Professor Blackie, in his eloquent Edinburgh Essay, has these stringent
remarks upon the lax morality of the day:
There is in the world always a respectable sort of surface
morality,—and nowhere more than in this British world at the present
hour,—a morality of convenience and utility, which pays respect to
the principles of right and wrong when generally formalised, but
which recognises them practically only in so far as local customs
and decencies, proprieties, etiquettes, and the round of certain
“inevitable charities,” are willing to recognise them. This morality
many a consumer of beefsteaks and swiller of porter in this lusty
and material land accepts, after eighteen hundred years of Gospel
preaching, as quite sufficient for all the purposes of a respectable
English life. But the perverse maxims and vicious practices with
which our British society is rank, make it evident to the most
superficial glance how far the current morality of our trades and
parties is from seeking to accommodate itself to the principles of
extreme moral purity laid down in every page of the New Testament. A
sermon may be a very proper thing as Sunday work, and may help to
bridge the way to heaven, when a bridge shall be required; but on
Monday a man must attend to his business, and act according to the
maxims of his trade, of his party, of his corporation, of his
vestry. Then the respectable sporting-man will stake his last
thousand on the leg of a race-horse, and think it quite like a
Christian gentleman to allow his tailor’s bill to be unpaid for
another year; then the respectable Highland proprietor will refuse
to renew the lease to the industrious poor cotter on his estate,
that the people, for whom he cares nothing, may make way for the
red-deer, which it is his only passion to stalk; then the
respectable brewer, instead of preparing wholesome drink from
wholesome grain, will infect his brewst with deleterious drugs in
order to excite a factitious thirst in the stomach of his customers,
and increase the amount of drinking; then a respectable corporation,
to maintain their own “vested rights,” will move heaven and earth to
prevent the national parliament from acting on the plainest rules of
justice and common sense in a matter seriously affecting the public
well-being; and the respectable members of society shall flutter
round the gilded wax-lights of aristocracy, and perform worship at
Hudson’s statue, and have respect to men with gold rings and goodly
apparel, and do every thing that is expressly forbidden in the
second chapter of the Epistle of James, which they profess to
receive as a divine rule of conduct. These are only one or two of
the more glaring points in which our commonly-received maxims and
practice of respectable British life run directly in the face of
that highest morality, which the most religious and church-going
Englishman professes to acknowledge as his rule of conduct.
Professor Blackie concludes with the gospel text, “What shall it profit
a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” which the
Professor applies in the plain practical question: “What will it profit
England to spin more cotton, to pile more money-bags, to set more
steam-coaches a-going, if Mammon is to be worshiped every where, rather
than virtue and wisdom?” &c.
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