“That expenditure," quoth Montesinos, | "gives employment to half the industry in the kingdom, and feeds half the mouths. Take, indeed, the weight of the national debt from this great and complicated social machine, and the wheels must stop."

From this passage we should have been inclined to think that Mr. Southey supposes the dividends to be a free gift periodically sent down from heaven to the fundholders, as quails and manna were sent to the Israelites, were it not that he has vouchsafed, in the following question and answer, to give the public some information which, we believe, was very little needed.

"Whence comes the interest?" says Sir Thomas.

"It is raised," answers Montesinos, "by taxation."

"Resaignare. repurgare, et reclysterizare.” "A people," he tells us, "may be too rich, but a government cannot be so.'

"A state," says he, "cannot have more wealth at its command than may be employed for the general good, a liberal expenditure in national works being one of the surest means for promoting national prosperity, and the benefit being still more obvious of an expenditure directed to the purposes of national improvement. But a people may be too rich."

may be too rich, must be this, that governments are more likely to spend their money on good objects than private individuals.

We fully admit that a state cannot have at its command more wealth than may be employed for the general good. But neither can individuals or bodies of individuals have at their command more wealth than may be employed for the general good. If there be no limit to the sum which may be usefully laid out in public works and national improvement, then Now, has Mr. Southey ever considered what wealth, whether in the hands of private men would be done with this sum, if it were not or of the government, may always, if the pospaid as interest to the national creditor? If sessor choose to spend it usefully, be usefully he would think over this matter for a short spent. The only ground, therefore, on which time, we suspect that the "momentous benefit" Mr. Southey can possibly maintain that a goof which he talks would appear to him to shrinkvernment cannot be too rich, but that a people strangely in amount. A fundholder, we will suppose, spends an income of five hundred pounds a year, and his ten nearest neighbours pay fifty pounds each to the tax-gatherer, for the purpose of discharging the interest of the national debt. If the debt were wiped out, (a measure, be it understood, which we by no means recommend,) the fundholder would cease to spend his five hundred pounds a year. He would no longer give employment to industry, or put food into the mouths of labourers. This Mr. Southey thinks a fearful evil. But is there no mitigating circumstance? Each of his ten neighbours has fifty pounds more than formerly. Each of them will, as it seems to our feeble understandings, employ more industry and feed more mouths than formerly. The sum is exactly the same. It is in different hands. But on what grounds does Mr. Southey call upon us to believe that it is in the hands of men who will spend less liberally or less judiciously? He seems to think that nobody but a fundholder can employ the poor; that if a tax is remitted, those who formerly used to pay it proceed immediately to dig holes in the earth, and bury the sum which the government had been accustomed to take; that no money can set industry in motion till it has been taken by the tax-gatherer out of one man's pocket and put into another man's. We really wish that Mr. Southey would try to prove this principle, which is, indeed, the foundation of his whole theory of finance; for we think it right to hint to him, that our hard-hearted and unimaginative generation will expect some more satisfactory reason than the only one with which he has yet favoured it-a similitude touching evaporation and dew.

Both the theory and the illustration, indeed, are old friends of ours. In every season of distress which we can remember, Mr. Southey has been proclaiming that it is not from economy, but from increased taxation, that the country must expect relief; and he still, we find, places the undoubting faith of a political Dialcirus in his

But what is useful expenditure? "A liberal expenditure in national works," says Mr. Southey, "is one of the surest means for promoting national prosperity." What does he mean by national prosperity? Does he mean the wealth of the state? If so, his reasoning runs thus:-The more wealth a state has the better; for the more wealth a state has the more wealth it will have. This is surely something like that fallacy which is ungal lantly termed a lady's reason. If by national prosperity he means the wealth of the people, of how gross a contradiction is he guilty! A people, he tells us, may be too rich; a government cannot; for a government can employ its riches in making the people richer. The wealth of the people is to be taken from them, because they have too much, and laid out in works which yield them more.

We are really at a loss to determine whe ther Mr. Southey's reason for recommending large taxation is that it will make the people rich, or that it will make them poor. But we are sure that if his object is to make them rich, he takes the wrong course. There are two or three principles respecting public works, which, as an experience of vast extent proves, may be trusted in almost every case.

It scarcely ever happens that any private man, or body of men, will invest property in a canal, a tunnel, or a bridge, but from an expectation that the outlay will be profitable to them. No work of this sort can be profitable to private speculators, unless the public be willing to pay for the use of it. The public will not pay of their own accord for what yields no profit or convenience to them. There is thus a direct and obvious connection be tween the motive which induces individuals to undertake such a work, and the utility of the work.

