33. Opposed to this array of strength on the side of existing principles, we have the incessant operations of what may be termed the movement party in science or in the literary commonwealth -some of whom are urged onward by the mere love of novelty and change; others by the love of truth; and very many by a sort of ardent and indefinite imagination of yet unreached heights in philosophy, and of the new triumphs which await the human mind in its interminable progress from one brilliant or commanding discovery to another. We have often thought that a resulting optimism is the actual effect of the play or collision that is constantly kept up between these two rival parties in the world of letters. On the one hand it is well that philosophy should not be a fixture, but should at length give way to the accumulating force of evidence. But on the other hand it is well, that it should require a certain, and that a very considerable force of evidence, ere it shall quit its present holds, or resign the position which it now occupies. We had rather that it looked with an air of forbidden authority on the mere likelihoods of speculation, than that, lightly set agog by every specious plausibility, it should open its schools to a restless and rapid succession of yet undigested theories. It is possible to hold out too obstinately and too long; but yet it is well, that a certain balance should obtain between the adhesive and the aggressive forces in the world of speculation; and that the general mind of society should have at least enough of the sedative in its composition, to protect it from aught like violent disturbance,

or the incursion of any rash adventurer in the field of originality. And for this purpose it is well, that each novelty, kept at bay for a time, and made to undergo a sufficient probation, should be compelled thoroughly to substantiate its claims-ere it be admitted to take a place beside the philosophy which is recognised by all the authorities, and received into all the institutes of the land.

34. And they are the very same principles, which, when rightly blended, operate so beneficially, not in philosophy alone, but in politics. There is no spirit which requires more to be kept in check, than that of the mere wantonness of legislation; and so far from being annoyed by that indisposition to change, which is rather the characteristic of all established authorities, we should regard it in the light of a wholesome counteractive, by which to stay the excesses of wild and wayward innovators. There is a great purpose served in society by that law of nature, in virtue of which it is that great bodies move slowly. It would not answer, if a government were to veer and to vacillate with every breath of speculation—if easily liable to be diverted from the steadfastness of their course, by every lure or by every likelihood which sanguine adventurers held out to them. It is well, that in the ruling corporation there should be a certain strength of resistance, against which all splendid imaginations, and all unsound and hollow plausibilities, might spend their force and be dissipated; and, so far from complaining of it as an impracticable engine which is so hard and difficult of impulse, we should look upon its very unwieldi

ness in the light of a safeguard, without which we should be driven to and fro by every wind of doctrine on a troubled sea that never rests. On these accounts we feel inclined, that, in the vessel of the body politic, there should be a preponderance of ballast over sail; and that it really is so, we might put to the account of that optimism, which, with certain reservations, obtains to a very great degree in the framework and throughout the whole mechanism of human society.

39. But this property in the machine of a government to which we now advert, does not preclude that steady and sober-minded improvement which is all that is desirable. It only restrains the advocates of improvement from driving too rapidly. It does not stop, it only retards their course, by a certain number of defeats and disappointments, which, if their course be indeed a good one, are but the stepping-stones to their ultimate triumph. Ere that the victory is gotten, they must run the gauntlet of many reverses and many mortifications; and they are not to expect that by one, but by several and successive blows of the catapulta, inveterate abuses and long established practices can possibly be overthrown. It is thus, in fact, that every weak cause is thrown back into the nonenity whence it sprung, and that every cause of inherent goodness or worth is ultimately carried-rejected, like the former, at its first and earliest overtures; but, unlike the former, coming back every time with a fresh weight of public feeling and public demonstration in its favour, till, like the abolition of the slave trade or that of commercial restrictions, causes

which had the arduous struggle of many long years to undergo, it at length obtains the conclusive seal upon it of the highest authority in the land, and a seal by which the merits of the cause are far better authenticated, than if the legislature were apt to fluctuate at the sound of every new and seemly proposal. We have therefore no quarrel with a certain vis inertiæ in a legislature. Only let it not be an absolute fixture; and there is the hope, with perseverance, of all that is really important or desirable in reformation. The sluggishness that has been ascribed to great corporations is, in the present instance, a good and desirable property-as being the means of separating the chaff from the wheat of all those overtures, that pour in upon representatives from every quarter of the land; and, so far from any feeling of annoyance at the retardation to which the best of them is subjected, it should be most patiently and cheerfully acquiesced in, as being in fact the process, by which it brightens into prosperity, and at length its worth and its excellence are fully manifested.

36. It is not the necesary effect of this peculiar mechanism, it is but the grievous perversion of it, when the corrupt inveteracy has withstood improvement so long, that ere it could be carried, the assailing force had to gather into the momentum of an energy that might afterwards prove mischievous, when the obstacle which provoked it into action had at length been cleared away. It is then that the vessel of the state, which might have been borne safely and prosperously onward in the course of ages, by a steady breeze and with a sufficiency of

ballast, as if slipped from her moorings is drifted uncontrollably along, and precipitated from change to change with the violence of a hurricane.

CHAPTER VI.

On the Capacities of the World for making a virtuous Species happy; and the Argument deducible from this, both for the Character of God, and the Immortality of Man.

1. WE shall now attempt to unfold the most general and comprehensive of all our adaptations; and which we at the same time think the most decisive of any in establishing the righteousness of the divine character.

2. We have already stated the distinction, between the theology of those, who would make the divine goodness consist of all moral excellence; and of those, who would make it consist of benevolence alone. Attempts have been made to simplify the science of morals, by the reduction of its various duties or obligations into one element

as when it is alleged, that the virtuousness of every separate morality is reducible into benevolence, which is regarded as the central, or as the great master and generic virtue that is comprehensive of them all. There is a theoretic beauty in this imagination-yet it cannot be satisfactorily established, by all our powers of moral or mental analysis. We cannot rid ourselves of the obstinate