It is no uncommon foible with those who are honoured with the acquaintance of the great, to attribute national events to particular persons, particular measures, to the errors of one man, to the intrigues of another, to any possible spark of a particular occasion, rather than to the true proximate cause, (and which alone deserves the name of a cause) the predominant state of public opinion. And still less are they inclined to refer the latter to the ascendancy of speculative principles, and the scheme or mode of thinking in vogue. I have known men, who with significant nods and the pitying contempt of smiles, have denied all influence to the corruptions of moral and political philosophy and with much solemnity have proceeded to solve the riddle of the French Revolution by ANECDOTES! Yet it would not be difficult, by an unbroken chain of historic facts, to demonstrate that the most important changes in the commercial relations of the world … had their origin not in the cabinets of statesmen, or in the practical insight of the men of business, but in the closets of uninterested theorists, or in the visions of recluse genius. To the immense majority of men even in civilised countries speculative philosophy has ever been, and must ever remain, a terra incognita. Yet it is not the less true, that the epoch-forming Revolutions of the Christian world, the revolutions of religion and with them the civil, social and domestic habits of the nations concerned, have co-incided with the rise and fall of metaphysical systems.