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Untitled Article
sportsmen who inveighed against the process and attempt , as an infringement on their privileges and * vested rights '— and , moreover , " ( this was unanswerable , ) w the national character was jeopardied if the manly English sport of hunting wolves were annihilated ; the kingdom would become a prey to any upstart invader who had courage to jump over the Picts' wall , or paddle across the English channel . ' Logic equally rational , arguments quite as cogent , and not more so ,
are nightly spouted forth in our two legislative assemblies in 1833 , and are common stock laughter for all nations . Was ever mirthexciting wit uttered by man equal to that precious gem from the Archbishop of Canterbury ? ' Men of birth and attainments would not be lured into the ministration of religion by so paltry a bait as four or five thousand pounds per annum . ' Laugh , Europe , Asia , Africa , and America ! Faith , they do laugh ! Good as the jest is , we in England cannot laugh at it ; the vulture ' s beak is in our vitals .
At present the wolves are too numerous ; they are tnple-fanged and long-clawed . Now , we may diminish their numbers without slaughtering one ; we may extract their teeth and root out their talons without inflicting on them bodily pain ; many will shed them voluntarily . By taking from them the will , they may be induced to resign the right and power to tear and mangle . This , however , is the chief difficulty ; they have been instructed in a love of the privilege
of using their claws and fangs ; and it is hard to conquer the appetite for power . I have been told by clever , close , and long-thinking and practical men , that all efforts to improve the moral and social condition of the people at large , high and low , will be useless till a great political improvement and better government be established ; but I think the political bettering will and must tread on the heels of the social and moral advancement—that the political bettering cannot
advance without that precursor ;* or at best it will be an illustration of the snaiFs pace on the wall , one foot up , and eleven inches and three quarters down , and there are thousands of miles to climb ; for every struggle will be made in the eagerness of self-interest only , by
one party , in total indifference or wilful injury of another . No expansive and general good will be effected or attempted—all will be the strife of meum ; while the mass , those who most need the benefit of good government , will be squeezed , ground , and tortured worse than ever . No ! reform education—teach the teachers ; God knows
they are most in want of teaching ; reform education in the * upper classes , ' ay , and in the middle classes too ; both need this reform much more than the lower classes' require political reform . Instruct , enlarge the minds of all ; education is now a narrowing of the mind : let the warm currents of good , which are fountained in every man ' s heart , be permitted to flow ; not curdled , nor thrown back , by a teaching which makes the precepts of virtue a mockery . Let every one be taught that his best security for happiness is not in a selfishness of defence , nor in a skill in attack . Let him learn that suspicion is a
* In as far as we have advanced , is education 1 he consequence of any political improvement ?—No ; every petty , the least legislative boon to the people has been extorted , wrung from our governors by the extension of knowledge among the people . Erao the political bettering is consequent oil the intellectual advancement .
Untitled Article
Autob iography of Pel . Verjuice . 697
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 697, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/37/
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