitter compulsion of their wants, we make them 
 inferior to us in all that can soften the heart or dignify the un- 
 derstanding." 
 
 There are those who can bear well the amount of toil 
 which Coleridge disclaims for himself, as likely to exercise 
 such a crushing influence over his faculties. While there 
 are a few who are subject to the curse — for such it is — of 
 indolence, the great body of the people, most assuredly, 
 are overtasked in their labours ; they have to wear ort life, 
 thought, sensation, and all the higher and better powers of 
 our nature, in the mere exercise of muscular strength : they 
 are doomed to a sort of engine-mode of existence, having 
 to fulfil their allotted task from day to day; and, however 
 much medical men may be puzzled to say exactly wiat is 
 the average measure of labour which is good for human 
 beings, there can be no doubt, nor, I believe, is there any 
 with scientific men themselves, that that measure is, in an 
 immense multitude of cases, largely overpassed. 
 
 The results of this system force themselves upon ou.- 
 notice. They evidence themselves in debilitated frames 
 prevailing epidemics, and shortened duration of life. 
 Death, like a stern monitor, keeps his account-books well ; 
 he swells his numbers, and records with unerring pen the 
 consequences of a deteriorated and oppressive condition of 
 society ; he points to nameless graves in the distance as the 
 total and the end of all. If in the struggle of the Scottish 
 people with episcopacy they can now point to their distin- 
 guished martyrs and others who fell in the cause of religion 
 or their country — so numerous that they were called upon 
 to erect one gravestone to the memory of ten thousand
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 249 
 
 martyrs — why, excessive toil lias also its records in graves 
 without a tombstone; where lie the hundreds of thousands 
 and the millions of martyrs to the imposition of labour too 
 great for humanity to bear. 
 
 There is something so painful in the class of facts which 
 the present subject naturally brings to notice, and they are 
 in many instances so harrowing to the feelings, without 
 presenting a prospect of corresponding good from dwelling 
 upon them, that one might feel rather disposed to recoil 
 into a different mode of dealing with the subject, and to 
 treat this topic as carefnily as may be, rather in a calcu- 
 lating spirit than in one which is simply adapted to excite 
 the feelings or to stimulate passion ; because we know that 
 the horrors are such that none can be in ignorance of them, 
 and that what is most wanted in the case with those who 
 have at all paid attention to the matter, is to see a clear 
 way through this tangled wilderness — an outlet to the 
 green fields and fresh air of heaven. 
 
 Some things are laid to the charge of labour which do 
 not fairly belong to it, but are referable to another portion 
 of human evils, which it may not be amiss to discriminate. 
 How much of suffering, for instance, exists in factories, 
 large work-rooms, and many of the splendid shops of this 
 metropolis, from the want of wholesome arrangement, a 
 due attention to ventilation, and other accommodations ? It 
 has been calculated by medical men that those classes who 
 work together in considerable numbers — such as the tai- 
 lors, sempstresses, and milliners — sustain a loss of one- 
 third of healthful adult existence, simply from the want 
 of proper attention to the ventilation of the buildings in 
 which they are employed. This is an abuse of the facilities 
 which society provides for tin 1 pursuit and acrjuisition of 
 wealth. For instance, the influence of gas destroys that 
 portion of the atmosphere by which life is supported, and 
 substitutes unwholesome matter and poisonous, which finds 
 its way into the frame, is inhaled into the lungs, and 
 brings upon the individuals who suffer from its presence all 
 descriptions of complaints of the stomach, head, and limbs, 
 dyspepsia and paralvsis. Those persons are actually as 
 much poisoned as though some deadly drug was mixed 
 with their food. We admit that there is no intention on 
 the part of the employers to produce this result; but there 
 it is; and in the one case it ought no more to be tolerated
 
 250 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 by society than in the other. Those who are necessitated 
 to employ large bodies of persons should be required by 
 law to find for them wholesome localities for their employ- 
 ment. Then, again, in the mines, where a vast number of 
 our countrymen are employed, apart from the irksomeness 
 of the labour, there are also continual sources of disease 
 and suffering from other causes ; so much so, that the life 
 of a miner at forty years of age is not worth, in the pro- 
 spect of its continuance, above half as much as that of the 
 agricultural labourer, and one-third that of persons in other 
 circumstances in life. 
 
 These evils are to a large extent remediable. Sanatory 
 measures could be taken, and sanatory laws enacted, which 
 would put down the mischief and diminish the sufferings 
 connected with labour, but plainly distinguishable from it. 
 So also with regard to the description of dwellings erected 
 for the poor ; the holes and corners into which labouring 
 men are often driven ; the wretched undrained streets and 
 courts ; the buildings totally unprovided with many accom- 
 modations which are needful for the comfort of human life. 
 W hy, it is not enough to say, when speaking of these 
 things, " people might live in better habitations if they 
 would." The fact is, they cannot do it. Apart from the 
 question of rent, they are by circumstances tied to some 
 particular locality ; their occupations require of them that 
 they should be within reach of the place where they have 
 to earn their daily bread ; they have no choice. The so- 
 ciety which says to them, " We condemn you to gain your 
 means of subsistence by your daily labour," says also, 
 " and we add to this the doom that you shall earn it in an 
 impure and disease-generating atmosphere." In the vari- 
 ous improvements which are effected in this great metro- 
 polis, what is the common tendency of the alterations ? 
 Why, to clear away small houses, and erect larger ones in 
 their place. No doubt these larger edifices are more valu- 
 able than the smaller, and bring a higher rent to the pro- 
 prietors of the ground ; but do the people of this country 
 exist only for the benefit of the proprietors of the soil ? Is 
 a city an erection intended merely to enhance the private 
 emolument of those who may have previously gained pos- 
 session of the land upon which it is built? Is it not an 
 arrangement which society has in charge, and which I 
 think it is bound to carry into effect, to overrule any of
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 251 
 
 those irregularities of private property which prove them- 
 selves to be destructive of public health and enjoyment ? 
 The abodes of a large portion of the community, in which 
 they an* condemned by the necessity of local circumstances 
 to dwell, are a disgrace to any civilised society ; the exist- 
 ence of them should be prohibited, and they should be 
 swept away from the face of the earth, like any other nui- 
 sance. 1 see no reason whatever why we should tolerate 
 machinery for the production and diffusion of malaria, or 
 why we should feel any charity for factories of fever. 
 
 But these are evils distinguishable from those produced 
 by excess of toil. They are, indeed, the common accom- 
 paniments, but they do not How directly from the same 
 cause. It may also be observed, that in some cases exces- 
 sive toil is voluntary upon the part of individuals. There 
 are portions of the working classes, as we find from the 
 reports of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the 
 state of trade and manufactures, such as the men employed 
 in the working of metals in the neighbourhood of Bir- 
 mingham, who have their own option as to the hours they 
 will labour. They do not work at their own houses; the 
 shops at which they are employed are continually open ; 
 and the practice of these men is generally stated to be, that 
 while the}- have any money in hand they are chiefly to be 
 found at the public-houses. They must be hungry before 
 they will go to work ; and when they do return to their 
 employment, they remain at it as long as they can stand, 
 day after day, from five in the morning till twelve at night; 
 and then, having again recruited their finances, they have 
 recourse to the same means of exhausting them, until the 
 renewed pressure of hunger drives them back again to their 
 toil. What a life is this ! No constitution could possibly 
 stand it, long; and the frame of a Samson himself must 
 have given way under it. What a life it is — this alterna- 
 tion from drunkenness to excessive labour; this putting 
 forth of the utmost energy of the muscular powers, and 
 tin n imbibing those liquid poisons which destroy all the 
 powers of mind and body ! What a wretched substitute is 
 this for a human being — toiling so that he merely pro- 
 motes the full development of the physical powers with 
 which he is invested, and able to alternate this with the 
 exercise of his mental powers, until he exhibits a strong 
 mind in a stromr bodv !
 
 Z3 l l LECTURE XVI. 
 
 This error does not belong peculiarly to the working 
 classes — it is a common blunder in the middle and trading 
 portion of the community. Every energy is put forth to 
 " get on in the world." The acquirement of a fortune at 
 the end of a life, and what must then be merely its physical 
 enjoyment, is looked to as the end and aim of existence. 
 For this, every kind of mental culture is sacrificed, disre- 
 garded, and scorned. The individual only lives for his 
 trade or calling ; he is " a man of business," and nothing 
 else. He wears out the powers and faculties within him ; 
 and suppose that, in process of time, he does get on in 
 the world, rises in society, and amasses a fortune ; what is 
 the result ? Why, he gives more splendid dinners, wears 
 perhaps finer clothes, and has costlier furniture in his 
 house. What then ? There is no heart or soul in these 
 things ; no enjoyment or happiness in their possession. 
 The tradesman has sacrificed to vanity what the poor work- 
 ing man in the iron-district gives up for his drink ; and the 
 one individual is about as wise as the other in the choice 
 that he has made and the privations he has endured. There 
 have been instances of men who, after an unremitting ap- 
 plication of years had enabled them to retire from business 
 in affluence, found themselves like fish out of water; for 
 nature they had no eve of discernment, for books no 
 mental appreciation. They bought things, and when they 
 had done so, the sight only palled upon them ; until there 
 have been those who have actually gone back at last and 
 petitioned for a clerk's desk in their own old counting- 
 houses. All which can result from exertions of this sort is, 
 , that, after living a very useless life, the man dies, and, as 
 the phrase goes, " cuts up " for three times as much as his 
 neighbour. A steam-engine has really more the appear- 
 ance of a moral being than sucli specimens of humanity; 
 for its best faculties do not lie idle. Whatever powers it 
 possesses are brought into exercise under the direction of 
 intelligence, and thus it runs its race : it does its work 
 without any accumulation of surplus labour in the form 
 of gold to bequeath to any other steam-engine, in order 
 that the legatee steam-engine may stand idle at the ter- 
 minus. 
 
 After all these deductions from our subject, what a mass 
 of misery do they leave ! Wherever we look, it is the 
 same. It is not chiefly in the best and largest establish-
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 253 
 
 merits ; for the hours of toil are much greater in smaller 
 ones, and perhaps most of all, under the grinding pressure 
 of necessity, with those who work at their own homes, and 
 whose weariness and wearing out all that belongs to the 
 human constitution is unnoticed by the world. I am in- 
 formed that the poor shoemakers at Northampton work 
 from six in the morning until ten at night, for the sum of 
 twelve shillings a week. The poor weavers in the west of 
 Scotland work as long, or even longer, for ten shillings per 
 ■week. The Spitaltields weaver toils from six in the morn- 
 ing until ten at night, including Sundays, rarely going out 
 of doors, and never having any thing like a breath of free, 
 fresh, and pure air; and for this excessive toil, those who 
 weave the narrow silks earn from seven shillings to ten 
 shillings per week ; and those who are employed upon the 
 broad silks, from ten shillings to thirteen shillings per week, 
 and having, at the completion of each piece, to wait clays 
 before they get more work; stoppage of work being with 
 them also absence of food. 
 
 There are the different classes of household servants, 
 whose work never ends, who are required to be awake be- 
 fore any one else in the house, and not to retire to rest 
 till every inmate of the family has gone to bed, driven, for 
 what little purchases they have to make, to steal a few mi- 
 nutes in the eventide and at nightfall, and so becoming, 
 unwillingly and unconsciously themselves, the occasion of 
 the labour and attention of others being also prolonged 
 to unseasonable hours. Oh ! there are many masters and 
 mistresses in this country whom I think it would become 
 the government, in their care of public instruction, to send 
 over for a while to the United States, to let them feel what 
 it is to have independent '"helps" to deal with, who, if they 
 have a national holiday to keep, will take leave, and not 
 ask it. practically assert their independence, rendering "ser- 
 vice." but not submitting to the degradation of slavery. 
 
 Then there are the needle-women, whose story has been 
 made so generally known by that affecting lyric of Hood's, 
 '• The Song of the Shirt," one of the many services which 
 has been rendered to humanity by a publication only 
 claiming to be characterised by its facetiousness, but 
 which is also more honourably distinguished by its truth- 
 fulness to every object of human interest. '• The Song of 
 the Shirt" is one of the million moralities of Punch, who
 
 254 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 never spares conventionalism, or suffers hypocrisy and 
 humbug to pass by unscathed, whose shafts fly far and 
 fast, always drawn with the power of a clear mind and a 
 true heart, and invariably sent home to the heart of hypo- 
 crisy and oppression. Were I a bishop, or even an arch- 
 bishop, I should feel thoroughly satisfied with the praise, 
 could it be honestly given, that my sermons were doing 
 as much moral good in the world as is effected by the 
 witticisms of Punch. But although one scene of human 
 wretchedness has been brought into broad daylight by the 
 " Song of the Shirt," how many others are there which 
 have never been presented prominently before the public 
 eye ! A volume of such lyrics might be wrought up with 
 similar power, not wanting an atom in materials to affect 
 the mind and wring the heart. Look at the condition of 
 those who belong to the same class in a superior grade — 
 the milliners' apprentices. Many of these young persons 
 come from the country, and find themselves involved in a 
 description of toil of which we are told, that fifteen hours 
 a dav is the " regular time," but that in ' ; the season" 
 keeping within regular hours is never thought of; but that 
 eighteen hours a day, and even more, are common. There 
 are 1.3,000 young women employed in this way in Lon- 
 don, besides the journeywomen who take their work home. 
 The time allotted for the meals of these young persons is 
 reduced to the smallest space: they are frequently obliged 
 to take their food standing, and are often kept up night 
 after night. 
 
 In the examination before the commissioners, one wit- 
 ness said, that upon the occasion of the death of William 
 the Fourth she was at work incessantly from -four o'clock 
 on Thursday morning till ten o'clock on Sunday morning, 
 standing a great part of the time to keep herself awake. 
 This is mourning for a king! The milliners and dress- 
 makers are your real mourners for royal funerals, and it 
 may be as much for royal festivals — both falling hardly 
 upon them. I think the employers, who at so much ex- 
 pense of human 'eyesight, health, and life, shew their own 
 respect for a dead king, would do well also to couple with 
 that feeling a little more respect for living humanity. I 
 knew in my youth one of these victims, who, upon her 
 arrival in London, was calculated to remind those who saw 
 her of Wordsworth's lines upon her namesake :
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. SOO 
 
 " She was ruddy, fleet, and strong, 
 And down the rocks could leap along, 
 Like rivulets in May." 
 
 She came from her native locality to London, served her 
 apprenticeship: her constitution gradually sank under it; 
 she just completed that apprenticeship, and then went back 
 to her native place with a pale face, attenuated form, flut- 
 tering nerves and gasping breath, and in a i'nw weeks more 
 was numbered with those who have gone where trouble or 
 labour are unknown. As one portion of the human race 
 in this great metropolis suffer in this way, there are a like 
 number of from 15,000 to 20,000 young men employed in 
 the shops of drapers and other trades, who have done of 
 late this good thing — taken their own case into their own 
 hands, and a sufficient number of them, though not so 
 large a proportion as tine would wish, have spoken out to 
 the world: and success attend their efforts ! They know 
 so admirably how to tell their own story — and well they 
 may. who relate it from experience! — that I shall adopt 
 their words in preference to my own, and read you a brief 
 but distinct statement of their case, in the commencement 
 of the Prize Essay on the evils which are produced bv late 
 hours of business, written by Thomas Davis, and published 
 by the Metropolitan Drapers' Association. It has also an 
 excellent preface prefixed to it, written by that earnest ad- 
 vocate of the claims of humanity and Christianity, the Hon. 
 and Rev. Baptist Noel. 
 
 " Of all the various objects which strike the attention and ex- 
 cite ihe wonder of a stranger upon his first arrival in the ' great 
 metropolis,' there are few more prominent than the many glit- 
 tering shops which meet his gaze in every direction. While 
 passing along the principal streets, you meet with a succession 
 of plate-glass fronts constructed in a costly manner, and often 
 displaying a high degree of architectural skill. Within the win- 
 dows, and separated from the gazer by enormous squares of 
 glass, the transparency of which seems to mock the foggy at- 
 mosphere without, are displayed, in the most skilful manner, all 
 the rich variety of woman's dress. It is as if at the bidding of 
 some magic power the silks of the East, the cottons of the West, 
 and the furs of the North, after having been wrought into a 
 thousand various forms and patterns, had been collected into 
 one gorgeous exhibition, to illustrate the triumphs of art in 
 ministering to the adornment of the human form. The interior 
 of these shops [?> not less worthy of attention than the exterior.
 
 *256 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 Some of them, from the profusion of glass-reflectors which they 
 exhibit, might he called 'halls of mirrors ;' while others, with 
 their stately columns and luxurious carpets, seem to rival the 
 palaces of princes. Perhaps few of the fair purchasers who ad- 
 mire these shops and their contents ever bestow a thought upon 
 the condition of the young men who so blandly and politely 
 serve in them. Yet it is a mournful fact, that there exists in 
 connexion with all this bright display much of positive r?;z7,— not 
 to say of misery. The cause of this evil is as follows : — The 
 young men who serve in the shops are engaged in business va- 
 riously from the hours of six, seven, or eight o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, to nine, ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock in the evening; these 
 variations being according to the season, the character of the 
 shop, and the custom of the neighbourhood. That is, they are 
 occupied for a longer time each day in the summer than in the 
 winter, in all shops ; while those shops which ore frequented 
 chiefly by the middle or vwrking classes are kept open later than 
 those ichich are frequent ed by the tipper classes. A further differ- 
 ence also exists according to the kind of street in which the shop 
 may be situated. Thus in busy thoroughfares they are generally 
 lept open later than in more retired streets. The best shops in 
 the best neighbourhoods are generally opened at seven o'clock in 
 the morning (in some few cases at six o'clock), at which hour a 
 certain number of the young men come down to make prepara- 
 tions for business in their several departments. At eight o'clock 
 (or in some cases at half- past seven) the others, who may be 
 called the seniors, come down, when the former party are al- 
 lowed to retire for half-an-hour for the purpose of dressing. 
 After their re-appearance, there is no further release from the en- 
 gagements of the shop (excepting for those wonderfully short 
 periods of time in which assistant-drapers manage to consume 
 the necessary quantity of food at meals), until the whole busi- 
 ness of the day is over ; and every article, from a piece of silk to 
 a roll of riband or a paper of pins, has been carefully put into its 
 appointed place. Sometimes, when, owing to the weather or 
 some other cause, there have been but few customers during the 
 day, this rearrangement is completed by the time of shutting the 
 shop, which in the present case is from eight o'clock to nine in 
 the winter, and from nine to ten in the summer. But, on busy 
 days, and during nearly the whole of the spring and former part 
 of the summer, it is often found to be impossible to leave the 
 .shop within one, two, or three hours after it has been closed. So 
 that during a large part of the year, it is a common thing for 
 these young men to be pent up in the shop from six or seven o'clock 
 in the morning until ten or eleven at night. This is a description 
 of the present mode of carrying on business, as it appears in the 
 most favourable aspect. The far larger number of shops, which 
 arc frequented chiefly by the middle and working classes, are kept
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 257 
 
 open until nine or ten o'clock in the winter, and ten or eleven in 
 the summer. So that it frequently happens that the young men 
 are employed from seven o'clock in the morning until twelve at 
 night; that is, for a period of seventeen hours out of the twenty- 
 four! On Saturdays the time for closing (as if in mockery of a 
 ' preparation for the Sabbath') is in all cases later. In many 
 shops the young men are often unable to retire to rest until one 
 or two o'clock in the Sunday morning. Well, indeed, may the 
 tired shopman, as he greets the day upon which he then enters, 
 say with the poet, 
 
 " ' Welcome, sweet day of rest !' " 
 
 What results from the unbroken and unmitigated con- 
 finement to which these young men are subjected ? It 
 appears they are generally kept standing ; and even in the 
 absence of customers it is expected of them that they 
 should abstain from occupying their minds. According to 
 the author of this essay, in many cases it would be deemed 
 an offence for a young man to be seen with a book in his 
 hand, although there might be nothing whatever to do at 
 the time. They are condemned to inanity of mind ; and 
 after these long hours, in what condition is their intellectual 
 and physical frame likely to be found ? What state are 
 Uiey in for reading, thought, study, and even for healthy 
 bodily exercise? Nothing is left to them after such ex- 
 haustion but stimulus, which reacts, and crushes the indi- 
 vidual under a double mischief. Stimulus is sought for 
 the mind as well as for the frame: one path of immorality 
 is opened, and too often in these arrangements another 
 road to vice is opened also; ami those employers who 
 should be the guardians of the purity of youthful integrity, 
 in some cases — we trust comparatively a lew — indoctri- 
 nate their young men with the worst practices of trickery 
 and chicanery. With tiie frame thus worn out, even if all 
 the temptations and dangers of such a state are avoided, 
 what ability can there be for its cultivation? We are told 
 in this essay that the list, of members of the Mechanics' 
 Institute in Southampton Buildings has been analysed and 
 divided into trades; and it is found that, out of TOO mem- 
 bers, there is but one linendraper. What, indeed, have 
 they to do witli institutions which are closed before their 
 hours of attention to business are over? What interest do 
 they possess in our galleries or museums? The hours for 
 admission have long gone by before they can command
 
 258 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 any portion of time ; and thus there seems a condemnation 
 to inertness, intellectual blank, and servility of manners. 
 A body of young men who ought to be the pride and 
 strength of the metropolis, from 15.000 to 20,000 in num- 
 ber, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, should 
 have their intellectual acquirements and their public inte- 
 rests, their stimulus to taste and artistical exhibitions; they 
 should have the disposition cherished, that mixing them 
 with society will make them the advanced guard of the 
 great body of the population, the representatives of gene- 
 rations which are yet to come, the link between the past 
 and the present, carrying on the progress of our nature, 
 asserting rights, and preparing the way for the cultivation 
 of mind, taste, and morals ; for shewing the world how- 
 humanity holds on from generation to generation, still 
 planting a firm footstep as it makes a further advance in 
 the career of civilisation. From this — which would indeed 
 be a desirable condition, a proud and happy destiny — they 
 are shut out; and after a while what becomes of them? It 
 is said in this essay that one seldom sees a linendraper's 
 assistant of more than thirty-five or forty years of age. 
 Where are they after that time ? A few, though compa- 
 ratively but a very small number, have the means of set- 
 tling themselves in business, and becoming emplovers in 
 their turn. Of the rest, some probably sink into povertv 
 and abjectness of condition — perhaps into crime ; and no 
 small portion of them are undoubtedly carried to a prema- 
 ture grave, victims of a system which slays its thousands 
 and tens of thousands. 
 
