that they spring, for the most part, from removable instead of necessary causes, their existence must rather inspire than alarm us, rather incite us to energy, than paralyse us with despair. ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN IMPROVEMENT.-No. II. HAVING asserted the practicability of human improvement, and endeavoured to prove that man, so far from being subjected to a continual and necessary deterioration, has, upon the whole, been advancing, with few and inconsiderable intermissions, in the career of knowledge, happiness, and virtue ;—that the tide of humanity has not only been flowing onward for ages with a constant and rapid motion, but that its very progress has enlarged and brightened it as it flowed, we are now able to proceed with confidence and courage in developing the disturbances which agitate, and the miseries which afflict, mankind; the evils which require to be corrected, and the prejudices which require to be removed. If our belief were different, we should almost shudder at the plagues and pestilences which infest the moral atmosphere; and, although an instinctive love of truth might compel us to exhibit the gloomy as well as the bright side of the picture, we should sketch the outline with a faultering and reluctant hand, nor pause for a moment to contemplate the description which we had drawn. As it is, we consider that the delineation of human wretchedness must be attended with its own specific benefit: we see in it only a new argument for the want of improvement, and a new inducement to promote it. It opens a wider field of philosophical investigation, and presents an ampler harvest to the labours of philosophy. A Here, as hitherto, man will be regarded rather in his social and political, than his moral and individual capacity. thousand sources of crime and misery must be omitted:-for instance, all the sorrows and disorders which spring from private vices and domestic misconduct :-all the passions which desolate the asylum of home, which fill families with dissension, and tear kinsmen from each other. What! it will be objected, shall we pretend to the merit of impartial reasoners, while we leave out 'the worst and largest class in the catalogue of human sufferings? What becomes of our boasted amelioration, if we can do nothing and propose nothing towards eradicating the ills which commit the deadliest and most frequent ravages upon the heart; which make existence a burden, and the world a theatre of discord and anguish? If we answer, that our present business is not with those mischiefs, which are utterly beyond the reach of positive laws and political institutions, we may be told that, by our own acknowledgment, our efforts must be in vain. We may be told that the mischiefs which have their origin in bad systems of government, in insufficient rules of policy, in unwise internal legislation, are as a drop of water in comparison with the aggregate of wretchedness which is occasioned by individuals in the sphere of their personal connection, and their private intercourse with their fellowcreatures. What is the one tyrant on the throne to the million tyrants within the threshold of retirement, whose oppressions are hidden from the day? The direst and most relentless enemies of humanity, are the bad husband, the ungrateful child, the unkind parent, the faithless friend, the seducer of innocence, the polluter of female honour, the assassin of reputation, the trampler upon unfriended virtue. These are the destroyers of general happiness; these are the poisoners of pleasure at its purest and dearest source. The pains which are inflicted by kings and governments are rather talked about than felt. The benefits which they can confer are like a faint but widely diffused light, which has more brilliancy than heat, more power to dazzle than to vivify. Almost all of the enjoyment or grief which is concentrated or condensed, almost all which is collected into a focus or a point; almost all which comes home to the heart, either to delight or torture it, is the offspring of personal character and private conduct. The mass of mankind are little sensible of political regulations, or political vicissitudes: they are neither affected by the changes of dynasty, nor concerned with the plans of statesmen: their lot takes its form and colour from their relatives, their neighbours, their every-day associates. It is, therefore, an idle mockery to prate about universal amelioration, or the means of alleviating universal miseries, yet leave out of the account the daily actions of each separate person: to hold out the good of society as the object kept in view, yet pass by the moral enormities of its several members. As if society was an abstract notion; or a community was something distinct from the individuals which compose it! No:-we hear it affirmed, the grand schemes of general philanthropy, the new fangled notions of modern enthusiasts, can avail nothing, until men can be brought to reform themselves; until the heart of man shall be changed, his desires purified, his ambition disinterested; until the interior of life shall present something better than a scene of endeavours to deceive and betray, to supplant and undermine; of distracting jealousies between man and man, of petty rivalries and perpetual intrigue; until the adulterer shall no longer strew the hearth of his friend with the firebrands of desolation and dishonour, or the slanderer plant his dagger in the bosom of domestic peace; or man, in short, by his private crimes and passions, contribute to his own wretchedness and the wretchedness of all within his influence. These are the real sources of human misery; and if these cannot be changed or dried up, man will make no advances to genuine happiness, in spite of the most imposing theories which can be devised by politicians in the cabinet, or philosophers in the closet. All else is a chimera, and a name, an empty dream, a delusion, and a bubble. In this, as in many other representations, there is just that degree of plausibility, which arises from a confused mixture of truth and falsehood. To separate the one from the other, and unravel the whole tissue of confusion, would be a very difficult task. The fact, indeed, seems to be, that the good or ill