On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    the first time a people were ever warned not to let themselves be cajoled into laying down the desire to grow rich , or , as Mr . M'Culloch would phrase it , the desire inherent in all mankind of bettering their condition , ' by the allurements of jolies phrases ' and ' images agreables . ' Would to God that there were in the world , that there had ever been in the world since it emerged

    from chaos , any people , any the smallest , paltriest tribe in the wildest , most inhospitable desert , among whom the danger lay on that side ! - Alas ! it is not against such small weapons as a few declamatory phrases and bons r / iofa , that the aid of moralists and politicians needs be invoked to strengthen a passion , against the excesses of which the highest degree of human culture yet attained is barely able to contribute some small counterpoise , and to neutralize some of its more detestable , of its more pitiable

    influences ! Did M . Chales ever know what it was to live in a country where the whole of life is but one incessant turmoil and struggle about obtaining the means of livelihood ? where the grand object of the existence of him who has five hundred pounds a year , is to make them a thousand ? of him who has one thousand , to make

    them two ? of him who has two thousand , to make them ten ? where next to getting more , the ruling passion is to appear to the world as if you had already got more , by spending or seeming to spend more than you have ? where hardly any branch of education is valued , hardly any kind of knowledge cultivated , which does not lead in the directest way to some money-getting end ? where

    whatever of any higher culture still forms part of the received systems of education , is strikingly in contrast with the spirit of the age , and is kept alive only by some remains of respect for old customs and traditional feelings ? where ( except a few of the richest of alt , who in every country lead idle and useless lives ) scarce a man can be found who has leisure to think , leisure to

    read , leisure to feel ? where such a phenomenon is scarcely known , as a man who prefers his liberty to a little more money , who , like so many thousands in France , can sit down contented with a small patrimony , affording him the necessaries and comforts of life , but nothing for ostentation , and devote himself to literature , politics , science , ^ art , or even to the mere enjoyment of quiet leisure ? where by most it would scarcely be deemed credible if it were told that such men existed ? where one who professed to act

    upon such principles would be supposed either to have some purpose to serve by assumipg a false character , or to have renounced wealth because wealth had renounced him , because he had not talents or industry to acquire it ; or , in fine , to be an odd , eccentric , unaccountable person , bordering upon a fool or a madman ? For , the mass of what , by a truly English expression , are called the better classes , ' are quite unconscious of any thing peculiar in their eagerness for wealth ; they suppose that it is

    Untitled Article

    888 The Journal des Debate and the English .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 388, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/4/