Though each individual is accountable to God for his conduct, it is evident that the great laws which regulate mankind are altogether independent of his will, and that liberty of action is perfectly compatible with the general design of Providence. “A more profound study of the social system will have the effect of limiting more and more the sphere in which man’s free-will is exercised, for the Supreme Being could not grant him a power which tends to overthrow the laws impressed on all the parts of creation: He has traced its limits, as He has fixed those of the ocean.”

Man is eminently sociable; he willingly gives up part of his free-will to become a member of a social body; and it is this portion of the individuality of each member of that body, taken in the aggregate, which becomes the directrice of the principal social movements of a nation. It may be greater or less, good or bad, but it determines the customs, wants, and the national spirit of a people; it regulates the sum of their moral statistics; and it is in that manner that the cultivation or savageness, the virtues or the vices, of individuals have their influence. It is thus that private morality becomes the base of public morality.

The more man advances in civilization the greater will be his collective influence, for knowledge is power; and at no time did the mental superiority of the cultivated races produce such changes as they do at present, because they have extended their influence to the uttermost parts of the earth by emigration, colonization, and commerce. In civilized society the number of people in the course of time exceeds the means of sustenance, which compels some to emigrate; others are induced by a spirit of enterprise to go to new countries, some for the love of gain, others to fly from oppression.

The discovery of the New World opened a wide field for emigration. Spain and Portugal, the first to avail themselves of it, acquired dominion over some of the finest parts of South America, which they have maintained till lately a change of times has rendered their colonies independent states. Liberal opinions have spread into the interior of that continent, in proportion to the facility of communication with the cities on the coasts, from whence European ideas are disseminated. Of this Venezuela and Chile are instances, where civilization and prosperity have advanced more rapidly than in the interior parts of South America, where the Andes are higher and the distance from the sea greater. Civilization has been impeded in many of the smaller states by war, and those broils inevitable among people unaccustomed to free institutions. Brazil would have been further advanced but for slavery, that stain on the human race, which corrupts the master as much as it debases the slave.

Some of the native South American tribes have spontaneously made considerably progress in civilization in modern times; others have benefited by the Spanish and Portuguese colonists; and many have been brought into subjection by the Jesuits, who have instructed them in some of the arts of social life. But these Indians are not more religious than their neighbours, and, from the restraint to which they have been subject, have lost vigour of character without improving in intellect; so that now they are either stationary or retrograde. Extensive regions are still the abode of men in the lowest state of barbarism: some of the tribes inhabiting the silvas of the Orinoco, Amazons, and Uruguay are cannibals.

Two important triumphs yet remain to be achieved over physical difficulties by the science and energy of man, namely, the junction of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans at the Isthmus of Central America, and the union of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean at that of Suez. The first seems to be on the eve of accomplishment, and, in conjunction with the treasures with which the auriferous district of California is said to abound, may bring about a complete revolution in the tide of affairs; and that country, hitherto so completely separated from the rest of the world and so little known, will become a new centre of civilization, whose influence will be diffused over the wide Pacific to the shores of the eastern continent; the expectation of Columbus will then be realized—of a passage to the East Indies by the Atlantic. Should the Mediterranean and Red Sea be united by a water communication, Alexandria, Venice, and the other maritime cities of southern Europe may regain, at least in part, the mercantile position which they lost by the discovery of Vasco da Gama.^[195]

The advantages of colonization and commerce to the less civilized part of the world are incalculable, as well as to those at home, not only by furnishing an exchange for manufactures, important as this is, but by the immense accession of knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants, that has been thus attained.

The history of former ages exhibits nothing to be compared with the mental activity of the present. Steam, which annihilates time and space, fills mankind with schemes for advantage or defence: but however mercenary the motives for enterprise may be, it is instrumental in bringing nations together. The facility of communication is rapidly assimilating national character. Society in most of the capitals is formed on the same model; and as the study of modern languages is now considered a part of polite education, and every well-educated person speaks more than one modern tongue, one of the great barriers to the assimilation of character amongst nations will be removed.

Science has never been so extensively and so successfully cultivated as at the present time: the collective wisdom and experience of Europe and the United States of America is now brought to bear on subjects of the highest importance in annual meetings, where the common pursuit of truth is as beneficial to the moral as to the intellectual character, and the noble objects of investigation are no longer confined to a philosophic few, but are becoming widely diffused among all ranks of society, and the most enlightened governments have given their support to measures that could not have been otherwise accomplished.^[196] Simultaneous observations are made at numerous places in both hemispheres on electricity, magnetism, on the tides and currents of the air and the ocean, and those mysterious vicissitudes of temperature and moisture, which bless the labours of the husbandman one year, and blight them in another.

