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    pendent grounds , and must , I was going to say , take pains to conceal that it is connected with any ulterior views . If his readers or his audience suspected that it was part of a system , they would conclude that his support even of the specific proposition , was not founded on any opinion he had that it was good in itself , hut solely on its being connected with Utopian schemes , or at any rate with principles which they are u not prepared * ' ( a truly English expre 3 sion ) to give their assent to .

    6 To you , who know that politics are an essentially progressive science , and that none of the great questions of social organization can receive their true answer , except by being considered in connexion with views which ascend high into the past , and stretch far into the future ; it is scarcely necessary to point out that any person , who thinks as you do on this point , mast have much to say , which cannot with advantage be said , just at present , to the people of England . In

    writing to persuade the English , one must tell them only of the next step they have to take , keeping back all mention of any subsequent step . Whatever we may have to propose , we must contract our reasoning into the most confined limits ; we must place the expediency of the particular measure upon the narrowest grounds on which it can rest ; and endeavour to let out no more of general truth , than exactly

    as much as is absolutely indispensable to make out our particular conclusion . * Now , as the people of England will be treated in this manner , they must ; and those who write for them , must write in the manner best calculated to make an impression upon their minds . When ,

    therefore , I see , that parliament ought to enact a certain law to-day or to-rnorrow , and that it is my duty to exert myself for that purpose , I will state to the English people such immediate advantages as appear to me likely to result from the measure : —but when I wish to carry discussion into the field of science and philosophy , to state any general principles of politics , or propound doubts tending to put other people upon stating general principles for my instruction , I must go where I find readers capable of understanding and relishing such inquiries , and writers capable of taking part in them .

    * I come to you as litterateurs and artists come to Europe from that country of pure industrialism , the United States of America ; because there is no call in their own country for the kind of labour which is their vocation . I conceive that , in political philosophy , the initiative belongs to France at this moment ; not so much from the number of truths which have yet been practically arrived at , but rather from the far move elevated terrain on which the discussion is

    engaged ; a terrain from which England is still separated by the whole interval which lies between 1789 and 1832 . Every one , therefore , who can contribute any thing towards the elaboration of political principles , should carry his ideas , such as they are , to France , and if o France , to none , rather than to you , who are in s <> many respects the furthest advanced of all persons in France at the present moment . 4 I have yet another reason for placing myself in communication with the readers of the ** Globe . " Englishman as I am , I understand them better than I do almost any class of my own countrymen . The cause

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    Of French and English Intellect 803

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 803, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/71/