Part 3 (2/2)

When these are grown up into the mass of mature population, ill it be, as far as their quality shall go toward constituting the quality of the whole? Alas! it will be, to that extent, just a continuation of the ignorance, debasement, and misery, so conspicuous in the bulk of the people now And to _what_ extent? Calculate _that_ from the unquestionable fact that hundreds of thousands of the hues, say of six and sixteen, are at this hour thus abandoned to go forward into life at random, as to the use they shall make of it,--if, indeed, it can be said to be at rando tendency and te at this proportion, does any one think there will be, on the whole, wisdoh in the community to render this black infusion i it absolutely inevitable that the sequel must be in full proportion to this present fact,--_ that this fact threatens, and _can_ lead to,--as we should behold persons carried down in a hty torrent, where all interposition is iration or an epidemic? It is in order to ”frustrate the tokens” of suchof what a destructive power is in the act of carrying away, to es of his march, that all his enlisted host have not followed him, and to quell soion, for we are many;”--it is for this that the friends of ireatly beyond those which are requisite forin its present extent of operation the syste, before it be too late, the progress of so large a portion of the youthful tribe toward destruction

Another obvious circuht class is, _that they are abandoned, in a direct, unqualified ratification_ The very narrow scope to which their condition li to the in existence, when there are so few other ratification which they either are in a capacity to enjoy, or have the means to obtain By the very constitution of the hu to the senses, it is so shut within them, affected by them, dependent on them for pleasure, as well as for activity, and ih their medium And while, by this necessary hold which they have on ould call itself a spiritual being, they absolutely will engross to thee share of its interest and exercise, they will strive to possess themselves of the other half too And they will have it, if it has not been carefully otherwise claimed and pre-occupied And when the senses have thus usurped the whole et any of it back? Try, if you will, whether this be a thing so easy to be done

Present to the rossed with the desires of the senses, that their main action is but in these desires and the contrivances how to fulfil them,--offer to their view nobler objects, which are appropriate to the spiritual being, and observe whether that being proenial to its nature, and, obsequious to the new attraction, disengages itself from what has wholly absorbed it

Nor would we require that the experiious nature, to which there is an innate aversion on account of its _divine_ character, separately froh the mental faculties _be_ cultivated It ht to have power to please the ination, and sentiment,--a pleasure which, in some of its modes, the senses themselves may intimately partake; as when, for instance, it is to be irand in the natural world, or in the works of art

Let this refined solicitation be addressed to the grossly uncultivated, in coence--with the luttony and inebriation See how the subjects of your experih they are,) answer to these respective offered gratifications Observe how these nified attractives encounter and overpower the meaner, and reclaim the usurped, debased spirit Or rather, observe whether they can avail for more than an instant, so much as to divide its attention But indeed you can foresee the result so well, that you may spare the labor Still less could you deem it to be of the nature of an experiment, (which implies uncertainty,) to make the attempt with ideal forms of nobleness or beauty, with intellectual, poetical, or moral captivations

Yet this addiction to sensuality, beyond all competition of worthier ether refuse to ads, in favor of sos of a lected in his youth that he cannot spell the names of Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon, or read the incite him, may only propel him forward on the level of his debased condition and society; and it is a favorable supposition that ilist; for it is probable his grand delight ance toward such as are unable tohis will the law to all whohten into subain, an occasional corant characteristic, generally, of uncultivated degraded human creatures, both where the whole coe tribes, and where they fore portion of it, as in this country--It is hardly worth while to put in words the acknowledgment of the obvious and odious fact, that a considerable share of uish, or even repress, this infernal principle of hu to witness and inflict suffering, even separately froard such examples as peculiarly hateful, and brand theed the fair and natural tendency of mental cultivation to repress that principle, inso a surpassing virulence of depravity? Every one is ready with the saying of the ancient poet, that liberal acquirements suppress ferocious propensities But if the whole virtue of such discipline may prove insufficient, think whatalo into action with its ated, unchecked, by any re or taste, or reason or conscience

