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    the moral aspect , surely some less common-place moral result , some more valuable and more striking practical lesson might admit of being drawn from this extraordinary passage of history , than

    merely this , that men should beware how they begin a political convulsion , because they never can tell how or when it will end ; which happens to be the one solitary general inference , the entire aggregate of the practical wisdom , deduced therefrom in Mr . Alison ' s book .

    Of such stuff are ordinary men ' s moralities Composed . Be good , be wise , always do right , take heed what you do , for you know not what may come of it . Does Mr . Alison , or any one , really believe that a . ny human thing , from the fall of man to the last bankruptcy , ever went wrong for want of such maxims as these ?

    A political convulsion is a fearful thing : granted . Nobody can be assured beforehand what course it will take : we grant that too . What then ? No one ought ever to do any thing which has any tendency to bring on a convulsion : is that the principle ? But

    there never was an attempt made to reform any abuse in Church or State , never any denunciation uttered , or mention made of any political or social evil , which had not some such tendency . Whatever excites dissatisfaction with anyone of the arrangements of society , brings the danger of a forcible subversion of the entire fabric so much the nearer : does it follow that there ought to be no censure of any thing which exists ? Or is this abstinence , peradventure , to be observed only when the danger is considerable ? But that is whenever the evil complained of is considerable ; because the greater the evil , the stronger is the desire excited to be freed from it , and because the greatest evils are always those which it is most difficult to get rid of by ordinary means . It would follow , then , that mankind are at liberty to throw off small evils , but not great ones ; that the most deeply-seated and fatal diseases of the social system are those which ought to be left for ever without remedy .

    Men are not to make it the sole object of their political lives to avoid a revolution , no more than of their natural lives to avoid death . They are to take reasonable care to avert both those contingencies when there is a present danger , but they are not to forbear the pursuit of any worthy object for fear of a mere possibility .

    Unquestionably it is possible to do mischief by striving for a larger measure of political reform than the national mind is ripe for ; and so forcing on prematurely a struggle between elements , which , by a more gradual progress , might have been brought to harmonize . And every honest and considerate man , before he engages in the career of a political reformer , will inquire whether the moral state and intellectual culture of the people are such as to render any great improvement in the management of public

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    514 The French Revolution .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 514, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/2/