214 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



Most men were beginning to hope that emperors 

 and kings had discovered that, if the people were 

 not enlightened, it was high time for them to use 

 their kingly influence to make them so; and that it 

 is far safer and better, as well as more honourable, 

 to preside over an intelligent people, than to 

 govern men brought down to the level of un- 

 reasoning brutes. The wretchedly bigoted, and 

 consequently oppressed, people of Spain will, no 

 doubt, see things in their true light at some 

 future day, and free their fine country from misrule. 

 The times in which Galileo lived have passed 

 away, but we still see the same kind of despotism 

 and superstition ready as ever to burn such men 

 alive, and to strew their ashes in the wind. The 

 affairs of mankind, managed in this way, will be 

 likely at no distant period to put such kings and 

 their priests out of fashion. Superstition makes 

 despots and tyrants of all the sovereigns whom 

 it influences : they become the confirmed enemies 

 of knowledge. The die is then cast. Superstition 

 never did, nor ever will, listen to reason ; for 

 credulity is the offspring of ignorance, and super- 

 stition is the child of credulity ; and this breed is 

 nursed and kept up by despotism, as its mainstay 

 and darling. The sun of reason may be clouded 

 for a time. As long as falsehood in the garb 

 of truth continues to lead the great mass of 

 mankind, so long will they struggle in vain to 

 attain the paths which lead to perfection and 

 happiness. 



" We should always repute it as our business in 

 the world the end and purpose of our being our 

 duty to our kind the natural use of the powers 

 we enjoy and the suitable testimony of gratitude 



