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Leader (1850-1860), 12th October 1850, Edition Country of 1, Page 688, Untitled Article

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      question that our aristocracy , and its partisans open , or secret , have a greater horror or dread to see mooted than the abrogation of entails and primogeniture—the twin institutions by means of which the privileged class in our country exists and m . ntains itself , to the detriment , socially and politically , of the community . This feverish dread was evinced during the discussions that attendt d the repeal of the Cornlaws , whfi ) , it will be recollected , the abolition of the privileges of property was , by the advocates of a free trade in corn , held as a sort of sword of Damocles suspended over the throats of our aristocratic hten th into surrender of the

      rulers , as if to frig em a Corn-iaws . After the bill repealing the Corn-laws h ad passe d the House of Commons and was about to be taken up by the House of Peers—after it had escaped the dangers of Scylla and was about to encounter those of Charybdis—Mr . Cobden , in . order tp obviate the dangers that awaited it in the new region , and to facilitate its passing , thought fit to declare at a public meeting in . Lancashire that he had no intention to move for a repeal of the laws of Entail and Primogeniture—a prudential declaration in the c ircumstances of the case , although it must have cost that excellent reformer a pang to make it . Mr . Bright , for having since adverted in his speeches to

      the same ire-stirring topic , will be seen to have drawn down upon himself the bitter vituperation of the Tory and Whig aristocracy and their press . I could name a talented younger son of a noble family in England who , for having , in a clever novel that he has given to the world , expressed hostility to the laws referred to , has been discarded by his family , and is shunned as a renegade to his caste by kith and kin . Mr . Kay , by his masterly and unanswerable treatise , is now sharing in the odium reserved by the aristocratical party for their truthful opponents ; and this party will doubtless think itself in luck in having found , as it has done , a new whipper-in in the person of Mr . William Chambers . A Scotch Democrat .

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      PRIZE ESSAY . Oct . 7 , 1850 . Sib , —It is with great pleasure that I find by one of your constant readers a definite proposition for a prize essay on the subject of Antichrist . I for one shall be happy to contribute in my small way to so desirable an object ; but before doing so should wish to be informed who are to be constituted the judges in a matter of such importance . It will , of course , be understood that the judges will not be competitors . As soon as preliminaries are satisfactorily settled , I beg that my name ( which I enclose ) may be set down on the subscription list for 30 s . Your obedient servant , Theophilus .

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      THE RATIONAL SYSTEM OF SOCIETY . Oct . 7 , 1850 . Sir , —In reply to Dr . Travis ' s remarks on my objections to the practicability of the " Rational System of Society , " allow me to observe that Dr . Travis's experience in human nature appears to be very different from mine . In the first place , it seems to me one of the most difficult things in nature—often impossible—to induce persons to exchange old ideas for new ones ; and , secondly , nothing is surely more common than to find those who sincerely adopt a principle or an idea unable to carry it into practice . In

      denying the probability of change of character , I speak from my own observation and experience . I admit " manners" or external character may be changed , but what I understand bv innate character is , from its very nature , unchangeable . If Dr . Travis denies that persons are born with distinctive innate qualities , mental and moral , which constitute what is usually understood by •* character , " and which , in fact , make the individuality of the individual , and must , therefore , be permanent , he seems to me " to betray an unconsciousness of most notorious facts . " I do not believe that the fact of the " rational svstom "

      never yet having been realized , is decidedly against its truth ; but 1 contend that Mi . Owen , not having yet fully realized his system , has no right to say it is founded on facts nnd the laws of nnturu . At pro-Hentthe system can be but a " theory , " nnd such , I believe , it will ever remain . 1 ?\ li . Uakton .

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      This calling for government aid is essentially immoral ; it sets at naught that golden law of justice , " as ye would that men should do unto you even so do ye unto them . " Under colour of promoting intelligence and virtue among the masses , it endorses the monstrous pretensions of government to the right to control the conduct of the people ; assumes the right of government to enslave , and then complains of the consequent degradation of the poor victims . The first step in the work of true education is to be just , to give the people liberty . The only sure foundation for education is morality ; government is itself

      an immoral and impious institution . No change of its form or of its employment can cure it of its original inherent depravity . It can do nothing for education higher or better than obstructing it , and cheating the people out of it . Voluntaryism inadequate to the work of education ! Where in all the world ' s history shall we find any measure of human enlightenment and elevation that has not been the sole work of voluntaryism ? And where shall we find a government otherwise than hostile to everything good and true ? Yours respectfully , George Sunteb , Jun .

