1871.] 205 [Carey. 
given way to indignation against a piety that subordinated humanity to 
theology. ‘‘ When the rulers of the synagogue watched him whether he 
would heal the withered hand, in their church, on their Sabbath-day, he 
looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness, 
or, as the margin has it, the blindness, of their hearts.’’ (Mark iii. 2-5). 
That it was this sort of indignation, mixed with the same kind of grief, 
which induced the severity of remonstrance complained of at the time, is 
manifest in the whole tone, and yet more so in the special drift of his ob- 
jurgations. The true construction of his aim, indeed, is found in his pro- 
test against the ruling doctrines of political and social economy which the 
churches, in common with the community, accept. A single sentence 
well represents him on this subject, as follows: “The social, political, and 
commercial institutions of the present day, founded upon, and sustained 
by, a selfishness heretofore unequaled, are the great barriers to the pro- 
eress of Christianity.” And again: “ Political economy, strictly so 
called, is as much opposed to the spirit of Christianity asitis antagonistic 
to socialism ; or, in other words, there is far more in common between 
socialism and Christianity than there is between the latter and political 
economy.’? The system of economic theory by himself adopted, is of 
course not the one intended here, but is that one which, referring to the 
North British Review, is thus described : ‘‘ Followed out to the utmost, 
the spirit of political economy leads to the fatal conclusion—that the con- 
duct of the social life should be left entirely to the spontaneous operation 
of laws which have their seat of action in the minds of individuals, with- 
out any attempt on the part of society, as such, to exert a controlling in- 
fluence ; in other words, without allowing the State or institutions for 
general government any higher function than that of protecting individual 
freedom.”’ 
It is, therefere, the laissez-faire theory of political economy which thus 
is charged with hostility at once to Christianity and humanity. The 
buy-cheap-and-sell-dear system elsewhere described by him as a policy 
¢in trade and in society, which makes it not only the interest, but the 
natural course of every one to prey upon his fellow-men to the full extent 
of his power and canning, and is well fitted to carry selfishness to its 
highest limits, and to extinguish every spark of mutual kindness.’’? His 
political economy was a system of philosophic benevolence, a doctrine of 
justice, mercy, and truth, with a resulting economic policy of protection 
to productive industry, leading to the highest human welfare. In the 
appendix and notes to his second edition of the ‘‘ New Themes,” he has 
given us a whole library of the literature of Charity. In the hundreds or 
treatises there cited and briefly epitomized, he exhibits a breadth of sur- 
vey and depth of inquiry that one would think must exhaust the subject. 
It was the result of many years of labor, directed by a zeal that nothing 
could inspire and sustain but a heartfelt devotion to the work of social 
duty and remedial beneficence. May I not here add, as a reflection that 
concerns the students of social science, that the system of economic doc- 
trines which secured the assent of a mind so fully informed, so eminently 
