Red with mankind's unheeded gore, And War's mad fiends the scene environ, Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, There Vice and Falsehood took their stand, High raised above the unhappy land. Falsehood. Brother! arise from the dainty fare, Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost! Yet wherefore this dispute?- we tend, Falsehood. Which thousands have toiled and bled I brought my daughter, RELIGION, year, Has been tracked by despair and agony. Falsehood. What have I done! on earth: She smothered Reason's babes in their birth; men, And, by the light of her poison eye, Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully: -I have torn the The dreadful stench of her torches' robe From baby Truth's unsheltered form, And round the desolated globe Borne safely the bewildering charm: My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor Have bound the fearless innocent, And streams of fertilizing gore Flow from her bosom's hideous rent, Which this unfailing dagger gave. I dread that blood!-no more-this day Is ours, though her eternal ray Must shine upon our grave. Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given To thee the robe I stole from Heaven, Thy shape of ugliness and fear Had never gained admission here. flare, Fed with human fat, polluted the air: The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries Of the many-mingling miseries, Vice. I have extinguished the noonday sun, In the carnage-smoke of battles won : Famine, Murder, Hell and Power Were glutted in that glorious hour Which searchless fate had stamped for me Brother, well:--the world is ours; A short-lived hope, unceasing care, V. 1, 2: ; Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae ; Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate; Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri. Thus do the generations of the earth Go to the grave, and issue from the womb. 'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto caeca ! Lucret. lib. ii. V. 93, 94: And statesmen boast Of wealth! There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains | radical mistakes of civilized man than of gold and the valleys of silver, the this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness1: the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, to subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his unceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce he without whom society must cease all the varieties of disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter of his country's mankind prosperity, who employs a number of I will not insult common sense by hands in the manufacture of articles insisting on the doctrine of the natural avowedly destitute of use, or sub-equality of man. The question is not servient only to the unhallowed cravings concerning its desirableness, but its of luxury and ostentation. The noble- practicability: so far as it is practicable, man, who employs the peasants of his it is desirable. That state of human neighbourhood in building his palaces, society which approaches nearer to an until jam pauca aratro jugera regiae equal partition of its benefits and evils moles relinquunt,' flatters himself that should, caeteris paribus, be preferred: he has gained the title of a patriot by but so long as we conceive that a yielding to the impulses of vanity. The wanton expenditure of human labour, show and pomp of courts adduce the not for the necessities, not even for the same apology for its continuance; and luxuries of the mass of society, but for many a fête has been given, many a the egotism and ostentation of a few woman has eclipsed her beauty by her of its members, is defensible on the dress, to benefit the labouring poor and ground of public justice, so long we to encourage trade. Who does not see neglect to approximate to the redempthat this is a remedy which aggravates tion of the human race. whilst it palliates the countless diseases Labour is required for physical, and of society? The poor are set to labour, leisure for moral improvement: from for what? Not the food for which the former of these advantages the they famish: not the blankets for want rich, and from the latter the poor, of which their babes are frozen by the by the inevitable conditions of their cold of their miserable hovels: not respective situations, are precluded. those comforts of civilization with- A state which should combine the out which civilized man is far more advantages of both would be subjected miserable than the meanest savage; to the evils of neither. He that is oppressed as he is by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him :no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is afforded of the wide extended and deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; 1 See Rousseau, De l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes, note 7. and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease, lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable burthen. English reformers exclaim against sinecures, but the true pension list is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity of its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by the loss of all real comfort. "The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the human species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each man's share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and more exquisite sources of enjoyment. and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period affords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state of barbarism.' -Godwin's Enquirer, Essay ii. See also Pol. Jus., book VIII, chap. ii. It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour two hours during the day. V. 112, 113: or religion Drives his wife raving mad. I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, and the mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded to incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience of every physician. Nam iam saepe homines patriam, carosque parentes Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes. Lucretius. V. 189: Even love is sold. Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve. How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private judgement should that law be considered which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object. The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling!1 But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed : such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than its belief? The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the 1 The first Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death; if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death; if the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they were banished and their estates were confis-quences of the sentence. cated; the slaves who might be accessory Decline and Fall, etc., vol. ii, p. 210. were burned alive, or forced to swallow also, for the hatred of the primitive melted lead. The very offspring of an Christians to love and even marriage, illegal love were involved in the conse- p. 269. Gibbon's See |