2. Counsels and Consolations: containing Meditations and Re- flections on Sixty-two Passages of Scripture, with particular Reference to those in Trouble and Affliction. By JONATHAN ART. IV. - A Vindication of Dr. Paley's Theory of Morals from the principal Objections of Mr. Dugald Stewart; Mr. Gis- borne; Dr. Pearson; and Dr. Thomas Brown. With an Appendix, containing Strictures on some Remarks of Dr. Whately. By the Rev. LATHAM WAINEWRIght, A. M. 187 ART. V.-The American Colonization Society ART. VI. - Third Letter from the Rev. MR. GOODWIN, on the - ART. I. Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, by JOHN LAWRENCE VON MOSHEIM, D. D. A New and Literal Translation, with ART. III. The African Repository. ART. IV.A General View of the Progress of Ethical Philoso- ART. VI. Report of the Committee to whom were referred the various Petitions for an Alteration of the Constitution in the ART. VIII. - 1. Plan of the Founder of Christianity, by F. V. REIN- HARD, S. T. D. Translated by OLIVER A. TAYLOR, A. M. 2. Memoirs and Confessions of Francis Volkmar Reinhard, S. T. D., &c. From the German. By OLIVER A. TAYLOR. 364 ART. IX. Indian Biography: or an Historical Account of those Individuals who have been distinguished among the North American Indians. By B. B. THATCHER, Esq. ART. X.-Cheering Views of Man and Providence, drawn from a ART. XI. — 1. A Sermon, &c. By JOSEPH HUTTON, LL. D. 2. A Reply. By RICHARD WINTER HAMILTON. 3. Unitarian Christianity Vindicated. By J. HUTTON, LL. D. THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. No. LII. NEW SERIES No. XXII. SEPTEMBER, 1832. ART. I. Householders in Danger from the Populace. By EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD, Esq. Effingham Wilson. London. 1831. THE pamphlet before us presents a picture of the British metropolis almost too horrible for contemplation. According to the statements it contains, nearly one hundred thousand inhabitants in that capital of the world are banded together for the constant and ferocious perpetration of terrible crimes. Over this vast multitude the restraints of civilized life are dissolved. Neither shame, nor conscience, nor punishment has any control. Duty and religion and eternity are equally without influence. One common object excites them. All their efforts are exerted to produce a state of confusion and anarchy, and thereby "to pluck sensual enjoyments in the midst of blood and fire!" The London "populace," according to this account, is composed of classes, which suppose themselves to have interests at variance with the community, and are "opposed to the protective laws, by which society is upheld." These classes are described to be, first, common thieves," of whom, the writer says, thirty thousand are always at large in London. Secondly, "the rabble," amounting to fifty thousand more, "whose extreme poverty, frequent unsatisfied hunger and brutalizing pursuits render them as dishonest as thieves." Thirdly, "desperadoes," the disciples of Owen and followers of Hunt, less numerous, but quite as troublesome; men of rather weak intellect, but noisy, egotistical, and boastful, bent on the overthrow of existing laws, with a view to the formation of a new state of society, in which there shall exist a perfect equality of property, or rather no property at all, as we use the word, but a community of goods. Fourthly, "women of the lowest character," not less then ten thousand, likely to prove a more effective force on the side of confusion and rapine, than the same number of men. 66 These classes are represented to be so entirely above the law, that they collect in large numbers without fear of the police; and Mr. Wakefield says, that he saw seven thousand common thieves in various parts of the town on the ninth of November, 1830, when it was expected that the king would visit Guildhall, prepared, in case of a political disturbance, "to sack the town.' Yet the police, thus set at nought, we know to be both numerous and active, more than seventy thousand persons having, from one cause or another, been brought within its operations during the past year. If Mr. Wakefield's statements be entitled to credit, society in London, and by consequence in the whole kingdom of Great Britain, is in the very process of disintegration. Our first inquiry then should be, whether he is worthy of belief; and we confess, that on his own character alone we should hesitate to give him our confidence. That he was confined in Newgate, where persons of his education and capacity are not commonly found, may have given him some unusual means of information; but neither the cause of his imprisonment, nor the imprisonment itself, has inspired us with much respect for his character. We should doubt whether he had those moral qualities that make a witness credible, and may fear, that, having been a sojourner in that perilous place, he abuses our credulity with traveller's fictions, and tells us tales of "Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Col But his statements