If we see (and I am sure that we do see it) that the Deity himself acts in submission and subservience to this universal law; that he builds no Aladdin's castles, and works no miracles, even if with his almighty power he could do so (and I am sure he never told the Reverend Thomas Styles or the Reverend John a Nokes that he could). If we see (and see we not?) that he deals not in Gospel wonderment for old women and children to believe, for knaves to preach, and fools to pay for, but that all the counsels of his infinite mind, as they are "in boundless love and perfect wisdom formed," are prosecuted with a constancy expressive of that love, and a perseverance worthy of that wisdom, we must conclude, as the mathematical corollary of that apparent demonstration, that all wise and good men who most resemble the Deity, will resemble him in the moral excellence of perseverance. We see that the propriety is physically indicated to man in his anatomical construction, which is the result of a gradual dévelopement, and exists only by a necessity of continued and repeated actions, of which the end and effect is kept in view from a great distance; but still prosecuted, still aimed at, still pursued, through discouragements or through excitements, through hope or fear, in sunshine or in storm, "over the mountain or over the moor."

We see, or rather we feel, that we are so physically organized, that prosperity itself would lose its relish, lose all its charm, lose its very nature to us, if it came in any other shape than that of reward; and that, too, as the reward of long-continued and persevering exertions, rather than of sudden and extraordinary

ones.

Our nature has occasion of continued motive and stimulus to actions by the same law that it hath occasion for any action at all. Our nature, continuing what it is, determines the value and wholesomeness of objects that continue to excite, and calls us on to reiterated and repeated actions.

And hence, when we see that power of excitement expended all at once, by sudden influxes of unexpected prosperity, it is sure to be followed by a corresponding lassitude, exhaustion, and ruin of the mind. The mind is not formed to bear, nor can it bear to gain its purposes all at once, and to be made happy in a trice, any more than the stomach could digest the dinners of six weeks at a meal.

Treasure-trove prizes, or windfalls of success, are therefore always found to fail of yielding the satisfaction which they promise. Those who get them are consequently driven to a necessity of calling upon their neighbour to envy them, and to show them on which side the gilt of the gingerbread lies, and what it is for which they are thought happy. As a deaf man, amidst all the clamors of an oratorio, would have to depend on the judgment of others as to which was the trumpet and which the fiddle.

The wealth of Croesus would not buy an ounce of the calm and tranquil pleasure which the mind finds in the prosecution of objects which can only be attained by perseverance; and which, when attained, are only valuable in the reflection that it was by perseverance, and not by lucky hits, and sudden gusts of fortune, they were won.

Of those who, out of the vast mass of insignificance, emerge into a just title to posterity's remembrance, the distinguishing 'qualification of their minds has been the acquired and cultivated faculty of perseverance. For, as the faculty itself supposes great strength of mind, and a power of election to resist the allurements -of novelty, and to hold itself steadily to its purposes, it almost involves a guarantee that those purposes will, in general, be such as are worthy of perseverance.

When one but speaks of " a persevering character," the term - leads us at once to the notion, that it is in the main a good one; -from the natural association of ideas of self-command and fortitude, and good sense, which the term seems to involve, and the exceeding rareness of any instance of such qualities being called forth by pitiful and unworthy objects. Perseverance is distinguished from obstinacy: in that the one is the characteristic of an active and powerful mind; the other of a weak, and consequently wicked one: they are distinguished also by the character of the objects they severally propound.

The objects and purposes of perseverance are those of its own election: which engaged us, not in a fit of humour, or from the ephemeral attraction of novelty, but by their own intrinsic excellence; and which retaining that excellence, and continuing to be what they were, will not acquit a sober and well-balanced mind from its engagement; because of the palpable injustice in such a fickleness, and the shame which the mind must feel in itself, in deserting what was once worthy to engage its ambition; and the accompanying punishment, which, in such a case, the mind cannot escape of a dismal fear that, one by one, all good objects shall lose their power of holding it to action.

The engagement of the faculty of perseverance must necessarily be to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. It appears in its proper character, in "great exploits which justice warrants, and which wisdom guides." For this reason, the Pagan moralists (to whom it is no compliment to say they were the best) in describing the character of a just man, always superadd the distinction of his being a persevering man, and exclude all allowance of his being a fickle one. "Justus vir et propositi tenax"-A just man, who steadily grasps his purpose.

The greatest and noblest objects that were ever aimed at by human ambition, or achieved by human energies, have been such as never could have been effected but by an indefatigable perse

verance.

We are ourselves indebted, and do every day of our lives, in ten thousand different forms, reap the advantages of the perse verance of the wise and good among our ancestors. If they had held it wise and good enough to have been wise and good for themselves, and had held no objects worthy their ambition but such as they could calculate upon living to attain, they would have left the world but a miserable inheritance to us.

All the monks, and friars, and priests, and beggars, and Methodist parsons of antiquity, are, I have no doubt, gone to heaven. They made themselves, and every body else, miserable enough in this world; and I thank God for keeping them so quiet in that. But those whom the gratitude of posterity consecrates, those for whose existence the world has been the better, were men who held it wise to propose measures of utility to future ages; and where no wrong to more immediate claimants forbade the sacrifice, have sacrificed themselves to serve mankind. ....

For this, the son of Sophroniscus drank the poison to which his mistaken countrymen sentenced him, as if it had been the nectar of immortality.

"And more true joy Marcellus, exil'd, feels,
Than Cæsar, with a senate at his heels."