Can we find any such connection in the case of a public work executed by a govern.

ment. If it is useful, are the individuals who know this, but believe that it is not in the "There are many," says Montesinos, "who

rule the country richer? If it is useless, are they poorer? A public man may be solicitous for his credit: but is not he likely to gain more credit by a useless display of ostentaious architecture in a great town, than by the best road or the best canal in some remote province? The fame of public works is a much less certain test of their utility, than the amount of toll collected at them. In a corrupt age, there will be a direct embezzlement. În the purest age, there will be abundance of jobbing. Never were the statesmen of any country more sensitive to public opinion, and more spotless in pecuniary transactions, than those who have of late governed England. Yet we have only to look at the buildings recently erected in London for a proof of our rule. In a bad age, the fate of the public is to be robbed. In a good age, it is much milder ―merely to have the dearest and the worst of every thing.

power of human institutions to prevent this misery. They see the effect, but regard the causes as inseparable from the condition of human nature."

"As surely as God is good," replies Sir Thomas, "so surely there is no such thing as necessary evil. For, by the religious mind, sickness, and pain, and death are not to be ac counted evils."

Now, if sickness, pain, and death are not evils, we cannot understand why it should be an evil that thousands should rise without knowing how they are to subsist. The only evil of hunger is, that it produces first pain, then sickness, and finally death. If it did not produce these, it would be no calamity. If these are not evils, it is no calamity. We cannot conceive why it should be a greater impeachment of the Divine goodness, that some men should not be able to find food to Buildings for state purposes the state must eat, than that others should have stomachs erect. And here we think that, in general, the which derive no nourishment from food when state ought to stop. We firmly believe, that they have eaten it. Whatever physical effects five hundred thousand pounds subscribed by want produces, may also be produced by individuals for railroads or canals, would pro- disease. Whatever salutary effects disease duce more advantage to the public than five may produce, may also be produced by want. millions voted by Parliament for the same If poverty makes men thieves, disease and purpose. There are certain old saws about pain often sour the temper and contract the the master's eye, and about everybody's busi-heart. ness, in which we place very great faith.

There is, we have said, no consistency in Mr. Southey's political system. But if there be in it any leading principle, if there be any one error which diverges more widely and variously than any other, it is that of which his theory about national works is a ramification. He conceives that the business of the magistrate is, not merely to see that the persons and property of the people are secure from attack, but that he ought to be a perfect jack of all trades, architect, engineer, schoolmaster, merchant, theologian, a Lady Bountiful in every parish, a Paul Pry in every house, spying, eaves-dropping, relieving, admonishing, spending our money for us, and choosing our opinions for us. His principle is, if we understand it rightly, that no man can do any thing so well for himself, as his rulers, be they who they may, can do it for him; that a government approaches nearer and nearer to perfection, in proportion as it interferes more and more with the habits and notions of individuals.

He seems to be fully convinced, that it is in the power of government to relieve the distresses under which the lower orders labour. Nay, he considers doubt on this subject as impious. We cannot refrain from quoting his argument on this subject. It is a perfect jewel of logic.

"Many thousands in your metropolis," says Sir Thomas More, “rise every morning without knowing how they are to subsist during the day; as many of them, where they are to lay their heads at night. All men, even the vicious themselves, know that wickedness leads to misery; but many, even among the good and the wise, have yet to learn that misery is almost as often the cause of wickedness."

We will propose a very plain dilemma: Either physical pain is an evil, or it is not an evil. If it is an evil, then there is necessary evil in the universe: if it is not, why should the poor be delivered from it?

Mr. Southey entertains as exaggerated a notion of the wisdom of governments as of their power. He speaks with the greatest disgust of the respect now paid to public opinion. That opinion is, according to him, to be distrusted and dreaded; its usurpation ought to be vigorously resisted; and the practice of yielding to it is likely to ruin the country. To maintain police is, according to him, only une of the ends of government. Its duties are patriarchal and paternal. It ought to consider the moral discipline of the people as its first object, to establish a religion, to train the whole community in that religion, and to consider all dissenters as its own enemies.

"Nothing," says Sir Thomas, "is more certain than that religion is the basis upon which civil government rests; that from religion power derives its authority, laws their efficacy, and both their zeal and sanction; and it is necessary that this religion be established for the security of the state and for the welfare of the people, who would otherwise be moved to and fro with every wind of doctrine. A state is secure in proportion as the people are at tached to its institutions; it is, therefore, the first and plainest rule of sound policy, that the people be trained up in the way they should go. The state that neglects this prepares its own destruction; and they who train them up in any other way are undermining it. Nothing in abstract science can be more certain than these positions are."

