that mankind are as likely to have been found going wrong in their attempts to better their social or political condition, as individuals in their endeavours to give a new turn to their private affairs; -that in both cases there is the same kind of danger when men-either as individuals or as communities,—shew a disposition rather to strike out new courses of action, than to improve gently and gradually, the modes of conduct to which they have previously been accustomed-and that, from the augmented virulence of any passion or error when adopted by multitudes of men, the chance previous to experience is, that the greater amount of disorder-of error—and of misery, will be found to have resulted from the combined action of communities in times of change and of excitement, than from any thing which mere private mistake or passion has ever, in its attempts at alteration, been able to accomplish.

Now, if we turn our attention to the past history of mankind, with the view of ascertaining what has been the obvious and acknowleged fact of the case ---we find our previous anticipations from the nature of the principles that are called into exertion, and from the accumulated energy of the multitudes that have admitted them, to be fully verified by what has actually occurred. For nothing is more

notorious, even on the most superficial review of the history of human associations---than that the attempts of men to effect great alterations for good in their condition have, in almost all cases, been signal failures-that they have either been wrong in their principle—or ill-conducted in their means —or not suited to the exigencies of society at the time—or have admitted some extraneous adjuncts into their operation, which have perverted or neutralized all their good tendencies--and that thus periods in which men have devoted themselves to the improvement of their condition, instead of being times of augmented happiness and progressive melioration, have invariably been times of great disorder of prevailing vice—of augmented misery -and, in many cases, of coming ruin or humiliation.

What we see, in short, over the entire scene of past history has not perhaps, in a single instance, been a quiet, and gradual, and well-adjusted adaptation of means to an end, the object of which was, to give a purer and more healthy developement to the characters-the institutions-and the enjoyments of men-but occasional explosions-of a greater or less intensity and continuance-which have torn up the surface-desolated for a period the quiet abodes of life-spread misery and ruin

over a wide space

around the scene of the commo

tion-and only retarded rather than hastened—and for an indefinite time, the course of improvement and melioration which would otherwise have taken

place.

Or, to change the metaphor-and at the same time to avail ourselves of the words of a great man, when speculating on the same subject—" there seem to have been times every now and then occurring to the communities of men, when, not as individuals only, but as communities, their understandings and passions seem to have undergone a decided and fearful derangement"-when they have abandoned for a season their ordinary and rational and quiet methods of proceeding, and have ventured upon courses of speculation and of action, which seemed to indicate a high and perverse degree of excitement and of error in the system—and when, after wasting this augmented but morbid strength, in violent and destructive efforts, to relieve themselves from imaginary evils-or to give new forms to their social institutions—they have at length sunk into the utmost depths of lethargic exhaustion—or have been quelled by the deserved and necessary chains of despotic power.

And hence it is obvious, that changes such as human nature, or the human condition has hither

to been subject to-unless they be considered as violent efforts of nature to shake off a previous malady-are to be regarded as things not in themselves to be desired but to be avoided, and when they have actually occurred, demanding the wisdom and caution of experienced and intelligent men, not assuredly to hasten them onward-but to modify and abate them-the tendency of the human mind in such times being obviously to rush into precipitate courses-and to move towards its purposes, with no measured or well regulated pace ---but, under the influence of passions of constantly augmenting force, and which are only increased in their energy and in the disorder which they occasion, by the multitudes who have partaken of, and communicated the common expression.

It being thus made obvious that men are as subject to great deviations from the right course in their public as in their private transactions-and that in the former, as well as in the latter, they often involve themselves in augmented misery by their very attempts to improve their condition, it becomes one of the most imperious duties of moral wisdom to point out the various nature of the deviations into which men are thus apt to fall, and, as far as mere speculation can succeed, to guard their understandings, at least, against the admission of

those vague or erroneous views by which such deviations are usually preceded and accompanied.

If, then, we were to confine ourselves merely to general speculation on the conceivable condition of mankind, we should be disposed to represent all change in the strict and proper sense of the word, that is, all sudden and great and violent alterations in the condition of human life--to be something that ought not, in a perfect state of social life, to occur-or to be ever encouraged. For what we should conceive, on the supposition of such a state of things, is, that the nature of man being essentially progressive-and his condition naturally subject to quiet and gradual alterations--all his attempts to amend his condition should be accommodated to this quiet and gradual procedure of the arrangements amidst which he is placedthat legislators should watch cautiously the incipient symptoms of alteration-and that their proposed improvements should be as gradual, and almost as imperceptible, as the "progress of the shadow on the surface of the dial plate."

This, however, we are aware, is rather something to be conceived in a perfect state of human society, than anything which experience or reason gives us a title to expect;-for human affairs always have been, and probably, from the essentially im