And such a consequence is manifest in the lower ranks of our self-extolled coress of education and religion has slowly effected, in certain of the once ht denoames of the rude populace These very practices, nevertheless, still keep their ground in some of the more heathenish parts of the country; and if it were possible, that the more improved notions and taste of the more respectable classes could adiven to their revival in the more civilized parts, it would be found that, even there, a large portion of the people is to this hour left in a disposition which would welcoe exhibitions It rees of cruelty would not please the greater nulish populace has shown indignation at extreme and _unaccustoing them; very rarely, however, when only brute creatures have been the sufferers Not hted with such scenes as those which, in the _Place de Greve_, used to be a gratification to a multitude of all ranks of the Parisians But how many odious facts, characteristic of our people, have come under every one's observation

Who has not seen nue is taken of weakness or simplicity, to practise upon them some sly mischief, or inflict solee hich the rude spectators can witness or abet the nant observer has hazarded a remark or expostulation, the full stare, and the quickly succeeding laugh and retort of brutal scorn, have thrown open to his revolting sight the state of the recess within, where the moral sentiments are; and sho much the perceptions and notions had been indebted to the cares of the instructor Could he help thinking as deserved somewhere, by individuals or by the local corow up to quite or nearly the complete di within it in substitution for what a soul should be? We need not rear are a vexatious or injurious incidents, (if only not quite disastrous or tragical,) befalling persons against whom they can have no resente when they _have_ causes of resenthted, (in company, it is true, withseveral of their fellow- each other with bruises, deformity, and blood

Our institutions, however, protect, in so frae of ould else become of the community But observe a ed, and with no preventive interference of those institutions, on the inferior anie proportion of this class it is, in their youth, one of the uish of living beings In many parts of the country it would be no ie yell heard at a distance, that a coonies, and cries, of so for escape or for life, while it is suffering the infliction, perhaps, of stones, and kicks, or wounds by more directly fatal means of violence If you hear in the clamor a sudden burst of fiercer exultation, you iven There is hardly an anih, and enough within reach to be a marked object of attention, that would not be persecuted to death if no consideration of ownershi+p interposed The children of the uncultivated families are alloithout a check, to exercise and i birds, and other feeble and hared to do it on what, under the denomination of vermin, are represented in the formal character of enemies, aled to them, and they were therefore not only to be destroyed as a nuisance, but deserving to be punished as offenders

The hardening against sy pain, co it, hter; a spectacle sought for gratification by the children and youth of the lower order; and in many places so publicly exhibited that they cannot well avoid seeing it, and its often savage preliravations; perhaps in revenge of a struggle to resist or escape, perhaps in a rage at the aard manner in which the victi Horrid, we call the prevailing practice, because it is the infliction, on millions of sentient and innocent creatures every year, in what calls itself a huuish unnecessary to the purpose Unnecessary--what proof is there to the contrary?--To _what_ is the present practice necessary?--So to say _humane_, but that is an equivocal epithet,) attempt made a number of years since by Lord Sohter, without suffering; a n nation hich we should deem it very far from a compliment to be placed on a level in point of civilization And it is a flagrant dishonor to such a country, and to the class that virtually, by rank, and formally, by official station, have presided over its econoeneration after another, that so hideous a fact should never, as far as we know, have been deehest state authorities worth even a question whether a ht not be practicable An inconceivable daily a, inflicted on unknown thousands of creatures, dying in slow anguish, when their deathinstantaneous, is accounted no deforruity with the national profession of religion of which the essence is charity andto sully the polish, or offend the refineher portions, a pre-eminently civilized and humanized community Precious and well protected polish and refinement, and humanity, and Christian civilization! to which it is a hborhood of their abode, those tortures of butchery are unnecessarily inflicted, which could not be actually witnessed by persons in who better than affectation, without sensations of horror; which it would ruin the character of a fine gentlele instance