For this, the justest calculations of human prudence, after the elapse of a hundred years, admits not only the admirable fortitude, but the excellent discretion of those who suffered and fell for liberty and virtue. It was as wisely as it was bravely done, when Woolston, the pride and honour of the church of England, and of our University of Cambridge, held as nothing his honours in that university, his emoluments in that church, and became rather a tenant of the cells of Newgate, for the glorious fault of launching the keen jibe and barbed sarcasm of indignant virtue, into the life's marrow of holy villainy and consecrated imposture.

All truly great and noble purposes, and such as are, or promise to be, of permanent and everlasting benefit to mankind-such as the bringing about of radical reform in radically corrupt and wicked governments-the putting down of tyranny and priestcraft-the setting up of liberal and learned institutions, to improve men's minds, enlarge their hearts, and free them from the yoke of a barbarous superstition: these are effects that cannot be accomplished without sacrifices-that cannot be proposed, without a spirit and a mind in man to brave difficulties, to defy auguries; a perseverance never to flag or change in any change of fortune; a courage and magnanimity, lasting as the life, and sparkling even in the dying eye.

To make man capable of this, nature has given to her choice spirits, in all ages, a physical as well as moral capacity to rise superior to discouragements; to look at a remoter good, as a prize worth all the hazard and all the pains of personal sacrifices'; to despise fortune, and to trust their fame itself to the justice of posterity. Such great and good men are built by the great architect, to find in themselves, and in the consciousness of their vast

merit, more than a recompense for all the ignominy that their contemporaries can heap upon them. Nor is the ignominy to them and to their feelings what it seems to be, and is intended to be, by their mistaken persecutors.

"The contempt and hatred thrown on such a character, by the ignorance of mankind, he considers as not belonging to him, and therefore it has no power to mortify him; it flies over him, as innocent of annoyance as the idle wind, which he regards not. Mankind despise and hate him, from a false notion of his cha racter and conduct, If they knew him better, they would esteem and love him :" and all their scorn and rage against him would turn into sympathy for his sufferings, and admiration of his virtues. "It is not him whom, properly speaking, they hate and despise, but another person, whom they mistake him to be. Our friend, whom we should meet at a masquerade in the garb of our enemy, would be more diverted than mortified, if under that disguise we should vent our indignation against him.". Such are the sentiments of a man of real magnanimity when exposed to unjust cen sure; and such as is the constitution of our nature making us capable of such a magnanimity, and making it a law of necessity and fate, that no great and good purposes should ever be effected, but by the medium of that sentiment.

Such are the indications given by the Author of nature of the eternal fitness and propriety of perseverance, the eternal duty of a man, not merely to embark in a great and glorious cause, but to go on with it, to prosecute it, through evil report or good report, through honour or dishonour, through life or death. If that sentiment of the noble Roman was indeed a just one, why should we not make it entirely our own.

""Tis not in mortals to command success,

But we'll do more-Sempronlus, we'll deserve it." Men and Brethren, more especially Members of the Areopagus, and patrons and well-wishers of our cause, is not our cause a great and glorious one? and is it not worth the patronage it needs, and the support it calls for? As I stand in no security of addressing you from this place again, and do so now, only by the good luck of an escape from the fangs of Christian intolerance, allow me to entreat you to carry home in your rumination the problem-How it is, that if our prosecutors have a better opinion of their creed than we have, they should be afraid to trust it to the experiment of letting an honest man speak his mind about it. What name or show of justice is there, that while the meanest peasant in the kingdom, the most unlettered barbarous hind in doating age, or drivelling idiotcy; can obtain the magistrates' license to go a preaching; and have privilege to disse minate his opinions so they be but absurd enough, preposterous and wicked enough, to be something like the opinions of the magistrate himself..

I must be denied a little privilege, and hold my life in momen tary subjectness, to imprisonment and ruin, for addressing assem blies of intelligent men in language worthy of their attention, and responsive to their convictions. Delenda Est CarthaGO.

'No. 23. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, Dec. 4, 1829. [PRICE 6d.

HAVING made the assertion, that the present distresses of the country are not connected, with the question of the currency, it behoves me to prove it on one of two grounds, or on both, either by argument and by facts, as relating to the currency question, or by the alibi, whence they do arise. I flatter myself, and I have been flattered by the admissions of some of my readers, that the last three numbers of THE LION have not been deficient on the first head, or as to arguments and facts, and I will now proceed to substantiate the alibi.

Yielding to my correspondent of last week all that he claims, as to the distresses of the labouring people, or of those whose con sumptions are always parallel with their earnings, and consenting to his conclusion, that taxation can never affect them so long as their numbers exceed the supply of labour, so as to make them compete with each for any amount of employment; seeing, too, that the quantity of labour proceeds with the ratio of the quantity of capital, and that it can only grow in the same ratio, I come to the consideration of the distresses of that class of people which has been called the middle class, or of those who have some amount of capital wherewith to trade. We may prudently keep in view that, as the distresses of the mere labourer or handicraftsman arise from scarcity of employment, regularly produced by increasing and competing numbers, so the distresses of the middle class or small capitalists must arise from other sources, or from the want of demand for the goods in which they deal, from excess of competition consequent, and from an overtaxed means of carrying on business. Society is a link, and, unless in cases of positive tyranny, one class cannot be happy and honestly successful when any other class is improvidently or unjustly depressed. I pay twenty pounds a-year to the poor, which I feel to be a payment Printed and published by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet Street. No. 23. Vol. 4. 2 z