"All of which," answers Montesinos, "are nevertheless denied by our professors of the

arts Babblative and Scribblative, some in the
audacity of evil designs, and others in the
glorious assurance of impenetrable igno-

rance."

train them in any other way, are undermining the state.

Now it does not appear to us to be the first established religion, and be attached to the object that people should always believe in the established government. false. A government may be oppressive. And whatever support government gives to false A religion may be religions, or religion to oppressive governments, we consider as a clear evil.

The greater part of the two volumes before us is merely an amplification of these absurd paragraphs. What does Mr. Southey mean by saying, that religion is demonstrably the basis of civil government? He cannot surely mean that men have no motives, except those derived from religion, for establishing and supporting civil government, that no temporal the people in the way in which they should go, The maxim, that governments ought to train advantage is derived from civil government, sounds well. that man would experience no temporal incon- believing that a government is more likely to But is there any reason for venience from living in a state of anarchy. lead the people in the right way, than the If he allows, as we think he must allow, that people to fall into the right way of themselves? it is for the good of mankind in this world Have there not been governments which were to have civil government, and that the great blind leaders of the blind? Are there not still majority of mankind have always thought it such governments? Can it be laid down as a for their good in this world to have civil go- general rule that the movement of political and vernment, we then have a basis for govern-religious truth is rather downwards from the ment quite distinct from religion. It is true, government to the people, than upwards from that the Christian religion sanctions govern- the people to the government! ment, as it sanctions every thing which pro-questions which it is of importance to have motes the happiness and virtue of our species. clearly resolved. Mr. Southey declaims against These are But we are at a loss to conceive in what sense public opinion, which is now, he tells us, religion can be said to be the basis of govern- usurping supreme power. Formerly, accordment, in which it is not also the basis of the ing to him, the laws governed; now public practices of eating, drinking, and lighting fires opinion governs. What are laws but expresin cold weather. Nothing in history is more certain than that government has existed, has power over the rest of the community? By sions of the opinion of some class which has received some obedience and given some pro- what was the world ever governed, but by the tection, in times in which it derived no sup- opinion of some person or persons? By what port from religion, in times in which there else can it ever be governed? What are all was no religion that influenced the hearts and systems, religious, political, or scientific, but lives of men. It was not from dread of Tarta-opinions resting on evidence more or less sarus, or belief in the Elysian fields, that an tisfactory? The question is not between huAthenian wished to have some institutions man opinion, and some higher and more cerwhich might keep Orestes from filching his tain mode of arriving at truth, but between cloak, or Midias from breaking his head. "It opinion and opinion, between the opinion of is from religion," says Mr. Southey, "that one man and another, or of one class and power derives its authority, and laws their another, or of one generation and another. efficacy." From what religion does our power Public opinion is not infallible; but can Mr. over the Hindoos derive its authority, or the Southey construct any institutions which shall law in virtue of which we hang Brahmins, its secure to us the guidance of an infallible opiefficacy? For thousands of years civil go- nion? vernment has existed in almost every corner of the world, in ages of priestcraft, in ages of fanaticism, in ages of epicurean indifference, in ages of enlightened piety. However pure or impure the faith of the people might be, whether they adored a beneficent or malignant power, whether they thought the soul mortal or immortal, they have, as soon as they ceased to be absolute savages, found out their need of civil government, and instituted it accordingly. It is as universal as the practice of cookery. Yet, it is as certain, says Mr. Southey, as any thing in abstract science, that government is founded on religion. We should like to know what notion Mr. Southey has of the demonstrations of abstract science. vague one, we suspect.

But

a

The proof proceeds. As religion is the basis of government, and as the state is secure in proportion as the people are attached to its institutions, it is, therefore, says Mr. Southey, the first rule of policy, that the government should train the people in the way in which they hould go; and it is plain, that those who

any profession, any class in short, distinguished Can Mr. Southey select any family, by any plain badge from the rest of the community, whose opinion is more likely to be just than this much abused public opinion? Would he choose the peers, for example? Or the two hundred tallest men in the country? Or the poor Knights of Windsor? Or children who are born with cauls, seventh sons of seventh sons? would recommend popular election: for that We cannot suppose that he is merely an appeal to public opinion. And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Mr. Southey and many other respectable proved the moral and religious training of the people seem to think that when they have once people to be a most important object, it follows, of course, that it is an object which the government ought to pursue. They forget that we have to consider, not merely the goodness of the end, but also the fitness of the means. Neither in the natural nor in the political body

have all members the same office. There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