are not without corroboration. quhoun's "Police of London," many years since, apprized us of the existence of a vast fermenting mass of corrupt materials. A treatise on the police and crimes of the metropolis, of which an account was given in our number for November, 1829, increased an apprehension of growing evil; and the ju dicial reports and examination of evidence before the commissioners for amending the laws, without letting us so deeply into the history of this depravity, render the account that is given of it in the pamphlet before us, probable in most of its details, and in some of them certainly to be taken as true. Supposing then that this narration is faithful in its statements, we are not about to call the attention of our readers to it for the sake of exulting at the more fortunate condition of our own communities, or of contrasting "the domestic manners of the Americans," which have recently afforded so much mirth to our English contemporaries, with the dangerous dissoluteness of their refined society. We advert to it for own warning and security. The moral pestilence that visits others, may make an irruption on our shores; and it is our duty to put up what barriers we may against its introduction here, and assist in preserving those which are already erected. We deem this the more desirable, because there is an unfortunate sympathy between our people and the people of England, which exposes us to evils at any time prevailing among them. Notwithstanding the difference and the distance between us, we often feel the residuum of the shock, the first force of which is there expended. Fashion, dress, expense, and the forms of social intercourse are regulated, in our humble way, by a standard which is there prescribed. This may be accounted for; but opinion, taste, and morals are often subjected to a foreign control, which it is as difficult to explain as resist. If the people in England are uneasy, our people grow restless. If their degraded and halfstarved laborers complain, and especially if they do any thing to make their complaints heard, a tone of querulousness is heard here among our respectable and flourishing workmen. If effort is there made for reforming their ancient and decayed establishments, some among us become dissatisfied with the freedom of our thrifty institutions. If abroad there are combinations against established, but oppressive laws, the example is contagious enough to give us trouble, even in the milder form in which the malady presents itself. It is important, in the first place, to look at some of the causes which have produced the unhappy state of things that is said to exist. The tendency of the English government is to separate the interests of classes of people from each other, to accumulate the wealth of the rich, and aggravate the poverty of the poor, and this appears to us to be one of the most active causes for the calamity described in Mr. Wakefield's pamphlet. Great Britain has been, for many years, rapidly advancing in wealth. A commerce of great prosperity, a productive agriculture, and a manufacturing power, whose ingenious machinery seems like a magical substitute for human labor, have increased prodigiously its integral wealth. But how has it been divided? By nothing like the equal or proportionate ratio of the population that acquired it. Vast fortunes have been accumulated, and possessions been multiplied in the hands of the lords of the soil. Great proprietors have increased, because surplus capital has been constantly growing larger; but the small patrimony of the less wealthy has as rapidly decayed, the numbers of the dependent have grown larger, and the ranks of indigence and misery become every day more crowded. Great wealth and great poverty have been the consequences; and each of these brings with itself peculiar dangers to the moral condition of the people. Refinement of manners to a certain extent is undoubtedly one of the truest marks of cultivation and elevation of mind, and is in a good degree the result of those advantages which affluence procures; but when this refinement is stretched, as it may be, into a voluptuous and luxurious sensuality, when it is devoted to a self-indulgence which taxes all the powers of reason to satiate it, when this excessive wealth, though it may throw off some of its superfluity in grand objects of public utility, seems principally devoted to the personal.indulgence of its possessors in the utmost extravagance of whatever an effeminate and perverted taste can desire, the influence of such wealth is destructive to the moral character of the state, and the retributive justice of Providence seems always to punish this misapplication of its bounty, by permitting the community to be cursed with a large harvest of iniquity. Poverty too, especially when it is general, and more when it is placed in contrast with unmeasured affluence, is a mighty generator of crime. So far as it diminishes education, by abridging the means of it; so far as it prevents the ability |
