Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

IMPROVEMENTS— No. III

Intellectual and moral, will, more than all other improvements, promote our happiness.

By improvement of the mind the man is rendered capable of new and higher enjoyment. By improvement of the heart the very fountain of enjoyment is improved, and the streams of happiness are rendered larger and more numerous more pure and permanent. In short, by intellectual and moral improvement, mankind are made more elevated and more excellent, and of course happier beings.

Let us for a moment compare the effect of a few moral improvements on human happiness, with that of improvements in some other departments. For instance, improvements in engravings have been made, which, their inventors allege, would prevent counterfeiting bank notes. Suppose this to be a fact, it would be a very desirable thing: But to prevent the making and circulation of lies, those base counterfeits of that most precious circulating medium, Truth, would be incomparably more beneficial. For on Truth rests the whole confidence and intercourse of society.

Great improvements have been made in the science of medicine for two or three centuries past; but without the least undervaluing a very useful profession; a thorough moral reform would
candid doctors must themselves confess, that universal activity and temperance, good nature and harmony would promote long life and health, and save from bloody noses and broken limbs, pistol and gun shot wounds, from gouts and consumptions, disease and death, more effectually than bleeding and vaccination, and all the rest of their Herculean medicines and Samson operations. If all the climates on the globe were rendered as fine and all the soils as fertile as the best, this would appear to be an admirable improvement. Yet it is plain, that if the serenity and pleasantness of the vale of Tempe or Montpelier, and the fertility of Bengal or Egypt, were universally diffused, it would not impart to mankind so much, so pure and permanent delight as the universal reign of benevolence. Could a Newton calculate how much misery is produced in the world by avarice and malice, falsehood and violence, drunkenness, profligacy and the whole catalogue of vices, it would require more than a Howard's heart, adequately to feel what an immense amount of felicity, universal sincerity and integrity, sobriety and purity, benevolence and peace would produce in the hundreds of millions of the human race.