Indeed, when we compare the _Political Justice_ with the reveries of Communism, so rife amongst our neighbours, we feel proud of our English dreamer. Godwin's scheme was somewhat as if one of the ancient stoics, not content with imposing upon his wise man rules of conduct quite independent of all human passions and affections, had resolved that the whole multitude of the species should demean themselves according to the same impracticable rules, and should learn to live, and labour, and enjoy, like reasoning automata. Under the light diffused upon them by the author of the _Political Justice_, men were to set aside all selfishness--all their natural, and even kindly affections--and to act in unceasing conformity to certain abstractions of the reasoning faculty; were, in short, neither to love nor to hate; but, sitting in eternal judgment over themselves, were simply to reason and to act. Like the iron figures that formerly stood elevated above the living crowd of Fleet Street, on either side of the venerable clock of St Dunstan's, they were to keep their eye fixed on the dial-plate of a most well-regulated conscience; and ever, as the hour came round, they were to rise and strike, and then subside into their metallic repose. Still, however, the great sentiment of justice, to which Godwin made his appeal, afforded him a far more noble and manly topic than the affected philanthropy on which so many Frenchmen have been descanting. Justice, though not understood after the manner of Mr Godwin, is a sentiment which really lives and moves in the very heart of society. Men respond to an appeal to their sense of justice; they become ungovernable if that sense of justice is long outraged; they work upon this sentiment; they can labour and endure according to its dictates: but for this philanthropy, or fraternity, of which we hear so much--what has it ever done? It never regulated the transactions of a single day; never produced a grain of corn, or a shred of apparel; produces nothing but theories. It is a vain, importunate, idle, and clamorous sentiment: it is justice all on one side; it demands incessantly, it gives never; it has hands to petition with, to clutch with, to rob with, to murder with, but not to work with; it has no hand that holds the plough, or strikes upon the anvil.