live in a constant struggle with fortune, and when the excitement of business has subsided vacuity and craving are experienced. These proceed from the moral and intellectual faculties calling aloud for gratification; but, owing to an imperfect education, either idleness, gossiping conversation, fashionable amusements, or intoxicating liquors are resorted to, and with these a vain attempt is made to fill up the void of life. This class ardently desires a change that would remove the evils here described, and will zealously co-operate in diffusing every kind of knowledge by means of which this end may be accomplished.

The punishment which overtakes the higher classes is equally obvious. If they do not engage in some active pursuit, calculated to give scope to their energies, they suffer the evils of ennui, morbid irritability, and excessive relaxation of the functions of mind and body, which carry in their train more suffering than even that which is entailed on the operatives by excessive labour. If they pursue ambition in the senate or in the field, in literature or in philosophy, their success is in exact proportion to the approach which they make to observance of the supremacy of the moral sentiments and the intellect.

Sully, Franklin, and Washington may be contrasted with Sheridan and Buonaparte as illustrations. Sheridan and Napoleon did not systematically pursue objects sanctioned by the higher sentiments and the intellect as the end of their exertions; and no person who is a judge of human emotions can read the history of their lives, and consider what must have passed within their minds, without coming to the conclusion that even in their most brilliant moments of external prosperity the canker was gnawing within, and that there was no moral relish of the present or reliance on the future, but a mingled tumult of inferior propensities and intellect, carrying with it an habitual feeling of unsatis fied desires,

165

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MORAL LAW AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY.

LET us now consider the effect of the moral law on NATIONAL prosperity.

In surveying the faculties common to Man with the lower animals, we perceive that they are all selfish in their objects. "Throughout organic nature," says a friend who has supplied many valuable suggestions for this work, “we see that one species preys upon another, inflicting pain of various kinds, of various degrees of intensity and duration, mental and bodily. And among individuals of the same species we find robbery, bullying, beating, and murdering, pretty much as we do among men, allowing for the greater powers of mischief possessed by Man through his greater endowments of mind." When we include the whole races of the inferior animals, the representation is borne out by facts fishes, for example, devour each other, the strong making their meals of the weak. Limits, however, are set by Nature to the inroads of these selfish faculties, in one individual and in one race, on the welfare of others, by denying reason to all of them, and by balancing instincts of evasion, escape, or defence against instincts of aggression; so that, as a general result, the different races continue to exist, and to enjoy, while they live, no mean portion of happiness, even amidst all the dangers which surround them. If this be true of each race, it holds good also as to the great mass of the individuals who compose it; for a race is not a being, but merely the aggregate of individuals composing it.

As moral sentiments have been bestowed on Man, the question presents itself, Has the world, in reference to nations, been arranged in harmony with their supremacy, or has it not? Granting, what cannot be denied, that the strong in animal and intellectual power among nations, as among the inferior creatures, may make the weak their prey, is this the best mode of pursuing and working out their own happiness and prosperity?

The natural sources of wealth are industry and economy. By robbery and murder, men may for a time appropriate

wealth already produced by their weaker brethren; but under such treatment the sources of it must soon be exhausted. Producers cease to labour and to save, if not to exist, when exposed to barbarous rapacity. No human skill, therefore, can render a nation permanently rich by neglecting industry and by prosecuting conquest and plunder.

If the world is constituted on the principle of the supremacy of the moral sentiments and the intellect, the practice of one nation seeking riches and power by conquering, devastating, or obstructing the prosperity of another must be essentially futile: being in opposition to the moral constitution of creation, it must occasion misery while in progress, and can lead only to the impoverishment and mortification of the people who pursue it.

It is narrated that Themistocles told the Athenians that he had conceived a project which would be of the greatest advantage to Athens, but that the profoundest secrecy was necessary to ensure its success. They desired him to communicate it to Aristides, and promised, if he approved, to execute it. Themistocles took Aristides aside, and told him that he proposed, unawares, to burn the ships of the Spartans, then in profound peace with the Athenian State, and not expecting an attack, which would have very much weakened the Spartan power. Aristides reported that nothing could be more advantageous, but nothing more unjust, than the project in view. The people refused to hear or to execute it.