They are known to be inflicted, and yet this is a trifle not worth an effort toward innovation on inveterate custom, on the part of the influential classes; who e in the fashi+on of a dress, or possibly some new refinement in the cookery of the dead bodies of the victi_ bodies; as we are told that the most delicious preparation of an eel for exquisite palates is to thrust the fish alive into the fire: while lobsters are put into water _gradually_ heated to boiling The latter, indeed, is an old practice, like that of _cris are allowed or required to be done by persons pretending to the highest refineislative attention; while the powers of definition are exhausted under the stupendous accuood order of society So hardened may the moral sense of a community be by universal and continual custom, that we are perfectly aware these very re, it is possible enough, some whoat the very same time of Christian charity and benevolent zeal [Footnote: This was actually done in a religious periodical publication] Nor will that ridicule be repressed by the notoriety of the fact, that the manner of the practice referred to steels and depraves, to a dreadful degree, a vast nus immediately employed about it; and, as a spectacle, powerfully contributes to confirreater number, exactly that which it is, by eminence, the object of ht of all suffering but their own This one thing, this not caring for what , is the very essence of the depravity which is so fatal to our race in their social constitution This selfish hardness is h even in an inactive state, as a s nity which is easily sti And yet, we repeat it, a civilized and Christian nation feels not the slightest self-displacency for its allowing a certain unhappy but necessary part in the economy of the world to be executed, (by preference to a harmless method,) in a ar class this essential principle of depravity, as all the expedients ofto expel it

Were it not vain and absurd to muse on supposable new principles in the constitution of the ht have been te _unnecessarily_ and wilfully inflicted by man on any class of sentient existence, a bitter intih asy, on all theinflicted

After children and youth are trained to behold with so excite for the service of man, it is no wonder if they are barbarous in their treatment of those that serve hi is race to our nation, than the cruel habits of the lower class toward the laboring animals committed to their power These animals have no security in their best condition and enerally the hateful disposition is the reatest sufferers Meeting, wherever we go, with soures, we shall not unfrequentlythee, and accents of hell, is wreaking his ut slow in perfor, and perhaps the feebleness of old age, have rendered difficult or absolutely i fro sores, or for losing the right direction through blindness, and that itself perhaps occasioned by hardshi+p or savage violence Many of the exacters of animal labor really seem to resent it as a kind of presu else than ashould betray under its toils that it suffers, that it is pained, weary, or reluctant And if, by outrageous abuse, it should be excited to some manifestation of resentment, that is a crime for which the sufferer would be likely to incur such a fury and repetition of blows and lacerations as to die on the spot, but for an interfering ad such a piece of property, and losing so much service When that service has utterly exhausted, often before the terth of those wretched anie of still more re whether the ut frame can be forced by violence, be worth the trouble of that violence, the delays and accidents, and the expense of the scanty supply of subsistence As they must at all events very soon perish, it has ceased to be of any rossly they hted with this release from all restraint on their dispositions Those dispositions, as indulged in soned to be destroyed, cannot bewe can attribute to fiends Sole casual circumstances, but as usual practices, by a patriotic senator soislative enacts of the brute tribes The design vanished to nothing in the House of Couuished for intellectual cultivation; whose resistance was not only against that specific ainst the principle itself on which _any_ measure of the same tendency could ever be founded

[Footnote: Lord Erskine's memorable Bill, triumphantly scouted by the late Mr Windham--Undoubtedly there are considerable difficulties in the way of legislation on the subject; but an equal share of difficulty attending some other subjects--an affair of revenue, for instance, or a measure for the suppression (at that time) of political opinion--would soon have been overcome] Nor could any victory have pleased hi the barbarism of the people, as the best security, he deeht abroad It ratification to hear (as was the fact) his naht by ruffians of all classes, who regarded him as their patron saint

