OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 265 



tion without prejudice. How else should it be that in any 

 case the guilty flourish and the innocent suffer ? How else 

 should it be that men often endure bitter woe and pain while 

 prosecuting the noblest objects ? How else should we ever 

 see so simple an event as the following, which meets my eyes 

 in the journals, while these sheets pass through the press : 

 A multitude of poor Irish emigrants are embarked in a canal 

 boat, about to leave their native district for a port whence 

 they are to sail for America. At the moment of parting, 

 they crowd to one side, to shake hands for the last time with 

 their friends. The vessel is overbalanced and turned upon 

 its side. Of the multitude thrown into the water, seven are 

 taken up dead. Here an action rather amiable and laudable 

 than otherwise, leads to the loss of life, a pure evil, unmixed 

 with good. It is impossible to imagine such a transaction 

 occurring under the immediate direction of the Deity ; it 

 would be profaning human nature to attribute any such act 

 to the immediate command or interference of a man. But 

 there is no difficulty in understanding how such occasional 

 evils should take place in the course of a chain of causes 

 which only proceed in consequence of a general impulse de- 

 signed in the main for good. 



Evil, indeed, is one of the strongest proofs that could be 

 desired for the reality of this system. We see it in one of its 

 most familiar forms in the destructive animals. An innocent 

 little bird in the claws of the cruel hawk a poor stag grasped 

 by the ruthless boa a lamb in the fangs of the wolf can 

 we imagine a form of misery greater than these animals ? 

 Yet millions of such creatures perish in this manner annually, 

 and have so done since long before there existed a human 

 heart to pine or break with its more sentimental, but not less 

 real wretchedness. Upon no theory can this be understood 

 except upon that of an economy governed by general laws. 

 The carnivorous animals are simply the police and under- 

 takers of the inferior creation, preventing their too great in- 

 crease, and clearing off all such as grow weakly and die, ere 

 they can become in any degree a burden to themselves or a 

 nuisance to other creatures. For these functions the destruc- 



