1. In assuming that the English Bible may yet be made the rule of faith and conduct to the English people; and in placing in the Sheffield Library, for its first volume, a MS. of that Bible in its perfect form, much more is of course accepted as the basis of our future education than the reader will find taken for the ground either of argument or appeal, in any of my writings on political economy previous to the year 1875. It may partly account for the want of success of those writings, that they pleaded for honesty without praise, and for charity without reward;—that they entirely rejected, as any motive of moral action, the fear of future judgment; and—taking St. Paul in his irony at his bitterest word,—“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,”—they merely expanded that worldly resolution into its just terms: “Yes, let us eat and drink”—what else?—but let us all eat and drink, and not a few only, enjoining fast to the rest.

Nor do I, in the least item, now retract the assertion, so often made in my former works, that human probity and virtue are indeed entirely independent of any hope in futurity; and that it is precisely in accepting death as the end of all, and in laying down, on that sorrowful condition, his life for his friends, that the hero and patriot of all time has become the glory and safety of his country.