The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-23 00:00:00

beheaders of Louis XVI. They were Louis XIV.
and the Regent who followed him, and Louis XV.
These brought their descendant to the guillotine. The
priesthood, Who revoked the Edict of Nantes, and drove
ti-um France the skill, and industry, and virtue, and
piety which were the sinews of her strength ; the states-
men who intoxicated Louis XIV. with the scheme of
universal empire ; the profligate, prodigal, shameless
Orleans ; and the still more brutalised Louis XV.
with hr court of panders and prostitutes ;—these made
the nation bankrupt, broke asunder the bond of loyalty,
and overwhelmed the throne and altar in ruins.
henr of the horrors of the revolution ; but in this, as in
other things, we recollect the effect without thinking of
the guiltier cause. The revolution was indeed a scene of
horror ; but when I look back on the reigns which pre-
ceded it, and which made Paris almost one great stew
and gaming-house, and when I see altar and throne
desecrated by a licentiousness unsurpassed in any former
age, I look on scenes as shocking to the calm and search-
in, eye of reason and virtue, as the 10th of August and
the massacres of September. Bloodshed is indeed a
terrible spectacle ; but there are other things almost as
fearful as blood. There are crimes that do not make us
start and turn pale like the guillotine, but are deadlier in
their workings. God forbid that I should say a word to
weaken the thrill of horror with which we contemplate
the outrages of the French Revolution. But when I hear
that revolution quoted to frighted us from. Reform, to
show us the danger of lifting up the depre;sed and ig-
.

norant mass, fmust ask whence it came ? and the an-
swer is, that it came from the intolerable weight of mis-
government and tyranny, from the utter want of culture
among the mass of the people, and frog a corrup-
tion of the great, too deep to be purged away
except by destruction.l II am also compelleJ,, to remem-
ber, that the people, in this their singular
madness, wrought far less woe than kings and priests
have wrought, as a familiar thing, in all ages of the
world. All the murders of the French Revolution did
not amount, I think, by one-fifth, to those of the " Mas-
sacre of St. Bartholomew." The priesthood and the
throne, in one short night and day, shed more blood, and
that the best blood of France, than was spilled by Ja-
cobinism, and all other forms of violence during the
whole revolution. Even the atheism and infidelity of
France were due chiefly to a licentious priesthood and
a licentious court. It was religion, so called, that dug
her own grave. In offering this plea for the multitude.
I have no desire to transfer to the multitude uncontrolled
political power. I look at power in all hands with jea-
lousy. I wish neither rich nor poor to be my masters.
What I wish is, the improvement, the clevatioa of all
classes, and especially of the most numerous clas : be-
cause the most numerous, because the many are man-
kind, and because no social progress can be hoped but
from influences which penetrate and raise the mass of
men. The mass must not be confined and kept down
through a vague dread of revolutions. A social order
requiring such a sacrifice, would be toodearif bought.

order should satisfy us, but that which i; in har-
mony with universal improvement and freedom."
e are glad to see Dr. Channing spiritedly throw-
ing back on the rich, even in America, those charges
which they and their satellites of the press are continu-
ally heaping on the poor and the industrious classes
throughout the world, and nowhere so continually and
Igo vehemently as here, where the rich and the titled—
the proud Nobles and the luxurious Bishops, are rich
and luxurious by the plunder they continually practice
on the industrious classes, and where the plunderers con-
tinually represent the poor as having no other object at
heart than to plunder them. As Dr. Channing truly and
justly hints, the danger to property here, as well as in
America, springs not from the industrious masses, but
from horrible abuses of the right of property, which
are practised by our Bollings and our Bruens. and
by the whole race of our tithe-exacting and our
law-making aristocracy. But leaving pampered indivi-
duals and pampered classes, who prostitute law and go-
vernment to individual and class purposes, we must turn
for one moment to the bright views of the course of so-
ei;ty which Dr. Charming has conferred a benefit on
mani.lnd by now making public. This is properly the
age of diffusion of knowledge, of science, and of art,
rather than the 'age of greater discoveries, except those
which arise from the diffusion. It may be said of know-
ledge, as of money, that, like manure, it is of no use til.
it be spread. One or a few heads can no longer carry all
that is known ; and to preserve it, as well as increase it,
inure must be called to share it. What further there is
to learn cannot be known, and till, some genius arises to
tell us, and make further discoveries, we may be permitted
to .:uppose that the proper vocation of learned and scien-
tifi t,:en is to spread abroad what they know. We hear
a great many complaints undoubtedly. of superficial
learning, and of the want of depth in our men o:
science, but those who make the complaint
must be informed that deep ploughing very
often turns up a worthless sub-soil, and that it is the
and tilling of a large surface which gives us
valuable crops. At present it would seem that nearly
all which can be known of the earth is known. There
are are few parts of it unexplored or unvisited by thost
wnh whom all are in communication. In the course (3
time /he motion of the sun and of the fixed stars may be
ascertaihs:d, but probably this will be the result of centu-
ries of obser:'ation. It may, then, too, 132 proved beyond a
doubt that die creation of new worlds is always going.
on ; but at present the knowledge of the planetary mo-
tion, though possessed by a few, is so complete that it
is more desirable to SpreLi it through the mass than in-
crease it in the few. We are far from supposing that
nothing more is to be discovered or learned, but nature,
nerou.s and free, abhors monopolies, and decides
against aristocracies, in science, as well as in politics.
We quite agree, therefore, with Dr. Chinning in be-
lieving that this is the age of universality or diffusion,
tut we also believe that this is in the order of nature, ant;
that mankind can only extend their knowledge and
science, and increase their wealth and power, by diffusing
pretty equally amongst the mass the stock already ac-
quired.