at have enquired, or affected to enquire,
into Ethics, have rarely been impartial; they have laboured under
prejudices or sinister interests; and have been the advocates of
foregone conclusions. There is not on this subject _a concurrence or
agreement of numerous and impartial enquirers_. Indeed, many of the
legal and moral rules of the most civilized communities arose in the
infancy of the human mind, partly from caprices of the fancy (nearly
omnipotent with barbarians), and partly from an imperfect apprehension
of general utility, the result of a narrow experience. Thus the
diffusion and the advancement of ethical truth encounter great and
peculiar obstacles, only to be removed by a better general education
extended to the mass of the people. It is desirable that the community
should be indoctrinated with sound views of property, and with the
dependence of wealth, upon the true principle of population, discovered
by Malthus, all which they are competent to understand.

The author refers to Paley's Moral Philosophy as an example of the
perverting tendency of narrow and domineering interests in the domain
of ethics. With many commendable points, there is, in that work, much
ignoble truckling to the dominant and influential few, and a deal of
shabby sophistry in defending abuses that the few were interested in
upholding.

As a farther answer to the second objection, he remarks, that it
applies to every theory of ethics that supposes our duties to be set by
the Deity. Christianity itself is defective, considered as a system of
rules for tho guidance of human conduct.

He then turns to the alternative of a Moral Sense. This involves two
assumptions.

First, Certain sentiments, or feelings of approbation or
disapprobation, accompany our conceptions of certain human actions.
These feelings are neither the result of our reflection on the
tendencies of actions, nor the result of education; the sentiments
would follow the conception, although we had neither adverted to the
good or evil tendency of the actions, nor become aware of the opinions
of others regarding them. This theory denies that the sentiments known
to exist can be produced by education. We approve and disapprove of
actions _we know not why_.

The author adapts Paley's supposition of the savage, in order to
express strongly what the moral sense implies. But we will confine
ourselves to his reasonings. Is there, he asks, any evidence of our
being gifted with