s of the clergy and the general
carelessness as to education. These sentiments are not the mere
platitudes, common to moralists in all ages. They are pointed and
emphasised by the state of political and social life in the period.
Besides the selfishness and want of principle of the upper classes, one
fact upon which Hartley insists is sufficiently familiar. The Church it
is obvious had been paralysed. It had no corporate activity; it was in
thorough subjection to the aristocracy; the highest preferments were to
be won by courting such men as Newcastle, and not by learning or by
active discharge of duty; and the ordinary parson, though he might be
thoroughly respectable and amiable, was dependant upon the squire as his
superior upon the ministers. He took things easily enough to verify
Hartley's remarks. We must infer from later history that a true
diagnosis would not have been so melancholy as Hartley supposed. The
nation was not corrupt at the core. It was full of energy; and rapidly
developing in many directions. The upper classes, who had gained all
they wanted, were comfortable and irresponsible; not yet seriously
threatened by agitators; able to carry on a traffic in sinecures and
pensions, and demoralised as every corporate body becomes demoralised
which has no functions to discharge in proportion to capacities. The
Church naturally shared the indolence of its rulers and patrons. Hartley
exhorts the clergy to take an example from the energy of the Methodists
instead of abusing them. Wesley had begun his remarkable missionary
career in 1738, and the rapid growth of his following is a familiar
proof on the one side of the indolence of the established authorities,
and on the other of the strength of the demand for reform in classes to
which he appealed. If, that is, the clergy were not up to their duties,
Wesley's success shows that there was a strong sense of existing moral
and social evils which only required an energetic leader to form a
powerful organisation. I need not attempt to inquire into the causes of
the Wesleyan and Evangelical movement, but must note one
characteristic--it had not an intellectual but a sound moral origin.
Wesley takes his creed for granted, and it was the creed, so far as they
had one, of the masses of the nation. He is shocked by perjury,
drunkenness, corruption, and so forth, but has not seriously to meet
scepticism of the speculative variety. If Wesley did not, like the
leader of anoth