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Untitled Article
of set-off against our political abuses . Our charities are pumps , often choked , and always ill-manned , that just serve to keep the leaky vessel of the state from utterly sinking under the vast deluge of distress pouring in upon it on all sides . But of all the
farces enacted under the pretence of charity , the fancy fairs were the most palpable pieces of mere appearance , but they did not
save appearance ; and unfeeling frolic , wanton vanity , and extravagant fashion , made waste while affecting to supply want—made a game of sport of the office ., once serious and sacred , of ministering to sickness and famine . Courage is a quality about which we have the good sense no longer to play the braggart , as we used a few years ago . Of our
physical courage I shall not attempt to speak , though it is universally allowed that the sight of one horse soldier is quite enough to cow an English mob , and prize-fighting is rather the hot-bed of brutality than bravery . But on our lack of moral courage , even an old woman may be permitted to descant , since the signs of that are open to the most casual observer . A mere name is in
England ' a tower of strength ; ' that will bear out any thing and any body . We look for the ' hall mark , ' and if that appears we praise ; and if not , we would as soon give a bank note to a beggar as an opinion any way . Who has the noble daring to stand by the unknown , to eulogize the obscure ? Who lacks the grovelling servility that heaps
e shrine of luxury and pride / and panders to the already popular ? The paucity of honest speakers and actors proves how limited
number of the really noble , and how aristocratic institutions rivet the feudal badge upon our characters . Our very manmaking our natural phlegm more hideous , is a servile imitaof aristocratic indifference , leaving our faces devoid of animation or expression , our voices of variety or inflexion , our delivery of emphasis or energy , and our whole bearing of any thing that would keep attention awake through half a winter's evening ; striking manners are pronounced bad manners , and nothing but the clock is allowed to strike in a strictly-ordered English house .
But of all the items in the account to be made out against us , what is more specious than our private morality ? Falsehood in the way of trade acts as no impeachment on a man ' s veracity ; words said over a counter or in a counting-house are insured , like the property they descant on , from damage , whatever they may do . Then we have a morality for men and a morality for women , and no two things can be more unlike than these two moralities . Is mind so different in the sexes , that what taints the one leaves the other untarnished ? ' At lover ' s perj uries 'tis said Jove laughs / so must the arch fiend at our morality . If morality
our still ner , tion our still ner , tion
Untitled Article
786 English Morality .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 786, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/54/
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