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the confused recollection of benefactions * the circumstances of which are lost , but which have left pensive and tender thoughts behind them . We shall rejoice to feel that the frost of
time has not utterly crushed the sweet blossoms of sympathy and love , which were put forth in our earliest years . Granting the premises of Mr . Malthus to be true , almost all his moral deductions proceed on the miserable principle of utility alone . He never considers that the seat of moral good and evil is in the heart of man , and
that these are not determined by events which lie beyond his controul . In all his calculations , the spiritual part of our nature is invariably forgotten . Thus he represents marriage , when
the parties are incapable of providing for the offspring it may produce , as an unpardonable offence against the social state , which it is a duty to visit on their children . In this severe judgment , he decides , even on his own
prmciples , from consequence and not from motive , and estimates crime only by the miseries which he supposes it may produce . He assumes the doctrines of Paley in their most degrading sense , which reduce morals to a mere calculation of profit and loss , and which take away from virtue all that
is august and venerable and sacred . The system which he thus espouses , deprives us of all that is really grand in the nature of man , and overthrows those noble principles of truth and goodness which we had regarded as eternal . There is then no anchorage for our purest thoughts , no restingplace for our holiest desires .
Goodness is of the earth , earthy . Virtue , instead of standing unshaken like a rock among the mighty waters , on which time and opinion and mortal changes have no power , is to be moulded and fashioned to the caprices ana fluctuations of the world . Her
essence is for ever degraded . We are to act rightly , not because duty enjoins jis , not because it is right so to act , but because such a line of conduct will improve our condition . All disinterested enthusiasm , all generous love of virtue , all spirit of self-sacrifice , l » gone for ever . The man who acts
jnost heroically is only the best calculator ; and even the most glorious martyrdom is bqt a price wisely paid for ( eathlese renown pn earth , or happi-
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ness beyond the grave . Nothing is left for us to venerate . " The great events with which old story rings , seem vain and hollow . * We can no more nurture our hearts and delight
our imaginations with reflecting on the noble deeds and nobler sufferings of the heroes and patriots and saints * who have vindicated the honour of our nature in the darkest times , and have shewn that there is , indeed , " breathed into us the breath of God . "
All the most sublime exertions of virtue lose their consistency when we deny the immortal principles on which they are built—principles which change not with the shifting expediencies of the world , which belong to eternity , and are indestructible as the throne of Jehovah . *
* I cannot refrain from here presenting to the reader the following noble passage from one of the Greek Tragedians , in which the principles of virtue are referred to their immortal origin , and their entire independence of the things of time is asserted in a strain of inspiration worthy of the theme :
Ei i ^ oi % weiy ) ( ph g orti Moff > cc rov eivzirlov dyvsiocv Xiyojy " TZgyouv re itdvrvovj cZv toiaqi irgoxewTou ^ i- ^ lifo Sag ^ egccviot v Si * ocfQeqcx , TbkvoQevtes , wv * Okvix , rt'o $ Tlxrri Q fjt-ovo $ , shk vh QvccroL
$ vcri $ dvsooov " nx-rev > she MtJ v it ore \ dQoc KaraKOi [ xd ( r £ U WleyoLg iv rsroig Oeo $ Ov < 5 e yegacTKei . Sophocles CEd . Tyr . 862—872 . The following translation , though utterlj inadequate to convey any idea of the grandeur of this passage , is the most faithful I am able to present to the English reader :
" O may it be my happy lot to preserve a reverend sanctity in action and in speech , in unison with those sublime principles which had their origin in the serene air of the immortal regions—principles which have God alone for their author—which are unaffected by the decays of man ' s earthly nature , and which can never be overclouded or forgotten : for the divinity i *
mighty within them and cannot grow old . ' The poetical translations of this magnificent stanza fail of giving- either the sense or the spirit of the original . Nor is this matter ot surprise . As the ideas have all the graceful freedom of ancient Greece about them , her laug-uag'e alone could have given them suitable expression . Notwith-
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On the System o / Malthus . 665
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1817, page 663, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2470/page/23/
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