(1852, November 2) The Evening Courant, p. 3.Philosophical Institution Public Lecture—29 October 1852, Segment 7.
the moral osteology, if I may so speak, of colossal characters, and may learn to know, from the bones and sinews of her old dictators, what the true foundations of genuine manhood are. The history of the middle ages—a subject of which lectures are promised at some future period—is a theme replete with the interest to every one who would trace the moral and political progress of society. It was then that the elements which compose our present political system, though still in a state of fusion, were beginning to shape themselves into order. It was then that the spirit of traffic and industrial competition, after a long period of depression, began to revive and to enter on a vigorous course of action. It was then that the towns of modern Europe took their rise, not as the ancient cities had done, as strongholds of violence and the depots of military strength, but as Emporia of trades: and these towns where the salvation of Europe. They steadied the steps of advancing civilization, and helped to extend its blessings to all classes of this community. Nurseries of free and industrious men who prosecuted useful callings, the towns of modern Europe were the cradle of our civil liberty, and gradually diffusing this blessing beyond themselves, they were of the utmost service in lightening or in breaking the bondage of the feudal vassals, and in repressing the independence of the great barons, whose turbulence threatened to perpetuate the evils of anarchy or despotism. By degrees these towns came to form a third estate in the realm, and their deputies to take rank in the assemblies of the nation, along with the nobles and the clergy. Industry had produced municipal prosperity; prosperity stimulated municipal industry. A new class of society had been called into existence by mercantile occupations, and, in proportion as it throve, the whole social order was improved. In so far as the anarchy of the times permitted them, the Sovereigns lent their aid in establishing the towns. They endowed them with important privileges; and the inhabitants of the towns, becoming rich, through their industry, dedicated in turn, their fortunes and their arms to the service of the Sovereigns, and to the support of the royal authority —which they were aware could alone act as an effectual protection to them against the rapacity of the nobles. That amalgamation tended more than anything else in those troubled times to bring about the reign of tranquility and good order. Industry and commerce had given birth to a species of wealth different from that arising from territorial possessions. The progress of legislation necessarily kept pace with the development of the new national activity. A new kind of prosperity demanded new laws and better organised courts of justice; and thus, it may be said, that the civil liberty, the political privileges, the national wealth, the ameliorated laws of modern Europe have all, in a great measure, proceeded out of commercial enterprise. Another confirmation of the truth, that industry is the mainspring of civilization, and has been in modern times, and during the period of the middle ages—for it was then that this new spirit announced itself—the grand regenerator of society. Another instructive theme which this Institution proposes, on a future occasion, to embrace in its course of lectures, is the history of the 16th century.