 What remedy or alleviation is there for all this? With 
 reference to this specific case of those who attend in drapers' 
 or other shops, very much indeed may be done by opinion. 
 As regards productive labour there may be a great conflict 
 of argument, as to the propriety of any interference by 
 opinion even, any more than by law : but as to the mere 
 distribution, there can be no such collision ; and the case we 
 are now considering is one solely of distribution, and not 
 of production. The same number of persons are wanting ; 
 the same amount of goods required : all that is needful is to 
 bring the wanter and the thing wanted together, and, so 
 long as this is done, in whatever time, the work of distribu- 
 tion is accomplished. People would not eat one loaf more 
 if the bakers' shops were never closed night or day ; neither
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 259 
 
 would they wear more clothes were the shops from which 
 they are supplied to be kept perpetually open, like the gates 
 of the temple of old. There is a certain amount of goods 
 wanted, and, whatever the time in which they are supplied, 
 the quantity sold remains the same. This is a fact which 
 is well known to the masters ; and it is said that in many 
 instances the cost of keeping shops open in the evening is 
 quite equal to the profit. Why, then, are they thus kept 
 open? Why, A. says that he must keep his establishment 
 open because B. does so. This is a reason which reminds 
 one of the old story : " John, what are you doing ?" " No- 
 thing." — '• Tom, what are you at?" " Helping John." — 
 Thus B. keeps his shop open to do no business, and A. 
 keeps his open only because B.'s is so. Nay, their conduct 
 is rather more absurd than this, because the fact stands 
 thus : that A., who is doing nothing, keeps his shop open 
 to compete with B., who is also doing nothing. There is a 
 vanity existing among these shopkeepers which will not 
 admit the possibility of its being thought that one is doing 
 less business than the other. That is to say, it is opinion 
 — fallacious, puerile opinion — which keeps these shops open; 
 and the question is to be tried whether opinion has not the 
 power to close them as well as to keep them open. 
 
 Allowances must, no doubt, be made for those who 
 receive their money at times which are fixed by others, at 
 inconvenient seasons; and who are compelled to lay it out 
 when they can get it. But, on the other hand, it may be 
 observed, that should public opinion set in strongly in favour 
 of closing shops at earlier hours, it may have a valuable 
 reaction, impelling an earlier payment of wages, so as to 
 get over this difficulty, and confer a very material benefit 
 upon the working classes in so doing. At the present mo- 
 ment there is a tendency of this description. The young 
 men to whom I refer have, in this publication and in their 
 various meetings, pleaded their own cause so fairly, ably, 
 and moderately in their tone as to their employers, that I 
 think there is nothing which can be added to their state- 
 ment. We can only express an earnest wish and hope that 
 it may act beneficially upon the opinion both of the em- 
 ployers and the public at large ; for the opinion of every 
 individual is of consequence in this matter, as a portion of 
 the community. It is one of those things which is just 
 resolvable into impression, and upon which, if people agree,
 
 260 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 opinion would be irresistible. Exertions have been made, 
 not in London only, but in various other places, and, to a 
 large extent, with prospects of success. Some effect, I un- 
 derstand, has already been produced in the larger establish- 
 ments in the metropolis — those at the West End. Analo- 
 gous movements have been made in Liverpool, Manchester, 
 Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, Cheltenham, Leeds, Coventry, 
 Birmingham, Bedford, Newcastle, Nottingham, Wolver- 
 hampton, Oxford, Hull, Beading, and Aberdeen. In se- 
 veral of these places there has been an agreement to dis- 
 continue business at earlier hours, and the system promises 
 to become general in many localities. Perhaps more has 
 been achieved at Manchester than anywhere else; and, 
 wishing to ascertain the present state of this great experi- 
 ment in that town, I made application through a friend to 
 be furnished with such information as could be given upon 
 the spot, and I yesterday received a reply as follows : 
 
 " All the respectable hatters and stationers close their shops 
 at seven o'clock, and this rule is very' generally adopted ; the 
 drapers close at eight o'clock ; the grocers close at nine, and on 
 
 Saturday at eleven o'clock. I asked Mr. , the grocer — 
 
 [a person whom I named] — why he did not close earlier ? if he 
 did any business after eight ? He said he did not, not even on 
 Saturday, and his only reason was because others did it. The 
 moral effect of this long-hour system is, that on Saturday they 
 get home at near twelve o'clock ; they have a good supper, keep 
 the whole house up till two or three o'clock on Sunday morning, 
 and then they lie in bed till dinner-time. On behalf of keeping 
 shops open after seven or eight (/clock, I never heard a single 
 reason given that was worth attending to. At present the Me- 
 chanics' Institution and the Athenreuin are Avell attended, and 
 arc paying their expenses. [This was mentioned in consequence 
 of my asking what the effect of their adopting this course had 
 been on their literary and scientific institutions.] And as to anv 
 difficulty in carrying the system to the fullest extent, there is 
 none except the foolish jealousy of one another. Who would 
 have supposed that in the great money-getting place, Man- 
 chester, where nothing else is attended to but getting money, 
 we should close here our wholesale warehouses on Saturday at 
 one o'clock ? When it was first proposed, I thought it impos- 
 sible, and others, both masters and men, said so, and if tried, 
 the thing would not la^t three months. But seven of the busiest 
 months of the busiest year that we have experienced in this town 
 for many years have passed, and I don't know one who wishes 
 to go back to the old system, and I know many masters who are
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 261 
 
 much delighted with the change ; of course no servants complain 
 
 of it. Your old friend of and says he 
 
 can now drive out with satisfaction on Saturday ; he knows 
 business is finished, and that nothing is going on wrong. To 
 any argument that may be brought forward against closing 
 shops early, only tell them what has been done in Manchester 
 with respect to warehouses, and if they have any thmg more 
 to say, it will be for the sake of talking. The principal part of 
 shopping among the working people is on Saturday, and they 
 give over work on that day at four ; and where can be the neces- 
 sity of keeping shops open till twelve?" 
 
 Now, this shews what can actually be done, and what 
 has been realised in one of the very last places in the country 
 in which it might have been expected. What has followed 
 this change? VV'hy, that a favourable time having arrived, 
 and wages also rising, a practice has originated of making 
 a half-holiday upon the Saturday; earlier hours of paying 
 the work-people have been adopted, and there is now a 
 pretty general closing of their shops; and whilst their 
 literary institutions are nourishing, they are making an 
 energetic movement to have public walks and grounds for 
 the recreation of the labouring population ; and there is 
 every prospect that, with the generous aid which 1ms been 
 afforded for that purpose, they will soon boast of a means 
 of recreation of this kind, which may well excite the honour- 
 able emulation of every other large town in the kingdom. 
 
 1 have thus referred to opinion as one means of alleviat- 
 ing this evil; but there are other portions of it which opinion 
 cannot reach. Opinion may benefit the draper's assistant 
 and the attendants in shops of any kind, and abridge the 
 hours of their labour; but opinion will not alleviate the 
 excessive toil of the weaver, the shoemaker, and those who 
 work at their own homes night and day for a scanty sub- 
 sistence. What, then, remains for them ? Why, ask the 
 legislature to let them have the full amount of their earn- 
 ings. At no gnat distance from this country of ours, and 
 under the rule of the same sovereign, are the isles of Jersey 
 and Guernsey. Last year, although corn was cheap here, 
 it was cheaper there, because the inhabitants of those two 
 places are beyond the boundary of the landlords' food- 
 monopolv, — cheaper by an average amount throughout the 
 whole year of twopence in the shilling. This may seem 
 little to some people, — but it is much to those who earn
 
 262 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 but a few shillings a week, and have to expend nearly the 
 whole of that pittance on a few loaves of bread. It would 
 make a difference of sixpence to the poor needle-woman 
 who now earns but three shillings a week. Give her that 
 now ; let her have it as her right, instead of taxing her food 
 ■ — only to secure the property of a class. It would well 
 become the legislature that this act of justice should take 
 precedence of all pretensions to charity and compassion. 
 There is plenty of food in the world for all its inhabitants : 
 there is a capability in the earth of producing to the very 
 utmost extent of human want. There may be an amount of 
 labour without excess, which would be perfectly adequate 
 to pay for all the necessaries of life. It is the incidence of 
 taxation upon the results of labour which occasions much 
 of the necessity for this continuous toil ; for when a man 
 has produced an article here which any body wants any- 
 where else, and will give him food, or its value in return 
 for it, whatever amount of taxation there is upon such 
 article, or on that which its producer wants, it is a taxation 
 upon the exchange of the produce of labour; it is, in fact, 
 so much taken away from the labourer, and so many more 
 hours added to his toil, if he strives to realise the same 
 amount of food. Resources ! why you have not exhausted 
 a tithe, or a hundredth part even, of the resources of the 
 earth. The mighty valley of the Mississippi is believed 
 to be capable of growing enough to support 100,000,000 
 persons ; and yet here are we, with our 15,000,000 inha- 
 bitants, talking of a surplus population, and of the impos- 
 sibility of finding covers for all at nature's table. 
 
 The great complaint of the United States is the cheap- 
 ness of food. I hold in my hand a leading article which I 
 cut from a New York paper of the month of June last, 
 which says : 
 
 " In considering the extreme low prices which agricultural 
 food now commands in the market, we must, however, have due 
 reference to the relative supply for a given amount of labour. 
 That is to say, wheat raised on the comparatively barren soil of 
 New England is worth per bushel a much larger sum of monev 
 than the same weight of wheat from the prolific prairies of the 
 West; because the same labour bestowed in the one place will 
 give a far greater product than if expended in the other; and in a 
 greater or less degree the same fact will apply to other food. 
 Beef, which sold in I S3Q at 15 dollars per barrel, now brings
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 263 
 
 but 4*50 dollars. Flour, which sold then at 7 dollars, sells now 
 at 4'75 dollar.-. This arises, in a great degree, from the fact 
 that large quantities of virgin land have come under cultivation 
 in that period of time. .More provisions are produced in the 
 great West with less labour; hence its intrinsic value is less, and 
 added to the supply, greatly in excess of demand, produces the 
 low prices our markets present. 'J he population of England is 
 differently situate;!." I That is very true.] "There demand 
 outruns supply, and food rises to a money-price, which places it, 
 in any quantity, beyond the means of millions of being- ; so 
 much so, that the poor-rates or sums paid for the maintenance 
 of paupers annually form a perfect index to the state of the mar- 
 kets. Just in proportion as prices rise, swells the demand for the 
 reiief of the poor." 
 
 In America they have to protest against a monopoly in 
 manufacturing products. There the discontented, oppressed, 
 and injured part of the community are the cultivators of the 
 soil; here the ca>e is reversed : but in both instances there 
 is a sacrifice of the well-being of the community to the 
 sordid profits of a powerful class. Against that monopoly 
 all who earn their living — that is, the honest labouring 
 people of the country — have a common interest. They 
 should not split up their questions; whatever peculiarity 
 there may be in any ease, this principle belongs to them all 
 —that labour has its rights, that exchange should be free, 
 and taxation fall where it ought to fall, upon the possession 
 of propei ty, and not on the ability of the human frame to 
 sustain more toil. Every impost that levies money 0:1 the 
 free exchange of the produce of labour — whether it be 
 an exchange at home or abroad — is a plundering of the 
 labourer — a system which should be swept away entirely, 
 and emancipated labour be tints enthroned upon the ruins 
 of iniquitous monopolies. 
 
 Another principle which I would suggest as remedial is 
 that of co-op ratio;;. How little of this has been practised 
 by tlie more laborious classes; and yet how much might 
 be accomplished ! It is remarkable that the wealthier orders 
 in tliis country have applied much more assiduously to the 
 co-operative principle than those who have far greater occa- 
 sion for it. The clubs at the west end of the town, where 
 such palatial splendour and luxury is realised for a com- 
 paratively small subscription, are monuments of what may 
 be eti'eeted by the co-operative principle. There has been 
 little done by the labouring classes towards gaining for
 
 264< LECTURE XVI. 
 
 themselves better houses, food, clothing, and a great variety 
 of the accommodations of life which many of them are now 
 in want of, and by possessing which they might gain more 
 disposable means for their intellectual and moral improve- 
 ment. They might co-operate in outlay and also in produc- 
 tion. Why should not the workmen become, by combina- 
 tion, their own masters? It is stated that, within not many 
 years past, 3,000,000/. sterling have been expended in this 
 country in strikes for wages. I do not think the working 
 classes have been paid interest upon that outlay. Here is 
 a capital ! The men that pan raise, even in the course of 
 years, such a sum as this, must be able, when they apply 
 themselves with determination to the purpose, to realise 
 capital enough to make themselves masters of engines, 
 which work now only for the benefit of individual capi- 
 talists. Your steam-engine is impartial, and is no respecter 
 of persons : he will work as much for the labourer as for 
 the lord. He will work most for those who use him best, 
 who have the greatest knowledge how to employ his mighty 
 and varied powers. The time will indeed be a happy one 
 when, by co-operation thus applied, steam and other great 
 mechanical powers shall work, not for individuals only, but 
 for the mass of the community ; when they sustain the great 
 amount of human toil; when their contributions to the 
 public good are realised by those who most need them. 
 It is said that there are legal difficulties in the way of such 
 co-operation. It is a great shame that it should be so ; 
 and the subject is well worth probing to the bottom as to 
 such difficulties. I profess not to be well acquainted with 
 this portion of the subject ; but if it be so, the sooner such 
 obstructions are exposed the better, for the doing so will 
 be one step towards exploding and sweeping them away. 
 When such laws can be cleared away, in connexion with 
 the establishment of free trade universally, I think the 
 people of this country will get, not a twelve or a ten but 
 an eight-hours bill, being as much work as they ought to 
 do, and as great an amount as well may realise all the con- 
 veniences and enjoyments of life. 
 
 I will only add further, that each individual interested 
 in this question (and who is not?) should cultivate; inde- 
 pendence of spirit and a manly self-reliance. Look not to 
 patronage; take help, kindly and thankfully, from what- 
 ever quarter it is offered ; but look most to yourselves, and
 
 INJURIOUS INFLUENCE OF EXCESSIVE LABOUR. 265 
 
 rely chiefly upon your own efforts. Bear no hostile front 
 towards other classes, but still let it appear that, conscious 
 of the rights of humanity, and the end for winch it exists 
 on earth, you will not gloze over the tale of wrong and op- 
 pression by deceitful words: you will not bow down to 
 the ground to accept humbly as alms that which is your 
 own by right; that you see what is the desirable coarse 
 to pursue, and towards that are moving with a self- 
 determination which difficulties may impede, but cannot 
 overcome, and certainly will be unable to repel. In the 
 determination to make the most of the time and oppor- 
 tunities afforded you — to give all diligence in enriching the 
 mind, and realising good, even from the smallest occasions 
 within your reach — you will shew, by the progress which 
 you make within these narrow limits, how deserving you 
 are of a better and broader sphere of action. 
 
 I have now arrived at a part of the subject which con- 
 nects this lecture with the one of which I have given notice 
 for Sunday evening next. Here, therefore, I shall leave the 
 question. I have endeavoured to advert, although very 
 imperfectly, to some of the enormous evils of excessive 
 labour, and to the remedial principles which may beat least 
 partially applied to them. Bringing this to individual eon- 
 duct, improvement, and exertion, will lead us to contem- 
 plate the great etui of human life, and the difficulties raised 
 by institutions and the present condition of society to tiie 
 realising that end. This will be the subject of my next 
 lecture.
 
 LECTURE XVII. 
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE, AND THE HINDRANCES 
 
 TO ITS ATTAINMENT IN THE PRESENT STATE OF 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 In the lecture of last Sunday evening I had the painful 
 task of describing lives of irksomeness and toil ; some ren- 
 dered so by custom, and therefore capable of being ame- 
 liorated by opinion ; others the result of oppression, and 
 requiring legislative measures for their redress. But sup- 
 pose both these objects accomplished, and that opinion 
 had in the first case required the change so imperatively as 
 to make itself heeded, and that those whose occupation 
 was merely the distribution of goods should have made 
 their arrangements for reasonable hours, allowing to those 
 whom they employ leisure for mental and moral cultiva- 
 tion ; and suppose, moreover, that law acted upon at length 
 by a sense of justice should untax the food of the labourer, 
 abolish the restrictions of commerce, and allow every one 
 to enjoy that which he has fairly earned ; with all this, 
 there would still remain something more to be done, which 
 could only be accomplished by the parties themselves, in 
 the doing of which they would perhaps find but little help 
 either from the influence of opinion or legislation. For 
 unreasonably prolonged occupation not merely invades a 
 light or indicts an injury as to the means of subsistence or 
 the extent or time which each should have at his own dis- 
 posal ; but there is in it a worse evil and a deeper wrong — 
 it tends to pervert human life, to prevent the attainment 
 of its proper ends and objects — to destroy the very life of 
 life. In this matter, only the exertion of the individual 
 himself, wisely directed, can achieve his deliverance. 
 
 I am persuaded that there is a -purpose in all things 
 which exist throughout the great universe, of which we, 
 and the world we inhabit, form so insignificant a portion. 
 There is for all things a final cause; something for which
 
 THE CHIEF EXD OF HUMAN LIFE. 267 
 
 whatever is exists. It is evidently so in the material 
 operations of nature. The elements wear away the moun- 
 tain, although it be of the hardest granite. The debris 
 becomes the means of fertilising the valleys below, giving 
 the soil its richness, and preparing it for yielding an abun- 
 dant supply of the food which humanity requires for its 
 sustenance. Then; is a purpose in those great convulsions 
 of the globe which are described by geologists as having 
 occurred from long-past ages, through countless periods : 
 there has been a preparing in the earth of those mines 
 of coal and metal which furnish us with materials by 
 which such conquests have been obtained over physical 
 nature, and, to a certain extent, the world subdued to the 
 use of man. There is a purpose in the meanest flower 
 that blossoms, and in the lowest kind of animals : all have 
 their appropriate place in the system of nature, and min- 
 ister somewhat to the sense of beauty and the means of 
 enjoyment. There is a purpose (even for us) in the re- 
 motest star that shines, although its light may be travelling 
 thousands of years before it arrives in sight of mortal 
 things : it brings contributions to science, ministers to spe- 
 culation, and helps to enlarge the mental conceptions of 
 mankind. 1? there be purpose in all these things — if 
 nature never works aimlessly, — is it possible for us to 
 believe but what humanity also has its end, aim, and pur- 
 pose in the world, and that that end. aim. and purpose is 
 something more dignified than twisting threads together, 
 forming cloth, measuring silk, distributing the various com- 
 modities winch people need for food and elothing— thus 
 '-.i aring away year after year, and at length coming to the 
 grave, having done nothing more or better than all this ? 
 if such ready be the end of life, how many machines are 
 there which have as noble a destiny as man, and whose 
 structure for those purposes is as complete as that of the 
 human frame! How much the unconscious machine does 
 now. which human beings once toiled to accomplish ! The 
 Turkish crier still proclaims the hour from the minaret; 
 but our eioeks perform that office much better, and with 
 gn ater accuracy and regularitv. The carrying of buckets 
 of water is superseded bv pipes and canals; steam, with its 
 hundred arms, does what human hands formerly wearied 
 and wore themselves to the bone in the accomplishment of. 
 Surclv if this be all which is required of man — if to be
 
 268 LECTURE XVII. 
 
 productive upon the principles of political economy and to 
 realise national wealth be the only object for which huma- 
 nity was created, our nature is scarcely a more honour- 
 able object than the meanest thing which crawls upon the 
 ground, or than the unconscious engine which performs 
 its master's work. 
 
 I turn, then, from these occupations, as not shewing 
 what humanity is, what it was made for and intended to 
 be. I look to the construction of man's nature to ascer- 
 tain what its purpose really is; in like manner as we 
 should look to the wheels and levers of a machine to dis- 
 cover what it is adapted to realise, upon what materials its 
 powers can be brought to bear, and what will be the 
 change it will effect upon those materials. I look at the 
 constitution of humanity, with its capacity for thought, 
 feeling, affection, and exertion. In the most productive 
 labour I do not see the means of accomplishing the chief 
 end of man's being : but when I see the senses so alive as 
 to thrill at every sight of beauty and sound of harmony, so 
 quick that nothing escapes them, so active that they range 
 around, and bring home, like bees to their hive, all the 
 treasures and diversities which nature and art without us 
 can provide; when I see the memory piling up the records 
 of past ages, of the discoveries of science, in its ample 
 storehouse, classifying and arranging them there, so that 
 everything is ready for use, and can be properly applied 
 at the moment it is wanted, — when I perceive thought and 
 reason operating like a skilful architect, laying deep the 
 foundations, and piling high and firm the structure of intel- 
 lectual character, — when I witness affection flowing out 
 richly and freely, having returned back again into its own 
 bosom the good it bestows upon others, — when I see the 
 active powers and principles working good alike for the 
 individual and the community, and man growing himself 
 rich in thoughts and recollections of the past and hopes of 
 the future, just in proportion as he is ministering those 
 same thoughts and hopes to his countrymen or fellow- 
 creatures, — when I note progress made from year to year ; 
 the mind able to take a loftier flight ; the thought ex- 
 hibiting grandeur, variety, and richness ; affection flowing 
 more clearly, free, and strong, and the sum of usefulness 
 augmenting on all sides ; — why then I think I see some- 
 thing of a fulfilment of the end for which man was created ;
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE. 269 
 
 I behold objects worthy of his powers and mental opera- 
 tions, — and trace their reasonable adaptation to the end 
 which is to be accomplished by them — something upon 
 which one can rest, towards which every individual should 
 aspire, — in that aspiration realising the good which the 
 lightened burden of class-legislation, or the interference 
 of opinion to mitigate the pains of humanity, may give 
 him an opportunity of doing; but for whom the opportu- 
 nity is worthless unless there be also the disposition. To 
 excite that disposition, to shew what there is to engage the 
 leisure when it can be attained, to add strength to the 
 argument against needlessly taxing the power of human 
 endurance, and to assist those who would emancipate 
 themselves from what is. even to society itself, a discre- 
 ditable thraldroiu, is what I contemplate in the present 
 lecture, and which forms, I think, a not inappropriate con- 
 tinuation of the remonstrances which have already been 
 made against wearing out human lives in toil needlessly 
 protracted, whether by the avarice or indifference of those 
 who have the power of beneficially interposing. 
 
