But if such had always been the way in which private individuals, single or associated, had accounted of themselves and their possible exertions, in regard to great general improvements, but very few would ever have been accomplished. For the case has commonly been, that the schemes of such improvements have originated with persons not invested with political power; have been urged on by the accession and co-operation of such individuals; and at length slowly and reluctantly acceded to by the holders of dominion over the community, always, through some malignant fatality, the last to admit what had long appeared to the majority of thinking men no less than demonstrative evidence of the propriety and advantage of the reformation.
In all probability, the improvement of mankind is destined, under Providence, to advance nearly in proportion as good men feel the responsibility for it resting on themselves as individuals, and are actuated by a bold sentiment of independence, (humble at the same time, in reference to the necessity of Divine intervention,) in the prosecution of it. Each person who is standing still to look, with grief or indignation, at the evils which are overrunning the world, would do well to recollect what he may have read of some gallant partisan, who, perceiving where a prompt movement, with the comparatively slender force at his own command, would make an impression infallibly tending to the success of the warfare, could not endure to lose the time till some great sultan should find it convenient to come in slow march, and the pomp of state, to take on him the direction of the campaign.
In laying this emphasis of incitement and hope on the exertions of good men as individuals, we cannot be understood to mean that the government of states, if ever they did come to be intent on rendering the condition of society better and happier, could not contribute beyond all calculation to the force and efficacy of _every_ project and measure for that grand purpose. How far from it! it is melancholy to consider what they might do and do not. But it is because their history, thus far, affords such feeble prognostics of their becoming, till some better age, actuated by such a spirit,--it is because the Divine Governor has hitherto put upon them so little of the honor of being the instruments of his beneficence,--that the anticipations of good, and the exhortations to attempt it, are so peculiarly directed to its promoters in an individual capacity.