So strong is the interest of a ruler to protect his subjects against all depredations and outrages except his own, so clear and simple are the means by which this end is to be effected, that men are probably better off under the worst governments in the world than they would be in a state of anarchy. Even when the appointment of magistrates has been left to chance, as in the Italian republics, things have gone on better than they would have done, if there had been no magistrates at all, and every man had done what seemed right in his own eyes. But we see no reason for thinking that the opinions of the magistrate are more likely to be right than those of any other man. None of the modes by which rulers are appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, afford, as far as we can perceive, much security for their being wiser than any of their neighbours. The chance of their being wiser than all their neighbours together is still smaller. Now we cannot conceive how it can be laid down, that it is the duty and the right of one class to direct the opinions of another, unless it can be proved that the former class is more likely to form just opinions than the latter.

A go

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely. vernment can interfere in discussion, only by making it less free than it would otherwise be. Men are most likely to form just opinions when they have no other wish than to know the truth, and are exempt from all influence, either of hope or fear. Government, as government, can bring nothing but the influence of hopes and fears to support its doctrines. It carries on controversy, not with reasons, but with threats and bribes. If it employs reasons, it does so not in virtue of any powers which belong to it as a government. Thus, instead of a contest between argument and argument, we have a contest between argument and force. Instead of a contest in which truth, from the natural constitution of the human mind, has a decided advantage over falsehood, we have a contest in which truth can be victorious only by accident.

And what, after all, is the security which this training gives to governments? Mr. Southey would scarcely recommend that discussion should be more effectually shackled, that public opinion should be more strictly disciplined into conformity with established insti tutions, than in Spain and Italy. Yet we know that the restraints which exist in Spain and Italy have not prevented atheism from spreading among the educated classes, and especially among those whose office it is to minister at the altars of God. All our readers know how, The duties of government would be, as Mr. at the time of the French Revolution, priest Southey says that they are, paternal, if a go- after priest came forward to declare that his vernment were necessarily as much superior doctrine, his ministry, his whole life, had been in wisdom to a people, as the most foolish a lie, a mummery during which he could father, for a time, is to the most intelligent scarcely compose his countenance sufficiently child, and if a government loved a people as to carry on the imposture. This was the case fathers generally love their children. But of a false, or at least a grossly corrupted relithere is no reason to believe, that a govern-gion. Let us take, then, the case of all others ment will either have the paternal warmth of the most favourable to Mr. Southey's arguaffection or the paternal superiority of intel- ment. Let us take that form of religion which lect. Mr. Southey might as well say, that the he holds to be the purest, the system of the Arduties of the shoemaker are paternal, and that minian part of the Church of England. Let us it is a usurpation in any man not of the craft take the form of government which he most to say that his shoes are bad, and to insist on admires and regrets, the government of Enghaving better. The division of labour would land in the time of Charles the First. Would be no blessing, if those by whom a thing is he wish to see a closer connection between done were to pay no attention to the opinion church and state than then existed? Would of those for whom it is done. The shoemaker, he wish for more powerful ecclesiastical triin the Relapse, tells Lord Foppington, that his bunals? for a more zealous king? for a more lordship is mistaken in supposing that his active primate? Would he wish to see a more shoe pinches. "It does not pinch, it cannot complete monopoly of public instruction given pinch; I know my business, and I never made to the Established Church? Could any governa better shoe." This is the way in which Mr. ment do more to train the people in the way Southey would have a government treat a in which he would have them go? And in people who usurp the privilege of thinking. what did all this training end? The Report Nay, the shoemaker of Vanbrugh has the ad- of the state of the province of Canterbury, devantage in the comparison. He contented livered by Laud to his Master at the close of himself with regulating his customer's shoes, 1639, represents the Church of England as in about which he knew something, and did not the highest and most palmy state. So effectupresume to dictate about the coat and hat. ally had the government pursued that policy But Mr. Southey would have the rulers of a which Mr. Southey wishes to see revived, that country prescribe opinions to the people, not there was scarcely the least appearance of disonly about politics, but about matters concern- sent. Most of the bishops stated that all was ing which a government has no peculiar well among their flocks. Seven or eight persources of information, concerning which any sons of the diocese of Peterborough had seenman in the streets may know as much, and ed refractory to the church, but had made amthink as justly, as a king-religion and mo-ple submission. In Norfolk and Suffolk all whom there had been reason to suspect had

rals.

