let us coolly examine the extent of that information, and see how far you are justified in your foul attack on him. Taking your own statement of the poverty and wretchedness of the people to be true, what relief do you offer them? What consolation does the miserable weaver, with a wife and six or more children, to be maintained, when in full work, on ten shillings per week, derive from reading the Register? What hope do you point out to the wretches, who wanted to be transported for life? What consolation does the skeleton potatoe-eating husbandman derive from the contents of your Register? In what way within the compass of their power have you pointed out to any or either of those the means of ameliorating their situation? You have boasted of your prophecy, and have held the Feast of the Gridiron are they, the poor, better or worse for it? Who suffers most at this moment, the master or the discharged man? And if, as you predict, the farmers will be in the same situation they were three years ago, what will then be the situation of the poor? They must bear the burden of the misery. You may write on about olden time, the beauty of churches, good living of beef-stakes. This is only tormenting potatoe-eaters, unless you can effect the means of obtaining those good things for them. One mendfault is worth ten find-faults. If your writings are to be relied on, you know as much about the population of this kingdom as you do about trade. From your view of old churches and the present number of people, you conclude, in opposition to the evidence of your eyes, by the rapid increase of our cities and towns, that we have decreased in number; and though you see the taylor and shoemaker exchange trowsers for shoes, each of which was made in a day, by which a saving of a week's time, to ay nothing of superior workmanship, is the gain of each man, yet you want a third person to be concerned in the transaction before you admit a profit to the makers! Malthus, you say, wrote a book pointing out the increase of population, and the misery of the lower orders of the people. This was applauded by the government, and his work patronized to an unbounded extent, because it pointed out forcible means of checking population. Carlile became a disciple, you say, to the opinion of Malthus, and a tool in the hands of others; because he published the way to check this surplus population-not by force, but by an act of the ladies. The women, at least, wil not call him a monster in the shape of a man for this. As they are to be the actors, they will not condemn the act. But as you say he is nearly a madman-why are you so angry? It is but a mad trick, and we pity, not detest the weakness of mad men. I differ from you respecting the soundness of his mind, and if I am to judge of your sanity, by your writings, from their contradictions, I should conclude, you cannot be always sound in mind.

Supposing, then, Carlile to be compos mentis, and he viewing the miseries under which the lower orders of the people suffered: miseries such as you have repeatedly asserted, and which I have quoted from your speech at the Feast of the Gridiron: he having read Malthus on surplus population, studying causes and effects, and trying, if possible, to ameliorate the condition of his suffering fellow creatures, he at last, brought up his mind to convey to them that information which he thought, under existing circumstances, may benefit those unfortunate creatures, born only to toil out a wretched existence. This is the very head and front of his offencefor which you call him a monster in the shape of a man. That he, with thousands of others, may wish for a reform of abuses, an extinction to the national debt, and an end to all sinecures, with a just administration of good laws, I have no doubt, but who, as the means of accomplishing this desirable end, who is the man that can give happiness to his fellow creatures, who can make all independant? There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water. The invention of machinery deprived the poor of part of their work and made

labour cheap. The increase of population through vaccination added to the numbers unemployed. The necessaries of life increased in price, and men starved in the midst of plenty. Yet the animal propensities were not checked, and on your own showing, surely beget crime. Who could look on a wretched halfstarved family, and witness the incessant toil of the mother, without a wish to help them? Who, with the feeling of a man, (but not with Cobbett's heart) could behold unmoved the naked, shivering, half-starved, ignorant children, and wish to see the propagation of such beings, born to no inheritance but misery? How many millions, from your own showing, have been born to no other inheritance in the last 50 years? What prospect is there for them in the future? Is the man then a monster, who offers a remedy in part? who says, to a poor man, is it not with the greatest difficulty you can support yourself, wife, and two children? you can give them little education, you can hardly clothe them, leaving yourself sufficient food, wherewith to do your work, but if you have four or six more, what will be your condition? Follow this direction, and unless you choose you will have no more children.

