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and demoralizing influence of an ambitious and military spirit in a trading community; never did any nation show so forcibly, that when injustice mingles with commerce, the process of destruction is begun, and every hour of its progress accelerates its velocity.

There were some demoralizing influences in the social and domestic relations of the Carthaginians, which appear to have been aggravated by their foreign wars. Their religion allowed the horrid rites of Moloch; they attempted to propitiate their deities by human sacrifices, and they multiplied these victims when the results of a campaign were dangerous or doubtful. Tertullian assures us, that this horrid practice was not abandoned until long after the conquest of Africa by the Romans, and he dwells particularly on the great extent to which the sacrifice of infants was carried. He assures us that mothers made it a merit to view their own offspring perish in the devouring flames without testifying any emotion, and that they hushed the cries of the innocent victims by kisses and embraces, lest the expected favour of the divinities should be withdrawn in consequence of any appearance of reluctance or regret.

We have already mentioned the perils attending the relations between the sexes in commercial communities. The Babylonian women prostituted themselves to strangers in the temple of Mylitta; the Phoenician women did the same in the temple of Ashtaroth, or Astarte, at Byblus; and a like system was established in the temple of Venus, at Carthage. To this ostentatious disregard of female honour, we may fairly attribute the frequency of infanticide. Every thing that has the slightest tendency to encourage promiscuous intercourse, or to diminish the sanctity of the marriage bond, is a direct incentive to child-murder. In our own days, some among those who call themselves So.

cialists, have advocated a removal of the restrictions which society has imposed on the commerce of the sexes, because these restrictions may in some instances become onerous and painful. It would be well to ask these gentlemen, whether infanticide is not a greater evil than any of those which they propose to remove? If they deny that their principles have any such tendency, let an appeal be made to the pamphlets published by their own booksellers, and in the name of their own apostles, in which something very like infanticide is directly recommended. It is unnecessary to dwell on a subject so painful, or to mention the evils which these pernicious doctrines have wrought within the sphere of our own experience. A philosophic blockhead is the most incurable of all blockheads; and Robert Owen was not the first, nor will he be the last, who undesignedly has made his philosophy an excuse for rascality.

We have seen that commerce is a moral dispensation, and that its highest ends are moral; but we have also seen that the dispensation may be perverted, and the end deliberately put out of sight. The history of the two great communities which we have examined, proves that commerce did not exert any corrupting influence until it had been itself designedly corrupted. We have not disguised the fact, that the temptations which beset commerce are greater than those in any other pursuit ; but so much nobler is the reward, and so much greater is the virtue, when they

are overcome.

"There is no being in the world," says Dr. Dewey, "for whom I feel a higher moral respect and admiration, than for the upright man of business: no, not for the philanthropist, the missionary, or the martyr. I feel that I could more easily be a martyr, than a man of that lofty moral uprightness. And let me say, yet more distinctly,

that it is not for the generous man that I feel this kind of respect-generosity seems to me a lower quality, a mere impulse, compared with the lofty virtue I speak of. It is not for the man who distributes extensive charities, who bestows magnificent donations. That may be all very well -I speak not to disparage it—I wish there were more of it; and yet it may all consist with a want of the true, lofty, unbending uprightness. That is not the man then of whom I speak; but it is he who stands, amidst all the swaying interests, and perilous exigences of trade, firm, calm, disinterested, and upright. It is the man who can see another man's interests just as well as his own. It is the man whose mind his own advantage does not blind nor cloud for an instant; who could sit a judge upon a question between himself and his neighbour, just as safely as the purest magistrate upon the bench of justice. Ah! how much richer than ermine-how far nobler than the train of magisterial authority-how more awful than the guarded bench of majesty, is that simple, magnanimous, and majestic truth! Yes, it is the man who is true-true to himself, his neighbour, and his God-true to the right-true to his conscience and who feels that the slightest suggestion of that conscience is more to him than the chance of acquiring a hundred estates."

This is no fancy-portrait, no ideal character: thank God, the writer has the privilege of knowing many such among our merchants, manufacturers, and traders; and it is for this reason that he can view with satisfaction the commercial prosperity of Britain, without fearing for his country the fate of Tyre and Carthage.

CHAPTER V.

GRECIAN CIVILIZATION.

No fact in the history of civilization is more striking, and none more difficult to be completely explained, than the immense superiority of Europe over the other quarters of the globe. In the multitude, variety, and beauty of their natural productions, Asia and Africa far surpass Europe; and the spontaneous harvests of America, though not so rich as the others, are still without a rival between the Uralian chain and the Atlantic. No groves of native spices; no natural orchards laden with rich fruit; no fields of self-sown maize; no uncultivated aromatic herbs, are produced in our division of the earth:

MAN is the nobler growth our realms supply,

And souls are ripened in our Northern sky.

In every thing which man invents, shapes, or fashions; in the exertions of the mind, and in the cunning of the hand, Europe is, and, since the earliest age of positive history, has been, as far beyond Asia, as it is below that region in natural fertility and beauty. Domestic life in Europe is based on the sanctity of marriage, and on the union of two persons. Nowhere in ancient or modern Europe has prostitution been legalized, or polygamy been sanctioned by positive law. Even among the Turks, an Asiatic horde who have only "encamped in Europe," the contact with the original nations has greatly weakened those elements of barbarism, and imposed restrictions, which, to the mass of the people, act as a prohibition. Slavery existed in

Europe as it does in Asia; but from the remotest ages Europeans have been found who protested against its injustice, and in European codes of law it has been tolerated rather than sanctioned. We may find in Asia, and even in Africa, some traces of efforts made to frame constitutions, and establish jural relations between the government, society, and individuals; but in Europe alone did the germ of political freedom unfold itself, strike its roots deep, and extend its branches wide. To Asia we are indebted for the rudiments of mechanical art; perhaps also for the suggestions of the higher inventions-the art of printing, the use of gunpowder, and the mariner's compass; but the development of these arts, the perfecting of these inventions, belong exclusively to Europeans. Compare the best spindles and looms of the Hindoos with the machinery of a Manchester mill; contrast a Chinese Gazette with the Times* or the Morning Chronicle; and observe the difference between a Chinese junk and a steam-packet, or a British man-of-war. In the fine arts, in literature, in science, and in philosophy, the superiority of Europe is still more decisive; no one ever dreamed of comparing Asiatic statuary with the sculpture of Chantrey or Canova; the Hindoo epics with the works of Homer or Milton; or the speculations of Eastern sages with the writings of Locke and Bacon. Europe derived the elements of civilization from the East, but now the most consoling prospect for hu

* While writing this sentence the author has got from the newsagent the singular phenomenon of a quadruple Times. Size is not the only wonder: the variety of talent displayed in the articles, the immense mass of information accumulated and digested, the extraordinary skill, combined with the exquisite simplicity of the arrangement, render this production almost a miracle of art and intellect. It is, however, perplexing to receive as a daily paper what would seemingly take a week to read.

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