 Man was not made for mere animal enjoyment: his 
 nature has never been bowed so low as that. It is one of 
 the great vices and worst results of the system described 
 in the last lecture, that it seems almost to incapacitate 
 those who are subject to it for any but animal enjoyments. 
 Worn out by their long hours, they look around for stimulus, 
 and mere physical stimulus is the first which offers. Thus, 
 what they have of their own in time is, from the fact of its 
 being reduced within the narrowest limits, in the greater 
 danger of being misapplied. The very circumstance which 
 should make it most precious has a tendency to render it 
 most worthless. Whatever their weariness of mind and 
 body, if they can be induced to reflect, it is impossible for 
 them to rest in this. Tin: ancients, who summed up their 
 morale in the words, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die," — when they graced their feast by the presence 
 of a skeleton, and poured out. their libations before it as if 
 in mockery — evinced by that very act that they were not 
 tin 1 mere brutes which they choose to represent themselves. 
 The sot who muddles his brains with beer thinks that he is 
 indulging social enjoyment ; he seeks for company, or he 
 will invent to himself some plea of necessity, and will do 
 something to mitigate, even to his dim intellect, the deep
 
 270 lecture xvir. 
 
 degradation of the Hie he is leading. Why are we so rich 
 in Bacchanalian songs — why that long train of lyrics, from 
 Greek Anacreon to Anacreon Moore ? Why, but that in- 
 tellect would not bow itself to the enjoyment of the bottle 
 without something to excuse its aberrations to its own 
 thoughts. Humanity said, " I will twine the cup with 
 flowers ; and it shall be the flowers that will excuse me 
 for taking the Circean draught which transforms me into a 
 beast." There has always been a protest of our nature 
 against life being so reduced ; having no better object than 
 the beer-barrel; which, referring to a class of writers in 
 this country, has been said to be the basis of the British 
 constitution, but which certainly is not the foundation or 
 the end of life to humanity. 
 
 If we cannot find in this class an exemplification of the 
 real purpose of our being, intellectually and morally, nei- 
 ther do we in some who, speaking in the common language 
 of society, are "much above" this class, and who, indeed, 
 think themselves qualified to set an example to those 
 whom they deem their inferiors — I mean your quiet, 
 thriving, well-to-do people — your conformists to law, 
 opinion, and whatever may be established — whose creed is 
 that " whatever is is right," and who deem it especially 
 right that they themselves should be comfortably off, and 
 have no such claims upon their time and labour as those 
 which press upon the less fortunate millions. What is life 
 as exhibited by a man of this description ? He is hu- 
 moured and spoilt in his infancy. In his very childhood 
 he is taught to distinguish between a rich and a poor rela- 
 tion, and to mark the difference in his infantile manners. 
 Then he sucks in the unquestionables of his catechism, 
 receiving " all that the nurse and all the priest have 
 taught," and holding it as his store of truth made up for 
 life. He goes to school ; but another is his teacher, and 
 he knows nothing of self-instruction. Vitality is never 
 aroused in him sufficiently for intellectual culture; yet he 
 reckons himself among " the educated classes." He ex- 
 claims, " Give the poor votes ! why how ignorant they are ! 
 They liave not had the advantages of education." For 
 himself, his own education was "the very best;" he went 
 to the same school with two young lords; and what better 
 pledge, therefore, could be given that his mind was pro- 
 perly matured and trained? Then, as lie grows up in life,
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE. 271 
 
 it is proper that lie should marry, and therefore he selects 
 for himself a wife ; that is, he rinds "an eligible partner" 
 for a sordid and decorous bargain. There is no heart in 
 the matter; lie looks about him in society, and it seems 
 axiomatical to him, that the classes which now exist have 
 always endured, and that it is quite right they should con- 
 tinue. He appeals to his Testament, and sees there, " The 
 poor ye shall always have with you," and infers that it is 
 unreasonable to complain of there being poverty in the 
 country. He sets it down as indubitable that the higher 
 classes were meant to rule. " Who should rule but those 
 who are at the top?" The middle classes; well, they 
 check the others by their petitions and remonstrances. 
 The lower classes, of course, should gratefully and obe- 
 diently submit to be governed, and be thankful that they 
 are ruled by their superiors. He has an implicit belief in 
 the; Church. Dissent he considers may be tolerated ; but 
 heresy and infidelity, if they are noisy, should be taught 
 decency by the wholesome ministry of tine and imprison- 
 ment. He admires all great poets; I do not say he reads 
 them. He thinks that Milton was sublime, Shakspeare 
 very various, and Burns's songs capital : but he also be- 
 lieves that genius has its irregularities; that Milton did a 
 most questionable thing when he wrote his book upon 
 divorce; that Burns had better never have touched whis- 
 key ; anil that if Shakspeare did really poach, it was very 
 irregular to meddle with the property of Sir Thomas Lucy. 
 He goes to picture-galleries. He would have gone in the 
 days of Fuseli's Milton-gallery. Perhaps he would have had 
 the remark thrown at him which a similar visitant had at 
 that gallery : he inquired of the painter what this and that 
 meant, and being referred for an explanation of all the 
 pictures to Milton, he said, '• Well, 1 think I shall read 
 Milton." "You had better not," said the painter, "you 
 will find it confounded tough work." Whatever the coun- 
 try has raised to tin; rank of a classic, is with him a work 
 to be spoken of respectfully. There are " new things," 
 and " strange notions," which he opines would perhaps 
 be as well subjected to the criticism of her Majesty's 
 attorney-general. Thus he goes on through life, thriving 
 and prospering. He offends no one except those who 
 offend society; he keeps upon good terms with every pre- 
 judice afloat ; he supports every reform when it is on the
 
 0*70 
 
 LECTURE XVII. 
 
 point of being carried by an overwhelming majority, but 
 not under any other circumstances. At length he is borne 
 most respectablv and creditably to his grave, carriages-and- 
 four folloMing his hearse, earning perhaps such an epitaph 
 as I have seen in some work of fiction of the last genera- 
 tion, and which may serve for the whole class : — 
 
 " Here lies the body of John Tompkins, who 
 Departed this life aged fifty-two ; 
 After a long and painful illness, that 
 He bore with Christian fortitude, though fat. 
 He died, lamented greatly by this poem, 
 And all who had the happiness to know him." 
 
 It is not in this way of gently sliding through life with- 
 out eitber thougbt or heart, and doing as much harm in 
 the world as many people perpetrate with evil thoughts 
 and bad hearts (because whatever is wrong and exists 
 extensively in society has its support — its standing army of 
 defenders — in people of this class) ; — it is not here either 
 that I should look, any more than in the sot and drunkard, 
 for that which constitutes the object of human existence. 
 It is in the general development of our powers and facul- 
 ties, in having them all called into play, enjoying the out- 
 ward circumstances and rights, as far as they can be 
 obtained from society, which best minister to the full and 
 free development of each, and then, in proportion to their 
 natural working, accomplishing the complete man ; just as 
 the plant in a favourable soil, not touched or marred by 
 the hand of external violence, will, under the dews of hea- 
 ven, and in the free and breezy air, put forth its boughs, 
 develope its foliage, and exhibit itself the complete tree 
 which nature intended to display. 
 
 I consider, therefore, that all persons in whom some 
 particular kind of perception is dead, or some particular 
 function of action is unused and is but partially developed, 
 so far fail of achieving the real end of human life. 
 
 [After a variety of illustrations, from history and ficti- 
 tious characters, of the evils of imperfect development, Air. 
 Fox continued :] 
 
 False education is at the root of much of this. Where 
 is the parent or teacher who takes the child and says, 
 " This child shall be what nature intended ; whatever there 
 is in it I will ( ndeavour fairly to develope ; disposing it 
 over to shew itself that which it really is, without endea-
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE. 273 
 
 vouring to assume, in order to consult the opinions of 
 others?" People do not act in this manner. They want 
 to twist the child according to their own turn; to cast it in 
 a mould, that it may be a copy of their own moral image, 
 something to prolong them, and not a thing existing in and 
 for itself as an independent being. Activity is the nature 
 of the child, — to see, hear, handle, investigate. It is fond 
 of taking things to pieces; of exercising its lungs and mak- 
 ing a noise. It likes to be moving and doing something. 
 All this is good in the child : it is the tendency of its 
 being. But it is the custom of people to avoid all the 
 convenience of co-operation, — to have their own small 
 house for their castle, — and so to live as that every move- 
 ment of the child shall inconvenience the parent ; and 
 therefore even the natural impulse to exercise its senses 
 and physical powers is continually checked with such 
 expressions as, "Nov." be: quiet! Do be quiet!" Then 
 they arc further corrupted, the parent saving, "You shall 
 have a cake if you are quiet;" or " You shall be whipped 
 if you make a noise." Mrs. Wesley, the mother of the 
 great John Wesley, used to whip her children until they 
 learned to " cry softly." Then the child goes to school. 
 Where is the teacher ? How often does he say (there may 
 be some who do) to himself, " I will endeavour to let this 
 youth realise whatever is in him. He shall have a transpa- 
 rent bosom, and not be afraid that any one should see the 
 heart beating within. He shall call things by their right 
 names, whatever other people may call them. No sanctity 
 of years shall be allowed to be a veil between him and the 
 truth. He shall seek his rightful position in society." 
 Where there is such a teacher, he would say to himself, 
 "Were I royal preceptor, and had George the Third or 
 Louis the Sixteenth under my care, seeing how excellent 
 a turn the one had for farming, and the other for making 
 locks, 1 would never have put the one on the throne of 
 England, or the other upon that of France; but I would 
 have sent this to his acres, and that to his forge and ma- 
 chinery. Thus shall the boy fairly work out his own 
 mind, and then go out in the world to uphold the right 
 and protest against the wrong ; to render what is due to 
 others, and claim what is just for himself; to uplift his 
 voice like a trumpet when he beholds oppression stalking 
 through the land ; to unmask hvpocrisv ; and, as he lives, 
 l- 2
 
 274< LECTURE XVII. 
 
 so in his death, even should he meet the fate of a martyr, 
 shew himself one of the realities of God and nature's form- 
 ing, and not one of the mere phantasmagorical figures 
 that society exhibits as though they were existences." 
 Indeed, were a teacher to be understood even to think in 
 this way, 1 fear he would stand but little chance of getting 
 on in his occupation. Most likelv the current of opinion 
 among his neighbours would be, that the schoolmaster 
 himself would come to the workhouse, and that what few 
 pupils he had would very probably arrive at the gallows. 
 We teach our very children to be proud and hypocritical 
 under the form of religion. How many thousands and 
 millions there are, I suppose, who have been taught to 
 repeat that hymn for children of Dr. Watts' — 
 
 " Whene'er I take my walks abroad, 
 How many poor I see ! 
 What shall I render to my God 
 For all his gifts to me r" 
 
 As if not to be poor were a special gift of God, and wove 
 itself into a religious feeling; as though §there were a spe- 
 cial divine favour in this child being born a young gen- 
 tleman or lady, and not the offspring of poor parents. I 
 once heard this verse parodied in a form much more rea- 
 sonable : — 
 
 "Whene'er I take my walks abroad, 
 How many pigs I see ! 
 What shall I render to my God, 
 Who made no pig of me I" 
 
 And very much better indeed would it have been for the 
 young master or miss to have been made a pig than a 
 proud hypocrite in youth, looking upon the distinctions of 
 fortune and rank as dispensations of Divine power and 
 partiality. All the great masters of education, who have 
 endeavoured to penetrate into this purpose as a means ot 
 unfolding and cherishing human nature, have striven in the 
 same direction to turn it from a semblance to a reality. 
 Why did Milton, in his Letter to Hartlib, recommend the 
 reading of Greek and Latin authors which were generally 
 neglected in the schools ? Why did he enjoin their exercise 
 in manly sports and drilling, so as, if need be, to draw the 
 sword in the cause of freedom, as well as to wish it suc- 
 cess ? Why did he tell them to soothe their minds with
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE. 275 
 
 solemn music, that thoy might recur, strengthened and 
 refreshed, to the operations of pure intellect ? It was all 
 to make education a pure and real thing in England ; 
 something that should train up youth to win back for his 
 country her ancient prerogative, as he describes it, " of 
 teaching the nations how to live." This, too, was shewn in 
 that love of truth which Locke enjoined and manifested, 
 and which made him so earnestly enjoin the always search- 
 ing out to the very bottom of the question, finding upon 
 what point it turned, deciding it upon its own merits. In 
 a similar spirit, Rousseau's eloquence blazed over Europe, 
 bringing mothers and fathers back to something like a 
 sense of the duties imposed on them by nature, and the 
 relation they stood in to their offspring. It was this which 
 made Pestalozzi take his pupils out of close rooms, and 
 bring them into the Held to study botany, point them to 
 the starry heavens to learn astronomy : all forming in the 
 same way. all proclaiming this one great truth, that educa- 
 tion is perverted now by resting in conventionalism. It is 
 needful to go back to realities, to study nature in our 
 teaching, and thereby to realise the purposes of nature in 
 the lives of the pupils. 
 
 Another influence in society which acts hostilely as to 
 the accomplishment of the purposes of life, is the condition 
 of woman. The subject of the last and the present lecture 
 has as much relation to females as to men. As great wrong 
 is done when their time is unduly occupied, their frame 
 worn out, and their minds debarred from the intellectual and 
 the moral culture, for which they have as much occasion, 
 and to which they have as much right, as other portions of 
 mankind. In theological language, they have " souls to be 
 saved," as well as their brothers, fathers, or husbands: and 
 that saving is only in healthful and beneficent operations 
 upon their own minds and thoughts. And yet how are 
 they situated, even those who have not to toil in the way 
 which has hem described ? What is their course of life 
 from early years? They look forward to being dependent 
 agents, ministering to others, instead of realising indivi- 
 dually good for themselves, which they should aspire to as 
 well as others. The law of society seems to be founded 
 upon that expression of .Milton : — 
 
 " lie for God onlv, she for God in him."
 
 276 LECTURE XVII. 
 
 And the notion of Deity is by no means improved by 
 looking at it through such a medium. Their early instruc- 
 tion is made to bear upon their future prospects. Often 
 there is the very reverse of what would be expedient in 
 education — which should be to soften the rougher sex, 
 and render more firm the gentler. Instead of that, the 
 training of schools makes the nature of the boy yet more 
 iiproarious and rough than it would be of itself; while 
 it softens delicacy and gentleness into weakness, which 
 avenges the wrong afterwards by the evil results to which 
 it leads. Then again, there is the refusal of the rights of 
 property to married women. Why, what a wrong in our 
 institutions is this ! The woman whose energy and talent 
 realises even a princely fortune is still a mere dependent 
 on the pleasure of perhaps an indolent and worthless hus- 
 band. She may have to petition, as Mrs. Siddons had, 
 to her husband, of whom nobody knew anything except in 
 that capacity, for not being left dependent upon others, 
 when she had for many years supported him in luxury, by 
 her exertions, which he could not otherwise have attained. 
 Till a very recent period, so hard was the law upon separated 
 wives, that they were not allowed to see even their young 
 children: and after how many debates in Parliament and 
 continued years of struggle was it that the law was ob- 
 tained, by which, under certain restrictions, and with 
 amazing care and caution, a judge was authorised to allow 
 a mother to see her own children of six or seven years' 
 old. In our police-cases, what is the state of women who 
 are daring enough to bring a case of wrong before such 
 tribunals ? Let her have been insulted, her door have 
 been broken open, and what is the result ? Perhaps she 
 is put into the witness-box, and cross-examined there until 
 she faints ; and at last the rich offender is dismissed with a 
 fine of a few pounds or even shillings, which he pays at 
 once and departs to his enjoyments, she having suffered 
 by far the most of the two. Of all the different inflictions 
 of our laws, I think the severest punishment is that which 
 falls upon women who are guilty of having been insulted 
 by some wealthy or powerful man. It is scarcely worth 
 while to advert in this lecture to political matters ; and yet 
 one can scarcely forget altogether the glaring incongruity, 
 that no woman whatever in the country, though her ac- 
 quirements may be ever so large, though her property is
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE. 277 
 
 extensive, is reckoned either to have intellect or morality 
 enough to have a voice in the election of one out of some 
 650 members of the legislative body, which is itself only 
 one-third of the whole law-making machinery; and yet one 
 woman, oven in early youth, has authority (no man could 
 wield it better) over questions of peace and war, the disposal 
 of millions, and an absolute right to reject any legislative 
 measure whatever. When the intellect of woman dis- 
 tinguishes itself, what happens ? Let her not merely in 
 the lighter regions of fanciful composition, but in the 
 sterner exercise of thought, have inculcated truth, and 
 taught the world lessons which are worth knowing; and 
 ten to one, some ignorant fellow, simply because he is a 
 man ami she a woman, will tell her to leave such things to 
 manly intellect, go home to her mother, make puddings, 
 and darn stockings. Now is all this compatible with the 
 growth of intelligence and the development of the mental 
 and moral powers, with the realisation of the proper ends 
 of life in woman ? Is it not of a debasing tendency ? Does 
 it not wrong her, and in so doing injure man also? The 
 influence of females, which is so often talked about, is 
 really a degrading thing both to those who exercise it and 
 those who are its subjects. It would be a thousand times 
 better to give a more legitimate sphere and degree of 
 power, than to throw woman upon what is called her 
 proper mode or sphere of influence — that of endeavour- 
 ing to prevail, in defiance of reason and principle, on the 
 determination, by mere cajolery, coaxing, or obstinacy. 
 Neither party is placed in a creditable position by the ex- 
 ercise of this kind of influence; but given the same chance 
 — or, I would say, made a sharer in the better chance which 
 I hope will be gained for both sexes — they then minister 
 through their varied power of clearness and sternness it 
 may be on the one hand, and truthfulness and gentleness 
 on the other, leading society onward towards that state of 
 existence, in which institutions, instead of keeping back 
 individual qualities, shall cherish them, and give them 
 when realised their full measure of enjoyment. Institu- 
 tions have the same delects in them. How full of incon- 
 gruities they are ! We mix up inequalities the most glaring, 
 yet preserving the regular declaration from Sunday to Sun- 
 day in our churches of the fraternity and brotherhood of 
 all mankind. We mix up the most incongruous preten-
 
 278 LECTURE XVI r. 
 
 sions ; and I do not know where actual human life can be 
 better exhibited in its divergence from the real purpose of 
 life, than from that point in Westminster Abbey in which 
 the cold bust of the poet seems to look down on the poets 
 who were starving in their lives, though honours are accu- 
 mulated on their bones, — to whom society refused bread 
 in life, and gave a stone after death, — looking down not 
 only on them, but upon warriors, politicians, and men of 
 wealth, occupying a much more conspicuous position, and 
 with more gorgeous display of marble memorials, — and 
 beyond these, the faded banners of a by-gone chivalry, but 
 still fluttering in the air, as though they were to keep alive 
 something of that obsolete time. And then the present 
 possessors of the building, from which its founders are ex- 
 cluded, going through their formal chants, and pocketing 
 their pence for the exhibition of the place, — looking on 
 all this, well may the bust of the poet have inscribed 
 upon it : 
 
 " Life's a jest, all things shew it ; 
 
 I thought so once, and now I know it." 
 
 But the bitterness of this exclamation warns us that there 
 is a deeper truth; that this jest is but superficial alter all; 
 that the possessors of national temples, those who now act 
 according to their own will in such stately and stupendous 
 places, may transform life into a jest, and the institution 
 they uphold may till it with incongruities; but these are 
 not in nature; thev are only in the temporary aberrations 
 of society; and just in proportion as human nature asserts 
 its own power and dignity will life shew itself real and 
 earnest, and monuments of the departed will be in accord- 
 ance with the reality and earnestness of the living effort. 
 They will all harmonise, and the energetic and wise of 
 future days render a becoming homage to the wise and 
 the brave of times gone by. All institutions, educational 
 establishments, and social arrangements should imply the 
 tendency of man's nature and its progressiveness. They 
 should all consult, and be formed in accordance with, this 
 law of progress. It is the neglect of this which brings 
 nature and institutions into collision. Taws should not be 
 formed for perpetuity. They wear out; they are avoided, 
 and are made to mean something very opposite to what 
 their authors intended ; or being forgotten for a while, they
 
 THE CHIEF END OF HUMAN LIFE. 279 
 
 become the instruments of fraud and oppression. Educa- 
 tion ought never to be fixed. Laws that such and such 
 books only should be taught, or such and such lessons 
 learned, what are these but barriers to the human mind ? 
 Each generation will find its own best instruction, so as 
 to provide for the generation which will follow. Religion 
 itself should partake of this spirit of progress, and be in 
 harmony with man's knowledge. It must be so, or it be- 
 comes only a form of words, which may be repeated by 
 persons in peculiar garbs, with solemnity of tone, in con- 
 secrated places, but will not be truth to man's mind and 
 heart. Progression is the law of all; the gradual and na- 
 tural advance of science; the intellectual powers, affections, 
 and active' principles, if they have only fair play, and un- 
 due influence is kept from perverting them, marking out 
 the mode in which they shall untold themselves, so that 
 the being shall grow up what God and nature mean it 
 should be. The discoveries of astronomy and geology 
 shew that this is indeed a principle of nature, throughout 
 its wide range, in the long course of its operations. 
 
