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from avowing a noble cause and a noble nation, because a party in England, joined through timidity by a number of men who have really no sympathy with it, choose to try to excommunicate all who will not join them. I have myself heard them expressing hearty approbation of the French Revolution, and yet shrink from avowing it, lest they should appear to join the Radicals. And thus they leave the Radicals in exclusive possession of sentiments, which they themselves join in, just as they would leave the Useful Knowledge Society to the Benthamites. I quarrel with no man for disapproving of the revolution, except he does it in such a manner as to excite national animosities, and so tend to provoke a war; but in a case so flagranta case of as clear right, as the abolition of the slave tradeit is clearly not for the friends of France to suppress or conceal their sentiments. About Belgium the case is wholly different: there, the merits of the quarrel are far more doubtful, and the conduct of the popular party far less pure; and there I have no sympathy with the Belgians. But France, if it were only for the contrast to the first revolution, deserves, I think, the warmest admiration, and the most cordial expression of it. I have written now more upon this subject than I have either written or spoken upon it before to any one; for indeed I have very little time, and no inclination for disputes on such matters. But, if I am questioned about my opinions, and required to conceal them, as if I were ashamed of them, I think it right then to avow them plainly, and to explain my reasons for them. There is not a man in England who is less a party man than I am, for in fact no party would own me; and, when I was at S- -'s in the summer, he looked upon me to be quite an illiberal. But those who hold their own opinions in a string, will suppose that their neighbours do the same,

CHAPTER VI.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE-SEPTEMBER 1830 TO

DECEMBER 1832.

The

PERHAPS no more striking instance of his deep interest in the state of the country could be found, than in the gloom, with which his correspondence is suddenly overcast in the autumn of 1830. alarming aspect of English society brought to view in the rural disturbances in the winter of 1830, and additionally darkened in 1831-32, by the visitation of the Cholera, and the political agitations of the Reform Bill, little as it came within his own experience, gave a colour to his whole mind. Of his state of feeling at this time, no better example can be given than the five sermons appended to the opening course of his practical school sermons, in his second volume, especially the last of them, which was preached in the chapel on the Sunday when the news of the arrival of the Cholera in England first reached Rugby. There are those amongst his pupils who can never forget the moment when, on that dark November afternoon, after the simple preface, stating in what sense worldly thoughts were or were not to be brought into that place, he at once began with that solemnity which marked his

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voice and manner when speaking of what deeply moved him :-" I need not tell you that this is a marked time-a time such as neither we, nor our fathers for many generations before us, have experienced; and to those who know what the past has been, it is no doubt awful to think of the change which we are now about to encounter." (Serm. vol. ii. p. 413.) But in him the sight of evil, and the endeavour to remove it, were hardly ever disjoined; and whilst every thing which he felt partook of the despondency with which that sermon opens, every thing which he did partakes of that cheerful activity with which the same sermon closes in urging the example of the Apostle's "wise and manly conduct amidst the dangers of storm and shipwreck.”

The alarm which he felt, was shared by many of the most opposite opinions to his own; but there could have been few, whom it touched at once on so many points. The disturbances of the time were to him the very evils which he had anticipated even as far back as 1819; they struck on some of the most sensitive of his natural feelings,-his sense of justice, and his impatience of the sight of suffering: they seemed to him symptoms of a deep-seated disease in all the relations of English society-the results of a long series of evils of the neglect of the eighteenth century, (Church Ref. p. 24)—of the lawlessness of the feudal system, (Hist. Rome, vol. i. p. 266)-of the oppressions of the Norman conquest, (Sheff. Letters)— of the dissoluteness of the Roman empire, (ib.)—of the growth of those social and national sins which the Hebrew Prophets had denounced, and which

Christianity in its full practical development was designed to check.

Hence arose his anxiety to see the clergy take it up, as he had himself endeavoured to do in the sermons already noticed.

"I almost despair," he said, " of any thing that any private or local efforts can do. I think that the clergy as a body might do much, if they were steadily to observe the evils of the times, and preach fearlessly against them. I cannot understand what is the good of a national Church if it be not to Christianize the nation, and introduce the principles of Christianity into men's social and civil relations, and expose the wickedness of that spirit which maintains the game laws, and in agriculture and trade seems to think that there is no such sin as covetousness, and that if a man is not dishonest, he has nothing to do but to make all the profit of his capital that he can."

Hence, again, his anxiety to impart or see imparted to the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, then in the first burst of their reputation, and promising to exercise a really extensive influence on the country at large, something of the religious spirit, in which they seemed to him to be deficient. There was a show of reason," he said, "in excluding Christianity from the plan of the society's works, so long as they avowedly confined themselves to science or to intellectual instruction; but in a paper intended to improve its readers morally, to make men better and happier, as well as better informed, surely neutrality with regard to Christianity is, virtually, hostility." His communications with the Society, made, however, from the nature of the

case, rather through individuals than officially, were at one time frequent; and though, from the different view which it took of its proper province, he was finally induced to discontinue them, he felt great reluctance in abandoning his hope of being able to cooperate with a body which he "believed might, with God's blessing, do more good of all kinds, political, intellectual, and spiritual, than any other society in existence."

"For myself," he says, "I am well aware of my own insignificance, but if there were no other objection to the Penny Magazine assuming a decidedly Christian tone, than mere difficulties of execution, I would most readily offer my best services, such as they are, to the Society, and would endeavour to furnish them regularly with articles of the kind that I desire. My occupations here are so engrossing, that it would be personally very inconvenient to me to do so; and I am not so absurd as to think my offer of any value, except in the single case of a practical difficulty existing as to finding a writer, should the principle itself be approved of. I am fully convinced that if the Penny Magazine were decidedly and avowedly Christian, many of the clergy throughout the kingdom would be most delighted to assist its circulation by every means in their power. For myself, I should think that I could not do too much to contribute to the support of what would then be so great a national blessing: and I should beg to be allowed to offer £50 annually towards it, so long as my remaining in my present situation enabled me to gratify my inclinations to that extent."

The most practical attempt at the realization of these views, was his own endeavour to set up a weekly newspaper, the Englishman's Register, which he undertook in 1831, "more to relieve his own con

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