Part 2 (2/2)

And _was_ not that, it lory to our nation? Why repress our delight in conte syy of those ti the unparalleled alloteniuses, but for whoht occidental star” would have left no such brilliant track of fa, What should the intellectual condition of the _people_, properly so denominated, have been in order to correspond in a due proportion to the nificence of these their representative chiefs, and corand spectacle as that of a _nation_? Determine that; and then inquire what actually _was_ the state of the people all this while There is evidence that it hat the fatal blight and blast of popery enerally and raded What it was is shown by the facts, that it was found i auspices of the learned Elizabeth, with her constellation of geniuses, orators, scholars, to supply the churches generally with officiating persons capable of going with decency through the task of the public service, made ready, as every part of it was, to their hands; and that to be able to read, was the very marked distinction of here and there an individual It requires little effort but that of going low enough, to coeneral estimate in conformity to these and si what a deception we suffer to pass on us from history It celebrates some period in a nation's career, as pre-enanienius There was, perhaps, a learned and vigorous hahs, with many other powerful thinkers and actors, to render it the proudest age of our national glory And we thoughtlessly adination this splendid exhibition as in so the collective state of the people in that age! The ethereal summits of a tract of the moral world are conspicuous and fair in the lustre of heaven, and we take no thought of the ilooeneral or, indeed, and courage, and fidelity to the interests of the country, were of such admirable avail to the purposes, and under the direction, of the reat assee was sunk in such mental barbarism, as to be placed at about the same distance from their illustrious intellectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia fro to this debased, countlessin the coarsest habits, destitute, in the proportion of thousands to one, of cultivation, and still in a great degree enslaved by the popish superstition,--it was nothing to them, in the way of direct influence to draw forth their minds into free exercise and acquirement, that there were, within the circuit of the island, a profound scholarshi+p, a orous reason, aenchantment Both the actual possessors of this , around theht and instruction i they diffused of this luxury and benefit aeneral multitude, have been a Brahined essential distinction of nature While they were exulting in this elevation and free excursiveness of h a life on a level with the soil where they were at last to find their graves But this crowd it was that constituted the substance of the _nation_; to which, nation, in the mass, the historian applies the superb epithets, which a s _exception_ to the general state of the community History too much consults our love of effect and po

”On the low level of th' inglorious throng;”

and our attention is borne away to the intellectual splendor exhibited a, or in councils, courts, and camps, in heroic and roenius And thus we are gazing with delight at a fine public bonfire, while, in all the cottages round, the people are shi+vering for want of fuel

Our history becoain with the intellectual and literary riches of a e,--that which was illustrated by the talents of Addison, Pope, Swift, and their numerous secondaries in fame; and could also boast its philosophers, stateses, according to the average terrand display of mind, what had been effected toward such an advanceence in the cohly endowed spirits should appear, they would stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the er portion of it qualified to receive their intellectual effusions By this tie on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of life, who took an interest in literature, and constituted the _Authors'

Public_, had indeed extended a little, extremely little, beyond the people of condition, the persons educated in learned institutions, and those whose professions involved so Still they _were a class_, and that with a liree very difficult for us now to conceive They were in contact, on the one side, with the great thinkers, htly in coenerality of the people on the other They received the ee, but did not serve as conductors to convey thearded in its intellectual character, had an inspirited and vigorous superior part, as constituted of these men of eminent talents and attainments, and this small class of persons in aand taste; but it was in a condition reseh an injury in the spinal marrow,) some of the most important functions of vitality have ter the inferior extremities devoid of sensation and the power of action

