On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
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
to that judgment on the minds of others . ' How far your lordship ' s advocacy of the pecuniary interests of the Church may have been rewarded by supernal light on the ways of Providence , it is not for me to divine ; but common observation has not noted it as any part of the Providential plan to designate by station those whose judgment ought to have weight with their fellow-creatures .
The New Testament tells a very different tale with reference to religion ; and so does history in regard to politics . Persons of your order , rny lord , are the least likely to form a dispassionate judgment upon questions ,, some of which involve the extent of their own privileges and their prospects of emolument and power . ' Quack doctors' have found as much support in the ranks of the aristocracy as in those of the multitude . Nor is it always a
{symptom of ignorance or source of mischief to expect that the benefit should be commensurate with the strength of the dose . ' In the reform of abuse , in the curtailment of irresponsible power , the proportion does obtain . Indeed , it is only the strong dose that is effective in such cases . Had only a third of the boroughs which appeared in Schedule A been inserted , the Reform Bill would never have accomplished a hundredth part of the good
which it has already realized . Your metaphor savours of quackery ; and it is obviously defective . Your apprehension of strong doses may have prejudiced you against , ' expectations' which are not c exaggerated / and ' desires' which are not c overstrained . ' What to you presents itself as an evil result of the Reform Bill , to other minds appears one of its happiest consequences . It has stimulated the desire of political change . And when the origin of our institutions in a comparatively barbarous age , and the length of
time during which they have been corrupted by being worked for party purposes , are considered , together with the immense advances made by the people in wealth and intelligence , who can doubt that change had become absolutely necessary ? Moreover , if there be any truth in the doctrine of human progression , which is , in fact , the doctrine of a Divine Providence , change in the forms and institutions of society must be always needful , until they have arrived at such perfection as to accommodate themselves to all further advances in knowledge and civilization .
Ours have not yet manifested any such character of excellence and cxpansiveness . They are still , in too many respects , only shackles forged by the past for the future , which must either yield or break ; and which , until they do , will be productive of suffer - iug and discontent , and act as impediments to the improvement of society . A philosophic statesman would rejoice in the desires
and expectations which herald the corning of a better social organization . Foolishly called destructive , they are the manifestations of a creative power at work in the political and moral world ; the power of that Providence which , operating by laws throughout the whole extent of its dominion , has made progressive
Untitled Article
£ 44 A Letter to Lord Stanley .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 444, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/8/
-