The places of the nebulæ and fixed stars, and their motions, are known with unexampled precision, and the most refined analyses embrace the most varied objects. Three new satellites and six new planets have been discovered within four years, and one of these under circumstances the most unprecedented. In the far heavens, from disturbances in the motions of Uranus which could not be accounted for, an unknown and unseen body was declared to be revolving on the utmost verge of the solar system; and it was found in the very region of the heavens pointed out by analysis. On earth, though hundreds of miles apart, that invisible messenger, electricity, instantaneously conveys the thoughts of the invisible spirit of man to man—results of science sublimely transcendental.

Vain would be the attempt to enumerate the improvements in machinery and mechanics, the canals and railroads that have been made, the harbours that have been improved, the land that has been drained, the bridges that have been constructed; and now, although Britain is inferior to none in many things, and superior to all in some, one of our most distinguished engineers declares that we are scarcely beyond the threshold in improvement; to stand still is to retrograde, human ingenuity will always keep pace with the unforeseen, the increasing wants of the age.^[197] “Who knows what may yet be in store for our use; what new discovery may again change the tide of human affairs; what hidden treasures may yet be brought to light in the air or in the ocean, of which we know so little; or what virtues there may be in the herbs of the field, and in the treasures of the earth—how far its hidden fires, or stores of ice, may yet become available—ages can never exhaust the treasures of nature or the talent of man.”^[198] It would be difficult to follow the rapid course of discovery through the complicated mazes of magnetism and electricity; the action of the electric current on the polarized sun-beam, one of the most beautiful of modern discoveries, leading to relations hitherto unsuspected between that power and the complex assemblage of visible and invisible influences on solar light, by one of which nature has recently been made to paint her own likeness. It is impossible to convey an idea of the rapid succession of the varied and curious results of chemistry, and its application to physiology and agriculture; moreover, distinguished works have lately been published at home and abroad on the science of mind, which has been so successfully cultivated in our own country. Geography has assumed a new character, by that unwearied search for accurate knowledge and truth that marks the present age, and physical geography is altogether a new science.

The spirit of nautical and geographical discovery, begun in the 15th century, by those illustrious navigators who had a new world to discover, is at this day as energetic as ever, though the results are less brilliant. Neither the long gloomy night of a polar winter, nor the dangers of the ice and the storm, deter our gallant seamen from seeking a better acquaintance with “this ball of earth,” even under its most frowning aspect; and that, for honour, which they are as eager to seek even in the cannon’s mouth. Nor have other nations of Europe and America been without their share in these bold adventures. The scorching sun and deadly swamps of the tropics as little prevent the traveller from collecting the animals and plants of the present creation, or the geologist from investigating those of ages long gone by. Man daily indicates his birthright as lord of the creation, and compels every land and sea to contribute to his knowledge.

The most distinguished modern travellers, following the noble example of Baron Humboldt, the patriarch of physical geography, take a more extended view of the subject than the earth and its animal and vegetable inhabitants afford, and include in their researches the past and present condition of man, the origin, manners, and languages of existing nations, and the monuments of those that have been. Geography has had its dark ages, during which the situation of many great cities and spots of celebrity in sacred and profane history had been entirely lost sight of, which are now discovered by the learning and assiduity of the modern traveller. Of this, Italy, Egypt, the Holy Land, Asia Minor, Arabia, and the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, with the adjacent mountains of Persia, are remarkable instances, not to mention the vast region of the East, and the remote centres of aboriginal civilization in the New World. The interesting discoveries of Mr. Layard, who possessed every acquirement that could render a traveller competent to accomplish so arduous an undertaking, have brought to light the long-hidden treasures of the ancient Nineveh, where its own peculiar style of art had existed anterior to that of Egypt.^[199] In many parts of the world the ruins of cities of extraordinary magnitude and architecture show that there are wide regions of whose original inhabitants we know nothing. The Andes of Peru and Mexico have remains of civilized nations before the age of the Incas. Mr. Pentland has found numerous remains of Peruvian monuments in every part of the great valley of the Peru-Bolivian Andes, and many parts of the imperial capital Cusco, little changed from what they were at the downfall of Atahualpa. Mr. Stephens has found in the woods of Central America the ruins of great cities, adorned with sculpture and pictorial writings, vestiges of a people far advanced, who had once cultivated the soil where these entangled forests now grow. Picture-writings have been discovered by Sir Robert Schomburgk on rocks in Guiana, spread over an extent of 350,000 square miles, similar to those found in the United States and in Siberia. Magnificent buildings still exist in good preservation all over eastern Asia, and many in a ruinous state belong to a period far beyond written record.

