of millions of men toiling to the extremity of human endurance for a pittance scarcely sufficient to sustain life; weavers labouring for fourteen or sixteen hours a day for eightpence, and frequently unable to procure work even on these terms; other artisans exhausted almost to death by laborious drudgery, who, if better recompensed, seek compensation and enjoyment in the grossest sensual debauchery, drunkenness, and gluttony; master-traders and manufacturers anxiously labouring for wealth, now gay in the fond hope that all their expectations will be realised, then sunk in despair by the ploughshare of ruin having passed over them; landholders and tenants now reaping unmeasured returns from their properties, then pining in penury amidst an overflow of every species of produce the Government cramped by an overwhelming debt and the prevalence of ignorance and selfishness on every side, so that it is impossible for it to follow with a bold step the most obvious dictates of expediency and justice, by reason of the countless prejudices and imaginary interests which everywhere obstruct the path of improvement. This much more resembles punishment for transgression than reward for obedience to the Divine laws. It has all flowed as the natural and inevitable consequence of neglecting the moral culture and elevation of our labouring population, of pursuing wealth irrespective of the laws by which its creation and distribution are regulated, and of inattention to the order of Providence in the natural constitution of the world.

If every man in this country will turn his attention inwards, and reckon the pangs of disappointment which he has felt at the subversion of his darling schemes by unexpected turns of public events, or the deep inroads on his happiness which such misfortunes overtaking his dearest relations and friends have occasioned to him; the numberless little enjoyments in domestic life which he is forced to deny himself in consequence of the taxation with which he is loaded; the obstructions to the fair exercise of his industry and talents presented by stamps, licences, excise laws, custom-house duties, et hoc genus omne; he will discover the extent of suffering attached by the Creator to national transgressions. From my own observation, I should say that the miseries inflicted upon individuals and families by fiscal prosecutions founded on excise laws, stamp laws, post-office laws, &c., all originating in the necessity of providing for the national

debt, are equal to those arising from some of the most extensive natural calamities.

It is true that few persons are prosecuted without having offended; but the evil consists in presenting men with enormous temptations to infringe mere financial regulations, not always in accordance with natural morality, and then inflicting ruinous penalties for transgression. Men have hitherto expected the punishment of their offences in the thunderbolt or the yawning earthquake, and have believed that, because the sea did not swallow them up, or the mountains fall upon them and crush them to atoms, Heaven was taking no cognisance of their sins; while, in point of fact, an omnipotent, all-just, and all-wise God had arranged before they erred an ample retribution in the very consequences of their transgressions. It is by looking to the principles in the mind from which transgressions flow, and attending to their operations and results, that we discover the real mode of action of the Divine government. When men shall be instructed in the laws of creation, they will discriminate more accurately than heretofore between natural and factitious evils, and will become less tolerant of the latter.

Since the foregoing observations were written, in 1826, a great measure of Parliamentary Reform has been carried into effect in Britain and Ireland, and already considerable progress has been made in rectifying our national institutions. For the first time in the annals of the world a nation has voluntarily contributed a large sum of money for the advancement of pure benevolence and justice. We have agreed to pay twenty millions sterling for the freedom of 800,000 human beings, whom our forefathers had led into hopeless slavery. Free trade has been established. Sinecures have been abolished, monopolies destroyed, entails relaxed, unmerited pensions checked, and taxation lightened; and there is a spirit abroad which demands the reform of all other abuses in Church and State. There is also a strong and growing desire for an efficient system of national education.*

These and similar changes tend to bring the institutions of the country into harmony with the dictates of reason

*This desire has now been gratified by the establishment of free national education all over the United Kingdom. --ED., 1893.

and the moral sentiments, the effect of which will infallibly be not only to increase the physical enjoyments, but greatly to advance the moral, intellectual, and religious condition of the people. Example is the most powerful instructor, and in vain did a priesthood allied to the State preach truth, justice, and benevolence to the people while selfishness, oppression, and profligacy were practised by their masters and themselves. No more effectual means of improving the morals of the people can be devised than that of purifying all public institutions, and exhibiting justice and kindly affection as the animating motives of public men and national measures.

Of all national enormities, that of legalising the purchase of human beings and conducting them into slavery is probably the most atrocious and disgraceful. Great Britain was long chargeable with this iniquity. The callous inhumanity, the intense selfishness, and the utter disregard of justice implied in the practice must have overflowed in numerous evils on the British people themselves. Indeed, the state of wretched destitution in which the Irish peasantry were allowed to remain, and the unheeded increase of ignorance, poverty, and toil in the manufacturing districts, were the natural and legitimate fruits of the same spirit that patronised slavery; and these were preparing punishments for the nation when, at length, repentance appeared. Slavery has been abolished by Great Britain, and I hail this as the first step in a glorious career of moral legislation.

