2 MODERN PHILOSOPHY 



diminutive and distant, yet perfect, reflection of the 

 great Creator's attributes, praising and glorifying His 

 infinite wisdom, goodness, and power ; and man toiling 

 in his predetermined lot, fulfilling his prescribed career, 

 urging, bending, controlling all things in creation to his 

 use : man, enjoying and exulting in the reward due to 

 the judicious exercise of his corporeal or mental 

 functions. 



No man can refute the justice of this axiom ; and in 

 its latter sense all men may claim a right to apply it to 

 their own immediate associations. It has been and is 

 practised, in the court and in the cabinet, in the camp 

 and in the cockpit, on the bench and in the senate ; and 

 many of our great men owe their elevation and possession 

 of power by steadily pursuing it. 



If this be the truth — and our history, as well of to- 

 day as of yesterday, gives irrefragable proof that it is so 

 — it must equally apply to the different grades that make 

 up this vast and varied community. Its principle relates 

 as much to the man who could raise himself from the 

 box of a stage-coach to be at the head of an extensive 

 railroad company, and afterwards to be a Member of 

 Parliament — the highest honour, we are told from the 

 hustings, an Englishman can aspire to — as it does to 

 that minister who could boast of his knowing the 

 price of every man in the House of Commons — sufiicient 

 evidence that both had made man their study, and by 

 that one talent only did the latter maintain his supre- 

 macy in the councils of two successive sovereigns ; and 

 by the same rule did the former, aided, perhaps, early 

 in life by fortuitous circumstances, work himself up 



