But it is said that even if these subjects be of such universal application, they may easily be acquired in after life when we have appeared as actors upon the great stage of the world. Then it is affirmed we may begin the study of morals and politics to most advantage, when theory and experiment may go hand in hand—when we may correct the visions of an overwrought imagination by the plain and palpable realities that exist around us. This opinion is certainly erroneous. The period of youth is the proper time to commence these studies. You have come up here, gentlemen, with minds and feelings not yet hackneyed in the beaten walks of a business life. You are now enlisted in no mere party warfare. Your hopes have not yet been damped by disappointment, nor your energies been deadened by adversity. All your affections and sympathies are warm and generous. Your hearts and heads have not been besieged by cold, inveterate selfishness, or perverted by unreasonable and noxious prejudices. You have as yet set up no false idols in the temple of the mind. Addicti jurare in verba nullius magistri. You stand committed to the cause of truth and justice alone. Under such circumstances you are in the best possible condition for the reception of pure and virtuous principles. Now is the time to imbibe the great lessons of morality and to study the general and elementary doctrines of government and politics. A little time hence you will have entered upon the bustling, busy theatre of the world. Your private interests and party prejudices will then rise up at every step to cloud your minds and pervert your judgments. Your moral and political researches will no longer be conducted with a single eye to truth and justice, but the demon of party will too probably exert an irresistible control over the little republics of the mind and heart. There are no sciences which require the same full, free, and generous exercise of the feelings of the heart, as morals and politics. In the fixed sciences, it is a matter of very little concern to us what the character of the fact may be; all we aim at is mere truth. We do not care whether a triangle should have two, three, four, or five right angles; all we are in search of, is the mere fact, the real truth. Whilst we are conducting the inquiry, all the passions and active feelings of our nature are laid to rest, and the intellect is left alone and unbiassed to move directly to its results. But when we have reached the region of morals and politics, then do we find that all the passions, propensities and principles of our nature are brought into full play. The whole human being, as he has been made by our Creator, becomes then the important subject of our researches, and we can never arrive at just conclusions without a due consideration of all the forces which are in action. And this is one reason why these are really the most difficult of all sciences.