no doubt they would find it a nuisance to pay the interest, but still, am I to be the loser, or can I fairly be said, if I get my interest duly paid, to be living at their expense? Besides, as a mere matter of policy, we should be ejected at once from most of the quarters where we might otherwise circulate, if we are thought to countenance in any degree the notion of a "sponge." a

The "tea monopoly," as you call it, involves the whole question of the Indian charter, and in fact of the Indian empire. The timber monopoly" involves far more questions than I can answer, about Canada, and the shipping interest, and whether the economical principle of buying where you can buy cheapest, is always to be acted upon by a nation, merely because it is economically expedient. Even about the Corn Laws, there are difficulties connected with the question that are not to be despised, and I would rather not cut the knot so abruptly. .

I

wish to distinguish the Register from all other papers by two things that politics should hold in it just that place which they should do in a well-regulated mind; that is, as one field of duty, but by no means the most important one; and that with respect to this field, our duty should rather be to soothe than to excite, rather to furnish facts, and to point out the difficulties of political questions, than to press forward our own conclusions. There are publications enough to excite the people to political reform; my object is moral and intellectual reform, which will be sure enough to work out political reform in the best way, and my writing on politics would have for its end, not the forwarding any political measure, but the so purifying, enlightening, sobering, and, in one word, Christianizing men's notions and feelings on political matters, that from the improved tree may come hereafter a better fruit. With any lower views, or for the sake of furthering any political measures, or advocating a political party, I should think it

a The proposal alluded to was the taxation of the funds distinctly from other property, as in the plan proposed by Lord Althorp's first budget.

wrong to engage in the Register at all, and certainly would not risk my money in the attempt to set it afloat.

about the Register; the letter of a really good man and a thinking one, and a really liberal one. I wrote to him to thank him, and got the kindest of answers in return, in which he concludes by saying that he cannot help taking in the Register after all when it does make its appearance. Those are the men whom I would do every thing in my power to conciliate, because I honour and esteem them; but for the common Church and King Tories, I never would go one hair's breadth to please them; for their notions, principles they are not, require at all times and at all places to be denounced as founded on ignorance and selfishness, and as having been invariably opposed to truth and goodness from the days of the Jewish aristocracy downwards. It is therefore nothing but what I should most wish, that such opinions and mine should be diametrically opposite... Not that I anticipate with much confidence any great benefits to result from the Reform Bill; but the truth is, that we are arrived at one of those periods in the progress of SOciety when the constitution naturally undergoes a change, just as it did two centuries ago. It was impossible then for the king to keep down the higher part of the middle classes; it is impossible now to keep down the middle and lower parts of them. All that resistance to these natural changes can effect is to derange their operation, and make them act violently and mischievously, instead of healthfully or at least harmlessly. The old state of things is gone past recall, and all the efforts of all the Tories cannot save it, but they may by their folly, as they did in France, get us a wild democracy, or a military despotism in the room of it, instead of letting it change quietly into what is merely a new modification of the old state. One would

think that people who talk against change were literally as well as metaphorically blind, and really did not see that every thing in themselves and around them is changing every hour by the necessary laws of its being.

XXXI. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, May 2, 1831.

Every selfish motive would deter me from the Register; it will be a pecuniary loss, it will bring me no credit, but much trouble and probably some abuse, and some of my dearest friends look on it not only coldly, but with aversion. But I do think it a most solemn duty to make the attempt. I feel our weakness, and that what I can hope to do is very little, and perhaps will be nothing; but if I can but excite others to follow the same plan, I shall rejoice to be superseded by them if they will do the thing more effectually. I have this morning been over to Coventry to make the required affidavit of Proprietorship, and to sign the bond for the payment of the advertisement duty. And No. 1 will really appear on Saturday with an opening Article of mine, and a religious one. The difficulty of the undertaking is indeed most serious; all the Tories turn from me as a Liberal, whilst the strong Reformers think me timid and half corrupt, because I will not go along with them or turn the Register into a new "Examiner" or "Ballot." So that I dare say my fate will be that of τὰ μέσα τῶν πολιτῶν from the days of Thucydides downwards.

I wrote to Parker immediately on the receipt of your letter, proposing to him either to give up [Thucydides] altogether except the Appendices, putting all my materials of every sort into his hands freely to dispose of, or else to share with him all the expenses of the next volume, and to refund at once what I have already received for the first. I have told him often before, and now have told him again, that I cannot do it quickly; and that I never meant or would consent to devote to it every spare moment of my

time, so as to leave myself no liberty for any other writing. I have written nothing for two years but Thucydides and Sermons for the boys; but though I will readily give up writing merely for my own amusement, or fame, or profit, I cannot abandon what I think is a positive duty, such as the attempting at least the Register. Parker wrote immediately a very kind letter, begging me to continue the Editorship as at present, and stating in express words "that though advantage might arise from the early completion of the book, no injury whatever has been sustained by him, or is likely to be sustained."

I am proprieter of the Register, and will be answerable for it up to a certain point; but I cannot pretend to say that I shall see every thing that is inserted in it, or that I should expunge every thing with which I did not agree, although I certainly should, if the disagreement were great, or the opinions so differing seemed to me likely to be mischievous. I have no wish to conceal any thing about it, and if I cannot control it to my mind, or find the thing to be a failure, I will instantly withdraw it. Sed Dii meliora piis.

XXXII. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Rugby, June 11, 1831. I confess that your last letter a good deal grieved me, not at all personally, but as it seemed to me to give the death blow to my hopes of finding co-operators for the Register. That very article upon the Tories has been objected to as being too favourable to them, so what is a man to do? You will see by No. 5, that I do not think the Bill perfect, but still I like it as far as it goes, and especially in its disfranchisement clauses. But my great object in the Register was to enlighten the poor generally in the best sense of the term; as it is, no one joins me, and of course my nephew and I cannot do it alone. What is everybody's business is nobody's," is true from the days of the Peloponnesian confederacy downwards. Unless a great change in our prospects takes place, Register

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will therefore undergo transmigration when the holidays begin; whether into a set of penny papers, or into a monthly magazine I cannot tell. But I cannot sit still without trying to do something for a state of things which often and often, far oftener I believe than any one knows of, comes with a real pang of sorrow to trouble my own private happiness. I know it is good to have these sobering reminders, and it may be my impatience, that I do not take them merely as awakeners and reminders to myself. Still ought we not to fight against evil, and is not moral ignorance, such as now so sadly prevails, one of the worst kinds of evil?

XXXIII. TO W. TOOKE, ESQ.

an

Rugby, June 18, 1831. I must take the earliest opportunity of thanking you most heartily for your active kindness towards me, to which I am indebted for the most gratifying offer a nounced to me in your letter of yesterday. I feel doubly obliged to you both for your good opinion of me, and for your kind recollection of me. I trust that you will

not think me the less grateful to you, because I felt that I ought not to avail myself of the Chancellor's offer. Engaged as I am here, I could not reside upon a living, and I would not be satisfied to hold one without residence. I have always strenuously maintained that the clergy engaged in education should have nothing to do with church benefices, and I should be very unwilling to let my own practice contradict what I really believe to be a very wholesome doctrine. But I am sure that I value the offer quite as much, and feel as heartily obliged both to the Chancellor and you for it, as if I had accepted it.

In this day's number of the Register there is a letter on the “Cottage Evenings," condemning very decidedly their unchristian tone. It is not written by me, but I confess that I heartily agree with it. You know of

a

Viz., of a stall in Bristol Cathedral, with a living attached to it-offered to him by Lord Brougham.