there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive to society as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress; and the cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to that natural but most deadly error of human indolence and corruption, that our business is to preserve and not to improve. It is the ruin of us all alike, individuals, schools, and nations.

XVII. TO HIS SISTER, SUSANNAH ARNOLD.

Rugby, November, 1830.

The paramount interest of public affairs outweighs with me even the school itself; and I think not unreasonably, for school and all would go to the dogs if the convulsion which I dread really comes to pass. I must write a pamphlet in the holidays, or I shall burst.

No one seems to me to understand our dangers, or at least to speak them out manfully. One good man, who sent a letter to the Times the other day, recommends that the clergy should preach subordination and obedience. I seriously say, God forbid they should; for, if any earthly thing could ruin Christianity in England, it would be this. If they read Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos and Habakkuk, they will find that the Prophets, in a similar state of society in Judea, did not preach subordination only or chiefly, but they denounced oppression, and amassing overgrown properties, and grinding the labourers to the smallest possible pittance; and they denounced the Jewish high-church party for countenancing all these iniquities, and prophesying smooth things to please the aristocracy. If the clergy would come forward as one man from Cumberland to Cornwall, exhorting peaceableness on the one side, and justice on the other, denouncing the high rents and the game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor ignorant, and then wonders that they are brutal, I verily believe they might yet save themselves and the state. But

the truth is, that we are living amongst a population whom we treat with all the haughtiness and indifference that we could treat slaves, whom we allow to be slaves in ignorance, without having them chained and watched to prevent them from hurting us. I only wish you could read Arthur Young's Travels in France in 1789 and 1790, and see what he says of the general outbreak then of the peasantry, when they burnt the chateaux all over France, and ill used the families of the proprietors, and then compare the orderliness of the French populace now. It speaks volumes for small subdivided properties, general intelligence, and an absence of aristocratical manners and distinctions. We know that, in the first revolution, to be seen in decent clothes was at one time a sure road to the guillotine; so bitter was the hatred engendered in a brute population against those, who had gone on in luxury and refinement, leaving their poorer neighbours to remain in the ignorance and wretchedness of savages, and therefore with the ferocity of savages also. The dissolution of the ministry may do something; but the evil exists in every parish in England; and there should be a reform in the ways and manners of every parish to cure it. We have got up a dispensary here, and I am thinking of circulating small tracts à la Cobbett, in point of style, to show the people the real state of things and their causes. Half the truth might be of little use, but ignorance of all the truth is something fearful, and a knowledge of the whole truth would, I am convinced, do nothing but pacify, because the fault of the rich has been a sin of ignorance and thoughtlessness; they have only done what the poor would have done in their places, because few men's morality rises higher than to take care of themselves, abstaining from actual wrong to others. So you have got a long sershowed me a copy of the Record newspaper, a true specimen of the party, with their infinitely little minds, disputing about anise and cummin, when heaven and earth are coming together around them; with

mon.

much of Christian harmlessness, I do not deny, but with nothing of Christian wisdom; and these are times when the dove can ill spare the addition of the serpent. The state of affairs, therefore, keeps me doubtful about going from home in the holidays, because, if there is likely to be any opening for organizing any attempts at general reform, I should not like to be away from my post. But the interest is too intense, and makes me live ten lives in one every day. However, I am very well, and perfectly comfortable as far as regards family and school.

XVIII. TO REV. AUGUSTUS HARE.

December 24, 1830.

I have longed very much to see you, over and above my general wish that we could meet oftener, ever since this fearful state of our poor has announced itself even to the blindest. My dread is, that when the special Commissions shall have done their work, (necessary and just I most cordially agree with you that it is,) the richer classes will again relapse into their old callousness, and the seeds be sown of a far more deadly and irremediable quarrel hereafter. If you can get Arthur Young's Travels in France, I think you will be greatly struck with their applicability to our own times and country. He shows how deadly was the hatred of the peasantry towards the lords, and how in 1789 the chateaux were destroyed, and the families of the gentry insulted, from a common feeling of hatred to all who had made themselves and the poor two orders, and who were now to pay the penalty of having put asunder what God had joined. At this moment Carlile tells the poor that they and the rich are enemies, and that to destroy the property of an enemy, whether by fire or otherwise, is always lawful in war-a Devil's doctrine, certainly, and devilishly applied; but unquestionably our aristocratical manners and habits have made us and the poor two distinct and unsympathizing bodies; and from

want of sympathy, I fear the transition to enmity is but too easy when distress embitters the feelings and the sight of others in luxury makes that distress still more intolerable. This is the plague spot to my mind in our whole state of society, which must be removed or the whole must perish. And under God it is for the clergy to come forward boldly and begin to combat it. If you read Isaiah, chap. v. iii. xxxii.; Jeremiah, chap. v. xxii. xxx.; Amos, iv.: Habakkuk, ii.; and the Epistle of St. James, written to the same people a little before the second destruction of Jerusalem, you will be struck, I think, with the close resemblance of our own state to that of the Jews; while the state of the Greek Churches to whom St. Paul wrote is wholly different, because from their thin population and better political circumstances, poverty among them is hardly noticed, and our duties to the poor are consequently much less prominently brought forward. And unluckily our Evangelicals read St. Paul more than any other part of the Scriptures, and think very little of consulting most those parts of Scripture which are addressed to persons circumstanced most like ourselves. I want to get up a real Poor Man's Magazine, which should not bolster up abuses and veil iniquities, nor prose to the poor as to children; but should address them in the style of Cobbett, plainly, boldly, and in sincerity, excusing nothing-concealing nothing—and misrepresenting nothing but speaking the very whole truth in love— Cobbett-like in style-but Christian in spirit. Now you are the man I think to join with me in such a work, and most earnestly do I wish that you would think of it... I should be for putting my name to whatever I wrote of this nature, for I think it is of great importance that our addresses should be those of substantive and tangible persons, not of shadows... anonymous

...

XIX. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Rugby, March 7, 1831.

.

I am most truly obliged to you for all your advice and collected opinions about the Register. Now, certainly, I never should embark in such a scheme for my own amusement. I have enough to do in all reason. I am not so craving after the honour of appearing in print, as to wish to turn newspaper writer on that account. I should most wish that the thing were not needed at all; next, that it might be done by somebody else, without my taking part in it. But all seem to agree that it is needed, grievously needed, and will any body else undertake it? That is to my mind the real question. For if not, I think there is a great call for much to be risked, and much to be braved, and the thing done imperfectly is better than not done at all. So much for the principle The aid of liberal Tories I should be most thankful for, and I earnestly crave it; but never will I join with the High Church party.. It would be exposing myself to the fate of Amphiareus with a vengeance, for such cooperation would sink any thing into the earth, or else render it such, that it had better be sunk. Most earnestly would I be Conservative; but defend me from the Conservative party-i. e. from those who call themselves so par excellence. Above all, I cannot understand why a failure should be injurious to future efforts. A bad history of any one particular period, may doubtless hinder sensible men from writing upon the same period; but I cannot see how a foolish newspaper, dying in 1831, should affect a wise one in 1832; and if the thing is impracticable rei naturâ, then, neither mine, nor any other with the same views, will ever answer. Certainly our failure is very conceivablevery probable if you will; but something must be risked, and I think the experimentum will be made "in corpore vili;" for all the damage will be the expense which it will cost me, and that of course I shall not stand beyond a