BIRMINGHAM MUSICAL PKSTIVAL. 209 



while exulting over the temporary accession of wealth to his own 

 country, he was indifferent to the corresponding impoverishment of 

 his insular benefactor. But no one can pretend that in any given 

 country (England, for example) the slightest good is effected by de- 

 priving one set of men of their daily bread, in order to support ano- 

 ther in idleness. As the distress in this country is caused by the 

 supply being insufficient for the population, it is evident that no al- 

 teration in the distribiifion either of bread or of the means of pro- 

 curing it can have the slightest effect in removing the evil, and that 

 the only remedy lies in increasing the aggregate capital by so ex- 

 pending it as to produce an adequate return ; the effect of which 

 would be to raise the value of labour in proportion to that of the 

 necessaries of life, thus putting it in the power of every industrious 

 man not merely to enjoy comforts to which he is at present a 

 stranger, but to lay by a fund for the season of scarcity or sickness. 

 It lies not within our province to indicate the means by which every 

 human being may be placed above the humiliating necessity of de- 

 pending for subsistence on the exertions of his fellow creatures ; suf- 

 fice it that we record our conviction that to apply the intellectual 

 powers to the discovery and comprehension of the laws which regu- 

 late the inmost recesses of the social fabric, and by fearlessly apply- 

 ing them when discovered ; to use our utmost exertions in forward- 

 ing that glorious consummation, " the greatest happiness of the 

 greatest number," is the only true charity, the best fulfilment of the 

 Christian precept, " Do unto all men as ye would that men should 

 do unto you." 



We next proceed to examine whether the festivals themselves are 

 amenable to the serious charge of being an idle and sensual plea- 

 sure affording no profit to the soul, but rather tending to foster 

 impiety and irreverence for the Deity ; or whether, on the contra- 

 ry, they do not rather afford delight and cultivation to some of the 

 highest faculties of the human mind. It is on this ground that, in 

 the estimation of all thinking men, they must stand or fall. If we 

 can prove that performances of sacred music on a grand scale are a 

 legitimate source of pure, extended, and ennobling pleasure, the con- 

 clusion will be inevitable that they cannot be too widely diffused 

 nor rendered too easy of access, and that to the furtherance of this 

 object ought the receipts to be exclusively dedicated. 



The readers of 2'ke Analij.st are, in all probability, generally ac- 

 quainted with the language of Phrenology ; we shall, therefore, in 

 future, make no scruple of employing it in illustration of our ideas 



