The National Register.
London, England, 1816-12-02 00:00:00

No. 460.—V0t...1X.

POLITICAL DISQUISITION.

t STATE OF THE COUNTRY.
(CONTINVXD FROM OLR 1.•%T.)

Ws now conchae our Extracts from 'the Quarterly
Routers, convinced that our zeaders will not grudge the
space we have allotted to them. The subject is one of all
others the most imperiously calling fur attention at the
present moment, and the manner iu which it is treated
iswell calculated to administer consolation, excite hope,
implant good principle, and invigorate industry in our
distressed countrymen. Our concluding Extract touches
upon that important point in bettering thedondition of
the Pow...the necessity of religious education, and we
recommend to all those who hold doubts on this subject,
an attention to the instances cited in the following re-
asarkq.

" There is always, and there ever will be, a quan-
tity of religious enthusiasm in every civilised commu-
nity, which becomes useful or injurious, as it is well or
erroneously directed. To prevent it is impossible—
even if its prevention were desirable ; it arises out of
tee mndition of human nature, and is one of the nia-
stifestations of our immortality. Where it occurs in
youth and opening manhood, it is most Oonnnonly in
great measure fictitious, and its duration may be
doubted. The vanity of human wishes, and the in-
stability of human happiness, trite as the topics are,
must be experienced before they influence our conduct,
It is not in the heyday of health and enjoyment—it is
not in the morning sunshine of his vernal day—that
man can be expected feelingly to remember his latter
end, and to fix his heart upon eternity. In the order
of nature, what Hartley calls theopathy, is not, and
ought sot, to be looked for, as the predominant feeling
of youth; the religious enthusiasm of youth is likely
to abate, or sometimes the appearance is retained when
the reality has evaporated, and seal as it cools settles
into hypocrisy. But in after-life many causes operate
to wean us from the World : grief softens the heart,
sickness searches it; the blossoms of hope are shed ;
'teeth cuts down the flower of our affections: the dis-
appointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of ex-
istanoi where his wiser desires may be fixed with the
certainty of faith ; the successfill man feels that the ob-
jects which he has so ardently pursued fail to satisfy the
@ravings of an immortal spirit ; the wicked man turneth
away from his wickedness that he may save his soul
alive. Among men. who, to borrow a Catholic expres-
sion, are thus undeceived, the Catholic church has, in
all times, found its most efficient and useful ministers,
from the days of St. Augustine to La liarpe. They
require to be actively employed,—iii &bore quies,—the
restless spirit finds fool and gratification in action, and
could not be supported without it. But the English
church has no moan for them in her ranks, and provides
no eraployment for them ; they arc therefore gathered
into the Methodist fold.
" Luring; the first af,,,e of Methodism, Bishop Laying-
ton published *endows parallel between the enthusiasm
of the Methodists and l'apists,—the fernier were not
then so well understood as they are at present, and the
latter a great deal better. At that time the sect was in
its first effervescence, end committed extravagancies and
tellies, which, in the natural process of fennenfation,
have Rime worked of. If their journals and experiences
then afforded abundant resemblances to the legends of
the !tarnish church, n parallel would now hold equally
'good with many of their institutions and pracdces.—in
their confeseions, their system of itinerancy, and the
knowledge of human nature which they have shewn in
raising women to a ()agree of importance in their church,
which bus in no slight. degree contributed to its rapid
j progress. Possibly it may not be long (after the ex
ample of the Ihruitila church,—in this instance truly
me-Apiary) before they term societies like the Ilevines
if Flanders, and the Scents de la Charlie of France,.,
whom the French found it necessary to resestablisli.for
the preel of humanity, when first they began to restore
time forms of relit ion. The commissioners, whom Louis
XVI. sent to inspect the English hospitals said, that
9111 uuly thing wanting thews was,eajigiinte dimity. It
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