530 THE CATASTROPHES OF PROGRESS. 



God-worship must be classed with those provisional 

 expedients, Famine, War, Slavery, the Inequality of 

 Conditions, the Desire of Gain, which Nature employs 

 for the development of man, and which she throws 

 aside when they have served her turn, as a carpenter 

 changes his tools at the various stages of his work. 



The abolition of this ancient and elevated faith ; 

 the dethronement of God ; the extinction of piety as a 

 personal feeling ; the destruction of an Image made of 

 golden thoughts in the exquisite form of an Ideal Man, 

 and tenderly enshrined in the human heart — these 

 appear to be evils, and such undoubtedly they are. 

 But the conduct of life is a choice of evils. We can 

 do nothing that is exclusively and absolutely good. 

 Le genre humain n est pas place' entre le bien et le 

 mal, mais entre le mal et le pire. No useful inven- 

 tions can be introduced without some branch of in- 

 dustry being killed and hundreds of worthy men being 

 cast, without an occupation, on the world. All mental 

 revolutions are attended by catastrophe. The mum- 

 meries and massacres of the German Reformation, 

 though known only to scholars, were scarcely less 

 horrible than those of Paris in '93, and both periods 

 illustrate the same law. I have facts in my possession 

 which would enable me to show that the abolition of 

 the slave trade/that immortal and glorious event, caused 

 the death of many thousand slaves, who were therefore 

 actually killed by Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and 

 their adherents. But by means of abolition millions 

 of lives have since been saved. The first genera- 

 tion suffered ; prisoners were captured to be sold, and 

 the market having been suppressed, were killed. This 

 was undoubtedly an evil. But then the slave-making 

 wars came to an end, and there was peace. In the 