It is on record, that works admirably adapted to find readers and tocirculation, according to _our_ standard of the popular success of the productions of distinguished talents Nor did the writers _reckon_ on any such popular success In the calculations of their literary a of course that the people went for nothing It is apparent in allusions to the people occurring in these very works, that ”the lower sort,” ”the vulgar herd,” ”the canaille,” ”the mob,” ”the nations generallyshort of the lowest classes of all,) were no ht of in any relation to a state of cultivated intelligence than Turks or Tartars The readers are habitually recognized as a kind of select coe hich the vulgar have nothing at all to do,--a converse theon that account And any casual allusions to the bulk of the people are expressed in phrases unaffectedly i on quite other terms and for essentially other ends, than we, fine writers, and you, our ade, (a feature still more prominent in that of France, at the same and down to a much later period,) that the main national population, accounted as creatures to which souls and senses were given just to render their liarded by the intellectual aristocracy with hardly so active a sentiment as contempt; they were not worth that; it was the easy indifference toas seldo as such a feeling was, there is no doubt that the actual state of the people was quite such as would naturally cause it, in e and richly cultivated h to regret and pity the popular debase their pride in the elevation, and their taste in all the luxuries and varieties, of that ae of existence enjoyed by such htof their wit, genius, or philosophy, could not even read their writings, but as a coarsematerial, the mere earthy substratum of humanity, not to be accounted of in any coher style? While they of that higher style were revelling in their mental affluence, the vast , and had always subsisted, on the arly pittance on which mind could be barely kept alive Probably they had at that tie which we have been describing For many of those hich popery had occupied the faith and fancy of that earlier generation, had now vanished fro replaced in equal number by better ideas, or by ideas of any kind And then their vices had the whole grossness of vice, and their favorite ae proportion of the wits, poets, and philosophers, of that age, they appear like gaudy flowers growing in a putrid norance, with all its appropriate consequences, continued to be the dishonor and the plague of the intellectual and land! which had through ure in Christendoislation, science, and all manner of literature: which has boasted its universities, of ancient foundation and proudest fa, in their accumulations of literary treasure, nearly the whole results of all the strongest thinking there had been in the world: and which has had also, through the charity of individuals, such a number of minor institutions for education, that the persons intrusted to see them administered have, in very numerous instances, not scrupled to divert their resources to total different purposes, lest, perchance, the cause of dae to a repletion of it Of England! so long after the Reformation, and all the while under the superintendence and tuition of an ecclesiastical establishment for both instruction and jurisdiction, co-extended with the entire nation, and furnished for its ministry withthe ht Thus endowed had England been, thus was she endowed at the period under our review, (the former part of the last century,) with the facilities, the provisions, the great intellectual apparatus, to be wielded in any th of hand she chose to apply, for pro her several s, somewhat beyond a state ofall this, an awful proportion of them were under the continual process of destruction for want of knowledge, what a tremendous responsibility was borne by whatever part of the community it was that stood, either by office and express vocation, or by the general obligation inseparable frouardianshi+p to the rest

But here the voice of that sort of patriotisland as in China, erated invective As if it were a question of what ht beforehand be reasonably expected, instead of an account of what actually exists, it ainst antecedent probability to be true, that a civilized, Christian, land, can have been so careless and wicked as to tolerate, during the lapse of centuries, a hideously gross and degraded condition of the people

But besides that the fact is plainly so, it were vain to presume, in confidence on any supposed consistency of character, that it _ _what_ a civilized and Christian nation, (so called,) may not tolerate Recollect the Slave Trade, which, with the nitude of a national concern, continued its abolishence, conscience, humanity, and refinement, as quietly accommodated to it, as if one portion of the race had possessed an express warrant from Heaven to capture, buy, sell, and drive another This is but one ofillustrations how much the constitution of our moral sentiments resembles a Manichaean creation, how much of them is for through prevailing custom; which determines that it shall but very partially depend on the real and s present to us, whether we shall have any right perception of their characters of good and evil The agency which works this reater triuuised to us by the very effect of their being constantly kept in our sight Could any nant enchanter wish for more than this,--to s not only _though_ they stand constantly and directly in our view, but _because_ they do so? And while they do so, there may also stand as obviously in our view, and close by theht be expected to make us instantly revolt from them; and these truths shall be no other than soion It shall be as if ns could be coo, to announce their character in conspicuous letters; or nightly assassins could be forced to carry torches before the to a vulgar superstition, evil spirits could not help betraying their dangerous presence by a tinge of briht of reason and religion, shall have been the true nature of certain important facts in the policy of a Christian nation; and nevertheless, even the cultivated part of that nation, during a series of generations, having directly before their sight an enormous nuisance and iniquity, shall yet never be struck with its quality, never be made restless by its annoyance, never seriously think of it And so its odiousness shall never be decidedly apprehended till some individual or two, as by the acquisition of a new moral sense, receive a sudden intuition of its nature, a disclosure of its whole essence andwhich has been exposing its quality, without the least reserve, by the ns, to millions of observers

