University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

If we examine, aided by the light of history,
the course of human events, we shall find that
every thing moves in a perpetual circle. The
world turns round, and all things with it. Every
thing new is only the revival of something
forgotten; and what are called improvements,
discoveries, or inventions, are, for the most part,
little else than matters that have again come
uppermost, by the eternal revolutions of the
wheel of fate. Mutability may be said to constitute
the harmony of the universe, whose vast
and apparent changes and varieties are produced,
like those of music, by the same notes differently
arranged.

“It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,”
says the old proverb, and accordingly we find,
that causes which produce the misery of one

being, bring about the happiness of another.
The tear of one eye is balanced by the smile of
another cheek; the agony of one heart, by the
transports of another, originating in the same
source. So, to extend our principle from individuals
to nations, the misfortunes of one contribute
to the prosperity of others; and, as the
circle of events is completed, these very nations
will be found to change their relations with each
other, the happy one being wretched, the miserable
one happy, in its turn. It is thus, too,
with the succeeding generations of man. The
struggles, violence, and crimes of a revolution
in one age, bring about a salutary reform of
abuses, of which many generations reap the
benefits in future times; and thus should every
suffering mortal, solace himself with the
comfortable assurance, that he is nothing more
than a martyr to the happiness of some unknown
being, who, in the course of events, will reap the
harvest in joy, of what hath been sown in tears.

The origin of moral evil, which is a problem
that has puzzled wiser heads than ours, is easily
and simply reconciled to the seeming contradictions
it involves, by means of this theory, which
will equally apply to man, and to all animated nature.
The sufferings of virtuous men, and the

apparent prosperity of the wicked, furnish, perhaps,
the strongest internal support to that universal
belief in a future state, which is cherished,
with some little varieties, all over the world.
Thus, a principle essential to our faith, and, of
course, a source of infinite happiness, both here
and hereafter, a great good in fact, owes its origin
in some measure to the existence of what
might, otherwise, be considered a great evil.
Those, therefore, who take advantage of this
seeming disparity to impeach the justice, and
sometimes the very existence, of a superintending
providence, look at but one side of the
question, and decide from partial views. But
perhaps the reader may be superficial enough
not to perceive the connexion between these speculations,
and the position with which we set out:
we will therefore leave this matter for the present.

That all things move in a circle is, however,
particularly demonstrated in affairs of less consequence,
which revolve perpetually before our
eyes. It is denominated, by philosophers, action
and re-action; but it is only the revolutions of
the wheel of mutability. For instance, it has
been supposed, that bigotry and intolerance were
synonymous with ignorance and hypocrisy;

yet we see the most virtuous and enlightened
monarchs, as well as the most learned and pious
preachers, sparing no pains to bring the world
back to a belief in dogmas and subtilties, supposed
to be peculiar to ages of barbarism and superstition.
No one doubts that the nineteenth century
is the most enlightened age the world ever
saw. Yet do we find the world, unless we mistake, is
in great danger of being brought, by a more
adroit appeal to its fears, or it may be to its reason,
to submit implicitly to old abuses under a
new name, with as much docility as in the tenth
century. For instance, the Inquisition, being
abolished in Spain, has revived in England under
a new name. The “Bridge-street Gang,”
as they are denominated, is nothing more than an
inquisition into men's consciences; and though
it cannot put the victims to the torture of the
rack or the boot, can put them to that of the
English law, and an English prison, which, in the
opinion of those who have had experience in
these delights, are no pitiful substitutes for the
discipline of a Spanish Inquisition. When a society
like that of Bridge-street is sanctioned by
courts of justice, in an interference with, and a
punishment of a man's opinions in matters of
faith, it is of little consequence whether you call
it an Inquisition, or a society for the suppression
of vice and the punishment of blasphemy. The
Inquisitors of Spain punished the Protestants
with the rack, the Inquisitors of London punish
those who differ with them in opinion, with fine
and imprisonment. Whatever body of men interferes
with men's consciences, in this or that
manner, is an Inquisition to all intents and purposes.

Beyond doubt, many people who have not
paid proper attention to the absolute monotony
which characterizes the course of events in all
ages of the world, and which is produced by the
revolutions of our wheel, are of opinion that
those refinements in police, those schemes for
public improvement, and that noble system of
political economy by which nations and communities
are enabled to get over head and ears
in debt, are the productions of the present age.
But whoever compares the system of the Heer Piper,
and his long-headed Counsellor Wolfgang
Langfanger, with that commonly in operation at
this time in our cities and states, will at once perceive
it is nothing more than the same thing
brought up again in the revolutions of the great
wheel, the primum mobile of human events. In defailing
the various plans of Governor Piper, to

make all the little bad boys good by means of
teaching them their A, B. C; in his attempts to
banish vice and poverty from Elsingburgh, by an
ingenious mode of encouraging idleness; and in
various other philanthropic schemes, which we
shall from time to time develop, it will appear
to demonstration, that he anticipated the
present age by at least a century and a half.
The evolutions of our wheel demonstrated their
inutility in a few years; but the lessons of experience
are ever forgotten when their effects
cease to be felt, and another turn of the world
brought these schemes uppermost again; whence
they will again fall, after having given their impulse
to the wheel, as the water falls out of the
buckets, runs away to put some other power
in motion, or is exhaled in clouds, whence it
falls in dews and showers, and once more replenishes
the brook that turns the wheel.