For us, our part has been deliberately chosen--and shall be manfully sustained. We entertain a firm conviction that the principles of liberty, as in government and trade, so also in education, are all-important to the happiness of mankind. To the triumph of those principles we look forward, not, we trust, with a fanatical confidence, but assuredly with a cheerful and steadfast hope. Their nature may be misunderstood. Their progress may be retarded. They may be maligned, derided, nay at times exploded, and apparently forgotten. But we do, in our souls, believe that they are strong with the strength, and quick with the vitality of truth; that when they fall, it is to rebound; that when they recede, it is to spring forward with greater elasticity; that when they seem to perish, there are the seeds of renovation in their very decay--and that their influence will continue to bless distant generations, when infamy itself shall have ceased to rescue from oblivion the arts and the names of those who have opposed them, the dupe, the dissembler, the bigot, the hireling--the buffoon and the sarcasm, the liar and the lie! SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CAPACITIES OP NEGROES. (1) (_Edinburgh Review_, March, 1827.) It {361}was not till a short time back that we entertained the slightest intention of criticising the speculations of Major Moody. We had supposed that they would of course pass in their infancy to that Limbo which is ordained for Laureate Odes, old Court Kalendars, and Sermons printed at the request of Congregations. That a Commissioner should write a dull Report, and that the Government should give him a place for it, are events by no means so rare as to call for notice. Of late, however, we have with great surprise discovered, that the books of the Major have been added to the political canon of Downing-Street, and that it has become quite a fashion among statesmen who are still in their novitiate, to talk about physical causes and the philosophy of labour. As the doctrines which, from some inexplicable cause, have acquired so much popularity, appear to us both false and pernicious, we shall attempt, with as much brevity as possible, to expose their absurdity. There are stars, it is said, of which the light has not yet travelled through the space that separates them from the eye of man; and it is possible that the blaze of glory which dazzles all the young politicians between Charing-Cross and Westminster Hall may not yet have reached our more (1) Art. VI. 1. _Papers relating to Captured Negroes. No. I. Tortola_ Schedules. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 16th, March 1825. 2. _Further Papers relating to Captured Negroes. No. II. Separate Report of John Dougan, Esq. No. III. Separate Report of Major Thomas Moody._ Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 10th Mardi 1825. 3. _Second Part of Major Moody’s Report_. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 24th February 1820.