Ancient literature has furnished a subject of still more interesting research, from which it is evident that the mind of man is essentially the same under very different circumstances: every nation far advanced in civilization has had its age of poetry, the drama, romance, and philosophy, each stamped with the character of the people and times, and still more with their religious belief. Our profound Oriental scholars have made known to Europeans the refined Sanscrit literature of Hindostan, its schools of philosophy and astronomy, its dramatic writings and poetry, which are original and beautiful, and to these the learned in Greece and Italy have contributed.

The riches of Chinese literature, and their valuable geography, were introduced into Europe by the French Jesuits of the last century, and followed up with success by the French and English philosophers of the present: to France we also owe much of our knowledge of the poetry and letters of Persia; and from the time that Dr. Young deciphered the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian hieroglyphics and picture-writing have been studied by the learned of France, England, and Italy, and we have reason to expect much new information from the more recent researches of Professor Lepsius of Berlin. The Germans, indeed, have left few subjects of ancient literature unexplored, even to the language written at Babylon and Nineveh—the most successful attempt to decipher which is due to a distinguished countryman of our own, Colonel Rawlinson.

The press has overflowed with an unprecedented quantity of literature, some of standard merit, and much more that is ephemeral, suited to all ranks, on every subject, with the aim, in our own country at least, to improve the people, and to advocate the cause of morality and virtue. All this mental energy is but an effect of those laws which regulate human affairs, and include in their generality the various changes that tend to improve the condition of man.

The fine arts do not keep pace with science, though they have not been altogether left behind. Painting, like poetry, must come spontaneously, because a feeling for it depends upon innate sympathies in the human breast. Nothing external could affect us, unless there were corresponding ideas within; poetically constituted minds of the highest organization are most deeply impressed with whatever is excellent. All are not gifted with a strong perception of the beautiful, in the same way as some persons cannot see certain colours, or hear certain sounds. Those elevated sentiments which constitute genius are given to few; yet something akin, though inferior in degree, exists in most men. Consequently, though culture may not inspire genius, it cherishes and calls forth the natural perception of what is good and beautiful, and by that means improves the tone of the national mind, and forms a counterpoise to the all-absorbing useful and commercial.

Historical painting is successfully cultivated both in France and Germany. The Germans have modelled their school on the true style of the ancient masters. They have become their rivals in richness and beauty of colouring, and are not surpassed in vividness of imagination, nor in variety and sublimity of composition, which is poetry of the highest order embodied. Sculpture and architecture are also marked by that elevated and pure taste which distinguish their other works of art.^[200] French artists, following in the same steps, have produced historical works of great merit. Pictures of genre and scenes of domestic life have been painted with much expression and beauty by our own artists; and British landscapes, like some painted by German artists, are not mere portraits of nature, but pictures of high poetical feeling, and the excellence of their composition has been acknowledged all over Europe, by the popularity of the engravings which illustrate many of our modern books. The encouragement given to this branch of art at home may be ascribed to the taste for a country life so general in England. Water-colour painting, which is entirely of British growth, has now become a favourite style in every country, and is brought to the highest perfection in our own.

The Italians have had the merit of restoring sculpture to the pure style which it had lost, and that gifted people have produced some of the noblest specimens of modern art. The greatest genius of his time left the snows of the far North to spend his days in Rome, the head-quarters of art; and our own sculptors of eminent talents have established themselves in Rome, where they find a more congenial spirit than in their own country, in which the compositions of Flaxman were not appreciated till they had become the admiration of Europe. Munich can boast of some of the finest specimens of modern sculpture and architecture.

The Opera, one of the most refined of theatrical amusements in every capital city in Europe, displays the excellence and power of Italian melody, which has been transmitted from age to age by a succession of great composers. German music, partaking of the learned character of the nation, is rich in original harmony, which requires a cultivated taste to understand and appreciate.