 A dim mist floats in the wide ether unnoticed, except 
 perhaps by tin 1 astronomer who watches it through his 
 telescope — one of the nebulas of which Ilerschel tells us. 
 At it floats it gathers matter here and there; it becomes 
 denser in its nucleus; it is evergrowing harder and larger; 
 and at length form begins to be impressed upon it; it takes 
 a revolving motion; it is already the germ of a world; it 
 becomes related to other bodies as sun, planet, or satellite. 
 No archangel has trained or schooled it to be globular and 
 regular; no compass of a master has measured out the 
 circle in which it should roll. The tendency of matter has 
 borne it thus along, and now it becomes yet more dense, 
 and forms of life develope themselves upon it ; first, some 
 strange wild shape, uncouth and huge, such as we behold 
 in fossil remains of ancient times of this our world ; then 
 the <v^'{\ casts down its roots; they explore the soil, feeling 
 for appropriate nutriment; it grows, and tremblingly peers 
 up above the surface, the air nourishes it, and it waves in 
 the breeze; the dews fall on it; it, grows and strengthens; 
 its leaves are put forth ; it matures its fruit, which falls on 
 the ground and reproduces the parent plant. Then higher 
 form- of animal life shew themselves, rising gradually 
 up to man at last, with powers of mastery over all. He
 
 280 LECTURE XVII. 
 
 comes into a world previously prepared for him, where, 
 from step to step, the whole process has gone on gradu- 
 ally and beautifully, working out, as from a germ, still 
 grander and grander consequences. And in the first dim 
 dawn of history, looking back as far as we can, we see 
 great men, each a patriarch with a family and retainers 
 around him, his own prophet, priest, and king, teaching 
 his own philosophy and religion, and tiiese households 
 ready to combine and agglomerate into cities, states, and 
 empires. The only evil is when powerful classes endea- 
 vour, for their own purposes, to fix any set of notions, or 
 form of society, and say, "Thus far shalt thou come, but 
 no farther." Then come scenes of strife and conflict, 
 tears and blood, which tyrannical governments and im- 
 positions upon conscience have so often produced in the 
 world, and will continue to produce, until the victory of 
 human freedom is won, ensuring the purposes of human 
 life. Then come martyrs and reformers, these being made- 
 synonymous terms; prophets are persecuted, and saviours 
 are crucified ; but though dead, they yet speak, until their 
 voice cries for and obtains, by the might of opinion in 
 gradually enlightened multitudes, from the powers that be, 
 for the people and for humanity, fair play in its toils and 
 its enjoyments, in its pursuits and its position, — fair play, 
 individually and socially, in its cradle and to its grave.
 
 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE HISTORY OF OPINION CONCERNING 
 DEATH, AND THE MENTAL .STATE INDUCED BY ITS AP- 
 PROACH. 
 
 (DELIVERED AT FINSBURY CHAPEL.) 
 
 i LECTURE I. 
 
 When Madame Roland was at the foot of the guillotine, 
 she requested writing-materials, and the delay of her exe- 
 cution for a few minutes, " that she might record the 
 strange thoughts which were rising in her mind." Would 
 that the request had been granted! That it was dictated 
 by vanity or affectation, or that it could possibly be a mere 
 contrivance to obtain a few more minutes of life, are sup- 
 positions totally inconsistent with the character of that pure 
 and noble-minded woman ; and the thoughts of such a 
 mind in the near prospect of death woidd have been most 
 welcome. Valuable, indeed, would be the genuine thoughts 
 and feelings of any mint! of a high order contemplating the 
 known close approximation of that most momentous change, 
 and especially if it take place under the ordinary circum- 
 stances of nature. We cannot help imagining that as man 
 approaches the separation of his present from his antici- 
 pated future being, some light from that remote region 
 must beam through the gloomy portal beneath which he 
 advances, and cast its lustre not only on the transition and 
 on what is beyond, but on what has already passed here ; 
 and shew this world, and the things of this world, under a 
 new aspect and other colouring, approaching more closely 
 to the reality than that in which they are generally con- 
 templated. But towards anything of this kind, which 
 woidd be a real revelation to the world on the subject of 
 death, and partially of life also, we only possess and we can 
 only hope for, approximation. It is not a time for the 
 use of the pen when man is anticipating for himself that 
 strange change, not are his verbal expressions likely to
 
 282 LECTURE XVI II. 
 
 reach us in their native and genuine force. Those by 
 ■whom lie is surrounded have usually their own feelings 
 and emotions to occupy them — their fears or griefs, or 
 their uncertain and wavering hopes : and, indeed, in most 
 instances in which we have minute records of the sayings 
 of persons at the approach of death, the record is influ- 
 enced by considerations that are almost certain to give it a 
 partial colouring, and has been dictated under the direction 
 of a proselyting or a sectarian or fanatical spirit, intent on 
 its own dogmas, and solicitous to find materials for their 
 illustration or their glorification. Nor can we take the 
 thoughts on death which have been written purposely for 
 the public in a season of health and of exertion. We can- 
 not be secure that such compositions are free from the in- 
 fluences which are apt to operate even on the thoughts of 
 those who have the public present to their imaginations. 
 Even the most truthful writers — those on whom we can 
 most rely, deriving our assurance from their mental cha- 
 racter as exhibited in their works and their lives — even 
 these will require more or less of allowance and of deduc- 
 tion to be made, when we refer to them for instruction con- 
 cerning an unexperienced event, the observations on which 
 must be so imperfect, and the consideration of which has 
 so much in it of remoteness from the reality. 
 
 The most authentic records of the dying are those 
 which relate to death as the result of violence ; and here 
 Ave have in many cases very minute verbal narratives ; but 
 then this is not exactly that of which we are in search. 
 The individual is here presumable to be in his ordinary 
 condition of health and strength. The monitions of ap- 
 proaching death are to him external and not internal. The 
 warning comes from an arbitrary power by which he is 
 surrounded, and not from the impulses of nature in his own 
 physical and mental constitution : nor, perhaps, can persons 
 in these circumstances ever escape altogether from the sug- 
 gestions of hope, or realise intently in their imaginations 
 the certainty that within so many days or hours their 
 earthly existence will be terminated. The destruction of 
 life, awful at all times, must be more than ever appalling to 
 the imagination when it is presented in a state of health 
 and of energy, devoid of those common natural notices 
 which forewarn of the approach of death. Possibilities 
 will suggest themselves to the mind of the person so situ-
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 283 
 
 ated ; there will be a want of faith in the future fact of his 
 approaching death ; he will advert to the contingencies 
 which may intervene and prevent the fiat that has gone 
 forth against him from being followed up to its actual 
 execution ; he may dream that political or social changes, 
 or even some of those strange convulsions to which mate- 
 rial nature is subject, may yet shake down the walls of his 
 prison, or arrest the hand of his executioner. So that in 
 all these instances there are deductions to be made, in ad- 
 dition to the peculiarity of the situation. And even when 
 we regard death under its most natural circumstances, still 
 in this case there is the failing which may take place of the 
 mental powers — the obscurity which may gradually gather 
 over the mind, and which will prevent our possessing that 
 which I have mentioned as so desirable — namely, the state 
 of thought and feeling realised by an individual in the 
 near approach of death. In the groat majority of cases, 
 the individual knows not that he dies. So much is the 
 power of thought previously enfeebled, so much are his 
 sensations dulled, that the great change is accomplished 
 without his being aware of what is going on : and perhaps 
 this is most properly called natural death. The change 
 begins when the higher powers of our being fail of their 
 full energy ; and according to the statement — the clear 
 and impressive statement — of the most philosophical of our 
 physiologists, such is the natural course of things: I allude 
 to the description of death given by Dr. Southwood Smith 
 in his work on the Philosophy of Health, which is the most 
 distincl picture of that great change, considered in its rela- 
 tion to our mental and physical being, that I am acquainted 
 with. lie has previously described the gradual formation 
 and building up of the human being, from the physical to the 
 mental. Death he describes as the reverse of this process: 
 
 " Death, when natural, is the last event of an extended 
 series, of which the first that is appreciable is a change in the 
 animal life, and in the noblest portion of that life. The higher 
 faculties fail in the reverse order of their development ; the re- 
 trogression is the inverse of the progression, and the noblest 
 creature, in returning to the state of non-existence, retraces step 
 by step each successive sta'ie by which it reached the summit of 
 life. In the advancing series the animal is superadded to the 
 organic life ; sensation, the lowest faculty of the animal life, pre- 
 cedes ratiocination, the highest. The senses, called into play at 
 the moment of birth, soon acquire the utmost perfection of which
 
 28-i LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 they are capable ; but the intellectual faculties, later developed, 
 are still later perfected, and the highest the latest. In the descend- 
 ing series the animal life fails before the organic, and its nobler 
 powers decay sooner and more rapidly than the subordinate. First 
 of all, the impressions which the organs of sense convey to the 
 brain become less numerous and distinct, and consequently the 
 material on which the mind operates is less abundant and perfect; 
 but at the same time, the power of working vigorously with the 
 material it possesses more than proportionally diminishes. Me- 
 mory fails ; analogous phenomena are less readily and less com- 
 pletely recalled by the presence of those which should suggest 
 the entire train ; the connecting links are dimly seen or wholly 
 lost ; the train itself is less vivid and less coherent ; train suc- 
 ceeds train with preternatural slowness, and the consequence of 
 these growing imperfections is that, at last, induction becomes 
 unsound just as it was in early youth ; and for the same reason, 
 namely, because there is not in the mental view an adequate 
 range of individual phenomena ; the only difference being that 
 the range comprehended in the view of the old man is too nar- 
 row, because that which he had learnt he has forgotten ; while 
 in the youth it is too narrow, because that which it is necessary 
 to learn has not been acquired. And with the diminution of in- 
 tellectual power, the senses continue progressively to fail ; the 
 eye grows more dim, the ear more dull, the sense of smell less 
 delicate, the sense of touch less acute, while the sense of taste, 
 immediately subservient to the organic function of nutrition, is 
 the last to diminish in intensity and correctness, and wholly fails 
 but with the extinction of the life it serves. But the senses are 
 not the onlv servants of the brain ; the voluntary muscles are so 
 equallv ; but these ministers to the master power, no longer kept 
 in active service, the former no longer employed to convey new, 
 varied, and vivid impressions, the latter no longer employed to 
 execute the commands of new, varied, and intense desires, be- 
 come successively feebler, slower, and more uncertain in their 
 action. The hand trembles, the step totters, and every move- 
 ment is tardy and unsteady. And thus, by the loss of one intel- 
 lectual faculty after another, by the obliteration of sense after 
 sense, by the progressive failure of the power of voluntary mo- 
 tion ; in a word, bv the declining energy and the ultimate ex- 
 tinction of the animal life, man, from the state of maturity, 
 passes a second time through the stage of childhood back to that 
 of infancy; lapses even into the condition of the embryo : what 
 the foetus was, the man of extreme old age is ; when he began 
 to exist, he possessed only organic life, and before he is ripe for 
 the tomb, he returns to the condition of the plant. And even 
 this merely organic existence cannot be long maintained. Slow 
 niav be the waste of the organic organs ; but they do waste, and 
 that waste is not repaired, and consequently their functions Ian-
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 285 
 
 guish, and no amount of stimulus is capable of invigorating their 
 failing action. The aiteries are rigid, and cannot nourish ; the 
 veins are relaxed, and cannot carry on the mass of blood that 
 oppresses them ; the lungs, partly choked up by the deposition 
 of adventitious matter, and partly incapable of expanding and 
 collapsing by reason of the feeble action of the respiratory appa- 
 ratus, imperfectly aerate the small quantity of blood that flows 
 'through them ; the heart, deprived of its wonted nutriment and 
 stimulus, is unable to contract with the energy requisite to pro- 
 pel the vital current ; the various organs, no longer supplied 
 ■villi the quantity and quality of material necessary for carrying 
 on their respective processes, cease to act ; the machinery stops, 
 and this is death. And now, the processes of life at an end, the 
 body falls within the dominion of the powers which preside uni- 
 versally over matter ; the tie that linked all its parts together, 
 holding them in union and keeping them in action, in direct op- 
 position to those jiowers, dissolved, it feels and obeys the new 
 attractions to which it has become subject ; particle after parti- 
 cle that stood in beautiful order fall from their place, the wonder- 
 ful structures they composed melt away, the very substances of 
 which those structures were built up are resolved into their pri- 
 mitive elements ; these elements, set at liberty, enter into new 
 combinations, and become constituent parts of new beings; 
 those new beings in their turn perish ; from their death springs 
 life, and so the changes go on in an everlasting circle.'' — Pliiio- 
 k-up/iy of Health, vol. i. pp. 68-72. 
 
 Perfect as I take this description to be physiologically, 
 I cannot regard it as perfect, nor was it intended so to 
 be, morally. The impression which it is adapted to leave, 
 which I think it must leave on every mind, of* a mere cir- 
 cling power of nature, a returning to the place whence it 
 arose, is not the impression which is fairly derivable from 
 the consideration of our whole being, physical and moral; 
 for I regard as essential to that being — as an instinct, if I 
 inav so call it, of our constitution — the aspiration after a 
 prolonged or renewed existence — the hope, the all-hut 
 universal hope, of immortality — and, combined with this 
 expectancy; the moral indication in man's being of prepa- 
 ration for another condition of existence. Though not 
 obviously in his physical structure, in that with which the 
 anatomist has to do, there is yet, I think, in his moral being 
 no lack of prophecy of another state for faculties which 
 here cannot be properly exercised upon objects with which 
 they have as much correspondence as the eye with the 
 liirht diffused through the material universe — which shew
 
 286 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 themselves, for their full development, and for their mature 
 and happy exertion, doomed vet to wait for some other 
 condition of existence, and which therefore are presump- 
 tion that such existence belongs to human destiny. 
 
 There are insects which change their mode of being — 
 which, from crawling on the earth or on the leaves of the 
 plant, fly in the air, and derive their nutriment and their 
 sensations from a very different sphere of existence. In 
 these there is a previous provision, and the anatomist, when 
 he dissects the crawling insect, finds in it the germ of 
 those wings which shall support its flight after it has un- 
 dergone its transformation. There is nothing analogous 
 in man's physical being; but there is in his moral. There 
 are semi-latent powers — there are imperfectly expanded 
 faculties — there are thoughts, feelings, passions, desires, 
 aspirations, which to his moral existence are what the em- 
 bryo wings of the chrysalis are to its physical being, and 
 which form a strong analogical argument, a sound moral 
 presumption, that future and higher existence belongs to 
 his nature, and to the design of his Creator. And it is not 
 merely in what we see externally — not merely in what the 
 knife of the anatomist may lay bare in the human form, 
 and demonstrate of death as a physical change; but in 
 the effects of its anticipated approach on his mind ; in 
 man's apprehensions as stimulated by the contemplation ; 
 in what he feels and thinks, the mode of his mind, in the 
 contemplation of death, and of the influences of death 
 upon his present and his future existence, that we would 
 look for illustration of death itself. 
 
 It is evident that men's state of mind in reference to 
 this subject must be largely wrought upon by their theo- 
 logical opinions. That religion which only inculcates a 
 divine Providence in this world, — that religion which con- 
 templates continued being, subjecting it, to a future judg- 
 ment, and to an eternal partition of the good and the 
 wicked, — or that religion which looks simply forward to 
 prolonged consciousness through some new and untried 
 state of being, — or that which contemplates an absorption 
 in the infinite spirit, the soul of the universe : these or what 
 other diversities religion may admit of, negative or positive, 
 in relation to futurity, must all have their action upon 
 men's state of mind, and must colour it differently. 
 
 But it is not merely religious opinion by which man is
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 287 
 
 influenced in the prospect of death ; various other causes 
 combine to act upon him, and their influences cannot be 
 disregarded. The circumstance of publicity, as we have 
 already remarked, must strongly affect his mind. ?dan, 
 dying in the full view of his fellow-creatures, must be 
 acted upon by the consciousness of their presence. He 
 must feel the power of opinion — the stimulus, perhaps, of 
 reputation, keeping down emotions that would else rise to 
 utterance, and frequently suggesting thoughts that would 
 not otherwise enter his mind, or giving them an undue and 
 unnatural predominance. Such is the death of the soldier 
 on the battle-field, when 
 
 " Fame is there to say vho bleeds, 
 And honour's eye en daring deeds." 
 
 The manners and customs of nations very much affect 
 the mode in which individuals contemplate death. There 
 arc regions in which life is considered habitually as a mere 
 trifle, compared with the preciousness attached to it in 
 other regions. The Hindoos are remarkable for thinking 
 little of it. The American Indians sacrifice it. chanting 
 their deuth-so:ig amid tortures, and in a state of high ex- 
 ultation. Different occupations lead men to regard death 
 with more or less of apprehension, and sometimes extin- 
 guish that apprehension altogether, and leave their minds 
 at liberty to contemplate particular arrangeme 1 "s as to the 
 mode in which it may cause them the least physical pain. 
 "When a ship is on tire, the veteran soldier or sailor quietly 
 seat-; himself on the powder-magazine, that he and the 
 vessel may explode together. The diseases by which per- 
 sons are affected colour their thoughts. They give in some 
 instances a tinge of gloom, whilst in others they excite 
 cheerfulness. The temperament, physical and mental, of 
 the individual, must needs have its mighty influence in this 
 case, as in all others; nor is it unaffected by the circum- 
 stance, whether in youth, in maturity, or in old age, man 
 is called to combat what is deemed the great enemy. 
 
 Bearing in mind these great influences, it is my purpose 
 to endeavour to trace, more in the historical than any other 
 order, the thoughts and feelings of individuals in relation 
 to death, so far as we can gather them from such of the 
 different records which remain as may suggest themselves 
 to mv recollection in the course vi' these lectures. And the
 
 288 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 first that naturally calls for our attention is death as it is 
 thus presented to us in the records of the ancient Hebrews. 
 And here we are struck by a remarkable peculiarity — I 
 mean, the general ignorance or non-reception by the Jew- 
 ish people, through the early period of their history, of the 
 doctrine of a future state. We find a deeper and a more 
 continuous blank in reference to that great and common 
 hope in their history than Ave do in the records perhaps of 
 any other people whatever. Their knowledge of a future 
 state has sometimes been asserted by theologians, and the 
 assertion supported by various ingenious inferences: but 
 the broad facts of their history are conclusive in refer- 
 ence to the whole period before the captivity in Babylon, 
 against its being generally entertained. Bishop Warburton 
 gives an able summary of this negative evidence, in his 
 celebrated work on the Divine Legation of Moses. 
 
 " As Moses did not teach, yea, forebore to teach, the doctrine 
 of a future state of rewards and punishments, so neither had the 
 ancient Jews, that is to say, the body of the people, any know- 
 ledge of it. The proof is striking, and scarce to be resisted by 
 any party or profession, but that of the system- maker. The 
 Bible contains a very circumstantial account of this people, 
 from the time of Moses to the great captivity ; not only the 
 history of public occurrences, but the lives of private persons 
 of both sexes, and of all ages, conditions, characters, and com- 
 plexions ; in the adventures of virgins, matrons, kings, soldiers, 
 scholars, parents, merchants, and husbandmen. They are given, 
 too, in every circumstance of life : captive, victorious, in sickness, 
 and in health ; in full security, and amidst impending dangers ; 
 plunged in civil business, or retired and sequestered in the 
 service of religion. Together with their story, we have their 
 compositions likewise : in one place we hear their triumphal, 
 in another their penitential strains. Here we have their ex- 
 ultations for blessing received ; there, their deprecations of 
 evil apprehended : here, they urge their moral precepts to their 
 contemporaries ; and there, again, they treasure up their pro- 
 phecies and predictions for the use of posterity ; and on each 
 denounce the threatenings and promises of Heaven. Yet in 
 none of these different circumstances of life, in none of these 
 various casts of composition, do we ever find them acting on 
 the motives, or influenced by the prospect, of a future slate ; 
 or indeed expressing the least hopes or fears, or even common 
 curiosity, respecting it ; but everything they do or say respects 
 the present life only; the good and ill of which are the sole 
 objects of their pursuits and aversions."
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 289 
 
 And what renders them a more curious object of con- 
 templation is, that in this connexion with the absence of 
 the usual anticipations of a future life, there was the pre- 
 sence of a strong conviction of a superintending, a national, 
 a particular Providence. The doctrine that there is a God 
 that reigneth in the earth, and who docth his will among 
 the children of men, was deeply inwrought into the moral 
 being of the ancient Israelites. They continually bore 
 this in mind — they applied it to everything which passed 
 of good and evil before them — to everything which they 
 hoped or feared. It was referred to continually whatever 
 they thought or did, and it forms a remarkable pecu- 
 liarity in connexion with their non-anticipation of immor- 
 tality. They hail, in combination also with both these, 
 the strong attachment which arose from their being not 
 merely a nation, but a separated race, the descendants of 
 tin; same parents, and brethren in a sense; more peculiar 
 than that which generally belong> to the nations of the 
 earth. As a specimen of the combination of these general 
 views in an individual, we may refer to the death of the 
 patriarch Jacob. In the last chapter but one of the book 
 of Genesis, we find that when his end was believed to be 
 approaching, his descendants were called around him, and 
 when they were gathered together, he pronounced his 
 blessing upon them, deemed and received as prophetical 
 by those to whom it was addressed. Having finished his 
 blessing, he thus proceeds: — 
 
 *' I am to be gathered unto my people ; bury me with my 
 fathers, in the cave that is in the held ofEphron the Hittite ; 
 in the cavt that is in the held of Machpelah, which is before 
 Mam re, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with 
 the field of Kphron the Hittite, for a possession of a bury- 
 ing-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; 
 there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife ; and there J 
 hurled Leah. The purchase of the held and of the cave that is 
 therein was from the children of Ileth. And when Jacob had 
 made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet 
 into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered untej 
 his people." 
 
