Popular Discontents; Health and Long Life. In these are to be found many sound and acute observations, expressed in the perspicuous and easy, but not very correct or precise language, for which he is noted. His memoirs and correspondence have been published by T. Peregrine Courtenay (2 vols. 1836). Dr Johnson said 'Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose: before his time, they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded.' It is true that some of Temple's productions are eminently distinguished by harmony and cadence; but that he was the first who introduced the latter, will not be admitted by any one who is familiar with the prose of Cowley, Bishop Hall, Jeremy Taylor, and Dryden. Against Excessive Grief.* The honour which I received by a letter from your ladyship was too great not to be acknowledged; yet I doubted whether that occasion could bear me out in the confidence of giving your ladyship any further trouble. But I can no longer forbear, on account of the sensible wounds that have so often of late been given your friends here, by the desperate expressions in several of your letters, respecting your temper of mind, your health, and your life; in all which you must allow them to be extremely concerned. Perhaps none can be, at heart, more partial than I am to whatever regards your ladyship, nor more inclined to defend you on this very occasion, how unjust and unkind soever you are to yourself. But when you throw away your health, or your life, so great a remainder of your own family, and so great hopes of that into which you are entered, and all by a desperate melancholy, upon an event past remedy, and to which all the mortal race is perpetually subject, give me leave to tell you, madam, that what you do is not at all consistent either with so good a Christian, or so reasonable and great a person, as your ladyship appears to the world in all other lights. I know no duty in religion more generally agreed on, nor more justly required by God Almighty, than a perfect submission to his will in all things; nor do I think any disposition of mind can either please him more, or becomes us better, than that of being satisfied with all he gives, and contented with all he takes away. None, I am sure, can be of more honour to God, nor of more ease to ourselves. For, if we consider him as our Maker, we cannot contend with him; if as our Father, we ought not to distrust him; so that we may be confident, whatever he does is intended for good; and whatever happens that we interpret otherwise, yet we can get nothing by repining, nor save anything by resisting. But if it were fit for us to reason with God Almighty, and your ladyship's loss were acknowledged as great as it could have been to any one, yet, I doubt, you would have but ill grace to complain at the rate you have done, or rather as you do; for the first emotions or passions may be pardoned; it is only the continuance of them which makes them inexcusable. In this world, madam, there is nothing perfectly good; and whatever is called so, is but either comparatively with other things of its kind, or else with the evil that is mingled in its composition; so he is a good man who is better than men commonly are, or in whom the good qualities are more than the bad; so, in the course of life, his condition is esteemed good which is better than that of most other men, or in which the good circumstances are more than the evil. By this of the advantages which you have, would look like a It is true you have lost a child, and all that could be lost in a child of that age; but you have kept one child, and you are likely to do so long; you have the assurance of another, and the hopes of many more. You have kept a husband, great in employment, in fortune, and in the esteem of good men. You have kept your beauty and your health, unless you have destroyed them yourself, or discouraged them to stay with you by using them ill. You have friends who are as kind to you as you can wish, or as you can give them leave to be. You have honour and esteem from all who know you; or if ever it fails in any degree, it is only upon that point of your seeming to be fallen out with God and the whole world, and neither to care for yourself, nor anything else, after what you have lost. You will say, perhaps, that one thing was all to you, and your fondness of it made you indifferent to everything else. But this, I doubt, will be so far from justifying you, that it will prove to be your fault as well as your misfortune. God Almighty gave you all the blessings of life, and you set your heart wholly upon one, and despise or undervalue all the rest is this his fault or yours? Nay, is it not to be very unthankful to Heaven, as well as very scornful to the rest of the world? is it not to say, because you have lost one thing God has given, you thank him for nothing he has left, and care not what he takes away? is it not to say, since that one thing is gone out of the world, there is nothing left in it which you think can deserve your kindness or esteem? A friend makes me a feast, and places before me all that his care or kindness could provide; but I set my heart upon one dish alone, and if that happens