ously attained by the vast enginery of a splendid intellect."

"I am glad," said Tyler, "that you admit that some sorts of intellect can find out the truth."

"When Burke reasoned, mind wrought not alone. And it will invariably appear that those authors who have established great and permanent principles in any moral science, have been men of a strong moral constitution and of high moral character; and we cannot help concluding that in that lay the true secret of their strength. A distinction must be taken between those studies which regard the relations of things alone, and those whose subject, direct or collateral, is man; in the latter, science must always be tempered with conscience. In the one you are, without any prefixed design, to combine certain elements in due proportion, and let them work out what conclusion they may; in the other, you have a definite object to accomplish-the welfare of man-and the deductions of your science must always be controlled with reference to that end and in subordination to, that intention. The subject of political economy, as reasoned out by modern philosophers, shows to what we are led by examining with the intellect alone any system of which the interests of man form a part. They have treated the subject as a pure science; they have taken up the elements and investigated them abstractly-with reference to their capacity and not their use; their separate magnitude and not their combined and relative importance; in reference to their qualities and not their objects; their nature and. not their ends. They should have assumed the national prosperity and domestic welfare of men as the centre from which their inquiries should begin, and the axis around which their interests should revolve; and instead of running out the topic of riches into a lank and starved science, they should have seen that to give such elongation and extent to one subject was inconsistent with the subordinate and limited station which it must always hold in the mosaic platform of man's infinitely varied and complex wants and duties. In place of tra

cing a circumference and fulfilling a circle, they have prolonged a radius and analysed a line. They have made a system of what was barely a science, and undertaking to construct a house they have exhausted their means in finishing one of the chambers. In the great cyclopedia of human and worldly interests, the only article which they have written is that of the science of wealth. From this difference between the completeness of this science in itself, and its inadequacy to the purpose to which it is applied, arises the diversity of contempt and admiration with which it has been regarded by different persons. For my part, while I think that the objects of the science are very small, I think that those objects have been treated with singular intelligence and skill; and that when the matter is more coolly examined, it will be seen that the modern science of wealth is a small, but very complete, department in the great and noble subject of true POLITICAL ECONOMY. To declare that the puny science now called by this name fulfils the measure of the social and political wants of man, or was a sound and sufficient scheme of national policy, were as foolish as to assert that salt is the only and adequate food for man, or to insist that a house can stand upon one pillar at the corner. The great Frederick said well that to confide the government to the hands of an economist would soon bring the country to ruin; for politics is the science of national welfare, and to attain this mixed result we must combine the thousand minor sciences that treat of his welfare in particulars; we must weave one interest with another and interlace a score of opposing purposes; and we must always remember that inquiries are to be cultivated not in proportion to their difficulty or curiosity but to the extent in which they advance the real interests of men. The cause of the error of the economists, to return to the outset of my remark, is that the intellect has grown masterless in construction of the means, while the heart has slumbered in oblivion of the end; the principles of things and not the interests of men have been their guide; they have been

philosophic rather than philanthropic. I have often been carried away by the fascination which there is in following out the creative principles of intellectual sciences; but I have always found that such exclusive devotion to the combinations of the mind, dwarfed the moral being and stunted the moral energies; I have found that it was as unholy as unprofitable; that not only was power wasted, but the passions of pride and selfishness cultivated, and love and considerateness destroyed. For the heart is a thing teeming with life; if it be exercised in openness it will be clustered with glad fruitage; if it lie dankly in the shade of a stern intellect it pullulates with poison-knobs. The true remedy for this mad passion of the mind-this fierce intoxication of the intellect-is to commune with the promptings of the moral sense-to listen to the ulterior truths it tells of duty and of destiny-and to be calmed and invigorated by the fresh freedom of a healthy heart. we bear in mind that evil is but a mistake, and that the oblivion of the suggestions of feeling in combining the data of moral judgment must certainly conduce to error, we shall see the truth of Milton's observation, that sin sprang from the head of Satan."

