The disproportion of the happiness of society with its means, is a subject which calls forth all the eloquence and sagacity of this writer. Nor is this surprising; for it might startle the most sluggish indifference—the most incurious stupidity. How does it come to pass, that with us misery is the fruit of successful labour, that with us experience does not teach caution, that with us the most munificent charity is unable to check the accumulation of evil, moral and physical, with which it vainly endeavours to contend? How is it, that while the wealth of England is a proverb among nations, the distress of her labourers is a byword no less universal; that while her commerce encircles the globe, while her colonies are spread through both hemispheres, while regions hitherto unknown are but the resting-place of her never-ceasing enterprise, the producers of all this wealth, the causes of all this luxury, the instruments of all this civilization, lie down in despair to perish by hundreds, amid the miracles of triumphant industry by which they are surrounded? How happens it, that as our empire extends abroad, security diminishes at home? that as our reputation becomes more splendid, and our attitude more commanding, the fabric of our strength decays, and our social bulwarks rock from their foundations? Who can say that the skill and valour of the general who has added a province to our Indian empire—who, triumphing over obstacles hitherto insurmountable, has caused the tide of victory to flow from East to West, and make the Sepoy invincible—may not erelong be called upon to fulfil the thankless task of suppressing insurrection, and to control the kindling fury of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population? Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and in our harbours be heard no sound of oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby? Is the vaunted splendour of this country to furnish a melancholy lesson of the instability of earthly power, and its fate to conclude a tale more glorious, to point a moral more affecting, than any which Tyre, or Sidon, or Carthage have furnished, to curb the insolence of prosperity, and to show the insignificance of man?
"Quamvis Pontica pinus,
Sylvae filia nobilis,
Jactes et genus et nomen inutile."
After dwelling on the supply of information which the present age enjoys, and which is quite without parallel in any former period, and pointing out the inconsistencies among us, of which, nevertheless, every day affords perpetual examples, the writer asks—
"Do these evils proceed from some moral perversity in the people? Is there some natural barrier in England against the effects of capital, industry, science, and religion; or is it not that ignorance of the laws that regulate and harmonize social existence, and of those that govern the human mind, has hitherto been extensively prevalent, and is still resisting the remedies of riper experience?
"But the poor and ignorant cannot educate themselves; it must be the upper classes who give them the means of improvement. In the natural laws of society, the use of a class who are independent of labour for subsistence, is, that a certain part of the community should have leisure to acquire that general knowledge which is the parent of wise institutions and pure morals. That they should have such affluence as to give weight to their example and authority, is also desirable. Government, as has already been observed, cannot act effectively against a very great preponderance of error and prejudice, but must legislate in the spirit of truths that are generally known, and in the service of interests that excite general sympathy.
"The object of this work is not to advocate particular measures, nor even to assume that every thing that is wrong is so through culpable neglect; but it is to call attention to the grievous evils, that neither legislation nor zeal and charity can counteract with effect, till the increased education of all classes assists their efforts. Something must be wanting, when such unrivalled knowledge and wealth are accompanied by such various and wide-spread evils. It is not benevolence that is deficient, for nowhere can we turn without meeting it in private, struggling against miseries too great for its power, and in public devoting abilities of the first order to the cause of humanity.
"It is the wider diffusion of knowledge we require: more heads and hands still are wanted, qualified for acting in concert, or at least acting generally on right principles. Too many persons capable of generous feeling are absorbed and corrupted by luxury and frivolity; too many waste their efforts from shallow, mistaken, and contradictory views."
Then follows a splendid description of scientific energy, the gratification which it affords, and the noble objects to which it points the way.
"In examining the prodigious resources at the command of the upper classes of English society, it is finely remarked, that 'the fine arts are the materials by which our physical and animal sensations are converted into moral perceptions.'
"Every thing in the form of matter, however coarse—the refuse and dross of more valuable materials—is resolvable, by science, into elements too subtle for our vision, and yet possessed of such potency that they effect transmutations more surprising than the fables of magic. The points that spangle the still blue vault, and make night lovely to the untaught peasant, interpreted by science, expand into worlds and systems of worlds: some so remote, that even the character of light, in which their existence is declared to us, can scarcely give full assurance of their reality—some, kindred planets which science has measured, and has told their movements, their seasons, and the length of their days. Such resemblances to our own globe are ascertained in their general laws, and such diversity in their peculiar ones, that we are led irresistibly to believe they all teem with beings, sentient and intelligent as we are, yet whose senses, and powers, and modes of existence, must be very dissimilar, and indefinitely varied. The regions of space, within the field of our vision, present us with phenomena the most incomprehensibly mysterious, and with knowledge the most accurate and demonstrable. Light, motion, form, and magnitude—the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms—have their several sciences, and each would exhaust a life to master it completely. No uneasy passion follows him who engages in such speculations, where continual pursuit is made happy by the sense of continual progress. He leaves his cares at the threshold; for when his attention is fixed, so great is the pleasure of contemplation, that it seems good to have been born for this alone.