conduct of individuals, and their adequate or insufficient discharge of their daily and ordinary duties, do, in reality, compose the principal sum of human happiness or misery: and that it is beyond the reach of any general system of philanthropy to meddle with the interior of private life in the higher and middling classes of society. So far, therefore, philanthropy can have no immediate effect in ameliorating the condition, or removing the wretchedness of mankind. Admonitions and denunciations can form no part of her functions. She may mourn over public corruption and private dishonesty. If the delineation of Bolingbroke is still correct; if "all is little, and low, and mean among us ;" if, "far from having the virtues, we have not even the vices of great men ;" if, "there remains not the least spirit among us;" if, "what passes among us for ambition, is an odd mixture of avarice and vanity, the moderation which we have seen is pusillanimity, and the philosophy which some men affect is sloth;" if "corruption has spread, and prevails;" if, again, "the minds of men have been narrowed to personal regards alone, and their views been confined to the present moment, as if nations were mortal like the men who compose them, and Britain was to perish with her degenerate children-and if these cannot be so easily or so soon enlarged;" if "our sentiments have been debased from the love of liberty, from zeal for the honour and prosperity of our country, and from a desire of honest fame, to an absolute unconcernedness for all these, to an abject submission, and to a rapacious eagerness after wealth that may sate our avarice, and exceed the profusion of our luxury; and if these things cannot be so easily or so soon elevated;" if, in a word, "the British spirit is lost,—that spirit which has preserved liberty, hitherto, in one corner of the world at least-and cannot be so easily, or so soon, re-infused into the British nation ;"-if "we have been long coming to this point of degradation, and to confirmed habits of evil;"* if the private vices, and follies, and passions of men and women, are inflicting the most irremediable wounds upon the repose of society, and committing the widest havoc in the moral world-still, even still, philanthropy will not directly interfere to stop the torrent, whose rapidity it dreads, or arrest the contagion, whose ravages it laments. Yet philanthropy will encourage the moralist, who points out the origin and effects of individual depravity; the divine, who, clothed with the thunders of inspiration, announces the misery and remorse which must attend it as a shadow; the satirists, "Who, arm'd for virtue, point the pen, Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men, Philanthropy can do more: she may not only encourage, but cooperate; and second the objects of them all by her indirect endeavours in the cause. Even here, then, let not the labours of genuine and comprehensive philanthropy be underrated. If philanthropy cannot often descend to particulars, she may effect much by an examination of general principles. Few pains have yet been taken to ascertain the exact amount of mischief which flows either immediately or remotely from erroneous or oppressive institutions in civil and religious "On *The words of Bolingbroke have been quoted from his two essays the Spirit of Patriotism," and "On the Idea of a Patriot King," as having a reference to the preceding paper; and tending to show-first, that, however bad we may now be, we can hardly have degenerated from our predecessors in his time-secondly, that the language of peevish disappointment has in all ages been the same. policy-from bad laws and degrading superstitions; and how much good might find its way to the inmost recesses of domestic life from the attainment of a better system, from the exposure of the misdirected efforts of executive power, from legislative enactments, or rather from the removal of cumbrous, unwise, and superfluous legislation-not indeed from idle alterations in the form or name of a government-from the change of monarchy into republicanism, or republicanism into monarchy-or from mere reforms, as they are called, in the popular representation-but from less defective modes of edu cation, from stricter attention to the formation of human character, and the allowance of greater freedom to the energies and resources of the human mind. The ultimate benefit would be, probably, incalculable: the little leaven, at first added to a part, would in time leaven the whole lump: the knowledge infused into the fountain-head would spread through all the channels into which the waters may diverge, would diffuse itself over the city and the hamlet, and refresh the inmates of the cottage. The political philanthropist may, in fact, lay the axe to the root of human wretchedness; and, while the moralist is deploring its existence, may eradicate many of its causes. While the former is preaching the necessity of virtue; the latter may impress, both upon nations and upon men, that virtue is the most enlarged self-interest; or, in other words, that true and enlarged self-interest, if it be not virtue, will at least perform the same actions and lead to the same results. Nor can it fairly be asserted, that if we omit the wretchedness which is engendered by individual crimes in a refined, luxurious, and artificial state of society, there will not remain. the most ample scope for the benevolence of philanthropic politicians. Their labours will never be suspended for want of materials on which to work. The difficulty will always be in finding persons who will undertake the task, rather than persons in whose behalf it should be undertaken. The world, throughout all its nations, presents an accumulation of misery, almost oppressive to the thought, of which private depravity is the consequence, and the true causes are general ignorance, and political degradation. Look at the myriads of unhappy beings in Africa and Asia. What thousands upon thousands are still hardly raised above the condition of brutes. Of intellectual pleasure they have no conception their enjoyments are all sensual, and they have often no certain means even of physical subsistence. It would be idle to say, that their moral characters are exemplary : |