If

"As respects those sciences of which the first and chief requisite is, that they should be suited to man's feelings and adapted to be popular," replied Mr. Tyler, "the data and suggestions are certainly to be furnished by the heart of the framer; but the combination of these data and the execution of these suggestions is the province of reason alone. On that sea, then, the intellectual all-in-all,' sails without a breeze and without maps. In regard of politics and private conduct, the success which you connect with the promptings of a just intention, is true merely by reason of that original and appointed connexion between the purest truth and the highest wisdom which the experience of time has attested by a proverb, and which holds so extensively as to have led many to the conclusion that the principles of morality were the deductions of convenience. But when you go on to make spiritual consciousness

and inward revelation the evidence of religious truth, you rest the proof of your creed upon an assurance which all the opposing creeds of Christianity equally possess and appeal to, and which is the foundation of the faith of the Mohammedans and Brahmins more satisfactorily than of yours. When you declare that the happiness which the acceptance of revelation produces, demonstrates its divine origin,-you establish a principle which gives divinity to every day-dream of the youthful heart-to the visions of the Sooffee-and the reveries of neologism and poetry. If, then, you leave this dangerous test, and say that, the general acceptance of the truths of the Bible among men, establishes its claims, either as evincing their natural and constitutional inclination towards it, or as showing that the protection and support of the Almighty was in its favour, I shall reply that the professors of Islam, or either of the sects of the Hindoo religion are more numerous than the followers of Christ-that the religion of Mohammed was propagated with vast rapidity, and in many instances against the course of conquest-and that in those nations in which the cross has conflicted with the crescent, the former has been wholly subverted. If you refer to the miracles of Jesus, I will say, upon the one hand, that other miracles which you do not believe are equally well attested with his, and, on the other, that since Christ himself has said, that there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, (if it were possible,) they shall deceive the very elect,' that can neither be, nor be designed as, a test of the truth, which belongs equally to the true and the false; and this will bring us to that doctrine of Bishop Warburton, which Coleridge, according to his custom, has plagiarised and disguised, that from among those prophets who have supported their claims by miracles, we must choose him whose doctrines are most consonant to the nature and conduct of God; but, in order to escape the contradiction and inconsistency which I discovered in the nature and qualities of God you were obliged to declare 18

VOL. I.

that we could form no notion of his properties from the material world, and even if we waive this admission, it' will appear that, while all miracles must demonstrate the attribute of power, any given one must satisfy either the attribute of vengeance or of love, both of which are equally predicates of his nature. Upon what support, then, Christianity will lean I am at a loss to discover."

"Nothing," said I, willing to change the conversation, "is so unprofitable as religious discussion; and we differ so much as to our data that it is not surprising that we do not agree in our conclusions. But if, as you have acknowledged, political and social truth is not reached by the intellect alone, but is approached by 'two coursers of etherial race,' I cannot help thinking that the predominance which in this country is given to mathematical studies in the education of youth, is unfavourable to their best advancement in future life."

"I am inclined to doubt,” said Mr. Tyler, “ the benefit which any discipline in the art of reasoning or any analysis of the processes of demonstration will produce upon the mind, because I think that in the business of life, conclusions are linked to premises, rather by the instincts of taste, habit, and a thousand other indices of truth, which become blunted by the strong jealousy of usurping reason. As a means, however, of cultivating the intellect for that high duty which will befal it, I consider mathematics as a study of little value as compared with moral logic, and in fact I think that it is often injurious to the practice of the world. Mathematics is concerned with relations only, and has no regard to the nature and qualities of the things related; whereas, all the great problems in life are the analysis of qualities and the determination of facts. The data of the mathematician are fixed and known; the business of the politician and moralist is to fix his data, the reasoning upon them is a much smaller matter; so that the business of life ends where mathematics begins.

"Moreover, the axioms of mathematics are not axioms of general truth; they are derived from the consideration of form and quantity, and it does not follow that