is a pledge given for his consistency of counsel and propriety of conduct when that post is to be defended. His honour is concerned to redeem that pledge, and not to leave the cause he has engaged in, in the hazard of detriment, from the irruption of intemperate feelings, or the treason of rash and hasty counsels.

The latest posterity will admire the noble answer of our Algernon Sydney, when he, who was as much hated and persecuted then as his memory is now dear to all good men, stood forth before a judge who was a knave, and a jury who were no better, the champion of the liberties of Englishmen-who, to save his country, sacrificed himself. "The prisoner is mad!" exclaimed Jefferies. "Feel my pulse, my Lord," was the reply; and sure, 'twas a reply that it was heroism indeed to be able to make, and the truest dignity to feel. "My pulse as yours doth temperately beat time, and makes as wholesome music." No mathematical demonstration can be clearer than the exact propriety and fitness of such a state of mind to such a situation. The man is exactly cut out to fit into the niche. The sentiment dove-tails into the character. Glorious was the cause for which he fell; and glorious was the man who fell in it.

But this propriety would have been lost had not a wonderful command of feeling enabled Sydney to preserve the balance of his mind, and to maintain that equanimity that was not to be irritated by insult, nor to be overborne by tyranny. An equanimity which, I guess, no man could have exhibited had he not, together with all other appliances and means to boot, considered that it was what the cause in which he suffered required from him. Had he not made up his mind beforehand to the governing conviction, that though a man may indulge his feelings where his own interests alone are at stake, that indulgence is not to be allowed when he is called on to act as the representative of others, to uphold the dignity of a glorious cause, to be the martyr of truth, and the champion of liberty.

Now come we to the consideration of our " modus tractandi:" the discipline, physical and moral, by which a man may acquire, if he have not, and may greatly increase to himself if he have, that most desirable evenness of mind which, whether adversity hath done its worst, or prosperity hath done its best for him-whether all his other good qualities have succeeded or failed, will still be the best provision for his happiness, best becoming his situation as a frail creature, and his dignity as a good one.

Of all these means and considerations, I am sure the physical ones are the first in claim and importance; and I am not sure but they may be the last, too; the all but every thing of the matter. To counteract the frailty of nature is to repair her strength. The most skilful pilot in the world would own that for the chance of weathering out the storm, there is more virtue in your vessel's tar and copper than in all the tactics of your navigation.

A dead man is the worst man in the world; and he who is but going dead is going the worst way in the world: in the way to lose not only all his physical good qualities, but all his moral ones too. Here is the clear and legible indication of nature, and of the great Author of nature, that it is the primary duty of a man to be provident and heedful of his state of health-that the mind's equanimity is to be sought for in the body's health. The mens sana, as physicians say, only taking lodgings in corpore-sano; that a sound mind in a sound body."

is,

66

The physical effect of the hyoscyamus, and of other medicines, to soothe and allay the irritability of the nervous system-of opium, to suspend the sensation of the most acute bodily pain of mental anguish, are demonstrative, that to keep the mind on its pivot, to preserve not merely its energy of action but its precision of movement, the first attentions should be given to the judicious administration of pabulum vitæ: the neglect of which, by luxurious and intemperate persons, by long fasters and long feasters, may be pathologically assigned as the cause of that unequal and unbalanced acting of their minds (if they have any minds), which produces fretfulness of temper and despondency of mind, which leads so naturally to -(I won't tell any body what it leads to!)

But all excessive excitements must necessarily be followed by alternations of dejection and gloom. A level kept by the bodily temperament is the best guarantee for the level of the mind. There is the same physical propriety in recruiting and invigorating the powers of life, to sustain an apprehended shock or straining of the nerves, as there is for supplying a more generous and nutritious aliment to sustain a man under a stronger muscular action. By judicious arrangements, with this intention in view, a man may wonderfully economize his vital powers; and may, in a literal sense, lay himself out to the best advantage. By these means may

"Minds an equal temper know,

Nor swell too high, nor sink too low." Such advice, I am aware, may seem somewhat below the dignity of public inculcation; but its vast utility is its apology. And as this Areopagus is devoted solely to the promotion of human happiness, nothing that is essential to the object can be really below our solicitude, or unworthy of our tractation. That men should have health, is assuredly as essential to their happiness as that they should be virtuous.

I am now to show what are the best moral considerations, by the happy concurrence of which, with physical attentions, we may acquire, or preserve to ourselves, or, which is the same thing, may obtain, in the greatest degree which our constitution admits of, the great and unspeakable advantage of a calm and evenly-balanced mind.

How much can be done in this way the experience of thousands

will attest, who, by dint of a prudent vigilance over their feelings, have attained a degree of self-possession, and an habitual placidity of temper, which they themselves, at the outset of their philosophy, had imagined to be beyond their hope of achieving. The excellent philosopher, Socrates, who retained his mind's composure amid the horrors of a dungeon, and smiled at the deadly aconite which he was sentenced to drink, has yet assured us that he owed little or no part of that wonderous equanimity to his nervous constitution. He was by nature of as irritable a temperament, and as subject to be transported by sudden gusts of passion, of rage, or of grief, as a Nero or Heliogabalus.

There can be no doubt that there must be an immense difference between the apathy and indifference which originates in an insensibility of the nervous system, or in an absolute want of sentiment and feeling, and that subdued and well-regulated sensibility which is the laurel of a wise man's victory over himself.

To attain this, the first moral step is to fix in our minds a deep conviction of the value of the attainment; and of the certainty that no effort that we can make in this way is, or can be, absolutely fruitless.

