sound; through the bright medium of knowledge, that, and that only, must be your monitor and guide. I tell you, once for all, to beware of placing a blind confidence in me: men will always differ on subjects incapable of demonstrative proof: what that proof is, I will hereafter shew you; but it remains for you to be convinced, that certain actions and facts are Right or Wrong, ought or ought not to be, from their concordance, or discordance with that voice that if in unison they constitute Good, or Virtue; if in dissonance, Evil, or Vice. "It has been said this standard is false, or subject to variation, because men's consciences and notions of good and evil, are not every where the same; and that therefore it will not serve as a common centre, around which all the circles of opinion may revolve without collision: we will endeavour to see whether this assertion be warrantable or not; whether, when the faculties of man are enlightened by the immeasurable brightness of science, by which he learns his real place among the powers of matter and motion, he will or will not, be enabled to reduce the voice of conscience to a key note, or fundamental sound, to act as a generator, or pivot, to an universal harmony of thought and action. It has been said, that good and evil are relative terms; or, in other words, that what is virtue in one place, is not in another: it remains for us to see whether they are, or are not, abstract and absolute in their essence; orto speak more plainly, that virtue is virtue, and vice is vice, in all places and at all times; and will continue to be so to all eternity." "I begin to perceive,” said I, "that I have yet much to learn: I find I know comparatively nothing; and yet, after all, I cannot see what reason you have to complain; why you, of all men, should be so dissatisfied. You possess all the comforts of life, all that is necessary to make life desirable. It is evident you possess a cultivated mind, and moreover, that which enables you to purchase by the labour of others, your own ease and leisure." "Alas!" said he, "these are the very causes of my chagrin; oh, pause! and think how selfishly you are reasoning: it is most true, I do indeed possess all these resources usually deemed as of course the sources of happiness; but do our fellow-men possess them too? I tell you, my friend, that this night, at the moment I am speaking, thousands of the sons of men are traversing this great city without the means of procuring food or clothing, the only absolute necessaries of man, suffering all the extremity of bodily and mental woe in shapes too dreadful to name; whose mourning in their dark abodes of misery, would, if heard, curdle your very blood; while we two are rioting in a superfluity of that of which they want the smallest portion. Do not imagine me so vain as to fancy myself the only one to whom reflections such as these suggest themselves. Multitudes of the best and wisest have long since acknowledged the existence of these enormities, and as feelingly deplored them; but it is these reflections which strike me with remorse. How can, or ought I, to sit down basking in the excess of what others, born with the same natural right of enjoyment, have not in any thing like sufficiency?"—" But," said I, "it was always told me, that inequality and gradation were the bases of all society: that unequal distribution followed man considered as a gregarious animal, as a necessitous consequent :" "Then," said L, "I think they lied. But let us hear who told you so; were they fools, or bigots, or a compound of the two, in undivided moieties? Did they speak from sheer ignorance, or because, knowing better, they wished the present system to continue? I hope to convince you shortly, how by far the greater portion of mankind glide down the stream of existence after the manner of a team of wild ducks, who fly with outstretched necks, without turning their heads to either side: these persons open wide their mouths for the cram of nonsensical garbage, and are crammed to the tongue accordingly: if your informants belong to that class, I pity them; if they knew better, I fear "they lied, and they knew they lied;" which is the quintessence of falsehood. And further, I, who from being in possession of the privileges you have noticed, ought to join in the necessity of inequality, if I wished that system to last, or sincerely believed it to have truth for its foundation, will endeavour to prove that it is founded on error, has no connexion with Nature and Reason, and is consequently hollow and artificial: and, lastly, that being established on positions purely local and temporary, it now totters to its base before the mighty engines of knowledge, which batter it forlorn on all sides. Happy are they who escape crush and suffocation from the rubbish which will accompany its fall. Rather let us fervently hope its fall will not be precipitate— that it will not fall; but that gradually and carefully lowered, story after story, by efficient workmen, this old, towering, and over-built |