Remarks on the question, are there any circumstances in which the lifting of the dead is justifiable? / by Aliquis.

  • Aliquis.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the question, are there any circumstances in which the lifting of the dead is justifiable? / by Aliquis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    to the rout the no less despotic Joseph of Austria, in a matter of as trivial importance; and we need not be reminded, that public opinion has kept in check, and chastened the despot- ism of the Sultan, at the threshold of his palace in Constanti- nople. But while we thus decidedly agree in admitting that Public opinion is powerful, we are far from allowing that its demands ought at all times to be complied with, or, that in its effects, it is always conducive to the well-being of civil society. 1 here is a difference, indeed, between our admis- sion of the fact, that public opinion is mighty in its influence, and of conceding to the doctrine, that its requests ought at all times, and in all circumstances, to be granted, or that in its consequences, it has in every case a tendency to promote the happiness of mankind. W ere we to enumerate all the baneful results arising from the operations of public opinion, they would only be a detail of the follies and miseries of our race. We merelv ask, what were the consequences of public opinion in the days of Car- thaginian greatness, when hundreds of children were torn ft om the bosoms of their mothers, and thrown alive into the furnace of their god Saturn? What was the result of public opinion during the period of Roman grandeur, when thou- sands of men were mangled and slaughtered by the hands of one another, in their places of public amusement? What was public opinion in this island three centuries ago? Part of it was the sun runs round the earth; a wafer is a god; and every wrinkled old woman is in compact with the devil. Had we been alive in that opinionative age, and defended the affirmative ol this question, (though we might not have had the honour to be burned as heretics, or drowned as ne- cromancers,) we assuredly would have been tortured to death as wicked wretches in the crucible of public opinion. What does public opinion demand in this country? One of its demands, which ought surely to he complied with, is, that the members of the medical profession should be sent out to their work ignorant of anatomy, (for what else does opposition amount to ?) and it requires no nice calculation to estimate