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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
It is the reigning feeling- of 4 ; he present day to rail at and ridicule exchisives—that word designating a peculiar class of the conservative party—people who by some right ( certainly neither divine nor human , so I leave theni to decide what other it may be ) hold themselves sacred and apart from the rest of human kind , as if God had fashioned them after some peculiar pattern of excellence . This , however , unfortunately for their lofty claims , happens so rarely to be the case , that the unicorn is scarcely more uncommon among the lower animals , than instances of genius and pre-eminent virtue among these higher ones . Now I have no wish to defend or excuse these insulters of their
felkmvcreatures , and consequently contemners of their Creator ; bat I wish to turn round to the rest of society , and ask if the conservative-exclusive is the only ot the worst exclusive in the world ? Exclusiveness is in character with the conservative—it is consistent with the principles he professes , and the plan on which he acts . As he would rather pin his creed to a leaden and pftrple ^ covered coffin , than to the finest feelings and actions that
ever animated the pulses of a human heart , so is it perfectly proper , and to be expected , that he should rather choose and seek his associates among those who bring credentials from the charnel house of the mute and mouldering dead , than among those who bear testimonies of warm and watchful activity in the cause of the well-being of the living world . The exclusiveness which ought to be especially denounced is , that which skulks covertly in the hearts and homes of liberalism—that exclusiveness which
is to be found , more or less , in every family , as well as every class , —which is to be found in every coterie , from the little •* party in a parlour , " to the large cliques , clans or associations which assemble in halls or meeting-houses , and spread their moral geography through broad counties . The exclusiveness
here alluded to is the rank offspring of the principle of selfishness in its abuse and excess . The cry is , my child , my father , my friend—it is in virtue of this pronoun mine that they present such instances of immaculate excellence , not in virtue of any indhridual merits . The talented Miss Feriar , in one of her clever novels , describes a Mrs Fair bairn , who is nothing but a mother
( Mid being nothing else , cannot be properly that ) , her husband is not her husband , but the father of her children ; her mother is D # t her mother , but the grandmother of her children . This is a htftrhtened picture , yet nevertheless I have little doubt a por-4 rw £ ure , and affords a not very exaggerated instance of the unjust , ungenerous , uncharitable nature 01 exclusiveness .
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4 M ZftrcA utt ***** .
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EXCLUSIVENESS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1836, page 492, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2660/page/32/
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