The Press.
London, England, 1855-11-17 00:00:00

LORD JOHN RUSSELL AT EXETER HALL.

Ow Tuesday evening last Lord John Russell deli-
vered, at the request of the committee of the Young
Men's Christian Association, the opening lecture of
the usual winter series. The subject chosen by the
noble lord was " The Obstacles which have Retarded
Moral and Political Progress."
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, after a passing allusion to
the concluding lecture of the last series in 11454, upon
the " Opposition to Great Inventions and Discove-
ries," came at once to his subject, and grounded his
lecture upon the assertion that we should find the
greatest obstacles which have interposed to moral
and political progress are such as arose from misap-
prehension of the functions, and a misapplication of
the powers, of civil government. First, considering
the varied functions and extensive objects of civil
government, which embraced the protection of life
and property, the promotion of religion and instruc-
tion, ant the security of the independence of the
nation, his lordship proceeded to show that the argu-
ments asserting the duty of governments, in addition
to these functions, was to prescribe the limits of
inquiry, and to guide opinion on all moral and even
physical subjects, were hollow, inconclusive, and the
origin of great evils to mankind. Quoting a conver-
sation from Boswell, in which Johnson asserted that
liberty of thought did not justify liberty of speech,
Lord John Russell remarked that Johnson's principles
were false, and that such a doctrine would prevent
all moral and political progress :

Is every man who has made a physical discovery
to ask the civil magistrate whether his demonstration
is at variance with some ignorant interpretation of the
Scriptures before be ventures to publish it to the
world? But, to meet the objection in front, is be who
deems more highly of his God than the emperor or
highpriest of his day, to hide his light under a bushel
because the civil or ecclesiastical ruler does not like to
b.! disturbed? Why not permit the free circulation of truth
and error—leave to truth its own all•sufficient armour, and
to error its own stratagems and delusions—( cheers )—leave
argument to be met by argument, assertion by inquiry? Dr.
Johnson and others contend that governments have the
right and duty to control their subjects, as parents control
children. The friends of religious liberty content that go-
vernments have no such right, and have no special capacity
to fit them for the task. A Roman historian speaks of the
rare felicity of his time, when a man was allowed to think
as he chose and to speak as he thought. This rare felicity
is the common birthright of mankind. It is the source of
all knowledge ; the privilege which elevates the nature of
man; one of the most precious of the gifts of God—

What is a man
If his chief good, and market of his time,
Be but to sleep and feed ?—a beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To rust in us unused.
With regard to the truth of the assertion that restric-
tions placed upon religious freedom tended to pre-
serve the peace and order of society, the noble lord,
in his inquiry how far history sanctioned this asser-
tion, quo•ed the great facts of the punishment of the
early Christians, the persecution of the Reformers in
the Low Countries, the religious wars in France, and
the revocation of the edict of Nantes, as memorable
and undeniable proofs that such restrictions rent
society to its foundations, and that liberty of con
science alone permitted peace among men. Al-
hiding then briefly to the persecutions in England,
and to the question of rests ictive import duties in
our own time, as one of the evidences of impediments
interposed by governments to moral and political
progress, Lord John Russell proceeded to consider
under the three heads, of " Intemperance," Want
of Education," and the " Vices of the Rich," bow
far the people themselves in the present day ob-
a improvement.
Human nature is so prone to evil, that to rely upon
the institutions of civilisation alone to restrain such
tendencies, the noble lord contended, was an error,
and instanced the fall of the Roman Empire, and the
French Revolutions, as proof that the conventional
rules of society were insufficient to subdue the vicious
inclination of mankind; and that, as to the rules of
Christian morality, we can alone look for a higher
and better social organisation than has yet been
reached in the history of the world.