With respect to Frank Henley, whenever he is pleading the cause of truth, he is inflexible. I have sometimes indeed known him silent, when he was hopeless of doing good: but at others I have heard him blame himself for this, and assert that we never ought to despair; for that truth, no matter how violently opposed at the moment, would revive in the mind, and do her office, when the argument and the anger should be wholly forgotten.
I believe the observation to be just. But he is no common thinker! No! I am almost persuaded he is the first of human beings! Equal, nay I have sometimes even thought superior, to Louisa herself!
As you perceive, dear friend of my heart, that I know you too well to fear offending you, I am sure you will do me the justice at the same time to confess that I do not seek to flatter.
Thus, dear Louisa, you perceive, we do not perhaps make quite so swift a progress as we could wish: but we must be satisfied. The march of knowledge is slow, impeded as it is by the almost impenetrable forests and morasses of error. Ages have passed away, in labours to bring some of the most simple of moral truths to light, which still remain overclouded and obscure. How far is the world, at present, from being convinced that it is not only possible, but perfectly practicable, and highly natural, for men to associate with most fraternal union, happiness, peace, and virtue, were but all distinction of rank and riches wholly abolished; were all the false wants of luxury, which are the necessary offspring of individual property, cut off; were all equally obliged to labour for the wants of nature, and for nothing more; and were they all afterward to unite, and to employ the remainder of their time, which would then be ample, in the promotion of art and science, and in the search of wisdom and truth!
The few arts that would then remain would be grand; not frivolous, not the efforts of cunning, not the prostitution of genius in distress, to flatter the vanity of insolent wealth and power, or the depraved taste of an ill-judging multitude; but energies of mind, uniting all the charms of fancy with all the severe beauties of consistent truth.
Is it not lamentable to be obliged to doubt whether there be a hundred people in all England, who, were they to read such a letter as this, would not immediately laugh, at the absurd reveries of the writer?--But let them look round, and deny, if they can, that the present wretched system, of each providing for himself instead of the whole for the whole, does not inspire suspicion, fear, disputes, quarrels, mutual contempt, and hatred. Instead of nations, or rather of the whole world, uniting to produce one great effect, the perfection and good of all, each family is itself a state; bound to the rest by interest and cunning, but separated by the very same passions, and a thousand others; living together under a kind of truce, but continually ready to break out into open war; continually jealous of each other; continually on the defensive, because continually dreading an attack; ever ready to usurp on the rights of others, and perpetually entangled in the most wretched contentions, concerning what all would neglect, if not despise, did not the errors of this selfish system give value to what is in itself worthless.