And whether I agree with their political views or not, I will never shrink from saying, in any society, that I am personally acquainted with Chartists, the integrity of whose purpose, the unselfishness of whose character, the firmness of whose principle is such, that if all resembled them, if all base men, whether high or low, could only be removed from the land, then the brightest day that England ever saw would be the day on which she got her universal suffrage; for universal suffrage would mean then only the united voices of all good men.

Now whichever of these views may be right, and I am not going to venture an opinion on that subject this evening,-whichever of these opinions may be right, there is a quackery in every one of them that pretends by the realization of itself, to give to this country all she needs. For instance, if a Tory gets what he wishes, a perfect loyalty, and his pattern kingdom should be only this, a tyrant sovereign, and a nation of slaves, I think he would say himself his toryism would do us no good. If the Conservative were to obtain his wish, "things as they are," and this were to leave us nothing but stagnation, moral, political, and intellectual, I think conservatism would do us no more good than toryism. If the Whig and the Radical were to

realize their scheme, the entire overthrow of all abuses, the triumph of the sovereignty of law, and yet with that we got, as we might easily get, only a nation without reverence, and the abolition of old sacred associations, the heart of the country being left morally diseased and sick, whiggism would be as ineffectual as toryism or conservatism. Lastly, if the Chartist got all he wanted, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, paid representatives, and no property qualification, and he should succeed in transferring all power into the people's hands, and yet it were to turn out that the majority were just as corrupt and depraved as the minority had been before them, every honest Chartist will tell us that his chartism would have been a failure, and was not worth the having.

Now the plan that you have adopted in this Institution seems to me to exactly reverse that order of procedure. You have said, "We will reform ourselves, and then the institutions will reform themselves." And in doing this you have surely proceeded in the rightful order; for if the heart of a nation be wise and right, you may depend upon it the laws of that nation will never long remain radically wrong. Free institutions will never of themselves make free

men out of men who are themselves the slaves to vice; but free men will inevitably express their inward character in their outward institutions. The spirit of every kingdom must begin first "within you."

I now proceed to offer you two or three cautions with respect to your Institution. First, we must not expect too much from it. There is no magic, no enchantment, in a library and reading-room. They will not make a man wise or good in spite of himself, or without effort of nis own. They will leave each man what he was before, except that they will put into his hands means of amelioration. The man who was the mere lounger in the streets will become the lounger in the Institute; the man who was the mere miserable politician there will remain the mere politician in the readingroom. The man who got excitement from drinking will now get excitement from the

newspaper.

The next suggestion is, that we must be prepared for a great deal of evil. It is utterly impossible to look on this great movement without seeing clearly in the distance a large possibility of evil. The motto on one of your papers is, "Knowledge is power." It is a truth that is glorious, but at the same time terrible. Knowl

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edge is power, power for good and evil. It is a power that may elevate a man by degrees up to an affinity with his Maker; it is a power that may bring him by degrees down to the level even of Satanic evil. Increased mental power will be the result of this plan-possibly that power will be devoted to bad purposes in many instances; it may become what it is not meant to be, the engine of some political party. Grant this. But are we to abstain from the granting of this power because of the possibility of its being turned to evil? Why, on that principle no good Good in this world cannot

could be done at all.

If

be done without evil. Evil is but the shadow that inseparably accompanies good. You may have a world without shadow; but it must be a world without light, a mere dim, twilight world. you would deepen the intensity of the light, you must be content to bring into deeper blackness and more distinct and definite outline, the shade that accompanies it. He that feels timid at the spectral form of evil, is not the man to spread light. There is but one distinct rule that we can lay down for ourselves, and that is, to do the good that lies before us, and to leave the evil which is beyond our control, to take care of itself. In this world the tares and the wheat grow together, and all we have to do is to sow the wheat.

If you will increase the rate of travelling, the result will be an increase in the number of accidents and deaths; if you will have the printing press, you must give to wickedness an illimitable power of multiplying itself. If you will give Christianity to the world, He who knew what his own religion was, distinctly foresaw, and yet foreseeing, did not hesitate to do his work, that in giving to the world inward peace, it would bring with it the outward sword, and pour into the cup of human hatred, already brimming over, fresh elements of discord, religious bitterness, and theological asperity. Our path is clear. Possibilities of bad consequences must not stand in the way of this work. I see one thing clearly,the labouring men in this town have a right to their reading-room and library just as much as the higher classes have a right to their clubs, and the middle classes to their Athenæums. Let no cowardly suspicion deter from generous sympathy. Give them their rights. Let the future take care of itself.

The other suggestion is this. Let not a public benefit become a domestic evil. In the upper classes it has been complained that the club has been the destruction of domestic comfort. It is easy for a man who has a few hundreds a year, by means of combination, to live at the rate of