Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/196

politics, and (except in so far as municipal law interferes) his morals,—although all these things are matters for his private judgment, and that judgment is free,—yet it does not follow that all religions, politics, and morals are equally right. Every man is entitled to be his own physician, but he has no intuition of the medicines which he should use or avoid. He is entitled to exercise his judgment, but there is certainly a right and a wrong judgment. One drug may be healing and another hurtful. So in religion; he is not responsible to man for his choice, but the choice is not therefore indifferent. There is a true, and there are false religions, and the consequences of error may be tremendous. In politics, one way may lead to general tranquillity and the public good; another way may lead to public misery or suffering, to anarchy or to tyranny. In morals, there is a good and an evil code. It may be true that no man is gifted with the power of pronouncing which is right and which is wrong; but it is of paramount importance that every man should make up his mind on all these subjects to the best of his understanding, and, having done so, that he should act upon his conclusion in all earnestness and sincerity. If this be so, we do not know how to act on your principle of avoiding or excluding the exercise of all influence. We believe this Christian confession to be a divine truth, which offers temporal and eternal happiness to man, and we propagate it with all our power; we beheve that these rules of national conduct will promote the well-being of the people and of mankind, and we promote their ascendancy to the utmost of our means; we believe that a rigid self-denial, and the restraint of passions and desires, are the basis of morals, and we encourage them as far as we are able. If we did not thus labour for what we conceive to be the good of our fellow-creatures, we should, as it appears to us, fail in our duty, and convert life into a cold converse of intellect, without affection or sympathy. We should become mere dialecticians, and not men. We are, by