      VOLUNTARYISM . I" > erhy , September 23 , 18 . j « . F kii ' . nd , —The discovery is said to be made , that Voluntaryism is unequal to the task of giving adequate instruction to the rising generation ; and hence a great cry is made for government assistance to supplement or supplant it . A marvellous position , truly , to be taken by a party claiming to be the most enlightened friends of the people . An insane and cruel cry for . 'b ' rute force to accomplish an object which , frpiK ^ to y ^ fyji 4 fu | r « g enn only be done by ' reason and j £ tfg £ YrES ^ pyer ml \ yn **' the lacks of voluntaryism , Aru | 7 n « wever inadequate the moans of education now WfPy&Pf ** $ overnmenAean add nothing but violc . ee . if ** WWfc ^ J htich makes the difference between any T ^ U ^ iftry - me ^ fur ^ and / nny government measure .

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      show toward the imaginary persecutions which they undergo is exceedingly silly , and imposes on none but themselves . I must confess , however , that , whe n dexterously introduced , it now and then gives zest to a dull tea-meeting . It generally , on such occasions comes in at the heels of «« our Puritan forefathers " all whose noble achievements the Unitarians , by ' curious process which I could never understand or explain , are fond of claiming as their own . Well were it for Unitarianism if , instead of dressing itself out in the childish fiction of a puritan ancestry , had been itself of puritan birth . Reared amid storm and danger , it would have been strong and courageous—a fighter and a conqueror . Its misfortune was to be " born out of due time "—to arrive a

      century too late . If it had arisen at the same time as Quakerism , when there was real and great risk in professing a new and unpopular faith , it would have been nursed by stripes into organic and invincible vigour . That this is no mere theory may be proved by the example of another sect , the Swedenborgians , in whom there is much spiritual beauty , but an excessive languor , and an absence of the more energetic moral qualities . Something of this may be owing to the very essence of Swedenborgianism , but much , more of it is owing to the fact that the Swedenborgians have never tasted all that is bitter , but all that is strengthening and ennobling in persecution , and have never been trampled and tortured out of their somnolency by the heel of the oppressor .

      But Unitarianism came a century too late for another rea 3 on than that which I have been giving . It was an attempt at a compromise when men were least in the mood to accept compromises . It dawned on the world at a moment when the English Deists had just completed a work which will for ever be memorable in the annals of human thought , when French infidelity , the witty and wayward child of English Deism , was at the very height of its dominion , when that grand German philosophy , which has since annihilated so many traditions , sacred and profane , was girding on its armour for the battle , and when those strange moanings and murmurings were heard which heralded the revolutionary tempest in France . What a poor , limping , and impotent thing must Unitarianism have seemed in the midst of

      phenomena so much more comprehensive in their range , so much more daring , extreme , and inexorable in iheir consequences ! What leisure or disposition could any one have to watch Dr . Priestly leaving his chemical experiments for a season , and blowing the dust from off the old Presbyterian rags to embroider on their battered blue words that had neither the tenth part of the import nor the tenth part of the boldness of those with which all who were not the

      LETTERS ON UNITARIANISM . Letter . II . October 8 , 1830 . Sir , —The history and development of Unitarianism have been greatly influenced by the circumstances of its origin and the character of its founder . As a system of Christian theology , it can claim of course as much antiquity as its orthodox opponents . The Athana 3 ian and the Arian conflicts are not things of yesterday . But , as an English sect , it counts an existence of somewhat less than a century . Now , nearly all our sects have sprung up as original and

      independent facts . They were not attempts to galvanize into activity some effete faith or exhausted institution . They grew as natural forces out of the bosom of society , sometimes to respond to a need , sometimes to carry on a warfare , sometimes to do both . They had freshness , ardour , organic energy from the beginning . Far otherwise was it with the Unitarian sect . It was the product of the apathy which had been gradually creeping over the old Presbyterian congregations . These had sunk into

      the state in which the Church of England was when Wesley rose to shake it rudely out of its sloth and its sleep . Years had softened their orthodoxy down , and they turned Calvinism out of doors , not as a false teacher , but as a troublesome companion . What had its root in indifference could not branch forth into acts of heroic zeal . The worst of all preparations for great martyr deeds , for daring apostleship , for prophetic fervour , is that craven indolence which abandons the ancient ways because they are rough ,