 We see here, though but briefly glanced at, the dif- 
 ferent feelings which I have: been describing. We beheld 
 the patriarch's recognition of a superintending Providence. 
 We> find him making no allusion to a continued individual 
 
 Q
 
 290 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 existence, but his associations are with the past — his at- 
 traction is towards the grave of his father, and of those 
 dear to him — his soul seems longing to he in a state of 
 unconscious peace with them, and to regain something of 
 unity with them, by mouldering together in the grave. 
 The death of his son Joseph, mentioned in the next chap- 
 ter, is chiefly noticeable by rendering more prominent his 
 confidence in an overruling Providence. " God will surely 
 visit you, and bring you out of this land, unto the land 
 which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." 
 And he died adjuring them not to bury him, but preserve 
 his bones, that they might be carried up with them, and 
 thus enter on an unconscious possession of the land of the 
 promise. 
 
 When modern Christians are disposed to be censorious, 
 as modern Christians sometimes are, on those who hold 
 not the like faith with themselves, for their want of the 
 great death-hope of which Christianity boasts ; — when they 
 point to the non-anticipating bed of the dying unbeliever, 
 and, without regard for a life which may have been irre- 
 proachable, utter expressions of stern condemnation ; — let 
 it be remembered that such were the deaths of the patri- 
 archs of humanity — of the fathers of nations — of the oldest 
 members of that church which in most theologies is identi- 
 fied with the Christian church — of those who are believed 
 to have gone first into the kingdom of heaven, and to sit 
 down with whom is one of the common descriptions of 
 Paradise. Thus bounded were their views — and the futu- 
 rity that presented itself to their minds was a futurity to 
 be realised by their descendants, or their fellow-creatures, 
 in this our world. And if it be said that circumstances 
 are different in this particular, that those against whom 
 such censures are directed live at a time when the doctrine 
 of immortality is known, when the hope of immortality is 
 cherished, — let it net be hastily assumed that no doctrine 
 of immortality had been taught in the time of the patri- 
 archs, or that no hope of immortality had been cherished 
 even in those remote, and early, and comparatively bar- 
 barous times; — for the truth is, that the doctrine had been 
 previously taught — that the hope was then cherished; and 
 already in Egypt had the notion of the metempsychosis 
 and its dogmas sent the spirit of man after its departure 
 from the bodv through different states of animal existence
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 291 
 
 for purification, until it might he prepared for re-absorp- 
 tion in the infinite and everlasting Spirit. The fact of 
 the existence of such a doctrine is repeatedly asserted by 
 writers who have endeavoured to throw upon tins subject 
 all the light which they could possibly accumulate. Dr. 
 Russell, in his ('annexion of Sacred and Profane History, 
 remarks on the patriarchal time that — 
 
 " If any connexion is to lie traced between the funeral care 
 of the Egyptians, and their belief in the separate existence of 
 the soul, there cannot be any doubt, that, before the days of the 
 patriarch Joseph, the philosophers of the Nile cultivated the 
 doctrine of immortality. That such a connexion did subsist 
 is confirmed by a remark of Diodorus Siculus, concerning the 
 inhabitants of -Memphis, and of the adjacent country. These 
 people, he assures us, regarded the term of human life as 
 bounded by very narrow limits, and therefore manifested the 
 greatest anxiety to leave behind them a high reputation for 
 virtue. On this principle they called the dwellings of the living 
 by the name of tents, because they were to occupy them only 
 a very short time; whereas they denominated the sepulchres of 
 the dead rternal mansions, because they were to pass an infinite 
 age with the gods below, for the same reason they were little 
 solicitous about the structure of their houses; whilst upon their 
 tombs thev lavished the utmost care and expense." — Vol. i. 
 p. 310. 
 
 The same writer remarks in another place — 
 
 "That the learned orders, among the Egyptians in the days 
 of Moses, held the tenet of the soul's immortality is rendered 
 more than probable, not only by their usages respecting the 
 treatment of dead bodies which had a distinct reference to a 
 future life, but a!-o by the opinions on that subject which pre- 
 vailed among them at the early period when they were first 
 visited by the Greek philosophers. The oldest writers in Greece 
 r cord ir as an unquestionable tradition, that the Egyptians 
 were the first who taught the imperishable nature of the human 
 spirit. Bui it is equally clear that the priests of On, and of the 
 other religious schools which tlcurished in the kingdom of the 
 Pharaohs, joine i with the doctrine now stated other specula- 
 tions, which rendered it altogether unfit to be used as a sanction 
 for the great system of divine and moral legislation, which 
 .Moses was commissioned to establish among the peculiar people 
 of Jehovah. 
 
 " The wise men of Egypt, there is great reason to believe, 
 thought with their brethren of the remoter East, that the soul 
 of man was doomed to enjoy its highest and most desirable 
 beatitude in its re-union with the Divine Spirit ; from which,
 
 292 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 during its abode upon earth, and in the various forms through 
 which it had to pass, it was painfully and reluctantly separated. 
 The tenet of the metempsychosis was necessarily ingrafted upon 
 the doctrine of absorption ; for it soon became manifest that the 
 lives of most men were not sufficiently pure to justify the expec- 
 tation of an immediate enjoyment of celestial happiness in the 
 bosom of the Most Holy. It appeared necessary that the con- 
 taminated soul should undergo a process, which might at once 
 inspire a hatred of sin and wash away its defilements. The 
 purified spirit was at length to return to its original bodv ; the 
 mortal term allotted to which it would then be enabled to spend 
 in loving good and abstaining from evil, and would thus become 
 prepared for its ultimate bliss, as a part of the great soul of the 
 world." — Vol. i. p. 30. 
 
 But although this doctrine, taught by others hut not 
 included in their own religion, had no distinct and direct 
 influence over the minds of the ancient Hebrews, we yet 
 find indications of it in the very fondness which drew them 
 towards the sepulchres of their fathers, led them to seek 
 for a re-union in death with the object of their affections, 
 and, as they had not a futurity to anticipate personalis, 
 brought vividly and strongly before their minds the tem- 
 poral destiny of their descendants. These were all, as it 
 were, blind gropings after the idea of a continuous being — 
 gropings which, of themselves, shew the principle at work 
 to which we owe the hope, and from which we derive so 
 much of the proof. Still it is certain that, till the time 
 when the Pharisees became the predominant sect in Judea, 
 the Jewish orthodoxy did not include the doctrine of a 
 future life. But the uncertainty, the doubt, the separa- 
 tion of the mind from such a doctrine, was not to be 
 borne : there was always uneasiness under it — uneasiness 
 felt alike by the wise and the vulgar of that people, 
 through many successive generations. There are distinct 
 indications of this in their addictedncss to witchcraft and 
 necromancy, which promised for them some communica- 
 tion with another world — which professed even to call the 
 dead from their graves and elicit oracles from their mouths. 
 There are indications of it in the notion which they enter- 
 tained of Hades, of the invisible state of the dead, which at 
 length became popular. In Judea, and in tiie time of the 
 prophets, this was the prevailing notion of a future state, 
 and it endured till the time of Christ— a doctrine remark- 
 ably obscured by translation, and shewing how much the
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 293 
 
 theological 1 > i as of a translator may do in suppressing, 
 unconsciously perhaps, that which is essential to a com- 
 plete view of the opinions whose records he is offering 
 in another language. The Jewish term Sheol, which cor- 
 responds with the Greek Hades, instead of being preserved 
 as it should, being a word which can have no perfect cor- 
 respondent in our language, is sometimes rendered "Hell," 
 and sometimes " Grave." The identity is, therefore, not 
 presented to us as we read the pages of the English Bible, 
 and the notion itself is obliterated, neither one nor the 
 other designating that which the Hebrews meant by their 
 term S/ico/. By " Hell" we commonly understand the 
 place of torment ; by '" Grave," that spot of earth to which 
 the dead body is committed. The original of these two 
 words, in a great variety of cases where they occur, meant 
 neither one nor the other, but a supposed immense cavern, 
 occupying the centre of the earth, to which departed what 
 survived alike of the righteous and the wicked here; 
 where they were to be found with the implements of their 
 human avocations — the sovereign with his sceptre, and the 
 soldier with his sword: and the different modes of exist- 
 once, jovous or miserable, were supposed to inflict some 
 retribution on them for their conduct during life. It 
 is the state to which the prophet Isaiah refers in his 
 triumphal ode on the downfal of the Babylonian monarch. 
 He describes his descent not into, literally, the earthly 
 grave, nor into the hell of modern theology, but his des- 
 cent to the Hades — the receptacle and abode of the spirits 
 of the dead. I read from the translation of Bishop Lowth, 
 who has retained the term " Hades :" 
 
 " Hades from beneath is moved because of thee, to mcjt thee 
 at thy coming. 
 
 He rouseth fur thee the mighty dead, all the great chiefs of 
 the earth ; 
 
 lie maketh to rise up from their thrones, all th.' kings of the 
 nations. 
 
 All of them shall accost thee, and shall say unto thee: 
 
 Ait thou, even thou too, become weak as we? Arc thou 
 made like unto us ? 
 
 Is, then, thy pride brought down to the grave ; the sound of 
 thy sprightly instruments .' 
 
 Is the vermin become thy couch ; and the earth-worm thy 
 covering .'
 
 294' LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the 
 morning I" 
 
 Here it is evidently not a state of torment, but in the 
 assembly of the shades of departed monarchs — monarchs 
 of all the nations of the earth — that the Babylonian tyrant 
 is received with acclamations. And thus, when Ezekiel 
 is denouncing tremendous calamities, utter desolation, and 
 destruction on the Egyptian monarch and the different 
 tribes allied with him, he represents them all as about to 
 be swept away from the face of the earth, and to descend 
 (those legions of warriors) into this receptacle of the de- 
 parted — into Hades. 
 
 " Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast 
 them down, even her, and the daughters of the famous nations, 
 unto the nether parts of the earth, with them that go down into 
 the pit," 6cc. — Ezekiel xxxii. 18-31. 
 
 And thus does he enumerate, one after another, the na- 
 tions, tribes, and people, the legions and armies, that had 
 gone down into this immense abyss where was congregated 
 whatever remained of human life in all its boundless di- 
 versities. This is the '•Hell" to which the Psalmist refers 
 in his description of the universal presence of the Deity — 
 " If I ascend into heaven, thou art there : if I make my bed 
 in hell (Hades, Sheol), behold thou art there" also. This 
 is the scene which is adopted for the parable of the rich 
 man and Lazarus. They are both in " Heir or " Hades," 
 in the state of the departed; they are in sight of each other, 
 though there is a gulf between them — there, in ''Hades," 
 the rich man lifting up his eyes in torment — there, in 
 " Hades," Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, enjoying the 
 bliss of the righteous. This was the notion, with all its 
 incongruities, in which the common mind found refuge — 
 by the adoption of which it shewed that it could not bear 
 to look death in the face, to see one generation passing 
 away after another, without finding some outlet for the 
 aspirations of the human soul, or its strong desires of 
 continued being and consciousness. And while the vulgar 
 mind thus struggled and strenuously contended against the 
 notion of annihilation, the wise had their struggles too, 
 and impressive records remain to us — two impressive re- 
 cords of the way in which thev did their uart in this hu-
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 295 
 
 mar; conflict. One of these is the book of Job — the other 
 the book of Ecclesiastes. In the book of Job the great 
 difficulty with which the writer contends is the unequal 
 distribution of good and evil in this life — their want of 
 reference to moral character. This topic he pursues 
 through the extraordinary scene of his introduction ; the 
 accumulation of calamity on the head of the most righte- 
 ous man. as Job is described to be; the reproaches con- 
 sequently brought on him from his friends, who inferred 
 his iniquity from his suffering; the energetic protests 
 which he uttered against their unjust conclusion, and the 
 manner in which the Divine interposition is represented 
 as closing the controversy. But the boo!; of Job does not 
 shew us a mind arriving by this process at the doctrine of 
 futurity. However some passages may be construed as 
 allusive to that state — whatever may be inferred by theo- 
 logians subjecting sentences to the strictest verbal analysis 
 of criticism — the spirit of the book certainly conveys no 
 such conception. Its tendency is to silence remonstrance, 
 not to solve the difficulty. Indeed, by the speech ascribed 
 to the Deity, and the temporal happiness of the cata- 
 strophe, the writer seems to give up the contest. His moral 
 is, the submission of the mind to the mystery which it can- 
 not pierce, but yet against which it is impelled from time 
 to time to combat with all its powers to its own wounding. 
 It is hushed by the authority which claims the right to 
 decree all things, and whose; decrees are received by a 
 submissive i'aitli that advances to the bounds of sublimity 
 when it declares, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
 him." 
 
 The author of the book of Ecclesiastes was of a far 
 more comprehensive soul. His difficulties did not relate 
 merely to the distribution, of external tilings — to the com- 
 mon prosperity and calamities of life; but to the whole 
 state and being of man upon the earth. The mystery to 
 him was in man's destiny; presenting itself in much the 
 same colours whether he took it at its best or at its worst; 
 and his spiritual autobiography under this pressure — under 
 the sense of intense gloom which brooded over the whole 
 system of being — is perhaps the sublimest effusion of the 
 kind upon record. There is an appalling grandeur in his 
 reiterated exclamation, " All is vanity ; vanity of vanities, 
 all is vanity:" and in his amplified descriptions of the
 
 296 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 thoughts, spirit, and being of man, the elements of mate- 
 rial nature, and every work of God, as borne along, like 
 planets and stars by the vortices of the old astronomy, in 
 that universal whirl of vanity. Glimpses of immortality 
 sometimes beam fitfully upon the scene, and then again 
 rise clouds of foreboding, and overspread it with a dark- 
 ness that is palpable. He demands, " Who knoweth the 
 spirit of man that goeth upward?"' and yet he would know. 
 The mere authority that silenced the patriarch could not 
 cmiet his thoughts, nor the shadowy Hades, for which the 
 people looked, satisfy his mental vision. He, no more than 
 they, could solve the mystery ; but he could, and did, feel 
 much more intensely what a mystery it was. Mighty must 
 be the workings of a spirit that could produce the lan- 
 guage of the book of Ecclesiastes ; and its most sceptical 
 passages — its deepest and its darkest gloom — are, by their 
 very depth, by the very power of their dubiety, evidences 
 of faculties, and a capacity which could only have their 
 proper destiny in the expansion of immortality. The im- 
 mortality of the soul is in the book ; but it is there, as the 
 soul is in nature, invisibly. 
 
 And thus fared it with the Israelites — with their wise 
 and their vulgar — with their sainted men and with their 
 transgressors. Thus fared it with them until their pro- 
 mised Messiah came. He was the futurity to which the 
 nation had long been taught by its priests and prophets to 
 look ; and when at length there was reason to believe he 
 was born, his advent itself was a nunc dimittis to the holy 
 men who had waited and longed for the redemption of 
 Israel ; and though they knew not what revelation was to 
 dawn on the world, they exclaimed, " Lord, now lettest 
 thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen 
 thy salvation.'" And then, when the proper time arrived, 
 lie went forth in their towns and villages, teaching even 
 babes to lisp the language of heavenly wisdom ; and he in- 
 structed the mind of his disciple through the heart of his 
 disciple, leading him to his brother man and to his Father 
 God. Having inculcated spiritual worship and spiritual 
 hopes and anticipations, at length he confronted death — 
 death, the mysterious and gloomy, in the power of a simple 
 and cheerful faith. He united in his last suffering the 
 strength of individual affection witli the expansion of ge- 
 neral benevolence— the recollection of the past with the
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 297 
 
 hope of the future — the exercise of commiseration to- 
 wards guilt with that of complacency in goodness— and 
 all that belonged to earth with all that is anticipated of 
 heaven ; and Ins death became the pattern of dying for 
 his followers in all future ages; and it constituted an era 
 in the history of death, by inspiring the practical and popu- 
 lar, the living and influential, hope of immortality.
 
 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE HISTORY OF OPINION CONCERNING 
 DEATH, AND THE MENTAL STATE INDUCED BY ITS 
 APPROACH. 
 
 (delivered at finseury chapel.) 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 We pass now from the ancient Hebrews to the Heathen 
 world, and especially to the Greeks, amongst whom we 
 find emotions and thoughts relative to death taking a very 
 different and contrasted form. 
 
 Death has always been a mystery to the human mind, 
 and to common minds a cause of apprehension ; but the 
 deepest dread that death has ever excited, is to be found, 
 not in the ignorance of antiquity — not amongst the ab- 
 surdities of idolatry — but in connexion with some forms 
 or modes of Christianity. Never were there known, I be- 
 lieve, in antiquity, such fearful apprehensions, such rack- 
 ing agonies, as have been experienced by devout Christ- 
 ians, according to their notions of Christianity, in modern 
 times, and with what they deem, and what is in some re- 
 spects, the far superior light which they enjoy. 
 
 I shall not now discuss the claims of these modes and 
 forms of Christianity. I only advert to this fact in rela- 
 tion to them — if they have taken away one sting from 
 death, they have imparted another and of tenfold venom. 
 In the dogmas so often called Christian, of a vindictive God 
 — of a future state of eternal torment — and of the mj^stcri- 
 ous and fearful mode of escape from this torment, ever at- 
 tended as it is with a considerable degree of uncertainty 
 as to the evidence of its application to the individual ; in 
 these have been found a source of anxieties unknown to 
 the human race through a large period of its history. It 
 may be said, indeed, that with the bane came the antidote 
 — that with these apprehensions and fears came eonvic-
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 299 
 
 tion, strong conviction, hopes and triumphs, expressions of 
 gladness and of victory -which were equally unprecedented. 
 It may he so ; but I confess the character oi' that triumph 
 seems scarcely to my mind appropriate to the occasion, or 
 a full redemption from the pain which one cannot but feel 
 at the contemplation of the opinions, and of the effect of 
 the dogmas to which I have just adverted. 
 
 Not thus was it in antiquity. It is scarcely worth 
 while to advert to the different modes of oriental thought 
 in ancient times, or to suffer our minds to dwell upon 
 them, before we come to that greater development of in- 
 tellect which took place in Greece. The chief character- 
 istic distinctions that we find in relation to death amongst 
 oriental nations were, their notion of a Theocracy — of a 
 Theocracy exercising its retribution in this world, by con- 
 ferring temporal good or the infliction of temporal cp- 
 lamity ; the reverie of metempyschosis ; the notion of the 
 transmigration of the human spirit in connexion with the 
 forms of the brute creation, until after certain changes and 
 purifications, it at length again took possession of the human 
 form : and a sort of rude retributory system as to futurity, 
 where virtue and vice, according to the then notions of 
 each, were to meet with something like the bestowment of 
 rewards and the infliction of punishment. 
 
 These views appear — with the exception of the first, 
 perhaps, which tended to make men formal, technical, sa- 
 crificial in their religion — to have had comparatively little 
 effect on the feelings even of the speculative men by whom 
 they were entertained and taught, or on those who profes- 
 sionally enforced them in the exercise of priestly functions. 
 On the great mass of the community they seem to have 
 been almost wholly inoperative, and other influences, de- 
 scribe;! in the last lecture, as affecting the mode in which 
 men meet death, were left to their entire and undisturbed 
 operation. The soldier encountered it with that heedless- 
 ness which is the concomitant of passion when roused by 
 the stimulus of conflict. The heat of their climate, when 
 attended bv debility and sickness, sunk them into com- 
 parative indifference, and they melted away, as it were, 
 into death; or they took it complacently in the mortal 
 bath to which thev attached so much of sacredness on the 
 banks of the Nile or the Ganges. Slaves bowed to this as 
 to another evil, like so many evils the infliction of which it
 
 300 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 was their destiny to bear, and to which their spirits wore 
 humbled : while their monarchs endeavoured to exhibit 
 the plenitude of their power, even in this particular, that 
 ■while death hovered over them, they withstood it as long 
 as the skill of their physicians or the rites of the magi 
 could enable them to sustain the struggle. And so life 
 and death alternated like the regular revolution of the 
 heavenly bodies, or like the almost equally unchanging 
 habits of those eastern countries. 
 
 Greece was the focus into which all of good and grand 
 that the earth had previously generated seemed destined 
 to flow. Thither they came, the mythologies of earlier 
 antiquity, to be rendered more poetical and vital. Thither 
 they came, the speculations, the philosophical speculations, 
 of remoter antiquity, to be rendered more cohesive, logical, 
 and rational. Thither they came, even the traditions and 
 revelations of remoter antiquity, found in some form or 
 other with their eternal principles and their simple maxims, 
 combined with what the Greeks produced of their own, 
 or history had accumulated from other sources. Thither 
 came the arts to be raised from their rudeness — to be 
 rendered imaginative, and beautiful, and impressive — and 
 to gain that development on which the world has ever 
 since gazed with astonishment. All seemed to flow there, 
 and there to assume a new form, more impressive and more 
 divine. 
 