Italy is the only country that has had two poetical eras of the highest order; and, great as the Latin period was, that of Dante was more original and sublime. The Germans, so eminent in every branch of literature, have also been great as poets; the power of Goethe’s genius will render his poems as permanent as the language in which they are written. France is, as it long has been, the abode of the Comic Muse; and although that nation can claim great poets of a more serious cast, yet the language and the habits of the people are more suited to the gay than the grave style. Though the British may have been inferior to other nations in some branches of the fine arts, yet poetry, immeasurably the greatest and most noble, redeems, and more than redeems us. The nation that produced the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, with all the brilliant train, down nearly to the present time, must ever hold a distinguished place, as an imaginative people. Shakespeare alone would stamp a language with immortality. The British novels stand high among works of imagination, and they have generally had the merit of advancing the cause of morality. Had French novelists attended more to this, their knowledge of the human heart and the brilliancy of their composition would have been more appreciated.

Poetry of the highest stamp has fled before the utilitarian spirit of the age; yet there is as much talent in the world, and imagination too, at the present time, as at any former period, though directed to different and more important objects, because the whole aspect of the moral world is altered. The period is come for one of those important changes in the minds of men which occur from time to time, and form great epochs in the history of the human race. The whole of civilized Europe could not have been roused to the enthusiasm which led them to embark in the Crusades by the preaching of Peter the Hermit, unless the people had been prepared for it: men were ready for the Reformation before the impulse was given by Luther; and Pius IX. merely applied the match to a train already laid. These are the barometric storms of the human mind.

The present state of transition has been imperceptibly in progress, aided by many concurring circumstances, among which the increasing intelligence of the lower orders, and steam-travelling, have been the most efficient. The latter has assisted eminently in the diffusion of knowledge, and has probably accelerated the crisis of public affairs on the Continent, by giving the inhabitants of different countries opportunities of intercourse, and comparing their conditions. No invention that has been made for ages has so levelling a tendency, which accords but too well with the present disposition of the people. The spirit of emancipation, so peculiarly characteristic of this century, appears in all the relations of life, political and social. On the continent of Europe it has shaken the whole fabric of society, subverted law and order, and ruined thousands, in order to throw down the crumbling remains of the feudal system. The same emancipating spirit which has thrown young and old into a state of insubordination and rebellion abroad, has been quietly but gradually altering the relations of social and domestic life at home. Parent and child no longer stand in the same relation to one another; even at an early age boys assume the character and independence of men, which may perhaps fit them sooner for taking their share in the affairs of the world; for it must be acknowledged that, whether from early independence or some other cause, no country has produced more youthful and able statesmen than our own; but, at the same time, it places them on a less amicable and more dangerous position, by depriving them of the advice and experience of the aged, to which the same deference is no longer paid. The working man considers his interest to be at variance with that of the manufacturer, and the attachment of servants to their masters is nearly as extinct in Britain as vassalage. Ambition, to a great extent, pervades the inferior and middle grades of society, and so few are satisfied with the condition in which they were born, that the pressure upwards is enormous. The numerous instances of men rising from an inferior rank to the highest offices in the State encourages the endeavour to rise in society, which is right and natural, if pursued by legitimate means, but the levelling disposition so prevalent abroad is pernicious as it is impracticable. So long as men are endowed with different dispositions and different talents, so long will they differ in condition and fortune, and this is as strongly marked in republics as in any other form of government; for man, with all his attempts to liberate himself from nature’s ordinances, by the establishment of equal laws and civil rights, never can escape from them—inequality of condition is permanent as the human race. Hence, from necessity we must fulfil the duties of the station in which we are placed, bearing in mind that, while Christianity requires the poor to endure their lot with patience, it imposes a heavy responsibility on the rich.

In Britain, respect for the labouring classes, together with active benevolence, form the counterpoise to the evil propensities of this state of transition; a benevolence which is not confined to alms-giving, but which consists in the earnest desire to contribute with energy to the sum of human happiness. In proportion as that disposition is diffused among the higher classes, and the more they can convince the lower orders that they have an ardent desire to afford them every source of happiness and comfort that is in their power, so much sooner will the transient evils pass away, and an improved state of things will commence; kindly and confiding feelings will then take the place of coldness and mistrust.

The continual increase of that disinterested benevolence and liberal sentiment, which in our own country is the most hopeful and consoling feature of the age, manifests itself in the frequency with which plans for ameliorating the condition of the lower classes are brought before Parliament; in the societies formed for their relief; and in the many institutions established for their benefit and comfort.

