wise circulate, if we are thought to countenance in any degree the notion of a

66

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sponge."

The "tea monopoly," as you call it, involves the whole question of the Indian charter, and in fact of the Indian empire. The 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 wrong to engage in the Register at all, and certainly would not risk my money in the attempt to set it afloat. . . . .

XXII. 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 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?

XXIII. TO W. TOOKE, ESQ.

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 announced 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

a

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

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. 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 old how earnestly I have wished to join your Useful Knowledge Society; and how heartily on many points I sympathize with them. This very work, the "Cottage Evenings," might be made every thing that I wish, if it were but decidedly Christian. I delight in its plain and sensible tone, and it might be made the channel of all sorts of information, useful and entertaining; but, as it is, so far from cooperating with it, I must feel utterly adverse to it. To enter into the deeper matters of conduct and principle, to talk of our main hopes and fears, and yet not to speak of Christ, is absolutely, to my mind, to circulate poison. In such points as this, "He that is not with us is against us."

It has occurred to me that the circumstances of some of the principal members of the Useful Knowledge Society being now in the government, is in itself a strong reason why the Society should take a more decided tone on matters of religion. Undoubtedly their support of that Society, as it now stands, is a matter of deep grief and disapprobation to a large proportion of the best men in this kingdom, while it encourages the hopes of some of the very worst. And it would be, I do verily think, one of the greatest possible public blessings, if, as they are honest, fearless, and enlightened against political corruption, and,

as I hope they will prove, against ecclesiastical abuses also, so they would be no less honest and fearless and truly wise in labouring to Christianize the people, in spite of the sneers and opposition of those who understand full well that, if men do not worship God, they at once by that very omission worship most surely the power of evil.

You will smile at my earnestness or simplicity; but it does strongly excite me to see so great an engine as your Society, and one whose efforts I would so gladly cooperate with, and which could effect so easily what I alone am vainly struggling at, to see this engine at the very least neutralizing its power of doing good, and, I fear, doing in some respects absolute evil. On the other side, the Tories would not have my assistance in religious matters, because they so disapprove of my politics; and in the mean time the people, in this hour of their utmost need, get either the cold deism of the Cottage Evenings, or the folly of the Cottager's Monthly Visitor. Would the Committee accept my assistance for those "Cottage Evenings?" I would give a larger sum than I should be thought sane to mention, if I might but once see this great point effected".

a From a later letter to the same. "I cannot tell you how much I was delighted by the conclusion of the article on Mirabeau, in the Penny Magazine of May 12. That article is exactly a specimen of what I wished to see, but done far better than I could do it. I never wanted articles on religious subjects half so much as articles on common subjects written with a decidedly Christian tone. History and Biography are far better vehicles of good, I think, than any direct comments on Scripture, or essays on Evidences."

XXIV. TO MRS. FLETCHER.

(After the death of her Son.)

Rugby, August, 1831.

I know that you are rich in friends, and it seems like presumption in me to say it; but I intreat you earnestly to remember, that M and myself regard you and yours with such cordial respect and affection, that it would give us real pleasure, if either now or hereafter we can be of any use whatever in any arrangements to be made for your grandchildren. I feel that it would be a delight to me to be of any service to fatherless children, contemplating, as I often do, the possibility of myself or their dear mother being taken away from our own little ones. And I feel it the more, because I confess that I think evil days are threatening, insomuch that, whenever I hear of the death of any one that is dear to me, there mixes with my sense of my own loss a sort of joy that he is safe from the evil to come. Still more strong is my desire that all Christ's servants who are left should draw nearer every day to him, and to one another, in every feeling and every work of love

XXV. TO REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE.

(In answer to a question about Irvingism at Port Glasgow.)

Rugby, Oct. 25, 1831.

If the thing be real, I should take it merely as a sign of the coming of the day of the Lord,—the only use, as far as I can make out, that ever was derived from the gift of tongues. I do not see that it was ever made a vehicle of instruction, or ever superseded the study of tongues, but that it was merely a sign of the power of God, a man being for the time transformed into a mere instrument to utter sounds which he himself understood not. However, whether this

be a real sign or no, I believe that "the day of the Lord" is coming, i. e. the termination of one of the great dives of the human race; whether the final one of all or not, that I believe no created being knows or can know. The

VOL. I.

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