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ON THE RECENT ARCHITECTURAL IMPROVements of London,

POLITICAL ECONOMY. No. IV.

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DESULTORY REMINISCENCES OF MISS O'NEILL. BY TIMOTHY CRUSTY, ESQ. 47

THE EFFECTS OF VARIATIONS IN THE CURRENCY,

THE WISHING-Gate,

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ON THE PORTRAIT OF WICKLIFFE. BY DElta,
THE FIRST GRAY HAIR. BY T. HAYNES BAYLEY, ESQ.

UPON SEEING MISS FANNY KEmble in Juliet,

LOVE AND DEATH. BY MRS HEMANS,

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In our Number for July last, there was an article, headed, "Modern Reformation in Ireland," in which the author opposes the formation of the " Reformation Society," and at the conclusion expresses his regret that his opinions and views "are at variance with those of the great and good men, the prelates and the other eminent individuals of the Church of England, who patronize the Reformation Society.' It is impossible to hear the names of the Archbishops of York and Dublin, and the Bishop of Salisbury, without feelings of the deepest respect and admiration. In us they have been so strong, as all but to overpower the conviction under which we labour, and which we have endeavoured to express, that the confederacy to which they are pledged, is not well calculated for effecting the moral regeneration of Ireland."

We have lately learned, from unquestionable authority, that so far from his Grace the Archbishop of York having approved and lent his countenance to the "Reformation Society," he has always entertained, and still entertains, the strongest and most conscientious doubts as to its utility; and that while he feels the most earnest anxiety for the promotion and spread of the Protestant faith, he neither considered it proper or expedient to encourage the establishment of a branch of that Society in his own diocese; and, consequently, discountenanced any attempt to introduce it within the limits of his jurisdiction. The way in which his Grace's name has been employed in this matter, by our excellent correspondent, may have arisen from the circumstance, that his son, Captain Frederick Vernon, R. N., had attended several meetings of the "Reformation Society" in Ireland; and thus the error may probably have sprung up, that those meetings had the sanction of his father the Archbishop.

A correspondent of ours, in an article entitled " British Settlements in Western Africa," (in No. CLVI. for September last,) made use of expressions towards Captain Fraser of the Royal African Corps, which we find were quite unwarranted. In justice to Captain Fraser, we have great pleasure in stating, that we have just seen very flattering testimonials in his favour from several gentlemen of high rank in the army, under whom he has served, who all speak of him in the highest terms as an able, zealous, and active officer.

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THE violent political partisans of education might be offended even with the word objection; as if to offer an objection were to set yourself against education, and to shew yourself to be an enemy of knowledge. If they were philosophers, they would see that such sensitiveness shews a misunderstanding of the magnitude of the subject, and of the constitution of the world. For education is a great, a boundless power; and no such power can be set in motion among men, whose faculties are disordered, and whose will is mixed, without producing, greatly and conspicuously, both good and evil.

The objections to education, urged by many enlightened men, are, that it tends to produce danger to religion, and danger to the state. Observe, that the education spoken of by them is essentially and pre-eminently-intellectual. True, that the education of Scotland has been something more-religious-not a gift of the state, however that might assist, but emanating from, and dependant on, its Church, laid on it by deep persecutions. But without peculiar circumstances which may give it this character, or considering it without this character, which is the proper way of learning its own nature, Education is intellectual. It is a cultivation of man's intellectual faculties, of his understanding, and his powers of reasoning. It has, therefore, a tend ency to raise in him a very high opinion of those faculties, and to induce

VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXI.

him to form an undue estimate of their power and province.

What is the effect of this? Generally-self-confidence, a feeling either good or evil-purified, it is good, and a necessary part of goodunpurified, it is immoral. But secondly and specifically, the effect is confidence in those particular powers, -an effect not necessarily ill either, -but more easily ill, and more difficult to guard. For moral self-confidence is purified by morality, which is in the power of every one, but intellectual self-confidence is purified only by the very highest instruction, which is necessarily reserved for very few.

Intellectual self-confidence thus produced by intellectual cultivation, is, in the first place, confidence in the powers of the human mind generally; then, in those of the human being himself. It has been seen in the last age of the history of the human mind, what confidence in the sufficiency of the human faculties generally may be in result. We have seen that the evil caused thereby has been tremendous. To extend the same confidence to orders hitherto uninstructed, is, unless guarded against, to extend to them the possibility, perhaps the probability, of the same result,-to make them partakers in the proud error of self-misled philosophy,-to carry down into their privacy of life, their humble security and their obscure peace, the dazzling illusions and ambitious falsehoods, which hu

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man wit, at its height of power, armed against itself with its brightest weapons, taught in mysteries, and amplest in resources, has been able to muster to its own destruction.

The intellectual self-confidence of the individual mind tends to similar effects. Necessarily so; because the human mind at large is only the assemblage, or collection of single minds; and speaking of it, we mean only to speak comprehensively of some common manifestation of the majority of minds, which manifestation, when the mind we speak of is that of an age, is always the more determined and vehement through the power of sympathy. Therefore, a disposition due to the circumstances of the times, a disorder, if it be such, -breaks out with more force than is due to the action of these circumstances on the single mind,-like one in the physical world, which, while "it is hung in the sick air," is also infectious from touch to touch, and from breath to breath.

Whatever, therefore, is manifested conspicuously, comprehensively, and with great power, in the mind of an age, as the effect of any cause acting on the mind of the age--say confidence in the powers of the human mind-that will, in degree, be manifested as the effect of the same cause, acting on the single mind, within the single mind. If that effect be to the one irreligion, immorality, and political license, to the other it will be irreligion, immorality, and political

license.

