I afterwards learnt in Chelsea, that, latterly, Ranelagh did not pay the proprietors five per cent. for their capital, and therefore they sold the materials to the best bidder. Return

It is difficult to assign limits to the gradual effects of the circuit of the waters by evaporation and rain on the creation of land, from the decay of vegetable organizations. All the rain which falls on such a country as England, from two to three feet deep per annum, tends to raise the surface of the soil with the substances generated by it, which we call solids. How small a portion reaches the rivulets, and how little returns to the sea! The consideration seems at least to justify the notion, that the waters desiccate in spite of the encroachments of currents, and that all things have proceeded from the silent agency of water. Return

I use the word ball, because I consider the power called electric, which shews itself between four containing and contained surfaces, as a physical point bearing geometrical relations to those surfaces; which point, by the rapidity of its motion to restore some disturbed equilibrium, generates a continuous fire, and deceives the eye by the semblance of a stream. Return

Since these observations were first published, a new law has provided for the separate maintenance of these wretched objects, nearly on the plan suggested. Return

As doctrines about fate and necessity involve a numerous class of mischievous superstitions, and are the bases of the success of endless impostures, it seems worth while to turn aside for a moment from the high road of my narrative to examine them. Some philosophers assert, that we are the inert patients of necessary causes: others, that we do what we list, without any cause, on the spontaneous impulse of our will: while nine-tenths of the human race maintain that we are governed by an unalterable fate, which is predestined, and that all the events of life take place for the sake of accomplishing some end! What is our real condition? We exist on a globe which, by a balance of mechanical powers, moves round a centre of gravity between it and the centre of the sun; and also round its own centre of gravity, communicating its aggregate motions to all the particles that compose it, and thereby exciting them into various modes of action, producing and sustaining all the phenomena which we witness. The entire mass then is the patient of these arrangements, and every thing on the earth is physically subservient to them. But, in animal organizations, we find a set of powers different from those which characterize inert minerals or plants. An animal has his own powers of loco-motion—he moves on his own centre of gravity—and, though the earth is his stage and the place of his origin, yet he is an independent Microcosm. To assist his loco-motion, to enable him to determine his course, to preserve his being, and to choose between what is good for him, and what is evil to him; he is provided with senses, with which he sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels; with memory; and with powers of reasoning by analogy, or his senses and his experience would be useless: and yet men say, that such a creature is as much the patient of physical causes, as a stone or a plant! On the contrary, is it not evident, that an animal possesses peculiar powers of sense and reason, in order that he may not be the patient and victim of physical circumstances? But, say they, his actions are determined by his motives, and these are governed by causes over which he has no control; those causes are necessary, and, therefore, his actions are necessary. True—but these exterior causes (granting that they are always necessary links of a chain,) operate on a man only according to his estimate of them, which varies in different men, and in the same men at different times. The causes, at least as far as regards beings which are really their patients, may be regarded as necessary, and they may govern passive existences with absolute dominion; but in all animals they have to encounter the principle of individuality, the feeling of independence, the desire of well-being, and the energies of self-love. These, so to speak, enter into an argument with the causes—a process of reasoning takes place—a decision of judgment is formed—and that judgment it is which directs the will and the action. In other words, an erroneous and varying judgment interposes between the causes and the action; consequently, however absolute and necessary may be the causes, the action governed by an intervening imperfect judgment, and a varying estimate of these causes, is not equally absolute and necessary. Place ten men, or animals, in the same critical situation, and their judgment of the circumstances will lead each of them to act differently; though the necessary causes which ought to have governed their actions were the same; but their judgments, their knowledge, or their experience, were different, and, therefore, their actions. If animals were omniscient, they would have perfect judgments, which would exactly accord with the exterior or necessary circumstances, by which they might then be said to be governed; or, if they were stones and plants, they might be inert patients. But theirs is a mixed species of existence, they are neither plants nor gods. They have powers which plants have not, by which they can freely judge of the means of averting many palpable dangers; though their powers of judging are too limited to enable them to estimate all circumstances correctly, and therefore to move in necessary unison with the immutable physical laws that govern the changes and the motions of inert matter. Return

