avarice of a capitalist should happen to be aroused by the fame of this discovery, and he have a fair prospect of money being put into his coffers by its reduction to practice, it will probably be thrown into operation. If not, it will be lost to the world, recorded perhaps on the pages of a few literary and scientific journals, but performing no good service to society at large. How different would be the fate of genius, if socialism prevailed! The public, having time and capital at will, would soon concur in any project likely to advance the general welfare. Thus scientific improvement would advance with rapid strides, and those oppressive enactments which now banish capital from the field of industrial enterprise would only be known as things which had once existed. Accounts of them would probably be preserved in the public libraries as monuments of the irrationality of the whole world; but, practically speaking, they would be known no more.

Now socialism may be considered as the moral regenerator of modern society, because it is calculated to subvert the system which produces such sanguinary results. Embracing wise and beneficial arrangements relative to the four great departments of the science of society-viz., the production of wealth, the distribution of wealth, the formation of character, and government-it bids fair to overturn every opposing system. But the revolutions it may occasion will be bloodless and peaceful. The widow's tear, the orphan's shriek—

"The shock of battle and the din of war's alarmıs❞—

form not either the companions of its course, or the consequences of its progress. Surrounded with that moral magnificence which genuine philanthropy alone can confer, it has gone forth to the world on its errand of mercy, proclaiming peace and goodwill to men. Mercantile competition, with the numerous and fearful evils it engenders, must wither at its touch, and shrink from its presence. In short, it will never cease battling with vice, poverty, and wretchedness, until they be eradicated from the world, and the human family formed into one fraternal brotherhood, united by bonds which are never to be broken.

(To be continued.)

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS.

NO. III.

On the true Standard of Morals.

As the saintly advocates of superstition so frequently and violently declaim against the moral turpitude and baseness of socialism, it is in some measure necessary that the advocates of that system should endeavour to remove a little of the vast heap of mental rubbish which has been generally associated with those ideas men have formed respecting the source of moral obligation, and those rules of propriety which ought to influence the conduct of a rational being throughout life. This is a subject of vast importance, and a right understanding of it may be productive of the most solid advantages. By obtaining a correct knowledge of the true theory of morals, we shall improve our understandings, refine our tastes, and be enabled to appreciate the true merits of those ecclesiastical tirades which are so often levelled against the supposed immorality of social reform.

The advocates of priestly imposture and ecclesiastical despotism frequently appear stultified with a sort of pious horror, when they hear of a theory of morals in connection with socialism. According to their opinion no individual can be truly moral unless he recognizes the truth of the principles which they advocate; unless he bends the neck of his reason to their galling yoke; unless he permits them to feel his spiritual pulse, and persuade him that he is morally diseased throughout all the ramifications of his mental constitution-" that the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint-" and that "from the top of his caput to the soles of his feet there is nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores;" unless he allows them to attempt a cure by administering spiritual pills of sawdust and asafoetida, secundem artem, to mend his spiritual appetite, until "hic jacet finishes what recipe began." It

is therefore highly important that all socialists should endeavour to obtain a correct notion of a true theory of morals, so that they may be enabled to weigh in the balance of a sound judgment the accusations of their malignant adversaries.

The principles of social morality, though their existence has been coeval with that of humanity, are, nevertheless, of modern date, as it respects their systematic adjustment and combination. If these principles are true, there never was a time in the whole range of man's existence wherein they did not exist, nor can there ever be a period in his history wherein they shall cease to be. Hence we are warranted to predicate of them both modernism and antiquity:-antiquity as it respects their real existence, and modernism as it respects their recent combination into a system.