Thus it has been with respect to the barbarous ignorance under which nine-tenths of the population of our country have continued, through a nues subsequent to the Refor low, vicious, and wretched This state of national debasement and dishonor lay spread out, a wide scene of nified and subordinate ecclesiastics, of istrates, of the philosophic speculators on huht theht have, in any way in which, they should choose to exert it, on the people below theht that the h the realm, should remain in such a condition that, when they died, the country should lose nothing but so much animated body, with the quantuth so to apprehend and proclaily slow in their assent to the refore proportion of theainst the speculations and projects for giving the people, at last, the use and value of their souls as well as their hands The earnest and sanguine philanthropistssuch an opposition, though they ought, perhaps, to have known better than to be surprised at the phenomenon They were to beprejudices and motives And froracious a ht into motives sharpened, does not tend to ent, when it comes to inspect the altered appearances assumed by persons and classes who have previously been in decided opposition What arguht be,) since you have never frankly retracted your former conteht have occurred, that youthe means? Or do you hope to deter mine and limit to some subordinate purposes, ish to prosecute for the ood? Or would you rather i an object which you dislike, than that we should have the chief credit of pro in the vineyard with maledictions on those who have reduced you to such a necessity? Would you have been glad to be saved the unwelco it alone?

Those friends of man and their country ere the earliest to co the people, and who continue to prosecute the object on the e suro any shrewd investigation into the causes of the later silence and apparent acquiescence of former opposers; and into the h in no very aeneral effect to the same end Whatever were their suspicion of those ether foreign to the nature of their business, and quite in point to their duty,--that of the reat Apostle disappointed his adversaries, by finding his own triu itself of these foes after the eneral, who has had the art to make those who have come into the field as but treacherous auxiliaries, co-operate effectually in the battle which they never intended he should gain Some preached Christ of envy, and strife, and contention, supposing to add affliction to his bonds; but, says he, What then? notwithstanding every hether in pretence or truth, Christ is preached--_the thing itself is done_--and I therein rejoice, yea, and will rejoice When anih principle, this aainer, because _it_ is a gainer, by all things convertible into tribute, whatever may be the temper or intention of the officers, either as towards the cause or towards himself He may say to the, be the motive what it will, in advancement of the object to which I arieveme see that you would not be sorry for the frustration of _my_ scheh I should lament such a state of your ht be the way to defeat _me_

We revert but for aafter the brilliant show of talent, and the creation of literary supplies for the national use, in the early part of the last century, the deplorable ree altered To pass froht and su to it in the subsequent state of the popular cultivation, is like going out fronificent aparte of elegant personages, to be beset by beggars in the glooht

Take a few hours' indulgence in the literary luxuries of Addison, Pope, and their secondaries, and then turn to some authentic plain representation of the attainments and habits of the mass of the people, at the time when Whitefield and Wesley commenced their invasion of the barbarous community But the benevolent reader, (or let hinize his country, his celebrated Christian nation, ”theand oratory have it,) in a populace for the far greater part as perfectly estranged fro, or even letters, had never been invented; the younger part finding their supre down into impenetrable stupefaction with the decline of the vital principle

If he would eagerly seek to fix on so as a counterbalance to this, and endeavor toperhaps the courage, and a certain rudiood sense, in which the people are dee nations, he will be compelled to see how these native endowo of contemptible superstitions;--contemptible not only for their stupid absurdity, but also as having in general nothing of that pensive, solemn, and poetical character which superstition is capable of assu--It is an exception to be made with respect to the northernmost part of the island, that superstition did there partake of this higher character It seems to have had somewhat of the tone imitated, but in a softer mode, in the poetry, denoion, there is no hazard in saying, that several millions had little further notion of it than that it was an occasional, or, in the opinion of perhaps one in twenty, a regular appearance at church, hardly taking into the account that they were to be taught anything there And what _were_ they taught--those of theave their attendance and attention? What kind of notions it was that had settled in their ht out, it would be ht, when so strong and general a sensation was produced by the irruption a, as they both did, (notwithstanding very considerable differences of secondary order,) the principles which had been authoritatively declared to be of the essence of Christianity, in that model of doctrine which had been appointed to prescribe and conserve the national faith If such doctrine _had_ been ih with somewhat less positive stateency of enforceht; if it had been but in crude _substance_ fixed in the people's understanding, by the ministry of the many thousand authorized instructors, ere by their institute soleed not to teach a different sort of doctrine, and not to fail of teaching this; if, we repeat, this faith, so conspicuously declared in the articles, liturgy, and horee in possession of the people, they would have recognized its main principles, or at least a similarity of principles, in the addresses of these t preachers They would have done so, notwithstanding a peculiarity of phraseology which Whitefield and Wesley carried to excess; and notwithstanding certain specialities which the latter did not, even supposing the the pro, therefore, of these ht or allowed to repose in as Christian truth, under the tuition of their great religious guardian, the national church What it was or was not would be found, in their having a sense of so opposite to it, or son and unknohen they were hearing those loud proclaimers of the old doctrines of the Refor with them this quality of a test, hoere those enerally received, on account of the import of what they said, stillit, with as strong an ieness, and contrariety to everything hitherto heard of, as any of our voyagers and travellers of discovery have been by the barbarous tribes who had never before seen civilized man, or as the Spaniards on their arrival in Mexico or Peru They ers have clone, experience every local difference of moral temperament, from that which hailed them with acclamations, to that which often exploded in a volley of s, there was a strong sense of soht before thes to our ears,” was an expression not more unaffectedly uttered by any hearer of an apostle, preaching in a heathen city And to many of the auditors, it was a matter of nearly as much difficulty as it would to an inquisitive heathen, and required as new a posture of the elical doctrines, though they were the very same which had been held forth by the fathers and lish Church

