Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

supersedes all form, however it may be aided by it; and procures a happiness to its subjects, envied by all nations, who mistake for the effect of form that of administration; and its power is admired, while they overlook the confidence which morality has placed as the great basis of all civil institutions.

In this confidence alone, administration must always participate; for in all subjects of speculative policy, where individuals find no cause of decision in the suggestions of their own conceptions, they must appeal to an arbiter, which is always the integrity of the minister; for no man cedes his judgment to the abilities of another whose integrity is suspicious; and hence arises the necessity of virtue in the character of a prime minister. And whenever the nation is duped by an independent logomachy, mistaken for abilities, or shall place a suspicious character at the helm of state; from that moment the British Empire will fall into convulsions, and a state of political decline will ensue. But should this event be retarded only fifty years more, the liberty of the press will have so much augmented the wisdom and virtue of the people, that being of age, they will claim their indefeasible and hereditary right of empire, and free themselves from the bondage of ignorant and ambitious tutors, who were necessary to restrain them in a state of minority, when liberty would have proved licentiousness to conduct them to misery and ruin.

This inestimable virtue, [Truth,] the source of all others, produces that wonderful and impartial administration of justice, the admiration of the whole world; it is this which resists the gangrene of corruption, with which the political body is infected, holds the flaming sword of vengeance, whose effulgent rays appal aspiring faction and relentless tyranny, and encourages patriots in the cause of integrity and liberty. This must be a foundation to every political structure. The history of past, and the view of present nations, prove that the sceptre of despotism, swayed by the hand of truth, is preferable to that of liberty dispensed with the hand of

corruption, and verifies the sentiment of Pope, that the happiness of nations does not depend on the form of government, but on the integrity of its administration, which can never be found, but among the people where truth is cultivated as the first of all virtues.

That constitutional form has an effect upon the mental faculties of the members of the community, cannot be doubted, because it suppresses or exercises them in proportion as they have a greater or less share in the government, and so far form is important, because it promotes wisdom, the only means to discover and cultivate truth; but divest form of this important, though often distant consequence, and it becomes an ignis fatuus which has led the world for many ages to the precipice of error. This observation will be illustrated and proved by taking a comparative view of the government of England, with any the most perfect democracy in Switzerland. Though in the latter the pyramid of government stands, as all good governments should stand, upon its base; and in the former the pyramid is truncated and deformed, and the base with the side is as one to six; yet that of England, though inferior in form, is superior in administration, as in the former justice is as abandoned as a prostitute, and in the latter chaste as a vestal virgin; and this can only proceed from the less or greater cultivation of truth, and force of wisdom to discover it. This virtue, truth, is as much the peculiar and appropriated character of this nation as sensibility, and proceeds from its extraordinary modes of

EDUCATION.

I shall consider this Education under two heads, scholastic and domestic, the first of which I shall subdivide into public and private.

Public scholastic education takes under its tuition the sons of the rich, and aristocratic part of the nation; here they are placed at an age when the passions are beginning to operate, and removed from the more immediate control of private tutors or their parents; they are assembled here as in a state of Nature, subject only to

relaxed school laws, containing boundaries of space to rove in, limited periods to read books, to eat, drink, sleep and rise. Their persons and property are at the mercy of tyrant school-fellows, and every one indemnifies himself by retaliation on the weakest. They have. no communication with men, and must therefore receive counsel, and place a confidence in those who act under the impulses of similar passions and weaknesses. They have no knowledge of any moral laws, and no fears but what arise from the breach of the puerile code of school laws, which seldom goes unpunished, while the highest offences against the law of morality are taken no notice of; and the audacious boy who has no fear of personal combat, or the puerile and shameful punishment of exposing his posteriors to be flogged by a birchen rod, may revel in every species of tyranny, injustice and cruelty. The mind of youth is left as uncultivated as the heart; a few grammar rules and compositions in the ancient and dead languages occupy their mouths and their time, and produce the learning of the parrot, and as improved as that animal they proceed to the university. Being now arrived at the age of adolescence, and entering into the society of men who are constantly displaying the contents of an extensive memory, they begin to feel the vacancy of their own, and proceed to burden it with all the errors of unprofitable philology. They know that the improvement of the heart may keep pace with that of the understanding; throw off the school vices of tyranny, injustice and robbery, being exposed to the dangers of punishment (like any other citizen) in the breach of the civil laws; they substitute the more manly vices of gaming, whoring and drinking; and with the pedantic and morose manners of a collegian, they proceed to the last stage of education-travelling abroad.