If any one should be inclined to interpose here with a reht to ascribe to those classes, as if it were peculiarly one of their characteristics, the insensibility to the sufferings of the brute creation, and to nue,” we can only reply, that however those of higher order may explode any attempt to make the most efficient authority of the nation bear repressively upon the evil, and however it may in other ways be abetted by them, it is, at any rate, in those inferior classes chiefly that the actual perpetrators of it are found It is soenerally speaking, render those who have the benefit of it incapable of practising, _therant of these cruelties which they s which they do, and sos which they omit or refuse to do Mr Windham would not himself have practised a wanton barbarity on a poor horse or ass, though he scouted any legislative atte his inferiors

The proper place would perhaps have been nearer the beginning of this description of the characteristics of our uneducated people, for one so notorious, and one entering so much into the essence of the evils already named, as that we mention next; _a rude, contracted, unsteady, and often perverted sense of right and wrong in general_

It is curious to look into a large voluious casuistry, the work of soe, (for instance Bishop Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium,_) with the reflection what a conscience disciplined in the highest degree ulator of the soul actually is where there has been no sound discipline of the reason, and where there is no deep religious sentiment to rectify the perceptions in the absence of an accurate intellectual discri, dispositions and conduct cannot be taken account of according to the distinction between holiness and sin; and in the absence of a cultivated understanding, they cannot be brought to the test of the distinguishi+ng laeen propriety and turpitude; nor estimated upon any comprehensive notion of utility The evidence of all this is thick and close around us; so that every serious observer has been struck and alree conscience is a _necessary_ attribute of the human creature; and how nearly a nonentity the whole systenition of it by an unadapted spirit While that system is of a substance veritable and eternal, and stands forth in its exceeding breadth, est characters and prominences, it has to these persons hardly the reality or definiteness of a shadow, except in a few rossest bulk Therebad in what is done, or questioned whether to be done, before conscience will coive proof of its existence There er before this drowsy and ignorantflagrant evil cannot be of very frequent occurrence in the life of the generality of the people, it is probable that many of them have considerably protracted exemptions from any interference of conscience at all; it is certain that they experience no such pertinacious attendance of it, as to feel habitually a ht and care they will inevitably do soe of the moral fortunes of a sojourner, of naturally corrupt propensity, in this bad world, who is not haunted, soh the whole course of his life? What is likely to becoo hither and thither on the scene exempt from all sensible obstruction of the many interdictions, of a nature too refined for any sense but the vital tenderness of conscience to perceive?

Obstructions of aA large portion of what he is accustomed to see presents itself to him in the character of boundary and prohibition; on every hand there is soh walls, and gates, and fences, and brinks of torrents and precipices; in short, an order of things on all sides signifying to him, with more or less of eneral way obsequious to this arrangeressing theacross those dreadful ones of nature But, nearly destitute of the faculty to perceive, (as in cohtning,) the awful interceptive lines of that other arrangement which he is in the midst of as a subject of the laws of God, we see hat insensibility he can pass through those prohibitory significations of the Al with an infinitely more formidable than material fire And if we look on to his future course, proceeding under so fatal a deficiency, the consequence foreseen is, that those lines of divine interdiction which he has not conscience to perceive as h a perverted will, a recognition of in another quality--as teenerality and advert to a few particulars of illustration:--Recollect how commonly persons of the class described are found utterly violating truth, not in hard eencies only, but as an habitual practice, and apparently without the slightest reluctance or compunction, their moral sense quite at rest under the accumulation of a thousand deliberate falsehoods It is seen that by far the greater nues in their dealings, by deceptive reatest but for fear of temporal consequences; would do it, that is to say, without inquietude of conscience, in the proper sense It is the testimony of experience from persons who have had the most to transact with theenerally their want of principle, and leave it to tied trial to establish, rather slowly, the individual exceptions Those unknowing adlish character, who are disposed to exclaiainst this as an illiberal rule, may be recommended to act on what they will therefore deem a liberal one--at their cost