While these pages were printing, the Common Council of London, the second deliberative assembly in the empire, have presented an address to the Throne, in which they describe the late devastating Wars as “RASH AND RUINOUS, UNJUSTLY COMMENCED, AND PERTINACIOUSLY PERSISTED IN, WHEN NO RATIONAL OBJECT WAS TO BE OBTAINED;” and they add, that “IMMENSE SUBSIDIES WERE GRANTED TO FOREIGN POWERS TO DEFEND THEIR OWN TERRITORIES, OR TO COMMIT AGGRESSIONS ON THOSE OF THEIR NEIGHBOURS.” No friend of Truth could wish to see a more correct historical record of these melancholy events; and, whether the authors of them are allowed to drop into the grave by the course of nature, or should expiate their offences on a scaffold, there is not likely to be much difference of opinion about them in the year THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED and SIXTEEN. Perhaps FIVE MILLIONS of men, and as many women and children, have fallen victims, in the space of twenty-five years, to attempts, as visionary as wicked, to destroy by the sword the assertion of Principles of Political Justice, which necessarily grew out of the cultivation of reason, and which were corollaries of that INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY of which Bacon laid the foundation, and which has been matured by Selden, Coke, Milton, Sidney, Locke, Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, Rousseau, D’alembert, Hume, De Lolme, Mirabeau, and Fox. Rights of social man derived from such sources cannot be overwhelmed, though a divided people may have been overpowered, though hated dynasties may have been restored, and though Popery, the order of Jesuits, and the Holy Inquisition, may for a season have resumed their ascendency. Return

The box-wood used in England by the engravers on wood is often twelve inches in diameter; this, however, is not of English growth, but comes from Turkey, where it is held in slight estimation. Of course, when engravings on wood are larger than twelve inches in diameter, two blocks are joined together, for it is only the transverse section that can be wrought for this purpose. The most famous plantations of box in England are on the White-hill, near Dorking; but the trees there are mere sticks and shrubs compared with those at Mortlake; yet many of them are known to be two hundred years old. Return

The system of Physics which I have for many years inculcated, in the hope of removing from Philosophy the equivocal word attraction, supposes that space is filled with an elastic medium,—that this medium permeates bodies in proportion to their quantities of matter,—that resistance or re-action takes place between the universal medium of space and the novel arrangements of matter in bodies,—that this action and re-action diverge in the medium of space from the surfaces of bodies,—and that, like all diverging forces, they act inversely as the squares of the distances. That, if there were but one body in the universe, it would remain stationary by the uniform action of the surrounding medium,—that the creation of another body would produce phenomena between them, owing to each intercepting the action of the medium of space on the other, in proportion to the angles mutually presented by their bulks,—that two such bodies so acted upon by an universal medium must necessarily fall together, owing to the difference between the finite pressure on their near sides, and the infinite pressure on their outsides,—that a stone falls to the earth, because, with regard to it, the earth intercepts an angle of 180° of the medium of space on its near or under side; while, with regard to the earth, the stone intercepts but a small proportion of a second,—that these actual centripetal forces are very slight, between such distant bodies as the planets,—and, that the law of the forces is necessarily as their bulks directly, and as the squares of their distances inversely. That the centrifugal forces result from the same pressure or impulse,—that the varied densities of the opposite sides of the masses, as land and water, occasion a uniform external pressure to produce rotation on an axis,—that the action or oscillation of the fluid surfaces, a consequence of the rotation, constantly changes the mechanical centre of the mass, so as thereby to drive forward the mathematical centre in an orbit,—and that this is the purpose and effect of the tides, increased by the action and re-action of the fluid and solid parts. That centripetal and centrifugal forces so created, are necessarily varied by the diverse arrangements of the solid and fluid parts of planetary bodies, as we see in the northern and southern hemispheres of the earth,—and that hence arise the varied motions, the elliptical orbits, and all the peculiar phenomena. Attached as the moderns are to the terms attraction and repulsion, I produce this theory with due deference to their prejudices; and I venture to presume, that, on examination, it will be found to be a fair induction from the phenomena, and also in perfect accordance with all the laws of motion. It accounts for the uniform direction and moderate exertion of the centripetal force towards the largest body of a system; for the mutual actions of a system of bodies, or of many systems, on each other; and for the constantly varying direction of the centrifugal force, by shewing that it is generated within the mass. The term repulsion is even more disgraceful to Philosophy than that of attraction; all repulsion being in truth but a relative phenomenon between at least three bodies; and its most palpable appearance in electricity being but a stronger mechanical action towards opposite surfaces. The local impulses of magnets, and of bodies going into chemical union, are not better explained by Kepler’s gravitating sympathy, than by this doctrine of mechanical interception; but, I have no doubt that the former of these will, in due time, be traced to the difference between the rotary motion of the Equatorial and Polar regions; and the latter to some laws of the atomic theory, arising out of the shape and arrangement of the component particles, with reference to those of surrounding bodies. Return