If this plan is put into execution, what will be the effect? a decrease of the misery of the poor, and an increase of their comforts, followed by a decrease of crime and immorality, and though it be possible that some single women may adopt the plan-even that will benefit society under existing circumstances. We shall have

fewer illegitimate children left to the misery of parish food or to induce the finger of scorn; fewer women exposed to want and misery, fewer new born infants destroyed, I think fewer common prostitutes, and consequently a smaller number of evils for Mr. Wm. Cobbett* to expose and enrich himself by.

Bristol, April 16, 1826.

CANDID.

P.S. Mr. Cobbett is requested to insert this letter, with his reply, in his Register, on doing which, my address, if required by him, may be known, by applying to Mr. Cossens, his agent in Bristol.

* If I have adopted strong language and used foul words, it is because I like to fight my opponent with his own weapon. The vulgarity of my mode of writing is a proof that I am a constant reader of Cobbett's Register.

STEWART'S LECTURES.

LECTURE VII.

The subject of my next and seventh Lecture is the discipline of the faculty of reflection, to shew its agency as appropriate to arts and science, generating the technical powers of the mind called knowledge. Also the discipline of the faculty of contemplation, to shew its distinct agency in the improvement of sagacity, generating the essential powers of intellect called wisdom.

ON REFLECTION AND CONTEMPLATION.

I SHALL preface this Lecture with an exposition and analysis of the nature of reflection. This faculty modifying its actions and powers beyond the impressions of sense into eventual and probable existence, seems to acquire an equivocal nature denominated metaphysic, that of power beyond sense or substance, a term of contradiction and phantasm. In analyzing the nature of reflection, it will be instructive to consider the meaning derived from the etymology of the Latin word reflectere, to bend back, or revert to the same object, that is, to revert the faculty on the simple and primary object of sense or impression. In this meaning the action of reflection is nothing but a resensation, that is, a repetition of single impressions in number, magnitude, or quality.

This truth may be illustrated by considering the impression of the senses in viewing a first-rate ship of war of 100 guns; these impressions, when reacted or reverted upon by the faculty of reflection, to imagine an improveable ship of 1000 guns is nothing more than the repetition of simple impressions, whose aggregate exceeds their constituent parts in number, magnitude, and quality, and in this action there is nothing but resensation, and no spiritual, metaphysical, or magical operation. If we assume a case of morality, policy, or sublime physics, (which term I think better than metaphysics). to signify the powers and qualities of substance or matter, we shall discover that all the moral operations of mind are as palpable and distinct sensations as the relation of body or matter. To exemplify this truth, I will consider. the operations of mind upon its own nature in modes of thoughts and faculties, and I find the actions of memory as distinct from the actions of judgment, as motion and cohesion in a bale of iron, and equally objects of sensation and impression.

Again, the various relations of morality and policy in justice, liberty, government, &c., are as palpable impressions in the organ of thought as the various modifications of substance in its distinct powers of motion, attraction, cohesion, fermentation, gravitation, &c. &c. In these various moral and physical modes, when acted upon by reflection to advance the improveable knowledge of arts and sciences, this faculty does nothing but repeat and multiply simple sensations, whose aggregate must be brought to the mea sure of experience to reduce them to the indispensible standard of sense or knowledge, which proves that the faculty of reflection is nothing but reflex sensation, and no supernatural metaphysic, or mysterious magic, according to the unintelligible jargon of both the ancient and modern schools.

ON THE FACULTIES OF REFLECTION AND CONTEMPLATION.

These two important faculties of the human mind have been so universally received as synonimous, that I am very apprehensive I shall excite the suspicion of metaphysical sophistry in the minds of my auditors while I profess to annihilate the science itself. I place my whole confidence for success not on any respectable influence of superior intelligence, but upon common discernment and common sense, to receive conviction from the simplest possible mode of ratiocination.

The word reflection is taken from the Latin word reflectere, which means simply to recoil, revert, or recur, as the light of a candle recurs from the reflecting-glass.

This metaphor applied to the mind signifies the recurrence of thought upon the object that caused it. The word contemplation is derived from the Latin contemplare, which means to dwell or reside in a place. This metaphor is applied to that action of mind which dwells on all its recurrent reflections, till every possi

ble relation of a subject, or constituent part of a system, are comprehended in one simultaneous view.

