real wealth of humanity, might
indeed be quicker, and might correspond more happily with the wishes of
the benevolent,--if Governors better understood the rudiments of nature
as studied in the walks of common life; if they were men who had
themselves felt every strong emotion 'inspired by nature and by fortune
taught;' and could calculate upon the force of the grander passions.
Yet, at the same time, there is temptation in this. To know may seduce;
and to have been agitated may compel. Arduous cares are attractive for
their own sakes. Great talents are naturally driven towards hazard and
difficulty; as it is there that they are most sure to find their
exercise, and their evidence, and joy in anticipated triumph--the
liveliest of all sensations. Moreover; magnificent desires, when least
under the bias of personal feeling, dispose the mind--more than itself
is conscious of--to regard commotion with complacency, and to watch the
aggravations of distress with welcoming; from an immoderate confidence
that, when the appointed day shall come, it will be in the power of
intellect to relieve. There is danger in being a zealot in any
cause--not excepting that of humanity. Nor is it to be forgotten that
the incapacity and ignorance of the regular agents of long-established
governments do not prevent some progress in the dearest concerns of men;
and that society may owe to these very deficiencies, and to the tame and
unenterprizing course which they necessitate, much security and tranquil
enjoyment.

Nor, on the other hand, (for reasons which may be added to those
already given) is it so desirable as might at first sight be imagined,
much less is it desirable as an absolute good, that men of comprehensive
sensibility and tutored genius--either for the interests of mankind or
for their own--should, in ordinary times, have vested in them political
power. The Empire, which they hold, is more independent: its constituent
parts are sustained by a stricter connection: the dominion is purer and
of higher origin; as mind is more excellent than body--the search of
truth an employment more inherently dignified than the application of
force--the determinations of nature more venerable than the accidents of
human institution. Chance and disorder, vexation and disappointment,
malignity and perverseness within or without the mind, are a sad
exchange for the steady and genial processes of reason. Moreover;
worldly distinctions and offices of com