Here the intellect of Aristides appears to have viewed the execution of the scheme as beneficial, while his sentiment of conscientiousness distinctly denounced it as morally wrong; and the question is: Whether Nature is so constituted that the intellect can, in any case, possess sufficient data for inferring actual benefit from conduct which is disowned and denounced by the moral sentiments. It appears to me that it cannot. Let us trace the project of Themistocles to its results.

The inhabitants of Sparta possessed the faculties of selfesteem, combativeness, destructiveness, intellect, benevolence, and conscientiousness. The destruction of their ships in time of profound peace would have outraged their higher sentiments and their intellect, and these would have kindled combativeness and destructiveness into the most intense activity. The greater the injustice of the act,

the fiercer would the flame of opposition, retaliation, and revenge have glowed; and not only so, but the more grossly and wantonly the moral sentiments were outraged by the act, the higher would have been the class of minds which would have instinctively burned with the desire of revenge, and the more powerful would they have been, by wealth, intelligence, and determination, to inflict it. The Athenians, then, by the very constitution of Nature, would have been assailed by this fearful storm of moral indignation and animal resentment, rendered doubly terrible by the most virtuous and intelligent being converted into the most determined of their opponents.

Turning to their own State again : only those individuals among themselves in whom intellect and moral sentiment were inferior to acquisitiveness and self-esteem, which give rise to selfishness and the lust of power, could have cordially approved of the deed. The virtuous would have turned from the contemplation of it with shame and sorrow; and thus both the character and the number of the defenders would have been diminished in the very ratio of the atrocity of the crime, while the power of the assailants, as we have seen, would, by the very circumstance, have been proportionately increased.

It was impossible, therefore, that permanent advantage to Athens could have resulted from such a flagrant act of iniquity; and the apparent opposition, in the judgment of Aristides, between the justice of the deed and the benefits to be expected from it arose from his intellect not being sufficiently profound and comprehensive to grasp the whole springs which the enterprise would set in motion, and to trace out the ultimate results. In point of fact, there would have been no opposition between the dictates of conscientiousness and those of an intellect that could accurately survey the whole causes and effects which the unjust enterprise would involve; and the Athenians, in listening to the suggestions of the moral sentiments, actually followed the most advantageous course which it was possible for them to pursue. The trite observation that honesty is the best policy thus becomes a profound philosophical maxim when traced to its foundation in the constitution of human nature.

If the Creator has constituted the world in harmony with the dictates of the moral sentiments, the highest prosperity of each particular nation should be thoroughly compatible

with that of every other. Hence England, by sedulously cultivating her own soil, pursuing her own courses of industry, and regulating her internal institutions and external relations by the principles of benevolence, veneration, and justice, which imply abstinence from wars of aggression, from conquest, and from all selfish designs of commercial monopoly, should be able to attain to the highest condition of prosperity and enjoyment that Nature admits of; and every act in which she deviates from these principles should carry inevitable evil to herself along with it. The same statement may be made with respect to France and every other nation.

According to this principle, also, the Creator should have conferred on each nation such peculiar advantages of soil, climate, situation, or genius as should enable it to produce something which other States want, and thus to carry on amicable intercourse with them in a beneficial exchange of the products peculiar to each; so that the higher one nation rose in morality, intelligence, and riches, the more estimable and valuable it should become as a neighbour to all the surrounding States. This is so obviously the real constitution of Nature, that proof of it would be superfluous.

England, however, as a nation, long set this law at defiance. She led the way in taking the propensities as her guides, in founding her laws and institutions upon them, and in following them in her practical conduct. England placed restrictions on trade, and carried them to the greatest height; she conquered colonies, and ruled them in the full spirit of selfishness; she encouraged lotteries, fostered the slave-trade, and carried paper money and the most avaricious spirit of manufacturing and speculating in commerce to their highest pitch; she defended corruption in Parliament, and distributed churches and seats on the bench of justice on principles purely selfish: all in direct opposition to the supremacy of the moral law. If the world had been created in harmony with the predominance of the animal faculties, England would have been a most felicitous nation; but as the reverse is the case, it was natural that a severe national retribution should follow these departures from the Divine institutions-and grievous accordingly has been, and I fear will be, the punishment.

My conviction, therefore, is that nations as well as individuals are placed under the moral law, and that the world