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•used as characterizing the inhabitants of cities, in contradistinction 
to the rude and unpolished boors or savages of the country plains or 
forests. The result of men's association in cities and communities 
was naturally progress in industrial arts and other inventions, 
attended with more polished and gentler manners, or moral eleva- 
tion. Whereas the original dwellers in the country were hunts- 
men and freebooters. But in thus speaking we are really reversing 
the order of things, and confounding cause and effect. It is truer 
to say, that the persons of milder and gentler disposition naturally 
associated together forming peaceful communities, and building 
towns for their mutual protection and in order to pursue industrial 
arts ; while those of a wilder disposition naturally separated and 
followed the chase, and thus acquired the habits of nomades or 
wanderers, degenerating occasionally into utter savagery. But, at 
any rate, there is not a doubt that the proper and natural meaning 
of the word “ civilized ” has reference to the moral characteristics 
of men, and not to the material adjuncts of civilization. And so, 
when a man, however outwardly civilized by the accidents of birth 
and association, commits some gross atrocity, we even now apply to 
him naturally the epithet “ savage." Or again, take this description 
of the condition of parts of Greece at the present day, from a leading 
article in the Times of 16th May last, by way of illustration : — 
“ Where the first principles of society are wanting in a country, where 
law is an alien and civilization merely skin. deep, what can we expect to 
see in Greece but a land where there is neither agriculture nor trade, 
simply because the right of property is insecure and life itself uncertain ? 
There are no roads, and consequently no means to dispose of local pro- 
duce, and, to sum up all in the words of a great moralist, ‘ There are no 
arts, no letters, no society, and, what is worst of all, continual fear and 
danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish 
and short.’ ” 
43. But besides disregard of law and moral rectitude, and of the 
life and property of others, there is a still more potent source of the 
corruption of manners, which is perhaps the primary cause of all 
such lawlessness, and that is false religion. For religion underlies 
morals. So in Sir Henry Bulwer's speech on the Greek massacres, as 
reported in the Times of the 20th of May, we have this passage : — 
“ You see the assassin, his hands dripping with the blood of his innocent 
victim, visits his priest, and returns with perfect cordiality the recognition 
of him who directs his conscience.” 
There was too much of this very same thing in the Middle Ages in 
this country and throughout all Christendom. There is the same 
thing now in Ireland and in Italy and elsewhere under similar 
influences : — Savagery and blood-guiltiness in the midst of Civiliza- 
