to consequences is not without its dangers; and that even the happiness of our fellow creatures might be a dangerous rule if adopted as the end of our actions upon too large a scale of calculation. We can never be warranted in doing any thing contrary to justice or veracity, upon the pretext of a preponderancy of good to arise to the mass of human beings from such particular breaches. It is our business to act so as to produce happiness within a sphere of proximate and immediate benevolence, leaving that, of which we possess faculties too limited to judge, to him to whom these catholic ends exclusively belong. Such general objects are beyond the tact of an individual, and could not be the law of his conduct without causing him to start out of his place in society. In complicated operations, for the whole to be well conducted, each man must attend exclusively to the part assigned him. As universal happiness is too wide a scope to regulate specific moral action, so mere solitary love of self can never be the true and proper end of the activity of a human being; when pursued in practice it is found to defeat itself; it is contradictory, and cannot therefore be true; and it is also confuted by that moral faculty, most obviously implanted in us, of discerning and feeling the right from the wrong, and which though feebler in some than others, is always, if attended to before habit has perverted it, capable of great enlargement by religious education. Again if the criterion of right were utility alone, it would be absurd to suppose any moral sense or faculty connatural with our minds, for a knowledge of utility could only come by experience, and such a rule would evidently be as precarious and fluctuating as the circumstances and interests of mankind. But the grand principle of Kant, apparently free from all reference to consequences, stands upon no real bottom. We are to do that upon all occasions which it is reasonable that all men should do. He must intend by this reason either an instrument or an end. If an instrument, we are to use reason in ascertaining the propriety of the act; and then it becomes a question, what is the propriety?—Is it fitness, utility, obedience, or what else? If by reason, in this place, we are to understand an end, then the question will be, what is reasonable? If the answer be, that which is virtuous and good; then how is virtue or goodness to be determined but with reference to consequences, and combined with feelings and sensations? Mere fitness or unfitness in actions, discernible by the essential differences of things, admitting the existence of such a chimera, would only be a natural, and not a moral good. Wearied with walking in these vain shadows, where can the fainting pilgrim find rest for his feet unless upon the floor of the sanctuary? Where can he end his search, but in assuming the will of God as the foundation of morality, and the moral sense or faculty of discernment between right and wrong as the instrument by which he acts upon our natures, thus manifesting himself as our builder and maker, our moral and natural sovereign, the lord of life and reason, the father of lights, the author and finisher of our faith? After running the round of these contentious systems, the mind at the close of its labours is only where it was, and has still to choose its principle of action. The advice of the preacher seems, surely, under all these circumstances, the most to be recommended, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man." These discussions on morals and metaphysics, never ending, still beginning, and which Lord Bacon has so aptly denominated vain affectations, vain altercations, vain imaginations, have bewildered the faculties of the German students for these last fifty years. At length a new philosophy was with great pomp announced, which was to put an end to all disputes by ascertaining the source of error, and conducting to a road of infallible certainty. This was the philosophy of Mr. Professor Kant, which had the merit at least of driving others out of the field for a time, and fixing attention upon one instead of many vanities. "Et sola in sicca secum spatiatur arena." All these German systems, however they disagree among themselves, seem to agree in keeping Scripture in subordination to that metaphysical morality which they derive from themselves: and this is the true reason of their unappeasable differences in doctrine. The fruit that grows upon their tree of knowledge, like the apples of Sodom, dissolves into ashes and smoke at the touch, and yet it is the source of eternal contention. "Greedily they pluck The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew In a review which we have seen of this work of Madame de Staël, an idea is thrown out of peace and unity between these conflicting hypotheses; and the fair theory is promulged of the probability of these various systems containing within themselves the scattered constituents of perfect philosophy. Something of this sort has always been the secret hope and expectation of every successive system-maker. For many centuries all philosophers have been virtually of this eclectic school; except, indeed, that philosopher of philosophers the great Bacon. Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the new Platonic system, made the experiment of selection upon a great scale; and we know what the success has been. If we can dare to contemplate that melior dies when these affinities, which belong to heavenly truth, shall be made to rush into union from all corners of the great intellectual world, we deem it most likely to happen from that paramount influence which the book of truth is daily acquiring by the exertions, under God, of associatious so happily formed in this country for its diffusion. This is to do that which Lord Bacon recommends— to suspend from the ceiling a branching chandelier, instead of running about after truth with a watch-light, which, while it illu nines a corner of the apartment, leaves the remainder in aggravated gloom. We cannot leave Madame de Staël without extracting a pas sage, which will recommend her work wherever the value of vir tuous emotion is acknowledged, while it exhibits a faithful specimen of the high sentimental colouring of the German morality. Much of it is truly admirable, it only wants a beginning and end more distinctly traced and defined. We have generally to complain that the commonplace, well bred, creditable, complacent religion of good people is made up of elements too gross to become a religion of the soul;-of the religion of Madame de Staël and her German friends we have to lament that it is too volatile, vague, attenuated, and airy, to submit itself to our touch and enjoyWe will make our extract from the translation, for the sake of giving it a wider interest. ment. "We cannot grow weary of admiring those writings of Kant, in which the supreme law of duty is held up as sacred: what genuine warmth, what animated eloquence, upon a subject, where the only ordinary endeavour is