to be thrown down, I scorn all the rest; and though he sends for another of the same kind, yet I rise from the table in a rage, and say: 'My friend is become my enemy, and he has done me the greatest wrong in the world.' Have I reason, madam, or good grace in what I do? or would it become me better to eat of the rest that is before me, and think no more of what had happened, and could not be remedied? Christianity teaches and commands us to moderate our passions; to temper our affections towards all things Addressed to the Countess of Essex in 1674, after the death below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under the loss, whenever HE who gave shall see fit to of her only daughter. take away. Your extreme fondness was perhaps as displeasing to God before as now your extreme affliction is; and your loss may have been a punishment for your faults in the manner of enjoying what you had. It is at least pious to ascribe all the ill that befalls us to our own demerits, rather than to injustice in God. And it becomes us better to adore the issues of his providence in the effects, than to inquire into the causes; for submission is the only way of reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in his will is the greatest duty we can pretend to, and the best remedy we can apply to all our misfortunes. Passions are perhaps the stings without which, it is said, no honey is made. Yet I think all sorts of men have ever agreed they ought to be our servants, and not our masters; to give us some agitation for entertainment or exercise, but never to throw our reason out of It is better to have no passions at all, than to have them too violent; or such alone as, instead of heightening our pleasures, afford us nothing but vexation and pain. its seat. us. : In all such losses as your ladyship's has been, there is something that common nature cannot be denied; there is a great deal that good nature may be allowed. But all excessive and outrageous grief or lamentation for the dead was accounted, among the ancient Christians, to have something heathenish; and, among the civil nations of old, to have something barbarous and therefore it has been the care of the first to moderate it by their precepts, and of the latter to restrain it by their laws. When young children are taken away, we are sure they are well, and escape much ill, which would in all appearance have befallen them if they had stayed longer with Our kindness to them is deemed to proceed from common opinions or fond imaginations, not friendship or esteem; and to be grounded upon entertainment rather than use in the many offices of life. Nor would it pass from any person besides your ladyship to say you lost a companion and a friend of nine years old; though you lost one, indeed, who gave the fairest hopes that could be of being both in time and everything else that is estimable and good. But yet that itself is very uncertain, considering the chances of time, the infection of company, the snares of the world, and the passions of youth: so that the most excellent and agreeable creature of that tender age might, by the course of years and accidents, become the most miserable herself; and a greater trouble to her friends by living long, than she could have been by dying young. Yet, after all, madam, I think your loss so great, and some measure of your grief so deserved, that, would all your passionate compliants, all the anguish of your heart, do anything to retrieve it; could tears water the lovely plant, so as to make it grow again after once it is cut down; could sighs furnish new breath, or could it draw life and spirits from the wasting of yours, I am sure your friends would be so far from accusing your passion, that they would encourage it as much, and share it as deeply, as they could. But alas! the eternal laws of the creation extinguish all such hopes, forbid all such designs; nature gives us many children and friends to take them away, but takes none away to give them to us again. And this makes the excesses of grief to be universally condemned as unnatural, because so much in vain; whereas nature does nothing in vain : as unreasonable, because so contrary to our own designs; for we all design to be well and at ease, and by grief we make ourselves troubles most properly out of the dust, whilst our ravings and complaints are but like arrows shot up into the air at no mark, and so to no purpose, but only to fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves. Perhaps, madam, you will say this is your design, or, if not, your desire; but I hope you are not yet so far gone, or so desperately bent. Your ladyship knows very well your life is not your own, but His who lent it you to manage and preserve in the best way you can, and not to throw it away, as if it came from some common hand. Our life belongs, in a great measure, to our country and our family: therefore, by all human laws, as well as divine, self-murder has ever been agreed upon as the greatest crime; and it is punished here with the utmost shame, which is all that can be inflicted upon the dead. But is the crime much less to kill ourselves by a slow poison than by a sudden wound? Now, if we do it, and know