Bill so great a majority that it would have been hardly in the power of the Episcopal Bench to neutralise it. If these few slight hints as to the analysis of that majority should meet the eyes of any of the Members of it in the solitary pause for reflection which retirement during the recess now bestows, may it enlighten them as to the real state of the case. And however doubtful would still have been the policy of opposing their order as a body to the wishes of the people, if the sense of that body had been pronounced in a decided, unequivocal, unbiassed proportion, surely when he finds how far this is from being so, much more will each individual hesitate before he takes upon himself the responsibility of continuing a majority so easily overthrown, so vulnerable in its composition, so little decisive in its numbers. And when again the anti-reforming Nobles meet in secret council to decide upon the course they are to pursue, if there still are a few who may not be moved by the higher and holier desire to recover the confidence and affection of their countrymen, still must these be shaken by the conviction of the utter impossibility of ultimate triumph. And rather than not yield at all, let them now listen even to the words of Belial— "I should be much for open war, O Peers!" (singular enough, by the way, that by that title should be addressed the infernal conclave who had embarked in a hopeless warfare with an irresistible power-) "I should be much for open war, O Peers, As not behind in hate; if what was urged "Ominous conjecture on the whole success" might indeed be now re-echoed in Baronial Hall and in Tory Club. Belial was no favourite with the poet. Temporising discretion was certainly not an appropriate quality for a fallen fiend. But such is not the character of the Peers now addressed-they are neither fiends, nor as yet fallen. Dissimilar in their present positionunlike in the alternative on which they are called to act, they can never be influenced by the feeling-"Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven." If unfortunately by their own presumptuous obstinacy they should fall, it would not be to rule even in hell; and on the other hand, they are but required to share power, (not to serve) in that only earthly heaven of a patriot statesman-the heart of a united People. ON ENGLISH NOTIONS OF MORALITY. THERE are many things about which that old gossip the World constantly prates, and "little knows;" but of all things-that of which she most prates and least knows is, morality! With us, to be moral merely means to be respectable-it is the appearance we care for the reality we despise.-As is customary with a commercial people to whom credit is a capital, we value most such externals as keep the world in good humour with us, and the best qualities are those which the most induce a tradesman to trust us! "A most respectable man-he has lived twenty years in that house, Sir; he pays his bills regularly once a quarter-he has provided very handsomely for all his family-his note is as good as the Bank of England's!" This sums up what is called an excellent character; yet in all these attributes of praise there is not a single moral quality. This excellent character may be full of the most vicious characteristics. He may be violent in temper-mercenary in disposition-hypocritical in religion-a hollow friend-an unforgiving enemy-and in possessing the movements of clockwork, may possess also the heart of a clock. The great feature in our notions of morals is their one-side-edness. The golden medium lies between two extremes -one extreme tends to meanness-the other to extravagance. One to the rash excessthe other to the paltry baseness. We are most lenient to the most despicable of the extremes, and rather forgive the low nature than the erratic. How little fiction can do towards altering the national dispositions, we may see by the small effect produced on us by the true moral of our greatest and most popular novel, "Tom Jones." It was this one-side-edness of morality-this undue love of the decorous hypocrisies, and this exaggerated resentment against the erring sincerities of mankind, which Fielding, a more deep, accurate, and scientific moralist than is generally supposed, sought to expose and correct when he contrasted the characters of Blifil and Jones. Nothing can more clearly prove our ignorance of real morals than the fact that no one appreciated this high moral purpose in our author. The world of readers fell upon him with the common places of the very hypocrisy he was satirizing;-forgot the service he rendered to virtue in unmasking its counterfeit in Blifil-charged him with all the excesses of his hero; and, because he had embodied morality as a philosopher, condemned him for being immoral. Even now his greatest merit is not acknowledged, nor his indecorums forgiven for the sake of their object; and the herd of critics would conceive it a monstrous paradox in him who asserted and undertook to prove that Fielding was a far more profound and noble moralist than Addison. Nay, if Blifi and Jones were living characters, who does not feel that the world would visit Blifil as a most praiseworthy man, and cut Jones as an incorrigible scapegrace? It is the misfortune of our social systems that we have been taught so exclusive a regard for the domestic moralities. The connexion between the sexes is almost the only morality of which we are aware. Doubtless that connexion constitutes one most important branch of morals, but there are others as important. The round of man's duties lies in a vast circle. And to be really good we must be good in public as well as private. It is a misfortune which has wrung tears of blood from this country, that a separation has been drawn between the public man and the private-that the world has been suffered to say" a dishonourable politician-a negligent pastor-a fraudulent merchant, but a most exemplary creature in domestic life!" We ought to allow no such unreal distinctions-it is the whole man only we must acknowledge to be good or evil-not a part of him. But even in regard to our domestic rigidities, we are not consistent; we are actuated by the most unaccountable caprices. We court one man solely because he is an adulterer, while we hiss another man off the stage for exactly the same offence. "That in the captain's but a choleric word One lady elopes, and is an "interesting creature" for life: another imitates her example, and she is only "that abandoned woman." Nor can it be said, with unvarying justice, that rank is a sufficient palliative of the crime, and the only cause of these discrepancies in our moral severity. A noble poet separates from his wife, and the world turn their backs on him and mutter fearful innuendoes on the terrible crime of quarrelling with a wife. A minister of state loses his cara sposa to a German Prince, and all the blame is saddled upon the unfortunate husband-for no earthly reason but because he is a Minister of State and a Tory. I am very much amused to see the gravity with which our newspapers record some terrible fallacy in the human heart as if it were the most natural thing imaginable. Bishop, whose cold and systematized atrocities checked, by a deeper excitement, the excitement of Reform, and benumbed, with a more curdling fear, the floating apprehensions of the cholera morbus; Bishop, we are told very seriously by the journals, after undergoing a certain ceremony, "felt greatly relieved, and enjoyed a sound sleep." What was this mystical ceremony, that thus lulled into peace the conscience-stricken murderer?