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    the laws which regulate the nature of man and the progress of society ; laws which are a portion , and the noblest , of that universal plan , by which is insured to us the succession of the seasons and the revolutions of the planetary system .

    It is not to such writings as those of the benevolent but impracticable Owen that we refer , when we speak of the reformatory ,

    or rather the progressive character of the productions of modern intelligence . Mr . Owen has been described , too severely , perhaps , yet not without some reason , as a man who can manufacture the plainest truth into an absurdity . The consequences he deduces have certainly not facilitated the reception of the principles he advocates . We rather had in our minds the great Conservative writers , their poets , orators , and oracles , and the tendency of

    their writings . It is not too far to go back to Burke , for the Tories are raising new altars to his name , and rendering the homage due to a great political philosopher and prophet , to the man who in his day was degraded by the pay of a pension for his partisanship . What was the one bright idea , enshrined within his soul , which solves and harmonizes the seeming discrepancies of his career , arid which he was infuriate with the French Revolution , and

    what were called Jacobin principles , for beclouding ? It was a stately and glorious vision of social order , like the proud keep of Windsor , rising in the majesty of proportion , and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers . ' Now , that same < majesty of proportion' is equally the object of enthusiastic idolatry to all true Reformers , even down to what are deemed the lowest grades and wildest speculators , to the Republicans , '

    ' Anarchists , ' and St . Simonians . ' In that conception , Burke showed the real and native tendency of intelligence ; and if , misled by the passing events and passions of a stormy time , when the dust of falling thrones made the air too dense and foul a medium for the clear perception of facts , he spoke of what to himself could only have been the comparative as if it had been the absolute ,

    that affects not the truth and grandeur of his conception , nor the certainty that the developement of the human mind must ever be , and is strongly now , an impulsive power towards its realization . There is not , there never can be , the ' majesty of proportion in society , while its various classes feel a gross discrepancy in their position ; while imbecility holds supremacy oversoul , and idleness sits like an incubus on industry ; while the weakest bear the heaviest burdens , and protection is distributed in proportion to strength ; while gulfs arc yawning wider and wider between classes that must rest on each other , if society is to be an edifice and not a ruin ; while political existence is a privilege capriciously conferred , most abundant where its perversion can be best enforced , and withheld from multitudes by whom it is claimed and needed ; and while ancient and venerable names gather associations of contempt and aversion by ceasing to represent , as they profess ,

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    4 The True Spirit of Reform .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1835, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2641/page/4/