we do it, by a long and continual grief, can we think ourselves innocent? What great difference is there, if we break our hearts or consume them, if we pierce them or bruise them; since all terminates in the same death, as all arises from the same despair? But what if it does not go so far; it is not, indeed, so bad as it might be, but that does not excuse it. Though I do not kill my neighbour, is it no hurt to wound him, or to spoil him of the conveniences of life? The greatest crime is for a man to kill himself; is it a small one to wound himself by anguish of heart, by grief, or despair; to ruin his health, to shorten his age, to deprive himself of all the pleasure, ease, and enjoyment of life?. Whilst I had any hopes that your tears would ease you, or that your grief would consume itself by liberty and time, your ladyship knows very well I never accused it, nor ever increased it by the common formal ways of attempting to assuage it: and this, I am sure, is the first office of the kind I ever performed, otherwise than in the most ordinary forms. I was in hopes what was so violent could not be long; but when I observed it to grow stronger with age, and increase like a stream the further it ran; when I saw it draw out to such unhappy consequences, and threaten not less than your child, your health and your life, I could no longer forbear this endeavour. Nor can I end it without begging of your ladyship, for God's sake, for your own, for that of your children and your friends, your country and your family, that you would no longer abandon yourself to so disconsolate a passion; but that you would at length awaken your piety, give way to your prudence, or, at least, rouse up the invincible spirit of the Percies, which never yet shrunk at any disaster; that you would sometimes remember the great honours and fortunes of your family, not always the losses; cherish those veins of good humour that are so natural to you, and sear up those of ill, that would make you so unkind to your children and to yourself; and, above all, that you would enter upon the cares of your health and your life. For my part, I know nothing that could be so great an honour and a satisfaction to me, as if your ladyship would own me to have contributed towards this cure; but, however, none can perhaps more justly pretend to your pardon for the attempt, since there is none, I am sure, who has always had at heart a greater honour for your ladyship's family, nor can have more esteem for you, than, madam, your most obedient and most humble servant. Right of Private Judgment in Religion. Whosoever designs the change of religion in a country or government by any other means than that of a general conversion of the people, or the greatest part of them, designs all the mischiefs to a nation that use to usher in, or attend, the two great distempers of a state, civil war or tyranny; which are violence, oppression, cruelty, rapine, intemperance, injustice; and, in short, the miserable effusion of human blood, and the confusion of all laws, orders, and virtues among men. Such consequences as these, I doubt, are something more than the disputed opinions of any man, or any particular assembly of men, can be worth; since the great and general end of all religion, next to men's happiness hereafter, is their happiness here; as appears by the commandments of God being the best and greatest moral and civil, as well as divine precepts, that have been given to a nation; and by the rewards proposed to the piety of the Jews, throughout the Old Testament, which were the blessings of this life, as health, length of age, number of children, plenty, peace, or victory. A man that tells me my opinions are absurd or ridiculous, impertinent or unreasonable, because they differ from his, seems to intend a quarrel instead of a dispute, and calls me fool, or madman, with a little more circumstance; though, perhaps, I pass for one as well in my senses as he, as pertinent in talk, and as prudent in life: yet these are the common civilities, in religious argument, of sufficient and conceited men, who talk much of right reason, and mean always their own, and make their private imagination the measure of general truth. But such language determines all between us, and the dispute comes to end in three words at last, which it might as well have ended in at first: That he is in the right, and I am in the wrong. The other great end of religion, which is our happiness here, has been generally agreed on by all mankind, as appears in the records of all their laws, as well as all their religions, which comes to be established by the concurrence of men's customs and opinions; though, in the latter, that concurrence may have been produced by divine impressions or inspirations. For all agree in teaching and commanding, in planting and improving, not only those moral virtues which conduce to the felicity and tranquillity as every private man's life, but also those manners and dispositions that tend to the peace, order, and safety of all civil societies and governments among men. Nor could I ever understand how those who call themselves, and the world usually calls, religious men, come to put so great weight upon