 This supremacy may be traced perhaps to something in 
 the original and physical organisation of this race of men 
 — something which better adapted them to receive impres- 
 sions by the outward senses — to estimate these impressions 
 more highly, to see their truth more keenly, to feel their 
 beauty more power fully, and to combine them with greater 
 versatility and skill, in the creations of imagination. Some- 
 thing is to be ascribed to the geniality of their lovely 
 climate — to the influence which the heavenly bodies, and 
 the beautiful forms of earth and of ocean, exercised upon 
 the senses, and through them upon the soul, when they 
 were contemplated through the transparent medium of 
 their delicate atmosphere. Much more is to be traced to 
 their democratic form of government, to their realisation 
 of civil liberty on its broadest principle and in its amplest 
 extent — they being more entirely a self-governed people, 
 without the intervention even of representation, than the
 
 CONCERNING DEATH, 301 
 
 world has seen before or since. Much is fo be ascribed to 
 their comparative freedom from toil, to their being at lei- 
 sure to spend their lives in seeking or telling some new 
 thing, or cultivating something rude into a higher degree 
 of refinement and a greater capacity of ministering to plea- 
 sure — a leisure the worth of which, however, we cannot 
 advert to without the recollection that it was obtained by 
 the toil of slaves. The rapid development of the arts, the 
 encouragement afforded to the arts by their poetical my- 
 thology and social habits, the principle of the love of fame 
 so strongly cherished among them and brought home to 
 their bosoms ; and in consequence of all these, and re-act- 
 ing on them as a mighty cause, the putting forth of intel- 
 lectual power — the freedom of thought and speculation 
 which knew no restriction, and the generation of great 
 minds that knew how to appreciate and exercise that free- 
 dom — these Mere what made Greece so glorious, and ren- 
 der it stiil " a watchword in the earth." 
 
 And what thought they of death, and how did they 
 meet it? They did not tear death. As I have already 
 said, I believe we can rind no trace in their history of the 
 intense apprehension and agony, of the bitterness of an af- 
 frighted spirit, trembling before an inexorable Deity, which 
 iias been experienced by many a good, though, as we ap- 
 prehend, not enlightened Christian. They did not fear 
 death ; but assuredly they did not covet, they did not like 
 it. They loved life — they prized it; although they were 
 not cowards when they found that it must be parted with : 
 and they dealt with death according to that mode of moral 
 being which was produced by the intellectual and artistical 
 advantages just enumerated, and in a manner analogous to 
 that in which these advantages led them to deal witli all 
 things else of a sombre and mysterious character. They 
 avoided its very name, and described it by varied circum- 
 locutions : they called it sleep, or implied that a man was 
 dead by asserting that In; had lived. They surrounded it 
 with (piaint and graceful fancies. It was the post of affec- 
 tion to watch by the expiring individual, to receive his 
 parting breath — the breathing forth of his spirit, of Ins 
 soul. The corpse was bathed in oil and crowned with 
 dowers. The honey-cake was put into its hand, and coin 
 into its mouth, that it might not be molested by the watch- 
 dog of the gates of Hades, nor delayed by the ferryman of
 
 302 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 the river of oblivion. As it was borne to the grave, the 
 melody of flutes modulated the Mailing of mourners ; it was 
 burnt on piles that were redolent of aromatic fragrance; 
 the ashes were collected in those graceful vases on which 
 the eye yet delights to look for the beauty of their forms, 
 even though they contain the ashes of the dead. When 
 either the corpse, or the urn containing the ashes, was 
 buried, a pillar or statue marked the spot, flowers grew 
 around, and the sacrifice and the banquet concluded the 
 day of separation. 
 
 Even in their executions we find often a refinement in 
 the mode; and in the sufferer an intensity of vitality, up to 
 the very last moment, and of enjoyment, which makes the 
 modern means of accomplishing the same purpose appear 
 very hideous and barbarous. Death, by drinking hemlock, 
 seemed almost voluntary on the part of the condemned. 
 Though legal justice held its course, the political enemy 
 fell as a political enemy falls in modern times; and efforts 
 against existing authorities were treated as treason has 
 ever been treated : yet often to the last his accustomed 
 modes of gratification were allowed, and the intercourse of 
 his friends ; and not uncommonly on the day of execution 
 the banquet was set forth as usual, the social feast was en- 
 joyed, the wine-cup and harp were passed round, and per- 
 fumes and fruits were there, and all that could gladden the 
 senses and stimulate enjoyment, and sustain the animal 
 spirits to their wonted pitch of luxuriant life in that luxu- 
 riant region ; till at length the moment arrived, the hem- 
 lock was called for and quaffed, and the condemned sunk 
 to his last sleep. 
 
 As there was very much in their modes of existence to 
 make tliem love life — as, with the exception of the slaves, 
 there was perhaps a greater mass of enjoyment in propor- 
 tion to the number of human beings (and I include high 
 intellectual enjoyment in that sense of the word) in an- 
 cient Greece than has ever been realised under anv other 
 form of government or condition of political existence — as 
 every thing concurred to make them love life, there was 
 little in their notion of futurity to make that an object of 
 desire. I have already described the Hades of the ancient 
 Hebrews, their subterranean world, that invisible region 
 whither the spirits of the departed went — where they were 
 found, the monarchs of the earth, — who rose from their
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 30S 
 
 thrones to greet the coming of the King of Babylon 
 amongst them, — and where the rich man and Lazarus are 
 represented by Christ as the one in torment and the other 
 in Abraham's bosom. This Hades was identical origin- 
 ally with that of the Greeks, and represented not unfairly 
 or imperfectly the popular anticipation of futurity. But 
 the popular doctrine of futurity did not make it a popular 
 futurity. Their conception of the soul seems to have been 
 that of a shadowy remain of man without any of his real 
 vitality — in winch there was not the flowing blood, or 
 the beating heart, or the thinking brain, or the energetic 
 hand ; — a mere image, a phantasma, having its conscious- 
 ness and something of recollection and feeling, but all 
 faint and cold ; and from which, and the dreary region of 
 its abode, they were disposed to turn with an instinctive 
 shudder, the more so for their appreciation of the vitality 
 in which they existed. This is the account we find in their 
 oldest potts; and Homer, in the Odyssey, makes Achilles 
 tell Ulysses, that he had rather be a very swineherd in this 
 our world, toiling under its bright sun, than wander in the 
 Elvsian, Fields. They had no great desire after Elysium, 
 nor had they any particular dread of going to Tartarus. 
 Their punishments in a supposed future world were chiefly 
 inflicted for impiety towards their gods; and as those who 
 committed such acts of impiety had not sufficient faith to 
 bring the apprehension of punishment home to their consci- 
 ences, and as those who had the faith did not commit the im- 
 pieties, the apprehension of punishment became very inert 
 and inapplicable altogether. And it is with this appre- 
 hension of dimness and coldness, — with this mere shadowy 
 realisation of futurity, that we find those who were the 
 best expounders of emotion — the tragic poets — represent- 
 ing pi rsons in their dramas as looking onwards into fu- 
 turity. There is no confidence of "going to glory," of 
 realising felicity ; — there are no desires for anything that 
 can stimulate the: senses, thoughts, and feelings, any more 
 than there were apprehensions of that which shall fill them 
 with horror. There was something of resignation to in- 
 evitable necessity ; and when age or sickness had worn out 
 the relish of life — when the bright and glittering enjoy- 
 ments with which they were surround< d were doomed to 
 fade away — then they seem to have thought that perhaps 
 the good which might yet be realised in the dim region
 
 30t LECTURE XIX. 
 
 below was preferable to annihilation — and they looked on 
 it with a sort of subdued satisfaction as the best thing that 
 remained for them. 
 
 But in the compositions to which I have referred, we 
 find the effects of their beautiful climate, the vividness of 
 their enjoyment of external objects through the senses, and 
 their regret at leaving these for the darkness and gloom of 
 a future state — a feeling common to the most dissimilar 
 minds, and expressed by almost all their characters that 
 are brought into the near contemplation of death. Thus 
 the Ajax of Sophocles, when disappointment and fury 
 drive him to suicide, as he plants his sword on the ground 
 to throw himself on its point, yet looks up to heaven and 
 bids farewell to the bright and beautiful sun and to the 
 gladsome light of day, and mingles these with his recollec- 
 tion of Salamis and of Athens. So even the old and blind 
 CEdipus, after all his wanderings and sufferings, and with 
 the prospect of death to which his mind was entirely made 
 up, even he bids adieu to the air and light of heaven as if 
 lie felt the contrast with the Cimmerian abode, with the 
 thick and murky atmosphere into which his soul was about 
 to depart. And such views mingle when the highest future 
 rewards are claimed for the individual, and all that the 
 gods can give is anticipated in order to furnish a fitting 
 recompense. As, for instance, in the Alcestis of Euripides 
 — a name which Milton's sonnet has rendered so familiar 
 and holy to modern readers — 
 
 (" Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 
 Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave:") 
 and who is represented in the drama as voluntarily parting 
 with life — as dying by way of commutation, that she may 
 preserve the life of her husband, which would only be 
 prolonged on such condition : anticipation for her of the 
 highest blessings of their futurity, in reward of the most 
 eminent virtue, can go no farther than we find in this 
 chorus : 
 
 STROPHE I. 
 
 Immortal bliss be thine, 
 Daughter of Pelias, in the realms below ; 
 
 Immortal pleasures round thee flow, 
 Though never there the sun's bright beams shall shine. 
 Be the black- browed Pluto told 
 And the Stvgian boatman old,
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 305 
 
 Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide, 
 
 The dead conveying o'er the tide, — 
 Let him be told so rich a freight before 
 
 His light skill' never bore ; — 
 Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes 
 The noblest of her sex her dreary passage takes. 
 
 ANTISTUOPHK I. 
 
 Thy praise the bards shall tell, 
 When to their hymning voice the echo rings ; 
 
 Or when they sweep the solemn strings, 
 And wake to rapture the seven-chorded shell ; 
 Or in Sparta's jocund bowers, 
 Circling when the vernal hours 
 Bring the Carnean feast ; whilst through the night 
 
 Full orbed the high moon rolls her light; 
 Or where rich Athens, proudly elevate, 
 Shews her magnific state, 
 Their voice thy glorious death shall raise, 
 And swell the enraptured strain to celebrate thy praise. 
 
 STROPHE II. 
 
 Oh, that I had the power, 
 Could I but bring thee from the shades of night 
 
 Again to view this golden light — 
 To leave that boat, to leave that dreary shore, 
 Where Cocytus deep and wide 
 Rolls along his sullen tide! 
 For thou, O best of women — thou alone, 
 
 For thy lord's life daredst give thy own. 
 Light lie the earth upon thy gentle breast, 
 And be thou ever blest ! 
 
 Potter's Euripides. 
 
 We have lien- their constant allusion to the beauty of 
 the. earth, the brightness of the sun. the loveliness of the 
 scenery — the feeling of chill and gloom which connected 
 itself even with that strongest anticipation of the recom- 
 pense of goodness below: and how naturally and how 
 readily the author turns from this species of recompense 
 to that of which they had a much stronger appreciation, 
 namely, the voice of fame, the verse of the poets, or the 
 song of the bards — to modes of commemoration which 
 were familiar to them, and would seem a more real pro- 
 longing of the existence of the dead than all they fancied 
 of the invisible region. 
 
 There was a modification probablv of the (ireek notion
 
 306 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 of futurity kept up in the mysteries — the Eleusinian mys- 
 teries especially, the nature, the ceremonies, the objects of 
 which have engaged, and without any certain result, the 
 attention of the learned for many a generation. Thus 
 much, however, seems probable, that the mysteries were 
 instituted in those early times when the gods who were 
 worshipped were only emblems of the powers of physical 
 nature — when they were the representatives of some prin- 
 ciple working in the heavens above, and on the earth 
 below, rendering the soil fruitful, and perpetuating and 
 multiplying the human race — that they were relics of the 
 idolatry which preceded the humanised mythology of the 
 Greeks, when the human form superseded all those bar- 
 barous and compound forms that had been previously 
 adored : and these relics of a more ancient system would 
 of course from time to time receive the influxes of the 
 Greek spirit — they would be rendered more poetical, more 
 philosophical; and it is not altogether an unreasonable 
 hypothesis advocated by Warburton, that eventually in the 
 celebration something like the unity of the Divine power 
 and the immortality of the soul were inculcated. 
 
 The extent, however, to which these influenced any 
 portion of the Greek population it is difficult to define by 
 any documents that we at present possess. There was a 
 principle called into popular exercise that was far stronger 
 with them in the conflict with death than the hope of im- 
 mortality — the love of country and of fame, which to them 
 were one. They lived in society and for society. The 
 confined number of the population that constituted the 
 state rendered each amenable to the opinion of others, and 
 identified their feelings, as it were, with his own moral 
 being. Accordingly we find this interweaving itself with 
 all their notions ; and when Euripides, from whom I have 
 already quoted, adopts for a subject the sacrifice of Iphi- 
 genia, he represents her as taking leave of the sun, and 
 air, and fields, in strains similar to those used by others in 
 the contemplation of death, and then going with gladness 
 to be immolated at the altar, because it was to be the re- 
 demption of the power of her country from the restraint 
 which bound it, and the source of future triumphs and 
 glory to the confederated hosts of Greece. Hence, too, 
 the (lying boast of Pericles, that he had never caused an 
 Athenian to wear mourning; and the description, in the
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 307 
 
 oration ascribed to him by Thucydides, of the mountains 
 and ocean as monuments of the heroes of Marathon. 
 
 This was the feeling that made suicide not uncommon 
 — which led them to have recourse to it frequently in pre- 
 ference to slavery— which made Themistocles take his 
 fatal draught rather than be entangled in the semblance 
 of hostility against a city which yet had banished him 
 from its presence, and from which he had been a com- 
 pulsory alien for so raanv years. This was the principle 
 in the strength of which Demosthenes, when lie found the 
 refuge of the sanctuary of Neptune would not avail him, 
 took his writing-materials, bit the end of his quill, and 
 sucked the poison it contained, and which he had trea- 
 sured as a refuge against such extremity. This was the 
 principle on which afterwards the Roman leaders, Cato 
 and Brutus, shewed themselves ready to be the followers 
 of the Greeks, though the; love of country could not be 
 what it had been at Athens, what it must be in those small 
 civic states where the nation is brought so completely 
 within the sensible observation of the individual and ren- 
 dered an ever-present object to his contemplation. 
 
 The philosophers of Greece speculated upon death with 
 that freedom of thought which nowhere else, unless per- 
 haps in modern Germany, philosophy has enjoyed and ex- 
 ercised; with that freedom of thought which was their pri- 
 vilege on ail topics; and they came accordingly to the 
 greatest diversity of conclusions. We find among them all 
 theories, from the oriental metempsychosis as inculcated 
 by Pythagoras, to the total annihilation which Epicurus 
 anticipated, and through the doubts of the sceptic school, 
 and all the intermediate gradations of conjecture or of 
 moral conviction, up to that anticipation of the immortality 
 of the soul, which was avowed by Plato, the divine philo- 
 sopher. Hut while there was this variety in their specu- 
 lations, I see no evidence of there being any corresponding 
 variety in their states of mind in the prospect of death. 
 Not one of them that 1 remember was ever dastardly, or ap- 
 prehensive, or cringing in its anticipation — not one of them 
 but met it with calmness and with dignity. V> hether they 
 held what we de< m the darkest or the brightest view, there 
 was something else bv which their conduct was influenced 
 — something else bv which their moral condition was deter- 
 mined ; and that was, I apprehend, chiefly the develop-
 
 308 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 merit, freedom, and strength of intellect of that extraor- 
 dinary set of men. They were great in the strength of 
 exercised and unshackled mind — they could not look at 
 anything of heaven or of earth in a servile or superstitious 
 spirit. However they might hold it proper in some things 
 outwardly to conform with the laws of the country, as in 
 the occasional observance of ceremonies, they still shewed 
 that they knew and appreciated, and were determined to 
 realise, their own freedom : and hence, even in the contem- 
 plation of death, they had the dignity of lofty-minded men 
 —they seemed rather spontaneously to bow to death than 
 to be themselves levelled and humbled, still less trampled 
 upon by it. We find this to be the state of mind of those 
 whose opinions were the least hopeful or the most hopeful. 
 Generally, they continued their speculations and their in- 
 structions up to the latest period of their lives — they made 
 provision, as in the will of Theophrastus, with the coolest 
 forethought, for arrangements to continue those instruc- 
 tions and to disseminate their speculations, or to secure 
 their well-earned fame, after their decease — they could 
 discuss with the greatest familiarity and complacency the 
 chances of the destiny that awaited them ; and although 
 Plato, so far as we can judge from his writings, had the 
 hope clear, firm, and strong of that individual immortality 
 which has sometimes been claimed as peculiarly the Chris- 
 tian doctrine, we have no reason to suppose this produced 
 anything essentially different from that state of mind in 
 which Socrates, his master, looked onward to futurity, 
 while vet he avowed himself unable to ascertain with any 
 certainty of conviction, whether it would be better or 
 worse than the continuance of life here. Resignation, ac- 
 quiescence rather, — acquiescence in a great law of na- 
 ture, the wisdom and beneficence of which might fairly be 
 presumed, — was the feeling cherished and exhibited by that 
 remarkable man : it was one in which he looked back com- 
 placently on a life spent in the promotion of true wisdom. 
 He rejoiced, in the prospect of death, that it had been his 
 work to bring philosophy down from the clouds to dwell 
 amongst men : and the peculiar circumstances of his death, 
 which have directed the attention of all ages towards him 
 and his philosophy, have, in this view, been a blessing to 
 the world, that they have tended to familiarise it with the 
 lofty exhibition of morality, of intelligent morality, that
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 309 
 
 ancient Greece produced. And perhaps the guilt of Athens 
 in the death of Socrates has often been estimated some- 
 what harshly, when, without hesitation, her citizens have 
 been arraigned as guilty of the most superstitious and 
 criminal judgment. We must remember the jealousy al- 
 ways entertained by the Athenians of eminent individuals 
 — their apprehension lest the power of a single person 
 should interfere with the pure democracy, which was their 
 cherished mode of political government and of social exist- 
 ence. It was this jealousy of personal influence that led to 
 the establishment of the ostracism amongst them, which 
 did not import conviction of a crime — which was not ba- 
 nishment as a sentence apportioned to guilt — but which 
 was dismission from their walls, on grounds that might bo 
 most honourable to the individual; merely implying that 
 lie had so much influence that it could not co-exist with 
 the state of democracy and equality which they willed to 
 be their social being. Of this feeling Socrates might pro- 
 bably be the object. Besides this, he had offended the 
 great interests of Athens — he had abridged the profits and 
 emoluments of the sophists — he had exposed their arts and 
 humbled their pretensions — he had offended the wealthy 
 classes of the city — he had accused them of an inordinate 
 regard for gold to the' disregard of intelligence and of vir- 
 tue — he had annoyed officials and those who delighted in 
 political offices in Athens — he had refused to hold such 
 offices himself — he had only been in office once, and then 
 he had to remonstrate against an act of abominable in- 
 justice on the part of his colleagues, in which he refused 
 to have any share — and he had been the object of perse- 
 vering sarcasm and censure, of the ridicule of the great 
 comic poet, as well as of the zealous reprobation of the 
 sophists. It was no wonder that there should be a strong 
 feeling against the individual, whatever the truth of Ins 
 philosophy, the soundness of his logic, the purity of his 
 morality, the virtue of his character, the beneficence of 
 his influence, who had exposed himself to collision with so 
 many different classes. And then he was judged by a 
 numerous assembly, a meeting of several hundred persons 
 sitting on the question of life or death. lie declined the 
 ordinary modes of appealing to the pride of his judges — 
 he humbled not himself before them — he asserted his de- 
 termination to continue in the same course he had so lorn;
 
 310 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 pursued — he, as it were, admonished or defied them when 
 his life was in their hands; and it is not strange, however 
 deeply to be regretted, that feelings of pride, provoked 
 into a species of antagonism, and having no other respon- 
 sibility than that of giving one vote among several hun- 
 dreds of votes, should have occasioned the condemnation 
 of Socrates, which, after all, was carried by a majority so 
 small, that throe votes, according to his first appeal, would 
 have turned the scale in his favour. 
 
 His manner and course of life are shewn in the apology 
 which Plato has preserved, and which there is every rea- 
 son for believing to be the genuine speech of Socrates on 
 that occasion. He supposes they might be inclined to say 
 to him : 
 
 " If you should say to me, ' O Socrates, we will now, in spite 
 of what Anytus has said, let you off — but upon condition that 
 you shall no longer persevere in your search, in your philosophis- 
 ing ; — if you are again convicted of doing so, you shall be put to 
 death;' — if, I say, you should let me off on these conditions, I 
 should say to you, O Athenians, I love and I cherish you, but 
 I will obey the God rather than you ; and as long as I breathe, 
 and it is not out of my power, I will not cease to philosophise, 
 and to exhort you to philosophy ; and point out the way to 
 whomsoever among you I fall in with, saying, as I am wont, O 
 most worthy person, art thou, an Athenian, of the greatest citv 
 and the most celebrated for wisdom and power, not ashamed that 
 thou studiest to possess as much money as possible, and reputa- 
 tion and honour — but concernest not thyself even to the smallest 
 degree, about intellect, and truth, and" the well-being of thy 
 mental nature ? And if any of you shall dispute the fact, and 
 say that he does concern himself about these things, I will not 
 let him off or depart, but will question him, and examine, and 
 confute him ; and if he seem to me not to possess virtue, but to 
 assert that he docs, I will reproach him for valuing least what is 
 highest worth, and highest what is most worthless. This will I 
 do both to young and old, whomsoever I meet with, — to citizen 
 and strangers, but most to my leilow-citizens, as connected with 
 me by a nearer tie. For these, as you well know, are the com- 
 mands of the God. And to me it appears that no good can 
 happen to the state greater than my service of the God : for I 
 pass my whole time doing nothing whatever but inciting you, 
 both the young and the old, to care neither for body nor estate, 
 in preference to, nor in comparison with, the excellence of the 
 soul,- — telling you that wealth does not produce virtue, but virtue 
 wealth, and all other good things to mankind, both collectively and 
 individually. If, then, saying these things, I corrupt the youth,
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 311 
 
 these must be noxious, — for if any one asserts that I say other 
 things than these, he speaks falsely. I say, therefore, O Athe- 
 nians, whether you believe Anytus or not, whether you acquit 
 me or not, let it be with the knowledge that I shall do no other 
 things than these — not though I should die many deaths." 
 
