HIS PRINCIPLES AND CHARACTER. 407 
Such being the impressions and theories which are instilled into 
our minds whilst pursuing our youthful studies—in direct opposition 
to those principles by which our conduct must of necessity be go- 
verned during our intercourse with society in after life—circum- 
stances in their nature and tendency so contradictory would una- 
voidably give rise to dissensions and heart-burnings among the 
community, and shake the institutions of a state to their very foun- 
dation, but for habit and use, by which men’s tastes become as 
readily reconciled to those things which are, as they are apt to lose 
sight of those things which ought to prevail. The changes of day 
and night, the revolutions of the planets, the returning seasons, and 
death itself—the most mysterious of all riddles—pass before us 
without leaving any impression on our minds, because our senses 
became accustomed to them long before we reflected on their nature. 
How can it, then, be expected that the great disproportions in soci- 
ety, as applied to persons and property, should produce in us a deeper 
impressions The defenceless state of the people, the corrupt pro- 
ceedings of the government, of the courts of justice and their subor- 
dinates, the disregard shown to merit, and the promotion of indivi- 
duals of mediocre talents and questionable character to rank and 
places of emolument, are as familiar to us as light and darkness: 
we have them every instant before our eyes ; yet is our perception 
of the existence of such abuses weakened by their unceasing recur- 
rence, as the never-failing manifestation of the workings, and con- 
stant contemplation of the wonders, of the creation, destroys the 
mental faculty of curiosity and inquiry. 
But the laws of nature are eternal and immutable, whilst the 
statutes and institutions framed and established by men are as pe- 
rishable as their authors ; and no sooner has the spirit of life (or of 
the age) departed from those institutions, than all the efforts of 
succeeding generations to re-animate them, must -be ineffectual. 
Hence the people lie groaning under the weight of an immoveable, 
inanimate mass of despotic decrees and regulations, which admit of 
as little amendment or reform as a dead body can be revived by 
physical remedies ; and the struggle which ensues between the con- 
servatives and the abolitionists must necessarily assume that blood- 
thirsty, barbarous, and uncompromising aspect, which characterized 
the events of the French Revolution, where the views and interests 
of the contending parties were so strikingly at variance. 
In all countries whose institutions are, in some measure, reared 
on a free and enlightened basis—where the laws partake more or 
less of the imperishable spirit of liberty—those reforms in the esta- 