those points of belief which men never have agreed in, and so little upon those of virtue and morality, in which they have hardly ever disagreed. Nor why a state should venture the subversion of their peace, and their order, which are certain goods, and so universally esteemed, for the propagation of uncertain or contested opinions. Sir William Temple's Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning gave occasion to one of the most celebrated literary controversies which have occurred in England. The composition of it was suggested to him principally by a French work of Charles Perrault, on The Age of Louis the Great, in which, with the view of flattering the pride of the grand monarque, it was affirmed that the writers of antiquity had been excelled by those of modern times. This doctrine excited a warm discussion in France, where the poet Boileau was among those by whom it was strenuously opposed. It was in behalf of the ancients that Sir William Temple also took the field. The first of the enemy's arguments which he controverts is the allegation, that we must have more knowledge than the ancients, because we have the advantage both of theirs and our own; just as a dwarf standing upon a giant's shoulders sees more and further than he.' To this he replies, that the ancients may have derived vast stores of knowledge from their predecessors-namely the Chinese, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Syrians, and Jews. Among these nations, he remarks, 'were planted and cultivated mighty growths of astronomy, astrology, magic, geometry, natural philosophy, and ancient story; and from these sources Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the ancients, are acknowledged to have drawn all those depths of knowledge or learning which have made them so renowned in all succeeding ages.' Here Temple manifests extreme ignorance and credulity in assuming as facts the veriest fables of the ancients, particularly with respect to Orpheus, of whom he afterwards speaks in conjunction with that equally authentic personage, Arion, and in reference to whose musical powers he asks triumphantly, 'What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so that they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable music?" In the same credulous spirit, he affirms that 'the more ancient sages of Greece appear, by the characters remaining of them, to have been much phon. They were generally princes or lawgivers greater men than Hippocrates, Plato, and Xenoof their countries, or at least offered or invited to be so, either of their own or of others, that desired them to frame or reform their several institutions of civil government. They were commonly excellent poets and great physicians: they were so learned in natural philosophy, that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, and storms at sea, great droughts, and great plagues, much plenty or much scarcity of certain sorts of fruits or grain; not to mention the magical powers attributed to several of them to allay storms, to raise gales, to appease commotions of the people, to make plagues cease; which qualities, whether upon any ground of truth or no, yet, if well believed, must have raised them to that strange height they were at, of common esteem and honour, in their own and succeeding ages.' The objection occurs to him, as one likely to be set up by the admirers of modern learning, that there is no evidence of the existence of books before those now either extant or on record. This, however, gives him no alarm: for it is very doubtful, he tells us, whether books, though they may be helps to knowledge, and serviceable in diffusing it, are necessary ones, or much advance any other science beyond the particular records of actions or registers of time-as if any example could be adduced of science having flourished where tradition was the only mode of handing it down! His notice of astronomy is equally ludicrous: 'There is nothing new in astronomy,' says he, 'to vie with the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system'-a system which overturns the whole fabric of ancient astronomical science, though Temple declares with great simplicity that it has made no change in the conclusions of astronomy.' In comparing the great wits among the moderns' with the authors of antiquity, he mentions no Englishmen except Sir Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden, leaving Shakspeare and Milton altogether out of view. How little he was qualified to judge of the comparative merits of ancient and modern authors, is evident not only from his total ignorance of the Greek language, but from the very limited knowledge of English literature evinced by his considering Sir Philip Sidney to be 'both the greatest poet and the noblest genius of any that have left writings behind them, and published in ours or any other modern language. He further declares, that after Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, he 'knows none of the moderns that have made any achievements in heroic poetry worth recording.' Descartes and of can Hobbes are 'the only new philosophers that have medicine, which will certainly cure all that have it; made entries upon