Third.That a meeting be held on Wednesday the 12th of August, 1829, for the purpose of submitting a plan of our intended operations.

Fourth. That all friends in the town and neighbourhood of Leeds, be invited to attend at the above time, and co-operate with us in so desirable an undertaking.

Unicorn-inn,

Leeds, July 6, 1829.

JOHN KIRBY, Chairman.

N.B. The undersigned would be glad to communicate with any person on the projected plan, and to receive the names of persons desirous of taking shares.

JOHN KIRBY, Currier, 145, York-street.

WM. DRIVER, Flour Dealer, 38, Call-lane.
JOHN SMITHSON, Broker, Duncan-street.
CHARLES MAYNE, Malbro'-street, West-street.
WM. VAREY, Holbeck, near Leeds.

TO THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR.

RESPECTED SIR-We, the subscribers, wish you to accept this small contribution of £1. 148. 2d. as a token of our approbation and respect, of your bold and fearless conduct in the cause of truth and virtue. Wishing that you may live to see the cause that you and Mr. Carlile have suffered so much for, triumph over all opposition, is the wish of

Yours, on behalf of the subscribers,

NINETEENTH DISCOURSE,

Delivered before the Society of Universal Benevolence, in their Chapel, Founders' Hall, London,

On Sunday, Dec. 3, 1826,

On Constancy.

By the Rev. ROBERT TAYLOR, A. B. Orator of the Society.

MEN AND BRETHREN-A well-balanced and duly-cultivated mind, without which there can be but little or no value at all, in man, will put itself forth, as our moral science has demonstrated in the noble qualities of fortitude, justice, truth, and sincerity; to be brought into their bearing and action in all the duties which a man owes to himself, his enemies, his friends, his country, and mankind.

These, being such beneficial, such excellent, such happy qualities of mind will call their exhibition in conjunction with that virtue, to which I now invoke your study, the virtue of coNSTANCY:-Which without connection with those virtues, (could it be conceived to exist without them) would be a vice and an evil, as those virtues, without this, would appear but as scintillations and sparks of excellence, bursting forth in fits and starts, only to increase our consciousness of disappointment and chagrin, in showing us how good and great a man is capable of beingwho is not so.

This virtue, of constancy, the very name of which in conjunction with just and laudable pursuits, great objects, and generous affections, (to which alone the name belongs) inspires us with the highest admiration, like every other virtue, can be the result only of science, study, and reflection. As we see at once that it is the want of these, and nothing else than the want of these, which leads to that fickleness of character, and inconstancy of affection, which I shall show you to be a very great vice, by applying to it the only definition of vice, which philosophy allows, that is, that it is that which causes misery. It is only because men, not otherwise deficient of a proper sense of the obligations of fortitude, justice, sincerity and truth, are yet deficient in the science of morality, have not studied the bearings and claims of those obligations upon them, nor habituated themselves to the wholesome exercise of reflection upon the motives which once actuated them, and the actions to which those motives have led, that they discover so often that infirmity of purpose, and that dropping off from good beginnings, which, as I shall show you, severely punishes themselves, and serves them right, and afflicts those who have had the misfortune to expect better things

from them; and so serves them wrong. And if this be not a definition of a pretty huge vice of character-vice itself, for all I know about it, may be innocent. The only plea for our more lenient consideration of it in other persons, and our too easy terms of peace with it, in ourselves, is that we cannot deny the good qualities with which it is sometimes found to co-exist.

Very brave, just, honourable and good-hearted men, are often found deficient of the quality of constancy, and wholly destitute of that magnanimity, which should enable them to persevere in the prosecution of what was wisely planned and bravely begun. But so much the worse and all the worst for that. To such men, their graces serve them but as enemies, and their virtues are sanctified and holy traitors to them."

There is a fitness and congruity in the fickleness of weak and wicked men ; and the more fickle and inconstant they are, the better. Because the more's the chance, that they may mend by chance; and so have the luck to find themselves sometimes guilty of a virtue, without the merit of inter.ding it.

"So when the tragic muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to flow thro' every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept."

There is, besides a most natural apology and a direct and sufficiently apparent cause for inconstancy and wavering in all wicked andworthless persons. Because their wickedness and worthlessness of character, is produced by, and results solely from the mind's imbecility, and consequent want of the faculty of tenacity, gripe, and fast hold upon its objects. Not to take into the account, that all objects of a doubtful or evil character, are nécessarily of a slippery and lubricous nature, and won't yield to the mind a point of purchase on them. "Tis of their nature to slip, break up, and give way from beneath the mind's reliance. So that the feeble-minded man, and consequently viciouslyminded man, necessarily labours under the double disparagement of a drunkard upon the ice; he can't stand firm, because of his intoxication, and if he were never so sober; he's not on the ground that admits of firm standing. His anchor has no fluke to it, where if it had, there is no anchorage.

