No. 89.

To Dugald Stewart, Esq., Edinburgh.

DEAR SIR,

Liverpool, September 15. 1795.

I have particular pleasure in embracing the opportunity afforded me, by the return of Dr. Hamilton, of acknowledging the obligations I have to you for the two publications you had the goodness to send me, and of expressing my very sincere esteem and respect.

I have received in the perusal of the life of Dr. Smith and of your Synopsis, equal pleasure and instruction. There is, perhaps, no man in the island who more thoroughly approves of your sentiments than I do. On the great points of abstract speculation which have so long exercised the ingenuity and divided the opinions of men, I am entirely with you; and I have felt in a high degree consoled and gratified to find your sentiments so frequently reflecting, improving, and strengthening my own. This coincidence of opinion I am the more flattered by, as it has taken place under a course of life and of education very widely different; and because the certainty

that your conclusions are the result of profound investigation, with every advantage of talents, of leisure, and of collateral science, serves to confirm opinions in which I might otherwise hesitate to repose, from a consciousness that they have been acquired under many difficulties and disadvantages.

While I assent with hardly a single exception to your speculations on mind and its laws, and to the conclusions which you deduce on morals and the first principles of politics, I think it probable that I have had more or less of your sympathy in the sensations, with which I have beheld the practice of our living politicians, and the scenes of guilt and folly by which Europe has been desolated.

On the subject of the war you perhaps know, that, under a fictitious name, I gave my sentiments at an early stage of the business, and when the peace of Europe was in the hands of our cabinet. I used a fictitious name (which I have often lamented), but I disguised neither my style nor my sentiments in a single instance; and to this circumstance it was perhaps owing that the work was ascribed to me.

Of the history of the letter of Jasper Wilson, I think it would be impertinent to say much to you. It originated in a private correspondence

with one of the most virtuous public men of the present day, by whom my sentiments on the subjects of that letter were requested, as they had before been on other subjects. Warmed by the vast and important views which were presented by this discussion, I suddenly determined on publication, hoping that the considerations, which had pressed with such weight on my own mind, might have some influence on the minister himself and the nation at large. I withheld my name from a wish to avoid appearing publicly as a politician, - a circumstance which at all times would have been injurious to my profession, and particularly so at a season of unexampled prejudice and passion. Had I foreseen that I was to be publicly attacked by name for a publication I had never avowed, I would have placed my real name on the title-page, and encountered the consequences.

It was the declared system of the adherents of ministry that every publication was to be traced to its real author. By these means only, their two great instruments of corruption and slander might be fully employed. On the application of these two methods of carrying on the war, if ever I have the pleasure of meeting you, I will give you some curious anecdotes.*

* Here follows an account of the attack of Mr. Chalmers.

*

Pardon this detail. I believe you are not likely to think it so tedious as many might do; and since I have deferred public notice of the attack made on my character, I am not willing that the very few who are likely to think and feel with me, should be ignorant of the facts necessary to understand it.

Have you perused Darwin's Zoonomia? the only work of science which England has of late produced. It is in my mind a production of extraordinary ingenuity, but resting far too much on the imagination. You will perceive that the Experiments and Observations of my friend Dr. Wells on Vision have given a very severe blow to the foundation of his theory of the sensual motions, and reduced his celebrated doctrine of vision to mere chaff.

You will see this (if you have not already seen it) in the Appendix to Wells's Essay on Single Vision, in the Appendix to the Zoonomia in reply, and in two letters of Wells's in the Gentleman's Magazine for September and October, 1794, in rejoinder. I think this controversy extremely curious, and involving as many consequences, speculative and practical, as any I am acquainted with. I correspond with both of the writers, and am interested much in the

issue. Dr. Darwin cannot leave it where it is, without giving up the cause.

In the mean time Dr. Darwin is going on with the publication of his second volume, which is almost altogether medical, and will be practically of great value. I see the sheets as they

come out.*

We hear nothing of the progress of your great work, which I earnestly hope is in progress, though the circumstances of the times sufficiently justify the suspension of the publication.

I have been reading Godwin's Political Justice, certainly in some parts profound, but in many superficial, and treading too lightly and too rapidly over the extensive field he traverses.

It seems also to me in its moral sanctions to be essentially deficient. I see no principle of action, but mere sentiment; and he who tells the author that his own happiness depends on conduct essentially different from that which he prescribes as good and virtuous, makes to him, in my mind, an unanswerable remark. God

* In this second volume of the Zoonomia, Dr. Darwin has given some curious observations by Dr. Currie on the frequency of the pulse, which sometimes occurs in sleep (p. 397.); and also mentions Dr. C.'s experience of the effect of swinging or riding on horseback in retarding the pulse (p. 482.). Editor.