The National Register.
London, England, 1817-11-30 00:00:00

ft di

N0..512.—V0L. X.

POLITICAL DISQUISITION.

THE CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH CHARACTER
PRODUCED BY THE ABUSE OF THE LIBERTY
OF THE PRESS.

IF the position, that extremes aproximate, wanted
arty confirmation beyond what ages have given it, we
might find that confirmation in the events of our own
times ; in which excessive refinement is accompanied by
excessicc crime. The instantaneous transition of a peo-
ple, whose manners bud received an over-polish, from a
s.e.te of easy and thoughtless quiescence, to one of tur-
balzace and unprecedented carnage, was fearftilly ex-
emplified in the conduct of our neighbours. Happily
for us, the asperities of our national character long pre-
served us from that close contact which hal !,roved
fatal to the characteristic originality of continental na-
tions. We appear, however, to be 1113 t approaching to
tt at period when the moral virtues will only be known
amongst us by recollection, and the worthiness of
our fathers, like ancient nobility, will be invoked to
hide .the unworthiness of our sons.
It cannot be denied that society generally has re-
ceived a polish in thi.; country, superior to what it had
obtained at any former period ; that education is more
general amongst ,the lower orders, and that efforts of
unprecedented magnitude have been made to give them
that religious instruction, the possession of which, alone,
can render them happy in themselves, or valuable in
Society. To what cause, then, are we to attribute
the alarming increase of crimes ? crimes not of any
particular character, but varied as the endless number
of dispositions which give them birth. Petty thefts,
frauds, burglaries, rapes, and murders of the blackest
hue, fill up the calendars of our Lamest perpetual ses-
sions; and to all this, unhappily, is to be added an un-
feeling hardnessof heart ;—au insensibility to human
suffering, in those persons whose province it is to watch
over the poor and the helpless, as new as it is disgrace-
ful to the English character, We have but to look at the
events of the day, to convince us of the alarming ext nit
of this evil. We one day find an unhappy creature suf-
fered to die in a prison, under the inuneiliate eye of hs
keeper, for lack of needful aid. On another, we find a
whole ncidrbourhood, parish officers and all, shitting
their ears to the cries of a numerous slimily perishing
of famine and disease, and leaving them to sink one by
one into the arms of death unaided and unpitied. This
flintiness of heart and increase of crime are to be traced
to the same sourse. To the profligacy of the daily press,
which by teaching men to make a false estimate of
their own importance in society has debauched their
minds, and made them view with envy, those above
them in rank, and those beneath them with scorn.—
Added to this, a system of infidelity, (the constant at-
tendant on false refinement), begun in this country by
Price, Priestley and Paine, has been industriously ft&
lewed up, and with the most .pernicious success,
by Cobbett, the Exannuer I knit, and a swarm of
wretches whose talents though in themselves despicable,
yet when united and 'bearing all to the slime point. are
calculated to produce, and indeed have produced, a
deterioration in our eioral character which the virtue of
ages will not be able to repair. These wrkers know, as
their predecessors well knew, that to make men bad
subjects, the most effectual way is to make them bad
Christians; by teaching them to despise Divine laws
lead them to violate those of human institution ;
and both these bulwarks against (-rime being broken
down, need we wonder if acts of the deepest enormity
follow.

The man whose confidence in God is shaken, knows
none of those feelings of tenderne,:s which soften the
severity cf our destiny on carte ; insensible to those of-
fwes of kindaess which 4mocth the brow of care awl dry