the noble stage of the sciences the philosopher's stone, which will be found out by for fifteen hundred years past,' and these 'have by men that care not for riches; the transfusion no means eclipsed the lustre of Plato, Aristotle, young blood into old men's veins, which will make Epicurus, and others of the ancients.' Bacon, them as gamesome as the lambs from which 'tis 'Newton, and Boyle are not regarded as philoso- to be derived; a universal language, which may serve all men's turn when they have forgot their phers at all. But the most unlucky blunder comown; the knowledge of one another's thoughts mitted by Temple on this occasion was his without the grievous trouble of speaking; the art adducing the Greek Epistles of Phalaris in support of flying, till a man happens to fall down and break of the proposition, that the oldest books we have his neck; double-bottomed ships, whereof none are still in their kind the best,' These Epistles, ever be cast away besides the first that was made; the says he, 'I think to have more grace, more spirit, admirable virtues of that noble and necessary juice more force of wit and genius, than any others I called spittle, which will come to be sold, and very have seen, either ancient or modern.' Some cheap, in the apothecaries' shops; discoveries of new critics, he admits, have asserted that they are not worlds in the planets, and voyages between this and the production of Phalaris-who lived in Sicily that in the moon to be made as frequently as between more than five centuries before Christ-but of York and London: which such poor mortals as I am some writer in the declining age of Greek litera-think as wild as those of Ariosto, but without half so much wit, or so much instruction; for there, these modern sages may know where they may hope in time to find their lost senses, preserved in phials, with those of Orlando. ture. In reply to these sceptics, he enumerates such transcendent excellences of the Epistles, that any man, he thinks, 'must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original.' The celebrity given to these Epistles by the publication of Temple's Essay, led to the appearance of a new edition of them at Oxford, under the name of Charles Boyle as editor. Boyle, while preparing it for the press, got into a quarrel with the celebrated critic, Richard Bentley, a man deeply versed in Greek literature; on whom he inserted a bitter reflection in his preface. Bentley, in reply, demonstrated the Epistles to be a forgery, taking occasion at the same time to speak somewhat irreverently of Sir William Temple. Boyle, with the assistance of Aldrich, Atterbury, and other Christ-church doctors-who, indeed, were the real combatants-sent forth a reply, the plausibility of which seemed to give him the advantage; till Bentley, in a most triumphant rejoinder, exposed the gross ignorance which lay concealed under the wit and assumption of his opponents. To these parties, however, the controversy was not confined. Boyle and his friends were backed by the sarcastic powers, if not by the learning, of Pope, Swift, Garth, Middleton, and others. Swift, who came into the field on behalf of his patron, Sir William Temple, published on this occasion his famous Battle of the Books, and to the end of his life continued to speak of Bentley in the language of hatred and contempt. In the work just mentioned, Swift has ridiculed not only that scholar, but also his friend, the Rev. William Wotton, who had opposed Temple in a treatise, entitled Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, published in 1694. To some parts of that treatise Sir William wrote a reply, the following passage in which perhaps suggested the satirical account given long afterwards by Swift, in Gulliver's Travels, of the experimental researches of the projectors at Lagoda: Schemes of Projectors. What has been produced for the use, benefit, or pleasure of mankind, by all the airy speculations of those who have passed for the great advancers of knowledge and learning these last fifty years-which is the date of our modern pretenders-I confess I am yet to seek, and should be very glad to find. I have indeed heard of wondrous pretensions and visions of men possessed with notions of the strange advancement of learning and sciences, on foot in this age, and the progress they are like to make in the next; as the universal SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE. SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE, lord advocate under Charles II. and James II. (1636-1691), was a native of Dundee, son of Simon Mackenzie of Lochslin, brother of the Earl of Seaforth. He was educated at St Andrews and Aberdeen, and studied civil law at Bourges, in France. In 1660, he published Aretine; or the Serious Romance. He seems to have been almost the only learned man of his time in Scotland who maintained an acquaintance with the lighter departments of contemporary English literature. Sir George was a friend of Dryden, by whom he is mentioned with great respect; and he himself composed poetry, which, if it has no other merit, is at least in pure English, and appears to have been fashioned after the best models of the time. He also wrote