action and re-action, like the crater of a volcano: which periodically causes it to burst and overflow, sweeping away its own mounds, absorbing itself in its own vortex; until drained of its tributary waters, it settles into a pool filthy and pestilential, again to become a source of similar catastrophes. And this something is the prodigiously unequal distribution of that birthright of man, the means of subsistence on equal terms, and without interruption from his fellows.

Of the origin and consequences of this state of things, I am now going to treat and explain to you.

LETTER VIII.

BEFORE I proceed to explain the causes and formation of the graduated scale, marked with ranks and degrees, at greater or less intervals, on which all civil society has been hitherto framed; it will be necessary to go back a good way, and notice with as much perspicuity as the subject will admit, the great changes to which our globe has been exposed. I shall not attempt to retrograde farther than the last catastrophe it experienced, being firmly convinced that all history prior to that æra, is a mass of confusion, mere oral tradition and fable. Lapse of time mystifies all things; through that, facts become varied and supplanted; mistaken narration frequently mistaken, without fraudulent intention, from the temperament of the narrator, and but too often wilfully perverted to forward his own views; is substituted for actual truth, and is received current and unsuspected by succeeding generations. I am positive, morally certain, that any fact, trivial or important, which shall happen in our lifetime to-night,

would, in the lapse of only twenty years, be narrated a hundred ways; amplified, modified, by almost every one who should then speak of it, according to his own conception of its probability, of the motives which gave rise to it, aye, according to the frame of mind he might be in at the period of his narration; and according to his knowledge, or ignorance of those to whom he might address himself. And this too in an age when facts are recorded almost at the instant of their taking place, very often by actual spectators, by means of the printing press, in forms of multiplied facsimiles, which seem calculated to put time and error at defiance.. If then these are admitted facts occurring under such advantageous circumstances in modern times, in our own times, so that we ourselves hear their narration; what must we infer respecting events which are said to have taken place four or five thousand years back, at a period when not one jot of natural causation was known; when the transmission of events to posterity was only by word of mouth, or signs called hieroglyphics, which from their nature must be more diffuse than written sounds, which are impressed as vividly, with as many shades of intonation, as if the objects they pourtray were actually visible? Why, we must pursue the

only course open to us; attend to natural suggestion, and in the absence of direct evidence have recourse to analogous reasoning. If what is stated to have happened as effect, and the causes assigned to it are in parallel with other causes and effects of like nature, demonstrably known as true, we either give implicit credence, or reject it in part or altogether, according to its total or partial agreement with such analogous cases. Such analogy constitutes a presumptive, collateral, and corroborative mass of proof, in aid and confirmation of what, from unfrequent occurrence, might at first be heard with incredulity. If the record is of things in line with those under daily observation, we believe them at once, as effects, though even then we are at liberty to question their cause, unless such cause has been since evinced by irrefragable proof.

Thus, if it was asserted the sun rose on any given day three thousand years since, we should not question the fact, because we see it rise every day of our lives. But if it was farther asserted, that the sun gave no light during a certain portion of another day, we should, if ignorant of the occurrence of eclipses, have an undoubted right to pause in belief, until the causation and necessity of them were

explained and satisfactorily proved to us; after such proof in aid, we could claim no right to hesitation in credence, because the mind assents involuntarily to the proposition; "that whatever has happened may happen again, provided its cause be still existing.”

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And here let us, once for all, draw the true line of distinction between belief and faith. Mankind have been led into prodigiously extensive and deep rooted errors, by connecting belief with volition; that is, by treating belief as an action of the mind, dependant on, and capable of controul by will or wish whereas it admits of the clearest proof that belief, which is the assent of faculty to any proposition submitted to its examination, is in its very essence absolutely involuntary, wholly independant of effort. If a man says, "I will believe," without sufficient evidence to warranty, he speaks a contradiction in terms: his correct expression is, "I can, or cannot believe:" there can be no belief without conviction; that is, unless the mind is involuntarily compelled by the evidence laid before it through the medium of the senses,, to acknowledge, or dissent from, the thesis advanced by that evidence. Thus, for instance, your eyes are now open; with my right hand I touch your arm, with my left