Three of the most beneficial systems of modern times are due to the benevolence of English ladies—the improvement of prison discipline, savings-banks, and banks for lending small sums to the poor. The success of all has exceeded every expectation, and these admirable institutions are now adopted by several foreign countries. The importance of popular and agricultural education is becoming an object of attention to the more enlightened governments; and one of the greatest improvements in education is, that teachers are now fitted for their duties, by being taught the art of teaching. The gentleness with which instruction is conveyed no longer blights the joyous days of youth, but, on the contrary, encourages self-education, which is the most efficient.

The system of infant-schools, established in many parts of Europe and throughout the United States of America, is rapidly improving the condition of the people. The instruction given in them is suited to the station of the scholars, and the moral lessons taught are often reflected back on the uneducated parents by their children. Moreover, the personal intercourse with the higher orders, and the kindness which the children receive from them, strengthen the bond of reciprocal good feeling. Since the abolition of the feudal system, the separation between the higher and the lower classes of society has been increasing; but the generous exertions of individuals, whose only object is to do good, is now beginning to correct a tendency that, unchecked, might have led to the worst consequences to all ranks. We learn from statistical reports that the pains taken by individuals and associations are not without their effect upon the character of the nation. For example, during the eleven years that preceded 1846, in which the criminal returns indicated the intellectual condition of persons accused, there were 31 counties in England and Wales in which not one educated woman was called before a court of law, in a population of 2,617,653 females.^[201]

Crime has generally decreased in proportion to the religious and moral education of the people: the improvement in the morality of the factory-children is immense since Government appointed inspectors to superintend their health and education;^[202] and indeed the improvement in the condition of the whole population appears from the bills of mortality, which unquestionably prove that the duration of human life is continually increasing throughout Great Britain.^[203]

The voluntary sacrifices that have been made to relieve the necessities of a famishing nation evince the humane disposition of the age. But it is not one particular and extraordinary case, however admirable, that marks the general progress—it is not in the earthquake or the storm, but in the still small voice of consolation heard in the cabin of the wretched, that is the prominent feature of the charities of the present time, when the benevolent of all ranks seek for distress in the abodes of poverty and vice, to aid and to reform. No language can do justice to the merit of those who devote themselves to the reformation of the children who have hitherto wandered neglected in the streets of great cities; in the unpromising task they have laboured with patience, undismayed by difficulties that might have discouraged the most determined—but they have had their reward, they have succeeded.^[204] The language of kindness and sympathy, never before heard by these children of crime and wretchedness, is saving multitudes from perdition. But it would require a volume to enumerate the exertions that are making for the accommodation, health, and improvement of the people, and the devotion of high and low to the introduction of new establishments and the amelioration of the old. Noble and liberal sentiments mark the proceedings of public assemblies, whether in the cause of nations or of individuals, and the severity of our penal laws is mitigated by a milder system. Happily this liberal and benevolent spirit is not confined to Britain, it is universal in the States of the American Union, and it is spreading widely through the more civilized countries of Europe.

No retrograde movement can now take place in civilization; the diffusion of Christian virtues and of knowledge ensures the progressive advancement of man in those high moral and intellectual qualities that constitute his true dignity. But much yet remains to be done at home, especially in religious instruction and the prevention of crime; and millions of our fellow-creatures in both hemispheres are still in the lowest grade of barbarism. Ages and ages must pass away before they can be civilized; but if there be any analogy between the period of man’s duration on earth and that of the frailest plant or shell-fish of the geological periods, he must still be in his infancy; and let those who doubt of his indefinite improvement compare the first revolution in France with the last, or the state of Europe in the middle ages with what it is at present. For, notwithstanding the disturbed condition of the Continent, and the mistaken means the people employ to improve their position, crime is less frequent and less atrocious than it was in former times, and the universal indignation it now raises is a strong indication of improvement. In our own country, men who seem to have lived before their time were formerly prosecuted and punished for opinions which are now sanctioned by the legislature, and acknowledged by all. The moral disposition of the age appears in the refinement of conversation. Selfishness and evil passions may possibly ever be found in the human breast, but the progress of the race will consist in the increasing power of public opinion, the collective voice of mankind regulated by the Christian principles of morality and justice. The individuality of man modifies his opinions and belief; it is a part of that variety which is a universal law of nature; so that there will probably always be a difference of views as to religious doctrine, which, however, will become more spiritual, and freer from the taint of human infirmity; but the power of the Christian religion will appear in purer conduct, and in the more general practice of mutual forbearance, charity, and love.