 Such was the manner in which he addressed his judges 
 prior to their determination. After that had taken place, 
 when it was made known to lain, — when sentence of death 
 was pronounced upon him, we find him in the same frame 
 of mind., and looking at the event that was now brought 
 distinctly to his apprehension, in the same intelligent, calm, 
 and dignified spirit. This passage is from his speech to his 
 judges, after the declaration of his sentence: 
 
 " Death must be one of two things: either the dead are inca- 
 pable of feeling or perceiving anything, or death is, as we are 
 toid, a change of abode, a passage of the soul from this to some 
 other place. Mow, if after death there be no sensation — but it 
 be like a sleep in which there are no dreams, death is a mighty 
 gain. for if any one were to choose from his life a night in 
 which he had slept without dreaming, and comparing with this 
 all the other nights and days of his life, were required to say in 
 how mam' of them he had lived better and more pleasantly than 
 in that night — I imagine that not a private man merely, but the 
 great king, would feel that such days and nights were soon 
 counted. If, then, this be death.it is gain; since all eternity 
 would not thus appear longer than one night. Jiut if death be 
 to quit this place for another, and if it be true as affirmed, that 
 in that other place is the abode of all the dead, what greater good 
 can there be, judges, than this ? If arriving in the other world, 
 and leaving these people who call themselves judges, we shall see 
 the real judges, who arc said to judge there — Minos, and llhada- 
 manthus, and Orcus, and Triptolemus, and all other demigods 
 who lived justly while they were alive, — would it not be a noble 
 journey : What would not any of you give to converse with 
 Orpheus, and Musjtus, and i 'esiod, and Homer? I would gladly 
 die many times it' this be true, since to me it would be a delight- 
 ful-residence, when I had met with Palamedes, and the Telamo- 
 nian Ajax, and any other of the ancients who perished in conse- 
 quence of an unjust judgment. To compare mv own fate with 
 theirs would not I think be very disagreeable ; and, best of all, to 
 live examining and interrogating the people there, as 1 have 
 done here, — to discov; l who among them are wise, and who think 
 themselves so, but are not. How much would not one give, O 
 judges, (ov an opportunity of examining him who led the great 
 expedition to Tiny ; or I "lyr-scs, or Sisyphus, or ten thousand 
 others whom one could mention, both men and women; with
 
 312 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 whom to converse and associate there, and to examine them, 
 would be the height of happiness. They do not there put one to 
 death for such things ; for the people there are happier than 
 the people here, both in other things and in this, that when once 
 there, they are immortal ; if what we are told is true. 
 
 " It behoves you, O judges, to be of good cheer concerning 
 death ; and to fix this truth in your minds, that to a good man., 
 whether he die or live, nothing is evil, nor are his affairs neglected 
 by the gods ; neither did what has happened occur spontaneously 
 — but it is evident to me that to die and to come to an end now 
 was most for my good. For this reason was it that the sign did 
 not interpose to check me ; and I do not much complain of mv 
 accusers nor of those who condemned me. Though they indeed 
 accused and condemned me not with any such intention, but pur- 
 posing to do me harm ; and for this it is tit to blame them. 
 
 " Thus much, however, I beg of them : when my sons grow 
 up, punish them, O Athenians, — by tormenting them as I tor- 
 mented you, — if they shall seem to study riches or any other ends 
 in preference to virtue ; and if they are thought to be something, 
 being really nothing, reproach them as I have reproached you, — 
 for not attending to what they ought, and fancying themselves 
 something when they are good for nothing. And if you do this, 
 both I and my sons shall have received what is just at your 
 hands. 
 
 " It is now time that we depart ; I to die, you to live ; — 
 but which has the better destinv is unknown to all exccot the 
 God." 
 
 So peculiar, calm, instructive, dignified, was the language 
 of the man who, when he delivered this, was addressing the 
 multitudinous concourse of judges that had just pronounced 
 his sentence of death. In consequence of one of their reli- 
 gious observances, thirty days had to elapse before the 
 execution of his sentence. This time was passed in con- 
 tinuing his instructions to his disciples who came to him 
 from day to day ; and Plato and Xenophon, although not 
 then present, have recorded many of those teachings, with 
 such diversities of colouring as arose from the peculiarity 
 of their own natures; and during this period, Socrates, we 
 find, as he refused to humble himself before the judges and 
 obtain mercy, when he only required justice, refused also 
 anv evasion of the law; and although the gaoler had been 
 bribed, and he had merely to walk out of prison, he would 
 not leave it, or set an example of disregarding the dictates 
 of the laws, however unjust might be the actual application. 
 And when the time came, and the weeping executioner
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 313 
 
 offered him the hemlock, he took it, directing a disciple to 
 pay a sacrifice he had formerly vowed to /Lsculapius, for 
 a recovery from sickness — perhaps the last unsettled item 
 of his life's account; perhaps a typical recognition of death 
 as the recovery of the soul's health and vigour — and then 
 in peace departed the spiiit of this martyr of moral truth. 
 The speedy penitence of Athens — punishing his enemies, 
 cherishing his followers, and offering the loftiest honours to 
 his memory — sought to expiate the crime which the lapse; 
 of ages cannot obliterate. 
 
 If the Christian, strong in faith, animated by the sacred 
 hope of his crown of glory hereafter, be morally sublime 
 when, in the path of duty, he perils his mortal being, sav- 
 ing, " Let God's will be done, whether it be for life or for 
 death," — assuredly it is Christian to recognise the moral 
 sublimity of the heathen philosopher, saying practically, 
 as he resigns life, "Let God's will be done, whether it be 
 for annihilation or for immortality."
 
 LECTURE XX. 
 
 AN" INQUIRY INTO THE HISTORY OF OPINION CONCERNING 
 DEATH. AND THE MENTAL STATE INDUCED BY ITS 
 APPROACH. 
 
 (DELIVERED A.T FINSBUKY CHAPEL.) 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The idea of immortality sprung up from the grave in the 
 Arimathean's garden, in the dehniteness of doctrine and 
 the tangibility of fact, to reanimate the moral world. 
 
 The first-fruits are exhibited to us in the deaths of 
 Stephen the Martyr and Paul the Apostle ; in the glorious 
 vision which appeared to the martyr, of Christ on the right 
 hand of the Majesty on high, encouraging him in the midst 
 of the agonies of a violent, death by the hands of an enraged 
 multitude, to say, " Lord Jesus, into thy hands I commend 
 my spirit," and to resign his spirit, praying for his mur- 
 derers ; and in the apostle facing the terrors of the scaffold, 
 and making his calm, complacent, and hopeful retrospect 
 and anticipation. " I have fought the good tight, I have 
 finished my course, and kept the faith ; henceforth there is 
 laid up for me a crown of glory, which the Lord, the right- 
 eous Judge, shall give me at that day ; and not to me only, 
 but to all them that love his appearing." 
 
 But the feelings which animated these first followers of 
 Christ were soon necessarily blended in a variety of com- 
 binations. The world was not then characterised by the 
 intellectual supremacy of Greece, but by the martial do- 
 mination of Rome ; and the Romans were mentally but a 
 hard and coarse copy of their Grecian masters. They 
 differed from them as their social state differed, which was 
 an overbearing aristocratical republic, instead of the free 
 and equal democracy of Athens : they differed from them 
 as being, in most things, save the rude arts of war, the mere 
 learners, the imbibers, the children and the feeble children
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 315 
 
 of the philosophers and poets of Greece. They faintly re- 
 flected whatever was most refined and lofty in Grecian 
 intelligence — they mixed it up with much that belonged to 
 their own coarser nature in their anticipations of futurity. 
 That scepticism with regard to futurity, which in Greece so 
 often assumed a dignified form, in Rome became the impulse 
 or apology of gross indulgence and licentiousness, adopting 
 as its moral maxim, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die." Scepticism had eaten out the very heart of their 
 mythology— of their religion, such as it was : it had become 
 only the pretext by which the higher classes kept the lower 
 in order, working by means of their boundless superstition 
 and credulity, whilst those who touched the springs of the 
 machine could scarcely look in one another's faces without 
 a laugh ; and with the less informed it was a mere husk 
 and shell of external observance, with little, indeed, of 
 emotion, and with less of power. And upon a world thus 
 situated it was that the doctrine of immortality, in the fresh- 
 ness of novelty — with that distinctness of doctrine and of 
 fact to which I have just adverted — with a power that 
 arose from the exercise of the most fervent zeal in its disse- 
 mination, and coupled also with the adjuncts of an almost 
 immediate resurrection — ofan anticipation that the coming 
 of Christ to judgment was to take place before many years 
 had passed away — and with it a revival for his followers 
 to earthly power and dominion blended with celestial glory 
 — it was, 1 say, in such a state that this view came upon 
 the Roman world, and spread over the Roman world, and 
 presented men's views and feelings in relation to death in 
 an entirely new phase. 
 
 Then; .-prung up. as political, as magisterial, and as 
 social opposition was manifested, ami as action and reaction 
 carried them to the extreme lengths of persecution — there 
 sprung up from the grafting of this notion on the previous 
 mental and moral condition of converts to Christianity, 
 what we may call the fanaticism of martyrdom. Instead of 
 loving Hie, as the old Greeks did, they rather loved death ; 
 they invited death — they courted the perils of trial and the 
 agonies of execution. We. find in many cases, whatever 
 were the edicts against Christians, considerable reluctance 
 on the part of the magistracy to enforce them. They were 
 very often compelled to do so by the clamour ofan ignorant 
 multitude. Thev -hewed their unwillingness, in the means
 
 816 LECTURE XX. 
 
 of escape which they continually opened for those who were 
 apprehended. They exhibited the very singular circum- 
 stance of sometimes proceeding the length of torturing those 
 who were accused, not, as is generally the case when torture 
 is applied, in order to make them confess the alleged crime, 
 but in order to extort from them a denial of the alleged 
 crime. They tortured the prisoner that he might declare 
 he was innocent of that which was laid to his charge ; and 
 we find that the Christian preachers, bishops, and writers 
 of that day actually were obliged to endeavour to restrain 
 the zeal of their followers, to repress the desire of martyr- 
 dom, to abate the fervour which was so desirous of rushing 
 at once headlong, by means of the persecution of others, to 
 the possession of that distinct celestial glory which pre- 
 sented itself to their imaginations. 
 
 The relics and traces of this feeling, in the language 
 held concerning death, by no means according with the 
 truth of man's nature, are every now and then encountered 
 in the devotions of different sects, or in the phraseology 
 of preachers or writers. There is something of it, for in- 
 stance, in the extraordinary and unnatural expressions com- 
 monly used in the devotions of a very large body of pro- 
 fessing Christians — the Methodists. As in this verse of a 
 hymn : 
 
 " O lovely appearance of death ! 
 
 No sight upon earth is so fair ; 
 Not all the gay pageants of earth 
 
 Can with a dead body compare." 
 
 Can any mind, not under the influence of a high degree 
 of fanaticism, perverting, discolouring the common associa- 
 tions of our nature, adopt language of this description ? 
 Nay, there is the same artificiality, flowing probably from 
 the state of things to which I have just adverted, in writers 
 of a very different description. There is an affected disdain 
 of life, an assumption of complacency in death, a pretend- 
 ing to look upon all things around, which are so much to 
 man, and intended by the Creator to be so much to man, 
 as if they were mere nothingness — as if not only devoid of 
 attractiveness and the power of ministering to enjoyment, 
 but as if they were absolutely repulsive ; and of this descrip- 
 tion is the passage which I am about to read from the 
 writings of Sir Thomas Brown, a man of such extraordinary 
 ingenuity of speculation, that it seems as if in the refine-
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 317 
 
 ment of his thoughts and the remoteness of his allusions, 
 he Mas capable occasionally of deceiving himself; and, 
 while he exploded many of the " Vulgar Errors" of his day, 
 could disinter some of the vulgar errors of antiquity to 
 enshrine them in his own mind. 
 
 " When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this 
 reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I do con- 
 ceive myself the miserablest person extant ; were there not another 
 life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not en- 
 treat a moment's breath from me : could the devil work my 
 belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very 
 thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of 
 existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think 
 this i?- to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 " For a pagan there may be some motives to be in love with 
 life ; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he 
 can escape this dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or 
 hopeless of the life to come." — Reliyio Medici. 
 
 The circumstances that give rise to this artificial state 
 of thought in reference to death destroy any reasonable 
 expectancy of our deriving much light from a close con- 
 templation of the mental state of those who were under its 
 influence. We cannot apply to that condition, any more 
 than we can apply to any kind of violent and public death, 
 the remark, as to the common approaches towards natural 
 dissolution, of honest old Montaigne, who says, " In this 
 la>t scene, betwixt Death and us, there is no playing the 
 counterfeit; we must speak plainly, and if there be any 
 purity or simplicity at the bottom, it. must be diseovered." 
 
 That is the effect of the ordinary course of things ; and 
 happy were it if we could attain to more acquaintance with 
 its effects upon the then estimate of life than are in our 
 possession as to the most enlightened minds. " For they 
 will feel," he says in another place, " the premeditation of 
 denth is the premeditation of liberty. He who has learnt 
 to die has forgot what it is to be a slave. There is no such 
 thing as evil in life to him, who rightly comprehends that 
 the being deprived of life is not an evil." 
 
 But this is widely different from the extravagance, from 
 the antagonism, from the artificiality of that state in which 
 martyrdom was sought for as a most desirable way of 
 (putting this life, and in which its crown seemed so bright
 
 318 LECTURE XX. 
 
 as to become the great object of exertion. We must not, 
 however, take to be without exception the feelings and 
 modes of thought which I have now described. Many 
 bright, many beautiful exceptions there were even when 
 the fanaticism and furor of martyrdom were at their great- 
 est height ; and none of these that I have met with are 
 more beautiful than the records which remain to us, written 
 in great part by herself, of Vivia Perpetua, a noble Roman 
 lady, who was put to death at Carthage in the beginning of 
 the third century. There is, in what she has traced of her 
 own emotions, of her sense of the evils that were gathering 
 around her at the time, and of the way in which she 
 looked through them to the existence, the happiness which 
 was to follow, a lively picture of how a nature physically 
 weak, but morally tine and strong, may rise above not 
 merely the vulgar apprehensions of the society by which 
 it is surrounded, but even above the aberrations, the in- 
 congruities, the fanaticism of the most celebrated profes- 
 sors, or of the reputedly wisest teachers of the religion by 
 which the individual is influenced. Vivia Perpetua was, 
 as I said, a young and noble Roman lady who had been 
 converted to Christianity, at a time when the avowed pro- 
 fession of Christianity subjected, at intervals, as the fury 
 of the multitude was roused, to a violent death. She was 
 arrested together with four other Christians, who were all 
 slaves. Her religion raised her above that debasement in 
 such an association which one of Roman aristocratieal de- 
 scent would naturally have experienced. The apprehen- 
 sions, the feelings that came over her when consigned to 
 the coldness and darkness of a dungeon are touched, but 
 rapidly and with great simplicity, in her narrative. She 
 thought little of these. She rejoiced in her community 
 with those who were about to suffer in the same cause ; 
 and, being exposed to a variety of trials to make her deny 
 her religion — trials arising from presenting her child to 
 her, and making her possession of it depend on her apos- 
 tacy — trials from the earnest entreaties of her aged father 
 — trials from the severities of imprisonment and from the 
 prospect of a violent death, and from the influence of the 
 magistracy and the public proceedings of their tribunals ; 
 she endured all, and, as it were, gently put aside all, in the 
 simplicity of a truthful mind, that could not apply terms 
 expressive of falsehood to that which it held to be a reality.
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 319 
 
 And ill the darkness of her dungeon, she had dreams and 
 visions, which had scarcely the less of heaven's inspiration 
 in them for springing from the gentle boldness of her own 
 spirit; on the energy of which they reacted for strength 
 and consolation. The ascending path which she saw in 
 her sleep resembled Jacob's ladder, which reached from 
 earth to heaven ; though it was not, as in Jacob's vision, 
 graced by descending and ascending angels, but guarded 
 by a ferocious dragon, over whom she had to pass, and on 
 whom she safely planted her foot in the faith that never 
 slumbered. Animated by such thoughts, strengthened 
 even by her dreams, she celebrated the love-supper which 
 the condemned Christians were allowed to hold together 
 the night before their execution. She partook of it with 
 slaves, with whom the Romans of old wotdd have held it 
 pollution to have so associated. One female slave, called 
 Felicitas. was her companion in the cruel punishment. 
 Exposed with her to the fury of wild beasts in the amphi- 
 theatre, in the presence of a ferocious and brutal multi- 
 tude, she held her hand as they awaited the attack, and 
 raised her from the ground when gored and lacerated; and 
 at last, when their sufferings were to be finished by the 
 hand of the gladiator, she kissed the poor slave, her Chris- 
 tian sister, that noble Roman lady, and, as the executioner 
 seemed unable to give her the mortal wound from the 
 trembling of his hand, she slightly touched his sword so as 
 to guide it to her throat, that she might finish her course 
 without more of torment, and amid the tumult of the arena 
 arrive peacefully at the close of a life so gentle and so 
 beautiful. 
 
 Such instances, few and far between as they may be, 
 beam upon us like a pure light in the midst of darkness, 
 which is otherwise Idled with horrid and fiery shapes. The 
 artificiality which prevailed in that period continued and 
 took other forms, and through the ages of barbarism reli- 
 gion became more and more arbitrary — arbitrary in its 
 description of virtue and of vice — arbitrary in its means 
 of redemption from the terrors which were held up by the 
 priests as objects of apprehension — and arbitral - }' in its 
 delineations of a future world with its joys and its sorrows. 
 Heaven and lull were indeed familiarly delineated in those 
 dav-, as if they were countries with which the -priests were 
 we!! acquainted. The j<»vs, the crowns, the songs of out
 
 '-S20 LECTURE XX. 
 
 — and the flames and excruciating torture of the other — 
 were vividly depicted to the imagination ; and the stains 
 of guilt were purified on terms which ever tended to fill 
 the coffers and enlarge the influence of a rapacious and 
 grasping hierarchy. 
 
 To such a degree was religion rendered artificial, that, 
 to this day, in the more ignorant regions of Catholicism, 
 heaven is looked for, and religion is supposed to be realised 
 in all the extent of its nature and of its requirements, with 
 scarcely any reference to what constitutes moral conduct. 
 Many a Calabrian bandit besides Pietro Mancino, at the 
 close of a life of rapine and murder, will take it as a gage 
 of peace to his conscience that he has not plundered or 
 murdered on the day that is dedicated to the Virgin, and 
 he will tell his beads with the priest, and do his penance, 
 and depart in the full assurance that for him there is an 
 intercessor in the courts of heaven, whose prayers must be 
 availing to his salvation and everlasting happiness. 
 
 Nor is arbitrariness in religion, or artificiality of feel- 
 ing, confined to external ceremony — to the rites which the 
 priests imposed in the dark ages — to the means of escape 
 to be purchased by money or realised by the penance 
 which they enjoined. They penetrate into the religion of 
 Protestants, and have assumed, in later times, a dogmatic 
 form, which bears substantially the same character with 
 the ceremonial one. What are the delineations still popu- 
 lar in this country of heaven and hell — the happiness of 
 the one and the torment of the other — and of the mode 
 of escape by faith in a substituted punishment and an im- 
 puted righteousness ? These, too, are arbitrary and artifi- 
 cial. These, too, alienate religion — they alienate our no- 
 tion of the human being in its continuous progress, and in 
 the connexion of its condition on this side of the change of 
 death, and on the other side of the change of death — from 
 the moral state. They present a theory of futurity which 
 cannot realise itself to an imagination that only follows the 
 guidance of observed truth on the tendencies of our being. 
 It is not in the nature of things that characters approaching 
 to identity, between whose moral condition there can be 
 found no broad line of demarcation, should have, at the 
 instant of death, an impassable gulf placed between them 
 — that those who had so many imperfections should be in 
 a state of absolute and unchangeable moral perfection — or
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 321 
 
 that those who here had so much of goodness mingling 
 with the vices that stained their character, should instantly 
 become totally and entirely depraved, so as to render their 
 redemption an impossibility. All these are things incon- 
 sistent with human nature, and therefore inconsistent 
 with what we know of Providence and of God — of time 
 and of eternity. And yet on such speculations as these 
 is the system built which has succeeded to the arbitrary 
 one of Popery, and established its own arbitrariness on the 
 ruins of its precursor. And hence there are afflictions of 
 the mind more excruciating than the disciple of old Popery 
 was subject to, and not capable of being bought off by the 
 purchase of masses, or the observance of penance, but ad- 
 hering to the individual, and often adhering to him as a 
 torment through many a year of life, and exerting their 
 power in the agonies of death. I quote from no fanatical 
 writer — I cite no man of uncultivated intellect but of riot- 
 ous imagination, who endeavours to throw all his rough 
 power into the description of future terrors. The passage 
 which I am about to read is from a reported sermon of one 
 of the most lofty and eloquent minds that have graced 
 any sect in England in recent times — 1 mean the late Ro- 
 bert Hall. In a discourse on death he says : 
 
 " If divine grace had not interposed, death has a sting bv 
 which he would pierce every transgressor, and send him to a 
 state of interminable misery. ' The sting of death is sin, and 
 the strength of sin is the law.' The death of the body is by no 
 means the full infliction of the penalty of the divine law. What 
 we look upon as death is only a dark passage which conducts the 
 sinner to the state of eternal death. The dissolution of our body, 
 and the separation of our spirit from it, is but a preparation — 
 like knocking off the chains and totters from a prisoner who is 
 about to be led forth to the place of execution. ' The wages of 
 sin is death ; hut the gift of God is eternal life.' Eternal life is 
 here contrasted with death; but what is the opposite of eternal 
 life, but eternal death, the death of the soul — which consists of 
 the perpetual loss of hope; a cutting off from the presence and 
 favour of God ; a sense of his eternal wrath which burns lik; de- 
 vouring fire, 'fhe second death treads in the footsteps of the 
 first, and its shadow covers it : it is the infliction of the sentence 
 of the Eternal Governor of the universe ; and the fear of it makes 
 those who are aware they are sinners willing to struggle with a 
 load of cares and sorrows, rather than fall into the hands of the 
 living God ; for it is a fearful thing, ' a fearful thing to tall into 
 the hands of the living God.' " — Hall's Works, vol. vi. p. 1 QG. 
 