The Spaniards, under the influence of selfish rapacity and ambition, conquered South America, inflicted upon its wretched inhabitants the most atrocious cruelties, and continued for three hundred years to weigh like a moral incubus upon that portion of the globe. In that conquest they set at naught the laws of religion and morality. They sought for wealth, not from industry, but from war and plunder. This conduct fostered avarice and pride in the Government, baseness in the nobles, and indolence, ignorance, and mental depravity in the people; it led them to imagine happiness to consist, not in the exercise of the moral and intellectual powers, but in the gratification of all the inferior, to the outrage of the higher feelings. Intellectual cultivation was neglected, the sentiments ran astray into bigotry and superstition, and the propensities acquired a fearful ascendency. These causes made them the prey of

internal discord and of foreign invaders, and Spain at this moment suffers an awful retribution.

In surveying the present aspect of Europe, we perceive astonishing improvements achieved in physical science. How much is implied in the mere names of the steamengine, the power-loom, rail-roads, steam-boats, canals, and gas-lights; and yet of how much misery are several of these inventions at present the direct sources, in consequence of being almost exclusively dedicated to the gratification of the propensities! The leading purpose to which the steamengine in almost all its forms of application is devoted is the accumulation of wealth; and until a very recent date few persons proposed to lessen by its means the hours of toil of the lower orders of society, so as to afford them opportunity and leisure for the cultivation of their moral and intellectual faculties, and thereby to enable them to render a more perfect obedience to the Creator's institutions.

Physical has far outstripped moral science; and it appears to me that, unless mankind shall have their eyes opened to the real constitution of the world, and be at length induced to regulate their conduct in harmony with the laws of the Creator, their future physical discoveries will tend only to deepen their wretchedness. Intellect, acting as the ministering servant of the propensities, will lead them only further astray. The science of Man's whole nature, animal, moral, and intellectual, was never more required to guide him than at present, when he seems to wield a giant's power, but in the application of it to display the ignorant selfishness, wilfulness, and absurdity of an overgrown child. History has not yielded half her fruits, and cannot yield them until Man shall possess a true theory of his own nature, and a religion in harmony with the order of Providence.

England has still much to learn in this respect. Her conquest and dominion of India are immoral; and as God's laws can neither be abrogated nor evaded, serious social evils must, at this moment, be flowing to herself from the immoral action, in her own social circles, of the selfish and domineering propensities which have prompted her to make and to retain that violent acquisition. At the same time, these conquests could not occur without weakness and immorality predominating in the subjected nation. Their fate is the consequence of their own low moral, intel

M

lectual, and physical condition; and apparently the scourge, even of foreign oppression, is intended to stimulate its victims to greater energy of action, or to sweep them away as encumberers of the soil. The first aim of Nature seems to be to develop strength, and to give the world to the energetic. Among moral beings, however, that strength must be regulated by morality, else they must suffer. The immoral may possess, but the natural law declares that they shall not enjoy, the earth.

If I might hazard a conjecture in regard to India, I should hope that before the close of another century the public mind of Great Britain will have made so great a progress in the knowledge of, and belief in, the moral order of God's providence, that it will compel her rulers either to relinquish that conquest as prejudicial equally to England and to India, or to administer it on the principles of morality for the benefit of the Indian people themselves. It may be affirmed that this is already done, and that, under British sway, India is now more prosperous and happy than she ever was under her native princes. English testimony, however, is not competent to establish this proposition; and we have never heard it confirmed by the general voice of the conquered people. Besides, it is notorious that we rule India as a conquered nation, and deprive her people of all high places of honour and authority in the administration of their own affairs.

A moral government of India would imply a thorough education of her people in the natural laws, and training them to reverence and obey them; the employment of them in the administration of their own government; placing them on a footing of equality, in rights and rank, with the British; and preparing them to become a free, moral, and intellectual people. If we should ever bring them into this condition, and be contented to act towards them on the principles of beneficence and justice, we might withdraw our armies and enjoy all the profits of their commerce from the bonds of interest, respect, and affection which such conduct would evoke.

These ideas will probably appear chimerical and utopian to most readers, but the other alternative is not fanciful, While the British public mind continues to disbelieve in God's moral government of the world, and to sanction the present system of domination in India, British institutions will never become thoroughly moral at home; and so long