RADICALISM AND THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 5 share of truth into the errors of the past, but also greatly enlarge the kingdom of human ideas. True, they may sometimes go astray; they may delude themselves and mislead others; yet to this class of men the world is mainly indebted for those sciences that have conferred such exalted honors on our nature, as well as those arts and inventions which have done so much to improve the condition of mankind. But for their life and mental activity, the intellectual status of earth would be stationary, perhaps retrogressive. Passing out of the circle of pure science into the sphere of reformatory movements, we find that the progress of the world is largely due to the same style of agency. A reform supposes an evil existing in human society, intrenched in some fundamental error of thought, or fortified by some vicious feeling, or,—what is generally the fact,—supported by both of these causes in combination. Now in the very nature of things a reformer must attack this evil; he must make an exhibition of its nature; he must reason about it; he must try it by some standard of truth; he must make an appeal to the conscience of men ; and in doing this he must of necessity lay the axe at the root of the tree. He proposes a fundamental change in the notions and practice of men; and this can be gained only by truth as fundamental as the change itself. The truth must be as deep as the error,—deep enough at least to go to the bottom of the error. Take an example. The immortal Wilberforce, being impressed with the horrible iniquities of the Slave-trade as tolerated and fostered under the prestige and patronage of the British government, exposed it, and denounced it, in the English Parliament and before the British public, till the moral sense of the nation awoke to the enormity of the system, and sternly demanded that it should come to an end. The merchants of Liverpool, and the merchants of London, the men who were interested in this infamous traffic, denounced Wilberforce as a radical, a fanatic, an agitator; like the men of Ephesus, when their craft was in danger, they cried out, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians”; even Pitt, contrary to his personal pledges, had not the moral courage to breast the
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