restraint! We feel penetrated with a profound respect for the austerity of an aged philosopher, constantly submitted to the invisible power of virtue, which has no empire but that of conscience, no arms but those of remorse; no treasures to distribute but the inward enjoyments of the soul; the hope of which cannot be offered as a motive for their attainment, because they are incomprehensible until they are experienced. "Among the German philosophers, some men of virtue, not inferior to Kant, and who approach nearer to religion in their inclinations, have attributed the origin of the moral law to religious sentiThis sentiment cannot be of the nature of those which may grow into passions. Seneca has depicted its calmness and profundity by saying, In the bosom of the virtuous man I know not what God, but a God has habitation.' ment. 6 "Kant pretended, that it was to impair the disinterested purity of morals, to present the perspective of a future life, as the end of our actions: many German writers have completely refuted him on this point. In effect, the immortality of heaven has no relation to the rewards and punishments, of which we form an idea on this earth. The sentiment which makes us aspire to immortality is as disinterested as that which makes us find our happiness in devoting ourselves to the happiness of others; for the first offering to religious felicity is the sacrifice of self; and it is thus necessarily removed from every species of selfishness. Whatever we may attempt, we must return to the acknowledgment, that religion is the true foundation of morality; it is that sensible and real object within us, which can alone divert our attention from external objects. If piety did not excite sublime emotions, who would sacrifice even sensual pleasures, however vulgar they might be, to the cold dignity of reason? We must begin the internal history of man with religion, or with sensation; for there is nothing animated besides. The moral system, founded upon personal interest, would be as evident as a mathematical truth, were it not for its exercising more control over the passions which overturn all calculations: nothing but a sentiment can triumph over a sentiment; the violence of nature can only be conquered by its exaltation. Reasoning, in such a case, is like the schoolmaster in Fontaine; nobody listens to him, and all the world is crying out for help. "Jacobi, as I shall show in the analysis of his works, has opposed the arguments which Kant uses, in order to avoid the admission of, religious sentiment as the basis of morality. He believes, on the contrary, that the Divinity reveals himself to every man in particular, as he revealed himself to the human race, when prayers and works have prepared the heart to comprehend him. Another philosopher asserts, that immortality already commences upon this earth, for him who desires and feels in himself the taste for eternal things; another affirms, that nature forces man to understand the will of God; and that there is in the universe a groaning and imprisoned voice, which invites us to deliver the world and ourselves, by combating the principle of evil, under all its fatal appearances. These different systems are influenced by the imagination of each writer, and are adopted by those who sympathize with him; but the general direction of these opinions is ever the same: to free the soul from the influence of external objects; to place the empire of ourselves within us; and to make duty the law of this empire, and its hope another life." (Vol. III. p. 208-211.) We lament our want of room to do more justice to this extraordinary work. We must now close our commentary; but yet one short passage on public honesty, which now catches our eye as we shut up the volume, shall be produced, and Englishmen may make the application of it to that set of political men with whose characters they think at this juncture it best corresponds. This, again, for notoriety sake we will take from the translation. "If it was once generally acknowledged, that national interest itself ought to be subordinate to those nobler thoughts which constitute virtue, how would the conscientious man be at his ease! how would every thing in politics appear clear to him, when, before, a con tinual hesitation made him tremble at every step! It is this very hesitation which has caused honest men to be thought incapable of state-affairs; they have been accused of pusillanimity, of weakness, of fear; and, on the contrary, those who have carelessly sacrificed the weak to the powerful, and their scruples to their interests, have been called men of an energetic nature. It is, however, an easy energy which tends to our own advantage; or, at least, to that of the ruling faction; for every thing that is done according to the sense of the multitude invariably partakes of weakness, let it appear ever so violent." (Vol. III. p. 199, 200.) Our readers cannot, in justice, complain that we have not given room enough in this number of our Review to Madame de Staël; our consciences, however, still tell us that we have not paid all the debt we owe to her talents, ner discharged all the duty of circumspection which they require at our hands. We still regret that although so much has been written by us on the subject of her performances so much has been left unnoticed. We shall, probably, have other opportunities of discussing her merits. In the mean time we flatter ourselves with the hope, that during her residence among us she may improve her acquaintance with English literature, and particularly with the works of our great theologians. We trust that in the denser divinity of these writers her intellect will breathe more freely than in the thin abstractions of German metaphysics. It will brace the constitution of her mind; and though it may tend to lower the pulse of sensibility, it will render it more regular and more tonic. It is in such company that she will soon learn to prefer practical goodness to scientific morality, and her genius may acquire one additional charm-the charm of sober simplicity. ART. XXIV.-An Inquiry concerning the Rise, Progress, the Redemption, and present State, and the Management of the National Debt of Great Britain. By Robert Hamilton, LL.D. F.R.S.E. Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen. 1813. BEFORE we resume our review of Professor Hamilton's inquiry respecting the national debt of Great Britain, we must apologise to our readers for having inadvertently omitted in our former article on this work to inform them that the subject would be continued and concluded in this number. We shall not often divide in this manner our remarks on any question, for we are aware that it is inconvenient; but as it appears to us that in general the subject now under consideration is very imperfectly understood, we have wished to take a wide and an attentive view of it, which has carried our remarks to a greater length than usual, although we have endeavoured to compress them as much as possible. We are indeed more appre |