 R '_'
 
 322 LECTURE XX. 
 
 Now, when futurity is rendered so terrific, even in the 
 description of a mind which we may suppose looking at it 
 in a clearer light and from a loftier point of view than 
 common intellects — and when escape from all these terrific 
 apprehensions is made contingent upon a past mental state, 
 a spiritual event, looked back to through the mist of years, 
 and concerning which the individual must be liable to 
 continually recurring uncertainty — what can be the result 
 but to spread a gloom, an unnatural and unwholesome 
 gloom, over many portions of life, and altogether to bewil- 
 der the thoughts when our faculties should be left in their 
 calmest exercise? And such is the recorded effect on 
 some of the best-constituted minds that are pervaded by 
 these notions. I have here a memoir by the same writer 
 (the Rev. It. Hall), of Mr. Toller, a man whose reputation 
 in the religious class to which he belonged was only se- 
 cond to that of Mr. Hall. And what is the account given 
 in this narrative of his deceased friend ? He says : 
 
 " During the greater portion of his life, he was occasionally 
 liable to great depression of spirits ; but about seven years pre- 
 vious to its close, in consequence of a sudden interruption of the 
 profuse perspiration which had constantly attended his public 
 exercises, and which was thrown back upon the system, he sunk 
 into such a state of despondency as disqualified him, for some 
 time, from the discharge of his ministerial functions. His mind, 
 during this season, was harassed with the most distressing ap- 
 prehensions of a future state, and possessed with such a view of 
 his pollution, in the sight of a holy God, that he was tempted to 
 suppose all his past experience in religion was delusive. Of his 
 state of mind during this melancholy period, I know not whether 
 he has left any written account ; but I recollect, when adverting 
 to it in familiar conversation, he described it as a year of almost 
 incessant weeping and prayer. Though none who were ac- 
 quainted with him will entertain a doubt of the sincerity of his 
 piety previous to that afflictive visitation, as little can it be 
 doubted that it was a source of great spiritual improvement, 
 that he did business in the mighty waters, and that he was 
 brought to a more profound knowledge of himself, and a more 
 deep and humble reliance on the power and grace of the Re- 
 deemer, than he had before experienced." 
 
 Such is Mr. Hall's theory of a result which lie pro- 
 ceeds to amplify, but which, for a reason I shall give pre- 
 sently, it is not necessary we should unhesitatingly receive. 
 
 " From that time his discourses were more thoroughly imbued 
 with the peculiarities of the gospel, his doctrinal views more clear
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 323 
 
 and precise, and his whole conversation and deportment such as 
 announced a rapid advance in spirituality. That generality in 
 his statements of revealed truth, which was the consequence of 
 his education at Daventry, and which almost invariably charac- 
 terised the pupils of that seminary, totally disappeared, and he 
 attained ' to all the riches of the full assurance of the mystery of 
 God the Father, and of Christ.' " 
 
 Such, as I said, is Mr. Hall's theory; but now mark 
 the conclusion of this paragraph, ami see how it accords 
 with the facts : 
 
 " Though he survived that affliction several years, it probably 
 shortened his life, by giving that concussion to his nervous sys- 
 tem, from which he never perfectly recovered ; and from that 
 time the circulation of his blood appears to have been less regu- 
 lar, and the depression of his spirits more frequent than before." 
 
 So that we have here an accomplished teacher of reli- 
 gion, of most unquestionable and most elevated piety accord- 
 ing to the system which he believed and inculcated, whose 
 whole constitution is shaken to its very foundation by the 
 apprehension of his own spiritual condition and prospects; 
 who, we are told, becomes by that trial more spiritualised 
 and more secure, and yet who, notwithstanding this asser- 
 tion, is thenceforth to the close of his life subject to the 
 incessant harassment of those " days of darkness " which 
 Mr. Hall is recorded to have apprehended so bitterly for 
 himself, and which he dreaded more than he dreaded death. 
 Fur there is a double apprehension in this mode of religi- 
 ous being. Not only is there the dread of death, but then; 
 is the dread of that dread — there is the apprehension of 
 being in such a state as is here described. There is this 
 double action set up, altogether tending to cast clouds and 
 darkness where Providence has not interposed them, and 
 where they would not exist did they not arise from the 
 ••stagnant marshes" of man's own superstitious imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Dr. Priestley was a man of dogma as well as Robert 
 Hall, though the advocacy of his life was consecrated to 
 tenets of a very different description. He was always ad- 
 dieted to those modi's of thought which he had imbibed 
 in early lite in his Calvinistic education, and with his Cal- 
 vinistic associations. He was ever solicitous, while he 
 was rejecting one tenet after another, and prosecuting his 
 inquiries with the ardour of an experimentalist, to cast the
 
 324 LECTURE XX. 
 
 results at which he arrived in moulds as definite as those 
 he had broken, and while expelling one set of positive 
 dogmas to supply their place by another set of positive 
 dogmas. Hence the affinity which continued to exist be- 
 tween his modes of thought and action, and those of the 
 religionists from whom he had seceded, and to whom he 
 was most directly opposed, and with whom he held some- 
 times the warmest controversy. But yet the ameliorated 
 character of his religion, dogmatic as it might remain, 
 gave a very different colouring to the death-bed of Priest- 
 ley, from that which has too often marked the termination 
 of those who have attained the honours of saintship in 
 what is called the orthodox connexion. With his dog- 
 matic propensity, Priestley yet had not the more vulgar 
 species of antagonism which has sometimes shewn itself in 
 the deaths of Unitarians — at least which sometimes appears 
 in their obituaries ; where the chief solicitude seems to be 
 to furnish by the record of that event another argument 
 against Trinitarianism and Calvinism — where there is 
 something like saying, Here is to be a proof exhibited of 
 the practicality of Unitarian doctrines, and of their equal 
 power with other doctrines to calm the conscience and to 
 support the mind — where there is that sectarian spirit 
 which led one who was no Unitarian (but there may be 
 sectarianism in Christianity, as well as in any particular 
 denomination of Christianity) — which led Addison to send 
 to a young relative to come to his bedside when he was 
 dying, in order that he might " see in what peace a Chris- 
 tian could die." Dr. Priestley was not tainted with any very 
 offensive degree of this sort of antagonism — yet there does 
 seem something of the controversialist in the way in which 
 he indicated his last emotions. When he spoke of death 
 as the " sound sleep" of the grave from which he was to 
 awaken ; and when he pointed to Simpson's Essay in Re- 
 futation of the Eternity of Future Punishment, laid on it 
 his dying hand, and told his son there was the source of 
 his consolation, we cannot but imagine that the old feelings 
 of the controversialist against the immateriality of the soul 
 and the eternity of future punishment, were still alive in 
 the dying man. One would have better liked a reference 
 to the positive side than to the merely negative: and yet 
 perhaps it was so in his own feeling, however habit might 
 influence the expression.
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. f>25 
 
 Priestley's views were simple, clear, and broad ; and in 
 a letter written a short time before Ins death, and in the 
 contemplation of that event, he tells his correspondent how 
 much the notion of evil was continually vanishing from his 
 view; how he saw less and less of it in his contemplation 
 of universal being ; how he did not believe in its existence 
 at all, except when spoken of in reference to temporary- 
 states of existence, but had a full reliance on the great 
 Author of Good, and believed that all was good, and tend- 
 ing to yet greater good. And when we regard his opinions 
 from this side — when we consider his feelings as conform- 
 ing with these views, and his mind passing from its mortal 
 to its future state, as into another stage of that divine 
 discipline which is on each and every spirit for bringing it 
 to perfection, we cannot but say that the orthodox bigotry 
 which proclaimed his death-bed the " damnation of the 
 Socinian creed," has need to take shame to itself that its 
 own creed has so often exhibited, in the death-bed of its 
 professors, a scene, that appeared like the realisation of 
 " damnation" upon the earth, by the agonies of the elect. 
 
 One of the most beautiful instances of the combination 
 of dogmatic religion, and even of ceremonial religion, with 
 philosophical views, a pure and lofty morality, and a cheer- 
 ful temperament, is to be found in the death of Sir Thomas 
 More — a man who, whatever his failings, gave the strong- 
 est indications of being simple and sincere — as assuredly 
 he was devout, kind, and beneficent ; and who has also left 
 traces of a richness and range of thought, that with refer- 
 ence not merely to his own day, but to any other times, the 
 most enlightened, should impress us as extraordinary. 
 
 Sir Thomas More was a moral martyr — he died, not 
 for dogma, but for conscience — he died because he would 
 neither falsify nor equivocate. The point on which he 
 was condemned Mas his refusing to take the oath exacted 
 by Henry the Eighth after his marriage with Anne Boleyn, 
 and which required the recognition of the validity oi 
 that marriage, as well as the succession of the crown in 
 its progenv. More was willing to take any oath relating 
 to the succession to the crown, because he held that to be a 
 matter within the compass and right of political authority 
 to direct. The other was an appeal to his sense of moral 
 truth, ami there he was immovable. W hen he was con- 
 demned, he concluded his appeal to his judges with an
 
 326 LECTURE XX. 
 
 expression which is full of truthfulness to his own generous 
 mind, and of moral beauty in itself. He was declared 
 guilty of high-treason, and condemned to die as a traitor. 
 After hearing the sentence pronounced without any sign 
 of surprise or indignation, he shortly addressed himself to 
 the court, which consisted of a select commission of peers 
 and judges. " My Lords (said he), I have nothing further 
 to add, but that as the blessed apostle Paul was present 
 and consented to the death of Stephen, and yet both are 
 now holy saints in heaven, where they shall continue in 
 friendship for ever ; so I earnestly trust and pray, that 
 though your lordships have now been judges on earth to 
 my condemnation, we may yet all meet together in ever- 
 lasting love and happiness." 
 
 The cheerfulness and serenity of his mind, displayed in 
 what some have deemed an unbecoming lightsomeness in 
 his conduct on the scaffold, when he put aside his beard, 
 declaring that the axe of the executioner should not touch 
 that, as it had committed no treason — the affection which 
 was evinced by the fact of his daughter twice breaking 
 through the guards in order to touch him again as he was 
 led forth to the fatal scene — and the solemn and impres- 
 sive, enlightened and charitable, as well as fervent and 
 devout prayer which is on record as his composition while 
 in the Tower — these were all worthy of the author of the 
 Utopia — of a work which touches and glances on almost 
 ail the great social questions that occupy, and deserve 
 to occupy men's minds — which affirms the simplicity of 
 religion, the freedom of opinion, mutual tolerance, the 
 property of labour, and the rightful objects of govern- 
 ment, in a tone that must ever be listened to with rever- 
 ence — and that seems, while describing the changes and 
 improvements which the writer says he " rather wished 
 than hoped" might be realised on the earth, — seems to be, 
 if not one of those revelations by the beaming light from 
 eternity upon the things of this world which we have 
 desired to find — at least such a view, so clear and com- 
 prehensive, as a mighty intellect might take, surveying 
 from some mountain-top of truth the changing and shift- 
 ing scenes of this our lower world spread wide beneath 
 its feet. 
 
 The antagonism of ancient martyrdom is also con- 
 spicuous in the history of martyrdom when it becomes
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 1327 
 
 Protestant. If there were not some of the concomitants 
 of the feeling of ancient times, there is yet retained that 
 sort of partisan spirit which made individuals seem to be 
 engaged in conflict up to the very latest moment of their 
 conscious existence. The martyrs of Protestantism, so 
 far as they belong to the Church of England, are set forth 
 with great care and diligence, with much zeal and admira- 
 tion, and with all the elocjuence with which hi' is so capa- 
 ble of emblazoning their virtues and memories, by Dr. 
 Southey, in his Booh of the Church. I confess these, like 
 the other martyrologies of sects, are to me unpleasant 
 reading. They do not accord with those views of life and 
 death and immortality — of virtue, vice, and happiness, 
 which one wants to titid illustrated in the closing scene 
 of man's earthly existence. The preachers and others 
 who were selected for these endurances seem ever to 
 have thought themselves committed in a partisan con- 
 ilict : even in their appeals to the Lord Jesus, when the 
 flames wire kindling around them, they appear to be look- 
 ing to the leader of a faction, which was engaged in an 
 intense struggle with some other faction, and though a 
 minority in this world, would become the majority and 
 predominate in the world hereafter. 
 
 There is much more of dignity connected with this 
 species of suffering when wc come to such men as Elliot, 
 Russell, and Sidney. Perhaps even to them a slight tinge 
 of the same taint adheres, evinced in their dying decla- 
 rations^/- Protestanism and against Popery, and the defy- 
 ingness of their devotion to the ''good old cause." The 
 deduction is a small one, and leaves an immense superi- 
 ority of moral grandeur to the political over the theolo- 
 gical martyrs of our country. They fell under the axe 
 of tyranny like stately sacrifices. Or in the lingering im- 
 molation of tiie dungeon, their collected faculties, lofty 
 principle.-, and indomitable will, asserted, in the presence 
 of despotism and of death, the true " Monarchy of Man." 
 Prom mere sectarian martyrdom, from the mutual burn- 
 ings of bigots, one turns with preference to tiie deaths of 
 even the French Revolutionists, men who were more in a 
 heroic past than in a fanatical future, and while they seem 
 (few of them) to have thought much of any thing that was 
 to befal them alb r the fatal stroke, yet lived to the last 
 in the fact of having been sharers in that great national
 
 328 LECTURE XX. 
 
 outbreak against ancient oppression. Its chains had been 
 riven ; and if they subsequently played a losing game as 
 to the political party to which they belonged, yet had they 
 contributed towards a magnificent event which the world 
 always regards with interest — and the spirit of which 
 they hoped would eventually extend itself over the world. 
 There was no flinching in their deaths — there were no 
 apprehensions or demonstrations of cowardice, save by 
 the poor imbecile monarch, vainly struggling with his 
 executioners on the scaffold, or by the sanguinary Robes- 
 pierre, who neither knew how to submit to or avoid the 
 guillotine with dignity. The better portion of them seem 
 like their hero, Danton, while they paid some tribute to 
 nature and affection at the foot of the scaffold, to have 
 said to themselves, " no weakness;" and if they did not, 
 and could not, like him say to the executioner, " Forget 
 not to shew my head to the people; it is worth looking 
 at," — there were many who might have said to the histo- 
 rian, " Forget not to record our story ; it will be worth 
 reading." 
 
 The spirit of antagonism in death has extended itself 
 even to unbelieving philosophers. I think there are traces 
 of it in the affected jocosity of Hume, in his poor cold 
 pleasantries about Charon, and the passage across the 
 river of oblivion. We see it yet more distinctly combined 
 with the irritable temperament of Voltaire, when dismissing 
 the over-zealous priest with — "Tease me no more about 
 that man." Other unbelieving philosophers have taken 
 a higher and more dignified course than this, and one 
 more in accordance with that of the heathen philosophers 
 of antiquity. Such men as Bentham and Goethe, in the 
 power of that practical analysis of which one was the great 
 applier, and of that philosophical poetry in, which the 
 other, through so long a life, had possessed his being, — 
 seem to have looked at the world as flowing on in the light 
 of their own minds, as deriving much, and about to derive 
 yet more, from what they had done, and to have found 
 that they could afford to disregard or to sink the question 
 of immortality as it affected themselves personally. It 
 became with them a matter of comparative disregard 
 whether their individuality was to continue, or then to be 
 extinguished — they merged self in the contemplation of 
 the progressive condition of the human mind, in the im-
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 329 
 
 mortality of the genius of humanity — an immortality ren- 
 dered more lustrous by the contributions of their intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 If a well-authenticated record of the reflections of a 
 great mind conscious of the near approach of death be of 
 most rare and difficult attainment, we may yet get some 
 substitute in the writings of those by whom the power of 
 abstraction from present objects and events has been car- 
 ried further than ordinary, and who have accustomed 
 themselves to bask reflectively in the clear light of truth. 
 The Essay on Death by Lord Bacon, a very brief and sim- 
 ple one, is a specimen of this kind, and contains much solid 
 and profound wisdom on the subject: 
 
 " Men fear death," says he, " as children fear to go in the 
 dark ; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, 
 so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death as the 
 wages of sin and the passage to another world is holy and reli- 
 gious ; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. 
 Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity 
 and of superstition. * * * 
 
 " Groans, convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends 
 weeping, and blacks and obsequies, and the like, shew death ter- 
 rible. It is worthv of observing, that there is no passion in the 
 mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death; 
 and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath 
 so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. 
 Revenge triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honour aspireth 
 to it ; grief ilieth to it ; fear pre-occupateth it ; nay, we read, 
 after Otho the emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the 
 tenderest of affections) provoked many to die, out of mere 
 compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of fol- 
 lowers." 
 
 And then — after mentioning how the identity of charac- 
 ter — when character has been strongly marked — is pre- 
 served even in the period of dissolution — he says : 
 
 " It is as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little in- 
 fant perhaps the one is as painful as the other. He that dies 
 in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, 
 who for the time scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind 
 fixt and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours 
 of death ; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is nunc 
 dimiitis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expecta- 
 tions." 
 
 To obtain such. then, should be the object of life —
 
 330 LECTURE XX. 
 
 and in obtaining them we shall probably find the best 
 light that can be thrown upon death. I have not in these 
 Lectures adverted to the opinion of the professors of the 
 Mohammedan religion, because I only perceive in them an 
 aggravation of the coarse, arbitrary, and dogmatic system 
 which we have traced in some forms of Christianity. Nor 
 have I cited, to any extent at least, the works of professed 
 theologians, because they are fraught in their remarks 
 on topics of this kind with a conventional phraseology, 
 with prescribed forms of expression, and have been usually 
 composed under influences unfavourable to the free exer- 
 cise of their own thoughts, or the simple communication 
 of those thoughts to others. I have endeavoured rather, 
 by a general view of the conduct of large bodies, and by 
 citations of what seemed most worthy from those whose 
 minds and histories were most celebrated, to combine such 
 few glimmering rays as might best act upon the darkness 
 that impends over the close of life. The great mistake 
 about the two modes of being which death parts, I take to 
 be, the notion of their entire dissimilarity. Hence the fears 
 of devout minds, and the confidence of superstitious ones ; 
 and from its absence, the courage of those who have been 
 in some great and good work, and the dignity of superior 
 intellects, whatever their opinions. The great question is, 
 What is man's mental and moral condition ? That which 
 is the record of the past is also the presage of the future. 
 In what he is now, we best trace what he has been and 
 what he shall be; for on every reasonable and religious 
 ground we must anticipate the continuance of a being 
 essentially the same, however progressive, indefinitely pro- 
 gressive it may be, in its powers and faculties. Instead, 
 then, of vainly struggling after a luminousness which can- 
 not be obtained, let us rather endeavour to condense, each 
 for himself, the light that does exist. In our moral being 
 we see the rudiments of what we shall be; and if we 
 cannot define to ourselves what "strange thoughts" may 
 " arise in our minds," when death is known to be near 
 and has us within its grasp, we may at least approximate 
 thereto, and by some moments, taken as opportunity serves, 
 of introspection and reflectiveness, attain to portions even 
 of prophetic truth : and if in such moments the import- 
 ance of many objects and occupations undergoes a change 
 in its relative proportions ; if mountains sink and valleys
 
 CONCERNING DEATH. 331 
 
 rise; if interests dwindle into insignificance, and victories 
 seem but vanities ; — while the realities of thought and of 
 affection, which had been regarded as incidentals of exist- 
 ence, grow more and more distinct to the mind, and more 
 and more beautiful as they become more distinct, — like soft 
 music heard at night, when the din of day is subsiding into 
 silence; and if then a plan of life simpler and purer than 
 what may have been actually followed, but yet capable of 
 accomplishment and of exerting its influences upon future 
 years, unfold itself to the mind, — I think this may be re- 
 ceived as a revelation and a guidance; as something of the 
 light of eternity thrown upon the things of time ; as spiri- 
 tual truth apprehended by the soul when contemplating the 
 world, whether consciously or unconsciously, by the sense 
 of its own immortal nature. 
 
 THE END.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Of the Lectures in these three Volumes, those which follow 
 Lecture XV. in vol. ii. to the end of vol. iii. were first delivered, 
 and are here reprinted from the original reports. Many tem- 
 porary allusions render this explanation necessary. 
 
 In vol. i., p. 294, line 30, the reader is requested to strike out 
 the words, " for the next seven vears."
 
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