Now, the effect of individual intellectual self-confidence appears to be morally good or ill, just as it is determined. Thus, it is easy to conceive such confidence, even when undue, and undirected, remaining within moral limits. That a man, through it, should be harsh and arrogant, rash, overbearing, untractable, refractory to direction and control, and most wilful in all his habits, is, in truth, what must be called an immoral effect, since it is a state of mind contrary to that which a perfect moral discipline tends to produce. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that it should still remain, so to speak, within the limits of morality. Because such a man may still bow down before the Moral Law, revering its sanctions, conforming to its greater

obligations, only not perceiving that there are innumerable lesser obligations with which he does not comply. But let there, for such a man's calamity, prevail in the society any kind of immoral opinion, sprung, as has been averred, from the confidence of the human mind in itself, and then such a man will be found more than all others, unless some very strong individual peculiarity, or bias, hold him back from it, predisposed to embrace that pernicious opinion. We are looking here to the lower orders. In the highest instruction, individual intellectual self-confidence is frequently the parent or finder out of dangerous opinions. In its lower degrees, it usually waits, but is not unwilling to be misled.

But why should the opinion produced by the self-confidence of the human intellect, be irreligious, immoral, adverse to political establishment? For two reasons, which are such as to make the consequences nearly universal. First, many of the reasons and doctrines of religion, many of the reasons of morality, many of the reasons of political obedience, are unfathomable to the human intellect, at least such as it is at present with the great majority of the cultivated orders of the most enlightened nations. There are difficulties in the philosophy of the world, to the height of

which it has not yet attained. Now, the human mind, confident in its own sufficiency, will not, cannot, believe what it cannot understand. It receives not, because it cannot pierce, penetrate, explore, and expound the dogmatic mysteries of religion; it has no faith in any secrets behind the veil which it cannot lift. It denies morality, because its law, too, is laid in depths of its own mysterious nature, which its own research has not yet laid bare, and possibly never will. It is unwilling even to hearken often to the still small voice of conscience, for it is like the voice of the unknown God. It refuses political obedience, because it has conceived but one reason for obedience, namely, the interest of the individual in the welfare of the whole; and yet it finds institutions challenging obedience, some of which have sprung up in imagination, some in passion, some out of the subsiding conflict of the blindest forces; but it does not discern what hand led

out of the tumult and wrath of fighting interests, and disposed out of many contending elements, institutions, laws, and a political order which the very condition it requires, namely, individual good in the common welfare. This good is under abatement, through the moral evil and corruption resting upon mankind; the unconquerable necessity of which abatement, except by the diminution of the moral evil and corruption in which it lies, it least of all distinguishes and admits.

Secondly, religion, morality, polity, are all bonds upon human willat least, since that will is corrupt they are so-to fallen man they are so-a stern, awful, often rigid subjugation. Can he like this? He hates it. There boils up in him, therefore, a will against these authorities, exciting and impelling his understanding to find invalidating flaws in their constitution. That the understanding should thus obey the impulse of the will, that it should seem to lead, where it is only propelled,-that belief should be moulded by inclination, is nothing new. It happens to all every day it has happened from the beginning of the aberration of our spirit. The highly cultivated, they whose wit is more subtle in self-deception, may not propose to themselves to find out reasons, but there is no doubt that any inclination pressing upon the thoughts continually will influence them, unknown to the consciousness of the mind through which they pass; whereas grosser minds, grosser in feeling, grosser in thought, although intellectually cultivated, will say openly and with their lips-"let us break asunder their bands, and cast their cords from us."

We think the consequences now shortly described of cultivation of the intellectual faculties, is real, and may go to any extent. Its consequences were, and are, in France. They are now here, in certain divisions of the educated, and the present partial literary corruption of the half-educated. This, then, is an argument against education; and if there were nothing to set against it, a decisive argument. But that it is not decisive would appear probable from this, that the same argument is one against the cultivation of all orders, of those who have leisure for study and give themselves

up to it. For it is among them, in the first place, that this hardened and defying philosophical pride shews itself, and that it begins to make its discoveries. But we instinctively resist the conclusion, that we are not to cultivate our faculties. We seem forfeiting our birth-right, our nature, if we give it up. Thus, then, we are led, if there be that tendency in cultivation which has been said, to enquire what may counteract it. We are led to this by a hopeful feeling, that there is such a counteraction, and that it will and does predominate. Now the basis of this hope seems to be of two kinds; in the nature of the human mind, and in the nature of the world. Of the mind, which is not mere intellect, but a mixed being, in which sensibility of affection, imagination, and conscience, have place with intellect. This mind is so constituted, then, that it rests not in intellect; if any power is given to the growth and developement of its other powers, these may and will counteract any injurious tendency lodged in the intellect. For instance, a great part of a man's happiness is in his domestic affections; but it is easily and quickly evident to him that the first condition of the enjoyment, wellnigh of the existence of these affections, is morality. Conjugal love is gone without the law of its own virtue. What is the happiness of a father in a profligate son? Let him be what he will in judging of himself, he becomes moral in judging of his child, Where is domestic peace, without domestic moral order? Here, then, is compulsion from the affections to reverence the moral law. Again, grant that there is in our minds, some principle not easily treated of, that draws us to religion. Is it not counteracted by others not strictly religious? Does not conscience, the moral sense, if this be really deep and tender, call us towards Him, incline us to seek and believe in Him, who, if he be, is, in the unfathomable necessity of his being, the eternal infinite law of Holy Right? Will not a moral spirit, oppressed with the immoralities of the only intelligent being it

knows,-itself,-rejoice to think that there is one Being in whom this miserable depravation of good does not mingle with the capacity of good, which is pure and unsullied? It

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