1826,]_ [ 28%, J 
THE PROGRESS OF CANT, 
C'est étre libertin, que d’avoir de bons yeux, 
Et qui n’adore pas de vaines simagrées 
N’a ni respect ni foi pour les choses sacrées. Moliére. 
THE ingenious caricature of ‘the Progress of Cant” exhibits a trait. 
of natural character,, which, by its contrast with the other features of 
British physiognomy, is sufficiently startling. Hypocrisy is the vice of 
the feeble; how, then, do we find it grovelling in the hearts of the 
most vigorous-minded and enterprizing people of Europe? If such be 
the fact, there must certainly be some good reason for it. Marvels and 
paradoxes are the creatures of ignorance ; and in morals as in physics, an 
adequate causation may be found for every appearance, provided it is 
observed with fidelity and skill : 
Nature well known, no prodigies remain, 
Comets are regular, and Wharton plain. 
To solve this enigma, it must not be forgotten that in the practice of 
hypocrisy there are at least two parties, the cheater and the cheat ; 
and if England be stained so deeply with hypocrisy, there must be 
something in both these classes which peculiarly adapts them to their 
proper parts. With respect to the cheaters, there are many reasons 
why England should be the favoured land of cant. Hypocrisy is an 
appeal to opinion, an effort to captivate men’s will by false appearances, 
which must ever be the most necessary in a mixed government like ours. 
In a state of pure despotism, open force affords so much shorter and 
easier a cut to corrupt ends, that hypocrisy is never thought of. In 
proportion, likewise, as opinion is influential, as the press gives rapidity 
and concentration to the operations of mind, the field for cant enlarges. 
Hypocrisy in England is a necessitated homage to the activity and 
power of the people, just as the cant of the Holy Alliance is to the 
increasing intelligence of the great European family ; a cant which was 
never heard before the French revolution set. men thinking all over the 
world, even in Austria, and among the snows of Russia. But while a 
certain degree of illumination is essential to render the practice neces- 
sary, too much would become destructive, by limiting too closely the 
number of dupes. In both these respects Britain stands perfectly alone, 
for while national habits have given to opinion an absolute control over 
affairs, and while the most powerful combination is but a rope of sand 
when opposed to it, the cumbrous and complicated form of government 
affords abundant materials for the art ; and the consequent confusion of 
ideas a large fund of cullability.. It is, perhaps, in England alone that 
there exists a considerable body of persons who at once stand in the 
double relation of cheater and cheat ; and who are in fact the principal 
instruments in setting the fashion of cant and deception. Look at the 
state of the representation—at the church establishment, the adminis- 
tration of law, the national debt, the unpaid magistracy, the game 
laws, the colonial system, the agricultural interest, as it is called, the 
poor-rates, the money-market, and the other hundred anomalies in the 
British institutions; and then wonder at the shoals of persons and of 
categories of persons: interested in the concealment of truth. In such 
a system, although every one has’ an interest in overturning all abuses 
but his own, yet for the sake of that one abuse he’ is obliged to tolerate 
all the others ; and thus a tacit confederacy in favour of “ things as they 