Accompanied by their pedagogues as guides, they enter into foreign regions, and memory, respiring from the fatigue of ancient history and languages, returns to as futile an occupation; and crams itself with ecclesiastical, civil, political and domestic forms, ceremonies and

institutions, and geographical and physical observations. Judgment, oppressed with its weight, has just strength enough to make relative conclusions, and to measure every thing by a local standard formed by education and habit; but has not energy enough to push back the bounds of truth beyond the circumscribed limits of its own native prejudices; and while the understanding is thus futilely occupied, the heart is surprised by pleasures called by the name of gallantry in all foreign countries; in England only, moral turpitude and depravity of principles; but as education has taught them to place virtue in abstinence from pleasures, they feel a remorse of conscience in the enjoyment of moral liberty; but Nature triumphs, and forces them to be happy. Conscience by the frequent friction of its irritability gains callosity, and leaves no sensibility, when real virtue, or probity and sympathy are assaulted by the temptation of self-interest. The English traveller constantly sacrifices the national character of stubborn rectitude, in proportion as he assumes the worldly polish or liberality which he travels to acquire.

From what cause the great energy of thought or extent of the mental faculties which characterizes this nation arises, it is difficult to say, but education seems to have much influence. I have observed a great contrariety of conduct between England and other nations in this respect.

Upon the Continent, children associate more with men, and adopt their concerns at a very early age. As these affect only the memory, the judgment of children being inadequate to operate upon them, the former is cultivated while the latter is neglected. These concerns convey a knowledge of all the chicane and interested conduct of life, corrupt the heart; and judgment finding no exercise, is overwhelmed and lost in the powers of the memory, and this latter instead of the former, be comes the guide of the adult through life.

In England men have as much aversion to associate with children as they with men; this leaves them to

their own society, where plays, toys and friendship, offer matter adequate to the exercise of infantine judgment; and memory throws off the frothy nothing contained in books, and the narative of worldly transactions, while the body is directed by the mind to gymnastic exercises, which improve the physical constitution. Probity or love of truth is the only moral, which parents or pedagogues have time or inclination to inculcate; though sympathy should precede it; this, however, Nature takes charge of, and never fails to inspire it into a vigorous mind and body. Though its use may be perverted by bad instruction and bad example, yet it gives an unparalleled humanity to the English character over all the globe.

From this mode of education, the English mind acquires that peculiar habit of thought or intellectual excellence, which, in proportion as education improves, or wisdom appears, will become a glorious luminary to spread, by means of the liberty of the press, over all the globe, and bring man to a knowledge of himself—to Intellectual Existence, and an Enlightened state of Nature.

And such is the course of an education which forms man to elevate him into the office of senator, and gives him qualities which are to promote and secure the happiness of his fellow-citizens. To this system of education I attribute the good and evil preponderating in the remarkable character of the English nation. In the age before puberty, the mind unattended to by parents or pedagogues, who will not condescend, as in other countries, to associate with children, is left to occupy its energy by being abandoned to the society of children; and it is here that judgment and invention are called into exercise, to make friendships, to acquire the property of toys, to defend their persons by forming alliances, by the exercise of personal strength or cunning; and demands for these purposes all the efforts and ingenuity requisite to a man living on the great stage of the world. The passions accustomed to early impressions from living in a state of Nature, grow tremblingly alive, and

« PoprzedniaDalej »