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in hysteric derision; and those who vaunt in fancied superiority of right feeling, ask, 'What mean you by our being ejected from the seats of our ancestors, from those domains which are as much our right and inheritance as the rood of garden-ground is the labourer's?' I would calmly answer, 'I mean this; that Revolution is the never-failing result of excessive gradation. I mean to say, that every inch of ground, which every one of you possess over and above what would suffice to support you and your children in necessary food and clothing, is primâ facie an infringement on natural law. Can you disprove that assertion? It is in vain that you talk of bounty to numerous dependants, of ancient services rendered to your country, of patents of nobility; these are are all artificial relations. I can listen to them, can make all allowance to the frail emotion of regret, at the idea of spoliation, which prompts this enumeration; but when re-action throws off the yoke of rule, when anarchy thunders at your defenceless gates, when the physical force of numbers of the people, so long, so madly set at nought, grown drunk with their oppressors' blood, revelling in all the delirium of revenge, when they proscribe their victims for slaughter, who shall deliver you? who shall erase your

names from the list of vengeance? what will prayer and repentance avail with a populace who have once tasted blood? Then will you begin to cry, and the cry is that of Nature, 'Take our lands, our mansions, our wealth; we freely give them, only spare our lives:' No,' say the people, reeling in the intoxication of success, we will now have all; comrades, strike home, these are the deathblows of slavery:' and the knife is driven to the haft.

"Will any one contend, this bloodshed is not the result immediate or more distant, of excessive gradation? Let him turn to the revolution of his own times, that of France; let him read there, if honours, titles, wealth, even disinterested virtue itself, weighed a feather, when the balance of public opinion once kicked the beam: and what was the consequence? No efforts of the vindicators of Nature, of the band of philosophic philanthropists with whom France was at that period teeming, could restore equipoise. A bloodthirsty, remorseless faction, seized the reins of power, wallowed in gore, and sacrificed in frantic fury, without distinction, all who stood in the gap to oppose them. Multitudes have had the effrontery to assert (to what length of assertion will not bigotry and prejudice go)

that what they choose to denominate 'False Philosophy' caused the French re-action. Gracious Heaven! I shall choke: what foul atrocious libel, what slanderous calumny is this? Why, the virtuous men, the philosophers of France, the very men who had illumined the civilized world to the farthest verge of the horizon of science, were dragged to the same scaffold with those who might have saved the country from anarchy, had they timely listened to good advice! No, no, my friend, trust me, revolution spares no party; levels every barrier. That a re-action must take place in England, as matter of strict necessity, unless checked by measures of efficient wisdom, is as clear as any deduction ever drawn from clear premises. At this moment her subjects, 'the many,' are bowed down with unmerited suffering, galled, and cut to the quick; they are merely awed to abject subjection by the armed governmental force, and this the latter well know. What a horrible state of things, in a country which boasts to have attained the very summit of civilized excellence and happiness! Precisely the same causes that gave birth to the ferment, and at last served to ignite the popular rage in the Gallic capital, will give birth to that which will burst forth here. France fell not from false philosophy; Oh no;

she fell from mis-government, hot-headed bigotry, apathy towards the sufferings of human nature. Because the knowledge of the people waged war with the principles of their government. And so will Britain unless her governors will consent to retrace their course, to say honestly, 'We have erred, let us see our way and amend.' Would they be but thus candid and sincere, they would receive joyful cooperation from united intellect, from talent, brilliant as that which enlightened France ere she sunk, dragging with her the hopes of Europe, who had fondly looked to her as the central mart from whence philanthropy, knowledge, and happiness, were to flow in a triple stream. The lands of the great proprietors were confiscated, and sold in the usual way for the State's use; but no divisional equalization, no true recognition of the rights of man took place, at least were not placed on a permanent footing. One tyranny was, as usual, succeeded by another, worse and more enslaving. May our fate be the reverse of theirs.

"Why should we be ashamed to act as prudence dictates? avoid the fury of the storm by timely listening to the hollow murmur which precedes it?"

LETTER XXIV.

"THE first proceeding imperiously requisite to pave the way for the re-admission of man into the bosom of Nature, to prepare him for the reception of the happiness peculiarly his own, 'as man' is to pursue a widely different plan in what we term 'education,' his mental instruction; as to its quantity, quality, and mode of communication. It is foreign to my purpose, here to enter into detail as to what he ought, or ought not to learn; but I will make a slight enumeration of a few leading particulars.

"Almost every individual will require different shades of treatment, according to individual temperament, natural bias of inclination, power of application, and the earlier or later development of faculty. I apprehend it matters but little whether a man acquires this or that knowledge, a year sooner, or a year later; but I humbly conceive, it makes an immense difference to himself and his fellowmen, whether he proves in the sequel a good or bad citizen. How any result, but disgrace and degradation, and defeat of good intention,

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