Now, this apparent novelty with which socialism is invested, at once tends to retard its progress and accelerate its course. By attracting the attention of the public, it causes a knowledge of the principles to be more generally diffused; and by opposing the love of the antique, which is so natural to some minds, it, in some measure, militates against its own advancement. There is such a thing as habit, and men from its influence are often disposed to adhere to ancient institutions and opinions in preference to those which are characterized by freshness. Ensor observes, that "so late as the time of Pausanius, in a temple of Hercules, at Hyetts, the god was represented, according to ancient usage, by a rude stone. Juno, at Samos, had a like substitute; and the Orchomenians adored even the graces under the same uncouth and barbarous form. This reverence for antiquity will sometimes continue after another superstition has become the law of the land. At Cyprus," according to Pococke, “the women make an annual procession to the sea, in remembrance of Venus emerging from that element; and the Catholic Welsh," according to Hume, “had a great wooden idol called Garvel Gatherin, so late as the sixteenth century."

* Principles of Morality, p 91.

Burke, in his Essay on Taste, remarks "that men are more inclined to belief than incredulity; because by incredulity they part with what they reputed knowledge. To desire ignorant men to question their opinions is more intolerable than to require their belief in the greatest absurdity. To affirm boldly, gratifies the multitude; when something is decided they think something is done." Thus they deceive themselves, and render their habits inveterately vicious. Men persevere in error, lest, by embracing more correct opinions, they should be compelled to reflect on their own mistakes. Locke, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, has remarked that, had men leisure, parts, and will, there are few that dare shake the foundation of their past thoughts and actions, and endure to bring on themselves the shame of having been a long time wholly in mistake and error."

Now this reverence for all time-hallowed institutions and doctrines, and the popular tendency to credulity to which we have alluded, become signally manifested when religion or morality is the theme of discourse or contemplation. If the conduct of an individual varies in the slightest degree from the ordinary and received standard of morals, that conduct is considered by many immoral, indecorus, and profane. If the sweep of an individual's judgment, and the keenness of his intellectual vision, enable him to detect the defectiveness of the ordinary standard of morals, and the consequent folly and impropriety of a rigid conformity to it, that is a consideration which seldom enters into the calculations of those who set themselves up for universal censors. Having erected a standard of propriety for themselves or their party, or having received some crude and defective code of morals from their rude and unpolished ancestors, they deem any departure from it an unwarrantable crime, and stigmatize, with the most unblushing effrontery, its perpetrator with immorality and licentiousness.

These remarks are peculiarly applicable to those men who brand the socialists with blasphemy and moral degradation. Trained from infancy to manhood to regard certain dogmas as divine, habituated to believe all

the assertions and maxims of the priests as true, they are disposed to censure those actions which do not accord with those maxims, and to repudiate as unorthodox, unsound, and dangerous, any system of morals which does not dovetail into the one they have adopted. From these or similar causes springs that outcry which has been raised against the supposed immorality of socialism, by its bitter opponents. The socialists, say the "oracles of fanaticism," are an immoral set of men. Their objects are "to proscribe religion, extinguish the affections which spring out of consanguinity and the domestic relations, destroy property by merging it into a common fund, annihilate civil government, unnerve the arm of industry, and quell the heart of commercial enterprise; and, in short, resolve society into its constituent elements, and reduce man to a level with his compeers of the jungle and the wilderness." This passage, which I have given, mutatis mutandis, in the language of the Rev. Dr. Styles, no doubt appeared the very beau ideal of modern eloquence to its reverend author. But it has one fault, and that a very serious one, a fault which is sufficient to damn, in the eyes of all sensible men, the finest piece of composition that ever was produced by the genius of a Homer, a Cicero, or a Demosthenes-that fault is, a total want of truth, it being, on the part of its reverend author, either a downright stupid blunder, or a gross and wilful libel.

It is not our intention, in this essay, to reply to these charges, seriatim, but to trace them to the cause we have specified. They have been put forward again and again, by the opponents of socialism, and as often refuted as put forth. The men who thus caricature the principles of the socialist are either sincere in their opposition, or, if they are not sincere, they find it their interest to rail, and rant, and roar (and do anything and everything but speak the truth,) against a system which is rapidly undermining their credit, their ill-gotten affluence, and their power. With such insincere opponents we will hold no controversy. The measure of their deceit will ultimately prove the measure of their punishment. We do not envy them the possession of feelings which, while they afford in the moment of