-merely the confessing that he had committed the murder! A mighty atonement this for the action! In truth, this cant about the blessing of a confession does more harm than the superficial perceive; if a man is to be represented as purchasing mental peace, after committing the most horrible of human crimes, by saying the night before his execution-" I will tell your reverenceit's all very true, I made the boy drunk with rum, and then kept his head under water till he was fit for selling, and I then sold him, Sir, for twelve guineas; and now I feel mightily eased in my mind, and am going to have a pleasant nap;"-if this is to be the moral of Burking and confessing to have Burked-why, then all I say is, that you rob Religion of those terrors which you assert to be checks upon crime; and you virtually make murder a less offence in a convict than his not satisfying the curiosity of the newsmongers, in quitting his own life without telling us how he got rid of another's. The fact is, that we pick up, as soon as we are able to remember what we hear, a few common-place maxims, and we call them morals. Whoever the most insists upon these, we call a moralist-that is to say, when Doctor Johnson declares in pompous sentences that we ought not to tell fibs, nor be proud, nor despise the homeliness of virtue, I believe it is this smallness and frigidity in our notions of morals that has induced men of high and ardent minds to incur the fatal error of choosing feeling rather than principle as a guide. And thus while we seldom hear any one talk of the principles of an honest man, or the duties of a religious one, we are for ever dinned with the feelings of a gentleman, and the feelings of a Christian, and the feelings of a father, till at last we are almost driven to fancy contrary to all sober judgment—that the Almighty intended us to be led not by reason, but emotion. No error for the virtue of a nation can be more deadly than the one I refer to. A pretty community is that in which the sentiments are the only mental guide! The Arabs cultivate the feelings, and are a nation of banditti;-they are exceedingly generous, and exceedingly hospitable, und exceedingly unjust-they utter the noblest sentiments, and steal the saddle from under you; they talk of the honourable feelings of a Bedouin, and they cut your throat! But if we would have morality, not vague impulse and shifting emotions, the general motor of the popular mind, we must make the Goddess whose Altars we would establish-lovely, gracious, and attractive. Men are very happily struck by the noble and the great; -they see these results in the passions and by the passions therefore they are allured. Let them behold the same loftiness in the science of morals, and morals will have somewhat of the power and vividness in allurement that now belong to the passions. It has been the fault of our moralists that morality is not better understood among us. Let us base it on its own true vastness of system, and breathe into it the generous spirit of its proper life. Law and Politics have been estranged from it-they should be united. Morality includes in its empire all opinion-Decorum hitherto has been the queen of the empire: let us depose her to her proper level in the court, and make her lady of the Grand Wardrobe. And let us, since we are seriously meditating efficient reform, take from the Virtues that detestable privilege of always acting by their proxies, the Appearances. Nor must we imagine that faith in our divine religion supersedes the necessity of applying to morals as a separate-though if you will -a subordinate science. The great and plain outlines of right conduct are all that the Scripture indicates; and it wisely leaves the nicer shades, and the more complicated positions, to the human intelligence, which moulds and adapts itself to the everlasting changes in human 忒 affairs. The great secrets of Government-the wide volume of legislation, were not enlightened by the rays that emanated from another world. Those secrets and that volume-thus left in darkness by Religion, it is the main duty of Morality to decipher and expound. Nor must we trust this task (be it said with all due reverence) solely to divines. When it was consigned to them, morality consisted only in donations to the Church. Charles Martel saved Christendom from the Saracen, and a synod of Christian Priests damned him afterwards to the penalties of hell. There is something amusing in the self-contradiction of certain Tory Peers, who are brimfull of noble sentiments for the basest systems. It is vastly entertaining to note the delusion of a phrase"I will stand by the constitution of my country to the last." How finely that sounds! How the chest of the utterer swells! His eyes water! What generous courage! What gallant fidelity! But the sentence requires construing: the constitution of the country means the jobbing of seats in Parliament. It would sound very differently if the loyalist exclaimed-" Rotten boroughs-perjury-briberycorruption-and fraud-it is you whom I will support to the last!" Oh, the solemn plausibility of fine phrases! Reform will do something to amend our morals: we shall not have the sacred example of the great to shelter perjury beneath; but the abolition of the stamp duties will do more. When there are but few public journals, prejudices are a long time grinding against each other before they pulverize into truth. Appeals to error and to passion are not easily answered. When all opinions are thrown into the crucible, the philosopher's stone, Truth, must at last come out! What an odd thing it would seem to Micromegas were he told that the immorality of a people and a tax upon pieces of paper were one and the same thing! The Mahometans narrate a curious fable, with which I will conclude this article, trusting that it may not have so wearied the reader, but that he will suffer me now and then to address him after a similar fashion, and thus to breathe into the lightness of this periodical, the great soul of a moral purpose. Al Sameri, wishing the Israelites to worship the Golden Calf, took some dust from beneath the footsteps of the horse of the angel Gabriel, and threw it into the mouth of the calf, so that (for the dust had that peculiar virtue) the calf assumed life and voice. Now there are certain good men in the world, who remind one greatly of the sagacious Al Sameri; they call upon us to worship a golden calf, and the only life-the only inspiration they can bestow on an idol, is derived from that dust which blinds the eyes of a man. a. |