266 NATIONAL AND DOMESTIC EDUCATION. 



only require to learn how best to apply these immense resources ta 

 realize that which it is their purpose to furnish happiness. 



We have seen that wealth has not won, nor learning and science 

 secured for us this advantage. All good is partially diffused and 

 precariously held ; the rich live in dread of poverty, the powerful 

 of overthrow, and the eminent of eclipse ; no success is a warrant for 

 security, and abundance is embittered by the neighbourhood of wants. 

 Thus, even the most fortunate make no approaches to felicity ; and 

 what is the fate of those that fill the opposite ranks ? who are ba- 

 nished, like the wretched pariah, to the deserts of poverty, and the 

 wastes of crime ? 



Was it not for the system that gives too much to some, there would 

 be enough for all. Abundance, not superabundance, is necessary to 

 happiness ; the equalization that would forbid waste on one hand, and 

 want on the other, is the only plan that can secure this universal 

 blessing. There have not been wanting, in all ages, men who have 

 seen and advocated these truths, and many also have been found to ad- 

 mire them ; but few have gone farther. Even at the present day, when 

 the ranks of rational inquirers are more numerous than ever when 

 the great moral truths that apply to the whole human family are more 

 widely spread and admitted than at any former times how do they 

 operate upon practice ? Men are as greedy, almost as exclusive as in 

 times past. Liberality of opinion is the only moral advance we have 

 made ; this opinion, like the priest's blessing, is the only thing gra- 

 tuitously bestowed, and is most partially acted on. 



The only means for removing this old-established disease, selfish- 

 ness for producing practical as well as theoretical liberality, is to be 

 sought in education, which will modify and remodel character. 



All that have the care of young humanity agree in declaring it to 

 be a mass of passions, more or less violent ; that it is ever seeking its 

 own gratification, and often by means of an instinctive cunning that 

 is almost wonderful. All this, which is, I suppose, what is meant by 

 " original sin," and the " deceitfulness of the human heart," I regard 

 as the effects of ignorance of strong principles blindly developing 

 themselves as a natural desire of happiness, with an utter ignorance 

 of the means by which it is attainable. From birth to death this un- 

 extinguishable desire of happiness attends us, and for want of moral 

 knowledge, the child, and the equally misinformed adult, seeks it in 

 individual appropriation. On this plan, education and institutions 

 have been formed. Whatever the object, selfishness is the pivot on 

 which the actor moves. The individual is invited to good, and 

 warned against evil, principally because they must re-act pleasurably or 

 painfully on himself; thus the little isolated machine feels no common 

 sympathy with his kind, and when disposed to try experiments for 

 enlarging the spere of his enjoyments, is undetered by any apprehen- 

 sion of diminishing that of others. The tyrant of twelvemonths old, 

 and he of half a century, differ nothing in essentials ; both are equally 

 intent on one aim, equally ignorant of the best means. Thus has 

 grown the great capitalist, who, without compunction, grinds wealth 

 out of the torture of humanity, till the great wheel of selfishness, 

 enlarging in size and scope as it revolves, draws in and crushes even 