Whereas all good and excellent qualities, which bad and weak men want, all objects which are in themselves fit and right, and in the pursuit of which, the noble virtues of fortitude, justice, truth, and sincerity, are called into action, have the contrary nature of strength, firmness, and precision in them, and the exceeding felicity of producing a corresponding strength, clearness of perception, and vigour of action, in the mind which is exercised in them.

Virtue, is in nature so truly and entirely mathematical, that like each successive theorem in geometry, when you have perceived one, the perception itself creates the faculty of perceiving

another, as the power of the load-stone is increased by its action : the more it holds, the more it can hold.

So that the inconstancy and recreancy of a man not otherwise deficient of virtuous inclinations is the more unnatural and more inexcusable, because it implies a fault for which there is no phy-. sical cause nor moral apology. Somewhere there is a voluntary breaking up of his economy, which is mere desperateness and folly, shameful to himself, cruelly mischievous in its consequences, and infinitely pernicious in its example: and all the more so, because he is the very man who ought to know better and as I shall show you now, possesses within himself and his own resources, the means of making himself better. For here I trust we are too old to place much reliance upon divine grace, which may be a very fine thing for low spirits, but nobody ever saw it cure a man of the vice of lying, and he who wants the assistance of the Almighty, to make him a good man, must want a great deal of assistance indeed.

In bad men, (as we have seen) inconstancy of purpose and unsteadiness of affection, is of little consequence, or may be rather useful than detrimental In men who have any pretence to virtue, it is a pure, unmixed, and unqualified vice, that can have no cause but folly, no effect but mischief, and that, with greater reproaches of their own consciences, as being more at variance with their better principles, and more repugnant to their greater knowledge; and also with heavier sense of detriment and injury, to those who for none, or but little cause, suffer from the withdrawing of their otherwise valuable good opinion. You grasp at them, as golden eggs they quash into callow goslings.

It is true that there are no bonds nor rivets to fasten a man to constancy, nor to oblige him to the continuance of the zeal with which he set out in a good cause. He has his liberty, and may use it; and can no more be directly impugned or charged with wrong, for giving up, than for not having first taken up a cause. But neither are there any violent or overbearing considerations to hold a man to a continuance in a course of virtue in any other respect. And since to disappoint expectations which our former professions and appearances had tended to excite, is to cause positive chagrin and uncalculated and unmeasured sensations of pain and inconvenience to others; even though we do but use our own liberty, and cannot be charged with doing any thing, but what we had a strict right to do. Yet our liberty and right so used, so hardly used, comes so near to trenching on justice, sincerity, and truth, that the fidelity of our observance of those virtues is rendered at least equivocal, when we suffer them to be so critically situated, so nearly exposed to danger.

What tho' it be not absolutely unjust and false, and insincere, for a man to be as changeable as the wind, and as fickle as he pleases, to blow hot in the morning and cold at night, hugging his friend to-day and forgetting him to-morrow. Yet, that

degree of fickleness, is so little like what he would well endure to experience himself, where he might have great interests and great consequences at stake, and so much of human misery and trouble originates in it-that the man who had no pretensions to justice, sincerity, and truth at all, might perhaps be the less ugly bit of humanity of the two. The fickle friend is therefore justly registered among the greatest evils and curses of society.

"Mark but what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the PATRON, and the jail."

DR. JOHNSON.

Besides, those virtues of justice, sincerity, and truth, were never acquired by any man without a certain degree of steadiness of character, perseverance, and constancy, and would hardly be likely to retain their perfection in the neighbour of a quality so heterogene to that discipline by which they were acquired.

Virtue, in every conceivable modification of it, involves ideas of united firmness and grace, strength and beauty, a finely feeling heart, and an accurately corresponding understanding. But if, one must not exactly deny the many good qualities that are to be found in some fickle and inconstant persons, their fickleness and inconstancy notwithstanding, one cannot at least anticipate a very long wearing of their unbuckled and ungartered virtues, nor hope much satisfaction from a state of mind not sufficiently sensible, to calculate the inconveniences its fickleness may cause, a heart not feeling enough to feel for the sorrows its follies may occasion.

It were not to be desired, not wished, that fickleness of affection and purpose should be left to the correction of experience or to the punishment which the return of its own measure upon itself would inflict. Nor is it necessary, while philosophy can correct the evil, and it is in the power of moral suasion to convince and reclaim the mind from its infirmity.

In this assured sentiment, I undertake now the business of propounding an apparatus of considerations to the mind, in commendation of constancy: which I am sure can no more fail of their effect in determining the mind to the love and cultivation of this good principle, than the mind on the supposition of its rational competence-could miss of the conviction that must accompany a mathematical demonstration.

Abstracting then, the merely sentimental feeling, nor borrowing from the heart its application of the most severe sense of pain by which its selfishness would sting it into virtue, should the inconstant and fickle-hearted person, come to be the victim of his own vice in another; here have you considerations submitted to your reason and demonstrated to your understanding, why you should be steady in your attachments, and pursue with fidelity and constancy the purposes which your reason has once approved.

Ye shall consider first of all; and give to the consideration its