regulations, and ostentatiously careful to
gratify the luxurious propensities, whether social or intellectual, of
the multitude! Irreligion is, no doubt, much concerned with this
offensive disrespect shown to the bodies of the dead in France; but it
is mainly attributable to the state in which so many of the living are
left by the absence of compulsory provision for the indigent so humanely
established by the law of England.

Sights of abject misery, perpetually recurring, harden the heart of the
community. In the perusal of history and of works of fiction, we are
not, indeed, unwilling to have our commiseration excited by such objects
of distress as they present to us; but, in the concerns of real life,
men know that such emotions are not given to be indulged for their own
sakes: there, the conscience declares to them that sympathy must be
followed by action; and if there exist a previous conviction that the
power to relieve is utterly inadequate to the demand, the eye shrinks
from communication with wretchedness, and pity and compassion languish,
like any other qualities that are deprived of their natural aliment. Let
these considerations be duly weighed by those who trust to the hope that
an increase of private charity, with all its advantages of superior
discrimination, would more than compensate for the abandonment of those
principles, the wisdom of which has been here insisted upon. How
discouraging, also, would be the sense of injustice, which could not
fail to arise in the minds of the well-disposed, if the burden of
supporting the poor, a burden of which the selfish have hitherto by
compulsion borne a share, should now, or hereafter, be thrown
exclusively upon the benevolent.

By having put an end to the Slave Trade and Slavery, the British people
are exalted in the scale of humanity; and they cannot but feel so, if
they look into themselves, and duly consider their relation to God and
their fellow-creatures. That was a noble advance; but a retrograde
movement will assuredly be made, if ever the principle, which has been
here defended, should be either avowedly abandoned or but ostensibly
retained.

But after all, there may be a little reason to apprehend permanent
injury from any experiment that may be tried. On the one side will be
human nature rising up in her own defence, and on the other prudential
selfishness acting to the same purpose, from a conviction that, without
a compulsory provision for the exi