The best and wisest men the world ever had in it, seem to have adopted the excellent method of proposing to themselves some great model of moral excellence, according to the symmetry of which they might mould and carve out their own character. Thus the patriot, Sydney, proposed to himself the example of Marcus Brutus, that he might imitate the virtues of that great man, be just what he was, and live the character over again.

The great advantage of thus proposing to ourselves a model of the excellence which we wish to attain, is that, though after all we should not come up to the standard we have proposed, every step of our advance will still be an advance in virtue; and our continued observance of the rule which we have proposed to ourselves, will encourage us to reiterated exertions, of which the worst issue the very worst-will be to have failed gloriously—to have come short of the laurel, but not of the honour of a victory. The next and most powerful moral discipline for securing our mind's composure, or recovering it as soon as possible after it has been perturbed, is to recur to a just and arithmetical calculation of the value of human life, and of the best employment of human talents. This calculation can only be accurately made by abstraction by contemplating our situation, whatever it may be, on such a point of view as shall make it fall into the proper perspective-make it what it will appear to others what it will seem to ourselves at some future period. Then, if it shall never be to be said that we have acted unworthily-if no enemy shall ever be able to point out a tarnish of dishonour on our shieldnever to stigmatize an act or counsel of ours, of which he could

:

"'twas out of character,-'twas pitiful-'twas mean, or

wicked' our sufferings and our wrongs will only serve to make our virtues shine the brighter. And when those wrongs and sufferings shall be seen, as they one day will be, to have been incurred not by any faults of our own, but in generous exertions to instruct and serve mankind, we shall never wish that our sufferings had been less, nor think that the good which we shall have done was too dearly paid for.

Mankind are not yet to be disliked, nor the hope of our moral improvement to be given up, for all the wrongs and cruelties which they have done, and will continue to do to those who love them most and serve them best. 'Tis for this great end that we may never be weary in well-doing, nor discouraged from the duties of philanthropy, that the Great Author of our nature has given so mighty an efficacy to the power of friendship, that he who has but some few who will be true and faithful to him, and the testimony of his own good conscience, will be more than a match for the whole hostile world; and will retain his mind's composure, and the sunshine of the heart in fortune's darkest day. With undisturbed equanimity and unshaken fortitude, the world shall see him ready to bear his full part of suffering in a glorious cause: ready to be led to prison or to death; and only anxious that the cause may not suffer through any infirmity of nature in him. It is our enemies, whose conduct reads to the world their confession, that their cause has need of barbarity and persecution for its support: that a single Areopagus has been dangerous to a thousand temples of priestcraft; and that a single man, who hath spoken his mind, and will speak it or perish, must be locked up at last, or Carthage trembles. It is for us to show the world, that while they cannot rob a man of the consistency of a good character, and the testimony of a good conscience, they, can take nothing that he is afraid of losing.

DELENDA EST CARTHAGO.

N.B. This was the last discourse delivered in the Areopagus. Its orator was on the next day cast into prison, under the accumulated horrors of four impending prosecutions at once, and the Areopagus, in consequence, unjustly and dishonourably sold.

This discourse, the last of the series, will recall to the memory of the hearers, the impression which the seal of example set on precept, when He who taught how a man should suffer, was himself the sufferer,-crushed by Christian malice, and betrayed by infidel cowardice. It is intended to publish these discourses in a single volume, as soon as the amount of subscriptions shall authorize the ineurring of the expense of publication.

Subscriptions received by Mr. Carlile, 62, Fleet-street.

R. T...

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expence, are requested to be left.

No. 24. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, Dec. 11, 1829. [PRICE 6d CURRENCY, CORN LAWS, AND GENERAL TAXATION.

I come to a summary of my case, in showing that the present distresses of the country are not referable to any kind of currency question; but that, as far as they do exist, they are referable to the general taxation, and to variations in the state of trade and credit.

In the first place, let us observe, there is not a general distress in the country-no general decay of capital. All persons who live upon the taxes-all persons who have incomes from the funds, or settled incomes, have an amendment of their condition in the decay of prices for those articles which they consume. All' the clerks in private offices stand in this amended condition, as we have not heard of diminished salaries. The lawyers, who flourish most on public distress, whose interest it is to add to individual misery, by seeking to make a wreck of every man's affairs whom they find in difficulties, were never more prosperous than at present. The farmers are suffering, and with them the agricultural labourers. Their evils evidently lie in high rents and taxes, and sinking prices for their produce. Of the labourers there may be too many; but the farmers cannot give employ upon any liberal scale through narrowed means. Labourers increased as fast or faster than capital increased during the war, when there was so great a drain for them in army and navy; but now, or since the war, we find the number of labourers, notwithstanding emigration to all parts of the earth, outstripping all. means of employment; and, at the present rate, from the conclusion of the war, if we wait a period of one or two and twenty years, for the new generation to come into the field of labour, produced after the return of the multitudes from employment in war, we shall find distress among the labourers greater than ever, and the English sinking to the level of the Irish labourer, and as much lower than that, as animal life can sustain a miserable existence. This is already visible in the multitudes, the thousands upon thousands of ill-managed children to be seen throughout the roads, streets, lanes, and alleys of both town and country. A continued peace for another twenty years will carry universal conviction of that principle of population, on which my little book, called Every Woman's Book," is founded. And be it remembered, that one-half of the present distress among the la

Printed and published by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet Street.

No. 24. Vol. 4.

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