ELEVATING THE PROFESSION OF THE EDUCATOR. 127 



with the national degradation. Thus the remedial plan is in con- 

 stant and almost useless operation ; while the judgment hall and 

 the courts of law are the moral pharniacopoliuras of a corrupt and 

 sinful people. Equity is merged in law, and law into a puzzle of 

 expediency. ]Monopoly is the great national characteristic of Great 

 Britain, not only of communities, but of individuals. The poor man 

 labours for and at a monopoly ; the artizan, the mechanic, the shop- 

 keeper, the merchant, the manufacturer, up to the professions, the 

 bar, the senate, and the church, are all and each monopolies. The 

 right of private judgment becomes the irritable and deceptive claim 

 of every monopolist ; and thus private opinion, acting counter to a 

 common consent, so retards reformation and checks inquiry that 

 every new-sprung and accidental evil is prolonged into a habit. 

 From this general and deadened apathy towards national and social 

 abuses, the vocations of life, from the highest to the lowest, get con- 

 taminated with all that is vile and debasing to the soul ; dishonesty 

 ascends through its modifying disguises of cunning, art, intrigue, 

 skill, and dexterity, up to the admired virtues of ingenuity and 

 worldly wisdom, to acquire which men aspire with an eagerness that 

 makes trivial all the obstacles of sin. By a misapprehension of all 

 final causes, mankind seem to act upon the principle of converting 

 evil into good, insomuch that truth and charity are become over- 

 dated virtues ; while in their stead the obsequious and pliable law 

 of a conventional propriety is set up. But, knowing this to be the 

 moral disposition of the higher and more affluent classes, how deep 

 must be the moral dejection of the multitude ! with whom corrup- 

 tion grows corrupt, and sin engenders upon itself; the mass and 

 compaction of every vice. " If there be any among the common 

 objects of hatred I doe contemne and laugh at, it is that great ene- 

 my of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude, that numerous 

 piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men and the rea- 

 sonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great 

 beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra."* 



Great is the criminality of those rulers, but greater is the guilt 

 of a dominant christian church, in withholding the common blessing 

 of a national education. A verdict has gone forth against them, 

 even from the wisest and holiest of her ministers, whose prescient 

 minds have prophesied of a better and universal education, and a 

 purer faith. The multitude are bereaved of their moral sustenance, 



* Ileligio Medici, p. 127- 