K

made profession of conformity, and appeared | tain many of the feelings and opinions of to observe it strictly. It is confessed that Charles and Laud, though in a mitigated form; there was a little difficulty in bringing some nor is it difficult to see that the heirs of the of the vulgar in Suffolk to take the sacrament Puritans are still amongst us. It would be deat the rails in the chancel. This is the only sirable that each of these parties should reopen instance of nonconformity which the member how little advantage or honour it forvigilant eye of Laud could find in all the dio- merly derived from the closest alliance with ceses of his twenty-one suffragans, on the power; that it fell by the support of rulers, and very eve of a revolution in which primate and rose by their opposition; that of the two sys church, and monarch and monarchy, were to tems, that in which the people were at any time perish together. popular system; that the training of the High being drilled was always at that time the unChurch ended in the reign of the Puritans, and the training of the Puritans in the reign of the harlots.

At which time would Mr. Southey pronounce the constitution more secure; in 1639, when Laud presented this report to Charles, or now, when thousands of meetings openly collect millions of dissenters, when designs against the tithes are openly avowed, when books attacking not only the Establishment, but the first principles of Christianity, are openly sold in the streets? The signs of discontent, he tells us, are stronger in England now than in France when the States-general met; and hence he would have us infer that a revolution like that of France may be at hand. Does he not know that the danger of states is to be estimated, not by what breaks out of the public mind, but by what stays in it? Can he conceive any thing more terrible than the situation of a government which rules without apprehension over a people of hypocrites; which is flattered by the press, and cursed in the inner chambers; which exults in the attachment and obedience of its subjects, and knows not that those subjects are leagued against it in a freemasonry of hatred, the sign of which is every day conveyed in the glance of ten thousand eyes, the pressure of ten thousand hands, and the tone of ten thousand voices? Profound and ingenious policy! Instead of curing the disease, to remove those symptoms by which alone its nature can be known! To leave the serpent his deadly sting, and deprive him only of his warning rattle!

When the people whom Charles had so assiduously trained in the good way had rewarded his paternal care by cutting off his head, a new kind of training came into fashion. Another government arose, which, like the former, considered religion as its surest basis, and the religious discipline of the people as its first duty. Sanguinary laws were enacted against libertinism; profane pictures were burned; drapery was put on indecorous statues; the theatres were shut up; fast-days were numerous; and the Parliament resolved that no person should be admitted into any public employment unless the House should be first satisfied of his vital godliness. We know what was the end of this training. We know that it ended in impiety, in filthy and heartless sensuality, in the dissolution of all ties of honour and morality. We know that at this very day scriptural phrases, scriptural names, perhaps some scriptural doctrines, excite disgust and ridicule solely because they are associated with the austerity of that period.

Thus has the experiment of training the people in established forms of religion been twice tried in England on a large scale; once by Charles and Laud, and once by the Purius. The High Tories of our time still enter

ing and detestable to a people not broken in This was quite natural. Nothing is so gallfrom the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government—a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink, and wear. it two hundred years ago; and we are not more Our fathers could not bear patient than they. Mr. Southey thinks that the yoke of the church is dropping off because it is loose. We feel convinced that it is borne only because it is easy, and that in the instant in which an attempt is made to tighten it, it will be flung away. It will be neither the first nor the strongest yoke that has been broken asunder and trampled under foot in the day of the vengeance of England.

ment carry its measures for training the peo-
How far Mr. Southey would have the govern-
ple in the doctrines of the church, we are un-
able to discover. In one passage Sir Thomas
More asks with great vehemence,

the unbelievers to exist as a party?
"Is it possible that your laws should suffer

"Vetitum est adeo sceleris nihil ?"

selves in defiance of the laws. The fashionMontesinos answers. "They avow themable doctrine which the press at this time laws ought not to interfere, every man having maintains is, that this is a matter in which the a right both to form what opinion he pleases upon religious subjects and to promulgate that opinion."

not give full and perfect toleration to infidelity. It is clear, therefore, that Mr. Southey would In another passage, however, he observes with some truth, though too sweepingly, that "any degree of intolerance, short of that full extent which the Papal church exercises where it has the power, acts upon the opinions which it is intended to suppress like pruning upon vigo rous plants, they grow the stronger for it." These two passages, put together, would lead us to the conclusion that, in Mr. Southey's opinion, the utmost severity ever employed by the Roman Catholic church in the days of its greatest power ought to be employed against unbelievers in England; in plain words, that Carlile and his shopmen ought to be burned in Smithfield, and that every person who when called upon should decline to make a solemn same fate. We do not, however, believe that profession of Christianity, ought to suffer the Mr. Southey would recommend such a course, though his language would, in the case of any other writer, justify us in supposing this to be his meaning. His opinions form no system at