That power of established custoreat, as we had occasion to show, on the moral sense of even better instructed persons, has its doar; inso suffered to exist, shall hardly bring to their ed rule not to do as ould wish not done to us From recent accounts it appears, that the entire coast of our island is not yet clear of those people called _wreckers_, who felt not a scruple to appropriate whatever they could seize of the lading of vessels cast ashore, and even whatever orth tearing froht be escaping but just alive froely attributed to our English vulgar, never recoils on theence of the irascible, vexatious, and ue or terror of all within reach, scarcely ever becomes a subject of judicial estimate, as a character hateful in the abstract, with them a reflection of that estih to say to hiht and deserved, and unavoidable, too, for he is unpardonably crossed and provoked; nor will he be driven from this self-approval, when it may be evident to every one else that the provocations are coht, and are only taken as offences by a disposition habitually seeking occasions to vent its spite The inconvenience and vexation incident to low vice,been so foolish, but it is in general with an extreestions of reprehension, in even the discreetest terms, and from persons confessedly the best authorized tocarelessness, in sons of an internal acknowledg reproof

And while thus the censure of a fellow-mortal meets no internal testimony to own its justice, this insensate self-complacency is undisturbed also on the side toward heaven A ion, otherwise than as capable of being applied to enforce and aggravate the sense of obligation with respect to rules of conduct, and would not, provided it may have this effect, care ht be disposed to assert that the ignorant and debased part of the population, of this Christian and Protestant country, are but so much the worse for the riddance of soe, with plausibility, that the system which imposed so many falsehoods, vain observances, and perversions ofnevertheless _some_ correct rules of e of enjoining them, as far as it chose to do so, with the force of superstition, a stronger authority with a rude conscience than that of plain sihty complexity and accumulation of authority, all avowedly divine; by which it could artificially augment, or rather supersede, the_itself_ the authority and prescriber; and thus could infix theelse, than the simple divine sanction Whereas, nohen those superstitions which held the people so powerfully in awe, are gone, and have taken aith the to exert the same power of moral enforcement; since the people have not, in their exemption from the superstitions of their ancestors, co effect of the true idea of the Divine Majesty And it is undeniable that this is the state of conscience aue, faint notion, as they conceive it, of a being who is said to be the creator, governor, lawgiver, and judge, and ells perhaps somewhere in the sky, has not, to many of them, the smallest force of intimidation froht One of the large sting-armed insects of the air does not alarm them less A certain transitory fearfulness that occasionally comes upon them, points one by) to the ghosts of the dead, than to the Al is in its ultimate principle, if it were ever followed up so far, an acknowledg to wickedno service to hinant in the greatest of the into effect his hostility But it is little beyond such proximate objects of apprehension that many minds extend their awe of invisible spiritual existence Even the notion really entertained by thereatness of God, ht power to restrain the inclinations to sin, or to ireat, they readily say, to mind the little matters that such creatures as we may do amiss; they can do _him_ no harm The idea, too, of his bounty, is of such unworthy consistency as to be a protection against all conscious reproach of ingratitude and neglect of service toward him;--he has made us to need all this that it is said he does for us; and it costs hi, it is no labor, and he is not the less rich; and besides, we have toil, and want, and plague enough, notwithstanding anything that he gives

It is probable this unhappiness of their condition, oftener than any other cause, brings God into their thoughts, and that as a being against who to a quarrel on account of it And this strongly assists the reaction against whatever would enforce the sense of guilt on the conscience When he has done so little for us, (so like this is the sentireat matter if we _do_ sometimes come a little short of his commands There is no doubt that their recollections of hiainst for their allotment, are more frequent, , than their recollections of hiht to have loved and served, but have offended against The very idea of such offence, as the chief and essential constituent of wickedness, is so slightly conceived, (because he is invisible, and has his own felicity, and is secure against all injury,) that if the thoughts of one of these persons _should_, by soly seeing his own faults, it is probable his i in the account; that he would easily forgive his of devotion towards the Supre, and the countless e