mock reverence to be prescribed, it steps in a censorial capacity on what
will be called a political ground, so far as to take account of what
concern has been shown, or what means have been left disposable, for
operations to promote the grand essentials of human welfare, by that
public system which has grasped and expended the strength of the
community, Christianity is not so demure a thing that it cannot, without
violating its consecrated character, go into the exercise of this
judicial office. And as to its _right_ to do so,--either it has a right
to take cognizance now of the manner in which the spirit and measures of
states and their regulators bear upon the most momentous interests, or it
will have no right to be brought forward as the supreme law for the final
award on those proceedings and those men. [Footnote: A censure on this
alleged desecration of religious topics, which had been pronounced on the
Essay (first edit.) by a Review making no small pretensions both
religious and literary, was the immediate cause that prompted these
observations. But they were made with a general reference to a
hypocritical cant much in vogue at that time, and long before. That it
_was_ hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the circumstance, that
those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion, by implicating it
with political affairs, smote almost exclusively on one side. Let the
religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion as largely as he
pleased with the _proper sort_ of political sentiments, that is, the
servile, and then it was all right.]

It is now more than twenty years since a national plan of education for
the inferior classes, was brought forward by Mr. (now Lord) Brougham. The
announcement of such a scheme from such an Author, was received with hope
and delight by those who had so long deplored the condition of those
classes. But when it was formally set forth, its administrative
organization appeared so defective in liberal comprehension, so