UN

THE SUFFICIENCY

OF

THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM.,

SECTION I. On the encouragements for holding intercourse with the common people, and the various ways of doing them good.

1. THERE is a certain political antipathy, the characteristic of a whole class, which disposes many to look coldly and adversely on the differences of rank in the world; and which has also misled them into a wrong philosophy, when speculating on the principles and the mechanism of human society. The homage which is generally if not universally felt towards men simply as the holders of wealth, or station, or family distinction, is treated by such, not merely as a pusillanimous affection, but as a prejudice—an illusion of the fancy which it is the prerogative of reason to expose and to dissipate an arbitrary or factitious sentiment, which, in the progress of light and of larger views in the world, will at length be extirpated from all breasts by a sounder and better education than that which now

enthrals the spirits of our race, and holds it in still remaining bondage to the senilities of an older period at length wearing fast away. It is thus that deference to rank is held by them to be rather a conventional feeling than an attribute of the species-having no place of stability either as a primary law, or even as a necessary result of laws in the constitution of our nature.

2. This is fortunately one of those speculations which Nature is too strong for-who asserts her own supremacy, and visits the transgressor with her obvious displeasure, when the wayward resistance is made to any instinct or tendency which her own hand has implanted. This is never done with impunity; and so all history demonstrates the evils and sufferings, which, in the shape of so many chastisements, come upon society-when, broken loose from her ancient holds, the distinctions of social order are set at nought; and a universal lawlessness of spirit becomes the precursor of a universal anarchy. It is with political as with physical theories when the lessons of experience are disregarded, that experience always steadfast and true to her own processes gives forth a practical refutation of both. But when the hypothesis is of inanimate matter, all the harm of the disappointment might be the mockery of a confident anticipation. Not so when the hypothesis is of men, to be acted on or carried into effect by a change in the framework of human society-the misgiving of which might be followed up by a general derangement and distress in the unfortunate community that has been made the

subject of some headlong adventure, some rash and reckless experiment. Such is the invariable result, when any of the special affections of humanity are uprooted, or rather when in some period of epidemic frenzy, they for the time are kept in abeyance. The inequalities of condition in life are often spoken of as artificial. But in truth they are most thoroughly natural; and it would require the violence of a perpetual stress on the spontaneous tendencies of every society in the world to repress or overbear them. The superiority of one man to another in certain outward circumstances of his state is not artificial but natural; and the consideration in which the occupiers of the higher state are held is natural also-insomuch that the public feeling of reverence for the grandee of a neighbourhood has an ingredient of nature in it, as well as the domestic feeling of reverence for the father of a family. Now what we affirm is, that neither of these affections can with impunity be violated, or without injury being done-in the one instance to the good order of a household, in the other to the good order of a commonwealth. More especially of the social affection do we aver —that when superseded in its operation, one main buttress of the social and political edifice is thereby damaged or destroyed-a lesson which the finger of history has often recorded in characters of blood; and chiefly in those seasons of revolutionary uproar, when, in the absence of this wholesome and balancing restraint, society vibrates between the fitful excesses of popular tumult and the severities of a grinding despotism.

3. There is a very general foreboding in our day-that, even now, we are fast ripening for such a catastrophe; and we will not say that they are the common people of our land who are altogether to blame for it. It is true that on their part there might be a criminal dislike and defiance to superiors; but it is just as true that these superiors, on the other hand, might deserve the forfeiture of all that influence and respect, which their place and their circumstances could otherwise have both gotten and maintained for them. For though a reverence towards the holders of rank be natural, the resentment of their oppression is also natural; and so even would be the return of this pained and irritated feeling, though there were no higher provocative than their mere indifference or neglect. The very distance at which the rich keep themselves from the poor, were enough of itself to engender a hostile feeling in the bosoms of the latter, and to fill them with all rankling and suspicious imaginations. The alienation becomes mutual; and even though on the one side, there should be nothing more or nothing worse than the habitual inattention of minds otherwise taken up, this might bear to the general eye the aspect of a lordly or aristocratic scorn; and if so interpreted, will separate by a still wider moral interval the patrician and plebeian orders of the community from each other. It is true that this reverence of which we have spoken forms part of man's nature. But his is a com

single but of vari

pound nature, made up not of a ous affections-any one of which, as the affection of rank, might be neutralized, even prevailed

The defer

against, by the operation of the rest. ence for rank is by itself so strong, that, when not overborne by other influences, it mightily conduces to the stability of our social system; and for this beneficial end is inserted, we have no doubt, as a principle in the human constitution, by the author of our frame. Yet it is not so strong, but that it might be nullified, nay reversed, by passions stronger than itself; and it is of vast account therefore to the peace and well-being of society, whether a tendency so wholesome shall be thwarted by conflicting or aided by conspiring forces-a difference this, for which the upper classes themselves are deeply responsible. Were all great men good men were the natural respect for station at all times harmonized with by the natural respect for virtue-were the homage spontaneously given to every holder of superior rank strengthened by the homage given as spontaneously to the intelligence or the accomplishments of superior education, and still more by the gratitude which substantial kindness, or even but the passing attentions of frank and honest affability never fail to awaken With such a concurrence of the natural influences all on the side of order and good will, there might still by a series of pacific changes, be the progressive amelioration of human society; so as that all anarchy and tumult might be banished from the land, and a revolution become a moral impossibility.

4. Should there ensue such a crisis then, it will not be the multitude who are alone to blame for it; but the holders of fortune and rank will have