nation, during a series of generations, having directly before their sight
an enormous nuisance and iniquity, shall yet never be struck with its
quality, never be made restless by its annoyance, never seriously think of
it. And so its odiousness shall never be decidedly apprehended till some
individual or two, as by the acquisition of a new moral sense, receive a
sudden intuition of its nature, a disclosure of its whole essence and
malignity,--the essence and malignity of that very thing which has been
exposing its quality, without the least reserve, by the most flagrant
signs, to millions of observers.

Thus it has been with respect to the barbarous ignorance under which
nine-tenths of the population of our country have continued, through a
number of ages subsequent to the Reformation, surrendered to everything
low, vicious, and wretched. This state of national debasement and dishonor
lay spread out, a wide scene of moral desolation, in the sight of
statesmen, of dignified and subordinate ecclesiastics, of magistrates, of
the philosophic speculators on human nature, and of all those whose rank
and opulence brought them hourly proofs what great influence they might
have, in any way in which, they should choose to exert it, on the people
below them. And still it was all right that the multitudes, constituting
the grand living agency through the realm, should remain in such a
condition that, when they died, the country should lose nothing but so
much animated body, with the quantum of vice which helped to keep it in
action. When at length some were beginning to apprehend and proclaim that
all this was wrong, these classes were exceedingly slow in their assent to
the reformed doctrine. A large proportion of them even declared, on
system, against the speculations and projects for giving the people, at
last, the use and value of their souls as well as their hands. The earnest
and sanguine philanthropists might be pardoned the simplicity of not
foreseeing such an opposition, though they ought, perhaps, to have known