We have alluded to the violence, which sometimes encountered the endeavor to restore these doctrines to the knowledge and faith of the people And if any one should have thought that, in the descriptions we have been giving, too frequent and willing use has been made of the epithet ”barbarous,” or sirading our nation, ould request him to select for hi that state of the people, in point of sense and civilization, to say nothing of religion, which could admit such a fact as this to stand in their history--namely, that, in a vast number of instances and places, where some person unexceptionable in character as far as known, and sometimes well known as a worthy man, has attempted to address a number of the inhabitants, under a roof or under the sky, on what it is in the world to know and consider, aand cursing, and acco, in many of the instances, their furious cries and yells with loathso the preacher fro hie and hear him, to flee for their lives, sometimes not without serious injury before they could escape And that such a history of the people may sho deservedly their superiors were denoe tuated or abetted, sometimes under a little concealher condition, and even by those consecrated to the office of religious instruction; and this advantage of their station was lent to defend the perpetrators against shae

There would be no hazard in affiran the conflict with the heathenism of the country, there have been in it hundreds of occurrences answering in substance to this description

From any one, therefore, who should be inclined to accuse us of harsh language, we ave the true character of a mental and e violence as the Christian htest cause to apprehend These outrages were so far from uncommon, or confined to any one part of the country, so while after, the ht be fairly taken as indicating the depth at which the greatest part of the nation lay sunk in ignorance and barbarisood and zealous men whose lot it was to be thus set upon by a depraved, infuriate rabble, the fore their ferocious delight in a hideous blending of ribaldry and execration, of joking and cursing, were taxed with a canting hypocrisy, or a fanatical norance and barbarism in terms equivalent to our sentence froe,” and for deploring the hopelessness of any revolution in this e institutions, which see-holds

But they who and indefinitely repeating such attempts at all hazards, were little likely to be appalled by these contuht coolly reply, ”Now really you are inconsiderately wasting your labor Don't you know, that on the account of this same business we have sustained the battery of stones, brickbats, and the contents of the ditch?

And can you believe we can much care for mere _words_ of insult, after that? Albeit the opprobrious phrases _have_ the fetid coarseness befitting the bluster of property without education, or the e, they are quite another kind of thing to be the mark for, than such assailments as have come from the brawny arms of some of your peasants, set on probably by broad hints or plain expressions how ratifying to see thus exeood cause, that provision in our nature for econo of the greater creates a hardihood which can despise the less

That our descriptive observations do not exaggerate the popular ignorance, with its natural conco at the middle of the last century and far doard,us can readily confirm, from what they remember of the testimony of their imave of theThey could convey lively iar notions andthe assees, and the fashi+on of discourse and manners, at fairs, revels, and other rendezvous of amusee green, or in front of the mechanic's workshop They could recount various anecdotes characteristic of the tis, which expressed the very essence of as to the population of the townshi+p or province instead of law and prophets, or sages or apostles They could describe how free frorand-sires down to the third rude reckless generation, for not being able to read; and hoell content, when there was sohborhood who could read an advertise speech of a malefactor, for the benefit of the rest They could describe the desolation of the land, with respect to any enlightening and iious instruction in the places of worshi+p; in the generality of which, indeed, the whole spirit and manner of the service tended to e just now described as the fact--that religion, in its proper sense, was absolutely _a thing not recognized at all_ To most of the persons there the for--they were _themselves_ the all [Footnote: None of the anecdotes, that have co away, are more illustrative of those times, than those which show both people and priest satisfied with the observances at church as _constituting_ religion, never thinking of them as but the means to _teach_ and _inspire_ it Such anecdotes must have been