i € 
1871.7 2 0 3 [Carey. 
In the battle-cry of the reformers now advancing upon the conservatism 
of our civilization, he hears the proclamation of “the fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man’’—a protest against “that notion of indi- 
vidual liberty which leaves every man to care for himself, and ruin to 
seize the hindmost.”’ 
To the almost universally prevalent doctrines of political economy he 
traces the apathy, indifference, and even hostility of the fortunate classes 
to the duties enjoined in the second table of the law, as it is summarized 
by the Great Teacher. Singling out the most distinguished and most 
popular of now existing disciples and advocates of the laissez-faire school 
of economists, he thus exhibits Herbert Spencer’s ‘‘Social Statics”? : 
‘The man of power and the man without; the man of wealth and the 
pauper, should each have the largest and most perfect liberty consistent 
with their not touching each other. * * * It forbids the thought of 
charity, or brotherhood, or sacrifice ; it consecrates selfishness and indi- 
vidualism as the prime feature of society. * * * Its principle is the 
least possible restriction, the fewest possible enactments ; the weak must 
be left to their weakness, the strong must be trusted with their strength, 
the unprotected man must not look for favor, and government must re- 
solve itself into the lowest possible agent of nonintervention.”’ 
Than the view thus presented of the now-so-much lauded Spencerian 
social philosophy nothing could be more thoroughly accurate. The whole 
tendency of that modern economical school, to whose teachings our de- 
parted friend was so much opposed, has been, and is, in the direction of 
giving increased power to the rich and strong, while throwing responsi- 
bility on the shoulders of the poor and weak. ‘‘If the latter wld marry, 
and will have children, why,’’ say they, ‘‘should they not be allowed to 
pay the penalty of their crime, as so many millions of starving Ivish have 
already done ?’”? ‘ Why,’’ though in somewhat different words, now asks 
Mr. Spencer, ‘‘ Why should not the poor remain in ignorance if unable to 
provide for educating their children and themselves?’ ‘‘ Why should 
the millionaire be required to aid in maintaining hospitals in which dam- 
age to poor laborers’ limbs may promptly and properly be repaired ?”’ “Is 
it not for every man to do as he will with that which is his own?’? The 
new philosophy having answered this latter question in the affirmative, 
need we be surprised that the miserable selfishness thus given to the world 
as science should have excited the indignation of one who knew, and felt 
that it must be a mere pretence of science that could sanction any course 
of conduct so wholly inconsistent with the divine command, ‘that we do 
to others as,’’ under similar circumstances, ‘‘we would that they should 
do to ourselves’? Assuredly not ! 
It would be difficult for me fully and completely to express the strength 
of the humanitarian sympathies exhibited in Mr. Colwell’s plea for jus- 
tice to the victims of our reckless competition and our voracity in the 
pursuit of material wealth. Tio prevent misconstruction of his severe 
animadyversions upon the existing agency of church and state in the pre- 
vailing disorders of society, and to show the bearing of his complaint I 
