improving or renovating force to be best applied, or what is the course of action, for bringing about that improvement, which the advanced state of knowledge would justify us in pursuing ?

Now there are three ways in which men may be conceived to proceed with this object in view. Either they may at once adopt the resolution of putting an end to all the forms of governmentand of faith-and of social life, which have hitherto been the objects of their reverence,—or they may give rise to such revolutionary movements as may have the effect, without proceeding the length of destructive energies, of giving an essentially new and more popular form to the whole framework of society-or lastly, they may take existing institutions as their groundwork—and by a cautious and gradual-but yet severe and conscientious improvement of these they may seek to raise them to their highest capabilities to draw from them the greatest good to the community which they are capable of affording—and especially to render them more in harmony than they have hitherto been with an extended enjoyment on the part of the community of what are conceived to be the common privileges of all classes of the state.

Now, it must be kept in mind, that increased knowledge is said to be the power by which this change and the mode of its production is to be determined—and we must, therefore, in conformity with this assertion, endeavour to ascertain to which of these modes the sanction of true wisdom would assuredly be given.

And there can scarcely be conceived a question to which the answer more readily and surely presents itself. Knowledge never has given its countenance to any thing that has assumed the character of the destructive principle-and those therefore who, with the assertion of high measures of knowledge on their lips, think that they give the best evidence of the true liberality and vast extent of their views, by advocating a root and branch excision of all existing things, are in fact acting in direct inconsistency with the very agencies of that spirit by which they at the same time pretend that they are actuated in its most abundant measure.

Then even revolution has not done much to recommend itself to the adoption of the wise-by any of the forms which it has been able to assume, or by the effects which, when set in motion, it has in fact produced-it being now the belief of all thinking minds, that it is one of the most ruinous expedients to which a people, with the desire

of improvement, can betake themselves-that it has, in fact, in every case, obstructed the very progress it was meant to have accelerated---and has produced an incalculable sum of misery to mankind, without any one of the good effects which might have rendered the endurance of that misery a thing to be submitted to.

Thus it seems that if knowledge is to be the umpire as to the means of improvement, that improvement can only go on with her approbation and sanction, by taking existing things as the groundwork of her proceedings---and by carrying them to as high ---but gradual, and cautiously conducted a style of amelioration, as the innate capabilities and the existing wants of the human race agree in recommending.

Now every thing in Europe accords with this conclusion.--Her governments afford materials which may be so altered and improved as to adapt them to the best wishes which mankind can entertain, for the liberty and progress of the race. Her religion is essentially fitted to harmonize with the highest attainments to which human nature and human life can be conceived capable of rising. Her philosophy will readily admit of improvements which more extended points of view may recommend as proper to be adopted. And her prevailing systems of manners and of social intercourse have everything in them that will suit them for being gradually the basis of forms more in harmony with the just rights and improved notions of the species.

Improved knowledge will thus never sanction either destruction or revolution-but it will give its authority to a reform in harmony with the wants of the age, and with the progressive condition of the human race. Yet, if its dictates be listened to, that reform must also, in every case, be gradual and cautious-rather demanded by circumstances, than willingly rushed into as a matter of choice and of search-and above all, never conducted in such a style either of rapidity—or of recklessness-as may give license to an universal desire of change-or endanger the essentials of those political forms which have hitherto been the chief safe-guards of human happiness and improvement.

The great and real danger, therefore, in such a condition of society as the present, lies in too great an extension of the power of the people for their propensity, when thus permitted to act in masses, and under the delusion of a spirit of change, will

always be to destroy or to revolutionize, rather than to improve -to beautify-and to amend ;-and as in all such times the tendency is to such an extension of popular power, there cannot be a greater error of judgment or of conduct than to foster a propensity which rather requires to be moderated and calmed-ind at all events to be led, by all cautious and prudent measures, into its most useful and just direction.

But how this may best be done---whether by yielding in some degree to the temper of the times, even when it is not altogetler as it should be---or by firmly, yet prudently, checking its haste--is the grand and difficult problem which political wisdom has now to solve.

INSTITUTIONS OF DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ABSOLUTE EXCELLENCE SUITED TO DIFFERENT STATES OF SOCIETY.

THE fundamental idea to be kept in mind on this subject is, that it does not appear to have been the purpose of Providence that the race of men, any more than the individuals who compose it, should attain rapidly, or at once, to all the improvement in knowledge or in condition of which they are susceptible. On the contrary, as the individuals of the human family are destined, by their very nature, to pass through a period of childhood and of youth, during which their passions are strong and their understandings limited---and in the continuance of which they have to struggle with many errors and misapprehensions before they attain to the maturity of their powers---so in regard to communities, and to the race generally, their earlier periods are obviously, and in accordance with the purposes of Providence, destined to contend with many false or imperfect modes of thought ---and to be subject to institutions of social and political life, which their more advanced attainments dispose them to renounce as imperfect and unsuited to a more enlightened state of public opinion.

But, at the same time, it must be kept in mind that as nature is impartial to all her offspring, and evidently intended that the substantial good of their nature should be the inheritance of all their generations---as well of the earlier and more uneducated---as of the more advanced and enlightened, she has provided that their virtue and happiness may be as effectually promoted by the confined notions of the simpler states of society and of life, as by the more extended and luminous views of ages of greater refinement and science.

2. In order to understand in what way this is accomplished, it must be kept in mind, that though we are accustomed to consider

man as chiefly and pre-eminently a being guided by reason, the truth is, that in his habitual conduct he is far more guided by his sentiments and impressions—by the current in which his fancy has been trained to run-than by any merely abstract exercises of that faculty which we familiarly denominate his reason or understanding-and that, provided his sentiments and feelings, and the habitual train of his conceptions are kept pure, it is of far less consequence, so far as either his virtue or happiness are concerned what may be the precise degree of illumination or consistency which the more occasional exercises of his intellectual or reasoning nature have attained. For the sake of simplicity—and in accordance with the usual style of philosophy, we may call the former aspect of his nature his imagination-and the latter his reason -understanding by the former his habitual impressions and habits of conceiving things-and by the latter, those rarer views which, in the exercise of his merely intellectual powers, he has been able to gain for himself;-and the following quotations from the work of a very enlightened author, who has treated this subject with great precision in different parts of his speculations, may serve to put the reader in possession, better than any farther explanations which we can give, of the modes in which, according to the arrangements in nature, her best gifts have been impartially distributed among all the orders of her intelligent creatures—and in all the varied states of improvement in which they have been found.

66 Imagination," says Tucker, actuates most of our motions, and serves us perpetually in all the purposes of life: it often holds the reins of action alone, or at least guides them in those intermediate spaces, while understanding looks forward towards the general plan. So that our behaviour depends for the most part upon what persuasions we have, and upon conviction (or reason) little further than as that may draw the other after it. For how well soever we may be convinced of the reasonableness of our measures, we still never pursue them heartily and currently, while there remains a latent mistrust in their disfavour : we can never be sure of accomplishing an enterprise so long as any cross apprehensions may rise to interrupt it. Besides, we cannot constantly keep a watchful eye upon our thoughts, but such notions as start up in the fancy will take direction of our active