The distinction between the two faculties of reflection and contemplation is of the greatest importance in the art of mental discipline, because on their separate instrumentality is founded the distinct character of sagacity and science. Reflection makes the astronomer, the naturalist and the mathematician-while contemplation produces wisdom, and makes the man.

I shall first exhibit the operations of the faculty of reflection in the triple process of morality, policy, and philosophy. I will assume the following question of morality-" What is the end of human existence, and the means best calculated to attain that end?" The faculty of reflection enters upon the process of the moral question, and makes all its recurrences in a straight line or radius: while contemplation pervades the whole circle of existence. Reflection recurs upon its ideas of religious dogma in the straight line of national tradition or local revelation.

The savage reflects the end of human existence to be the chase, and the means to attain that end war and desolation-his reflective faculty moves on the straight line of tradition, and his ideas have no power of recurrence in any other direction.

The pastoral man considers the question in reference to scriptural history, and discovers his end to be the adoration of the immortal prince called the Lama, and the means to attain it a certain tribute and sacrifice of his property; thus his reflection, like that of the savage, recurs ever on the straight line or radius of received opinion and sacred history. The agrestic man, in treating this moral question of the end and means of human life, reflects in a train of local ideas-the Mahometan points to his paradise of virgins; the Bramins, mistaking the doctrines of Pythagoras, (who taught the real laws of nature, the transmutation of all bodies into each other) point to the transmigration of spirit; and each nation conforming its means to such ends in religious rites, exhibits the very limited process of a straight line reflection, which has no power to deviate into the collateral direction of improveable system. The scientific class of the continental inhabitants of Europe offer a most instructive example of the character of reflection, unaided by the powers of and distinguished from contemplation.

This class of population, among whom the arts and sciences have been carried to their acme, to extend the operations of intellectual power, and give to the passions the highest momentum of sensibility and refinement, notwithstanding this cultivated state of teclinical intellect, their faculty of reflection differs from that of the savage in quantity and not quality. The question of the end and means of human existence is conducted by them in a similar process with the subordinate classes of human society. Their faculty of reflection recurs in the same straight line, advancing only to a more remote point of purgatory and Paradise

for the end of human existence, and regarding as means to attain that end the observation of religious rites and the rules of fashionable manners, which constitute virtue.

From this example of the operations of the faculty of reflection, conducted by technical intellect or science, we discover the great defect of sagacity, and the important distinction between wisdom and science. I shall now examine the operations of the faculty of reflection, as conducted by the civic people of Great Britain and America, as the most exalted class of human population.

The constitutional government of civil liberty, which in its electoral assemblies calls every mind to the equivocal and dubious study of politics, and the administration of justice in juries, which demands the most subtle discriminations of the moral science, gives a new character to the faculty of reflection by employing it as a mere instrument for the faculty of contemplatiou to work with.

The quality of recurrence in a straight line diverges under the impulse of contemplation into every direction of the subject, and the simple radius of reflection is carried through every mensuration of its subject, or circle, as follows:-The civic man, reflecting the question proposed of the ends and means of human existence, his thoughts do not recur in the straight line of dogma and authority, but pervading every relation of the question in the great circle of the moral science, he discovers happiness to be the end of existence, and good actions to be the means to attain that end. I must obviate some reflections that may probably suggest themselves here, that there exists a great mass of superstitious reflection among the great mass of the people: this cannot be denied, but it is equally true, that the national characteristic of the civic class of population has ever been that of moralists, and not of religionists, a people who believed consciousness to be the only reward of virtue, and virtue synonimous with happiness, to be both the end and the means of human existence, independent of all authority and all creeds of superstition.

I shall now consider the character of the faculty of reflection operating on a question of policy, which I shall confine to the superior classes of civic and scientific life. Let the question be, What is the end and means of social life? The scientific man, operating with a technical faculty of reflection, goes forward in theory to the straight-line process of natural liberty, and if this fails he recurs back to the point of despotic power, concluding the end and means of social life to be government or dominion over themselves and others.

The civic man pursues the question with reflection, aided by the faculty of contemplation, by which reflection is directed into all the relations of social life, both practical and theoretical. Instead of pursuing the straight line of natural liberty, it diverges into all the relations of social organism, and determines that doubtful point of equation of liberty and law, which equilibre of