      and then calls itself liberality . From such base and beggarly elements there could neither flow the bold and positive assertion of new doctrines nor the persistent and stalwart antagonism to doctrines considered false . It is a favourite notion of the Unitarians that they are a persecuted sect . There never was a more preposterous delusion . It is precisely because they have not been persecuted that they have not prospered . During the hundred years that Unitarianism has existed , has there been anything in England deserving the name of religious persecution at

      all ? It is true that persons who pay their tithes very quietly go through the farce of letting their chairs and tables be seized for church-rates , and if one of them , rather than surrender sevenpence halfpenny , chooses to go for three days and three-quarters to a comfortable room in the prison , he is waited on by scores of deputations , he becomes the most famous and feted individual in the world next to Jenny land , and is a hero for life . Such are the awful and bloody persecutions to which the saints in these days are exposed . And what more tragic persecutions than those have Unitarians ever encountered ? To be

      sure , bigots say that they are not Christians ; and in this denial of the Christian name by those who have nothing of the Christian spirit consists the whole of the persecution to which they are subject—a _ persecution to which every good man is liable , just in proportion to his excellence . And , considering what the majority of those who call themselves Christians arc , you and I ought rather to regard it as a compliment when some brimstone-breather comes and informs us that we are not Christians . Mot » t manifestly we arc not , if he is . When we look at the kind and amount of persecution which the Unitarians

      complain of , wo are compelled to ask them whether they have never heard of what the early believers in the Gospel suffered , or the horrible atrocities perpetrated by the Inquisition—of the cruelties that harassed and crushed the brave Albigenses —of Scotland ' s heather stained by the blood of the Covenanters , nnd of their wild and despairing death-cry as it ran through Scotland ' s lonely glens—of the dragonnades in the Cevennos in the time of Louis the Fourteenth , and of the thousand wrongs and agonies man has inflicted on man for the awful crime of breathing with the lips the natural prayer which the earnest and pious heart inspired . Verily , this dilettante resignation which the Unitarians so valorously

      merest and meekest slaves of worn-out theological systems were familiar ? in what sense could even the dullest be brought to view this transformed Presbyterianism as a Reformation ? Not in the sense that it was the fairest and fullest application of the Protestant principle ; for a far fairer , a far fuller , application of that principle was contained in every contemporary work that assailed superstition , heedless of the blow which it might thereby strike at Scriptural authority . Not in the sense that it was the most triumphant use of logic on the subject of religion ; for David Hume was alive , and was a mighty reasoner , notwithstanding the tedious and trashy books which Archbishops of our day have written to refute him . Not in the sense that it was

      the completest proclamation of tolerance ; for how much more completely , energetically , persuasively had Voltaire , Rousseau , Lessing , and others proclaimed it ? Speaking nothing new , therefore , and speaking what it had to say so feebly , by what miracle was Unitarianism to traverse society as a whirlwind of change and of conquest ? It whispered and whimpered at an hour when the thunders were abroad or were piling up their black forerunners on the horizon . Every reformation , political , social , or religious , to be successful must be something which the community neither imagines nor expects . It

      must be a surprise . Its fortune is in the suddenness of its approach . Sacred books and priests boast of the miracles which have pioneered or accompanied some grand religious movement , some fecund outpouring of the . Spirit of God on the heart of man . Hut every primordial revolution in human opinion or in human affairs has its miracles too . And in what does the miraculous in such cases consist ? Less in the magnitude of what is done than in the rapidity of the deed , and in its unlikeness to what every wondering bosom longed and looked for . Deeper thnn men ' s expectations lie men ' s needs . To

      break through the crust ef their expectations into the thick of their needs is the characteristic of the true Reformer . When Unitarianism started from the cobwebs of capacious and comatose Presbyterian pews it did not bring this gift of miracles with it . Above all things it wished to bo moderate : it had the ambition , and , therefore , it had the luck of mediocrity . If it had transcended men's expectations it would very much have transcended its own . Of the needs that lay deeper than whatever was done or expected it knew nothing . There is a holy imulness which is wiser than earth's wisdom , rind which , when a Paul , a Luther , a Mahomet , or a George Pox

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      688 & !) £ & £ && **? [ Saturday ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 12, 1850, page 688, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1856/page/16/