106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In common with many other excellent persons, Priestley believed 

 that man is capable of reaching, and will eventually attain, perfec- 

 tion. If the temperature of space presented no obstacle, I should be 

 glad to entertain the same idea ; but, judging from the past progress 

 of our species, I am afraid that the globe will have cooled down so 

 far before the advent of this natural millennium, that we shall be, at 

 best, perfected Esquimaux. For all practical purposes, however, it is 

 enough that man may visibly improve his condition in the course of a 

 century or so. And, if the picture of the state of things in Priestley's 

 time, which I have just drawn, have any pretense to accuracy, I think 

 it must be admitted that there has been a considerable change for the 

 better. 



I need not advert to the well-worn topic of material advancement, 

 in a place in which the very stones testify to that progress in the 

 town of Watt and of Boulton. I will only remark, in passing, that 

 material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. 

 Becky Sharp's acute remark, that it is not difficult to be virtuous on 

 ten thousand a year, has its application to nations ; and it is futile to 

 expect a hungry and squalid population to be any thing but violent 

 and gross. But as regards other than material welfare, although per- 

 fection is not yet in sight even from the mast-head it- is surely true 

 that things are much better than they^were. 



Take the upper and middle classes as a whole, and it may be said 

 that open immorality and gross intemperance have vanished. Four 

 and six bottle men are as extinct as the dodo. Women do not earn- 

 ble, and talk modeled upon Dean Swift's "Art of Polite Conversa- 

 tion " would be tolerated in no decent kitchen. 



Members of the legislature are not to be bought, and constituents 

 are awakening to the fact that votes must not be sold even for such 

 trifles as rabbits and tea and cake. Political power has passed into 

 the hands of the masses of the people. Those whom Priestley calls 

 their servants have recognized their position, and have requested the 

 master to be so good as to go to school and fit himself for the admin- 

 istration of his property. No civil disability attaches to any one on 

 theological grounds, and the highest offices of the state are open to 

 papist, Jew, or secularist. 



Whatever men's opinions as to the policy of Establishment, no one 

 can hesitate to admit that the clergy of the Church are men of pure 

 life and conversation, zealous in the discharge of their duties, and, at 

 present, apparently, more bent on prosecuting one another than on 

 meddling with Dissenters. Theology itself has broadened so much, 

 that Anglican divines put forward doctrines more liberal than those 

 of Priestley ; and, in our state-supported churches, one listener may 

 hear a sermon to which Bossuet might have given his approbation, 

 while another may hear a discourse in which Socrates would find 

 nothing new. 