some moral essays, which possess the same merits. These are entitled-On Happiness ; The Religious Stoic; Moral Gallantry; The Moral History of Frugality; and Reason. In 1665, Sir George published at Edinburgh A Moral Essay, preferring Solitude to Public Employment, which drew forth an answer from John Evelyn. Both are curious and pleasing works, and it is remarkable as illustrating the propensity of men to dwell in imagination on pleasures which they do not possess, that the writer who contended for solitude was a person busily employed in scenes of active life, the king's advocate for Scotland; while Evelyn, whose pursuits were principally those which ornament retirement-who longed to be 'delivered from the gilded impertinences of life'-stood forward as the champion of public and active employment. The arguments of Evelyn are, however, unanswerable. He ought to be a wise and good man, indeed, that dares to live alone; for ambition and malice, lust and superstition, or torpid indolence, are in solitude as in their kingdom. The most busy may find time for occasional retirement from the world, while the highest virtues lose their efficacy from being unseen. letters the chief delight and attraction of a secluded life-palls upon the mind, and fails to render instruction, for not to read men, and converse with living libraries, is to deprive ourselves of the most useful and profitable of studies.' The Even the love of CRIT. AND MISCEL. WRITERS. literary efforts of Sir George Mackenzie were neighbour and the overrating ourselves. As also I conbut holiday recreations. His business was law. sider that the perfections envied by me may be advanHe was author of Institute of the Law of Scotland, tageous to me; and thus I check myself for envying a and Laws and Customs in Matters Criminal; great pleader, but am rather glad that there is such a also A Defence of the Royal Line of Scotland, in man, who may defend my innocence: or to envy a great soldier, because his valour may defend my estate or which he gravely supports the story of the forty country. And when any of my countrymen begin to fabulous kings deduced from Gathelus, son-in-law raise envy in me, I alter the scene, and begin to be of Pharaoh, and his spouse Scota! An important glad that Scotland can boast of so fine a man; and I historical production of his pen, entitled Memoirs remember, that though now I am angry at him when I of the Affairs of Scotland, from the Restoration compare him with myself, yet, if I were discoursing of of Charles II. lay undiscovered in manuscript till my nation abroad, I would be glad of that merit in him the present century, and was not printed till which now displeases me. Nothing is envied but what 1821. Sir George disgraced himself by sub- appears beautiful and charming; and it is strange that serviency to the court, and by the inhumanity I should be troubled at the sight of what is pleasant. and cruelty which, as Lord Advocate, he was I endeavour also to make such my friends as deserve my instrumental in perpetrating against the Covenan-envy; and no man is so base as to envy his friend. ters. He is distinguished as the founder of Thus, whilst others look on the angry side of merit, and thereby trouble themselves, I am pleased in admiring the Library of the Faculty of Advocates in Edin- the beauties and charms which burn them as a fire, burgh. At the Revolution, he retired to England, whilst they warm me as the sun. where his death took place in 1691. Sir George Mackenzie was less successful in verse than in prose: Praise of a Country Life. O happy country life! pure like its air; What courts, what camps, what triumphs may one find Against Envy. We may cure envy in ourselves either by considering how useless or how ill these things were for which we envy our neighbours; or else how we possess as much or as good things. If I envy his greatness, I consider that he wants my quiet: as also I consider that he possibly envies me as much as I do him; and that when I begun to examine exactly his perfections, and to balance them with my own, I found myself as happy as he was. And though many envy others, yet very few would change their condition even with those whom they envy, all being considered. And I have oft admired why we have suffered ourselves to be so cheated by contradictory vices, as to contemn this day him whom we envied the last; or why we envy so many, since there are so few whom we think to deserve as much as we do. Another great help against envy is, that we ought to consider how much the thing envied costs him whom we envy, and if we would take it at the price. Thus, when I envy a man for being learned, I consider how much of his health and time that learning consumes: if for being great, how he should flatter and serve for it; and if I would not pay his price, no reason I ought to have what he has got. Sometimes, also, I consider that there is no reason for my envy: he whom I envy deserves more than he has, and Í less than I possess. And by thinking much of these, I repress their envy, which grows still from the contempt of our Fame. I smile to see underling pretenders, and who live in a country scarce designed in the exactest maps, sweat and toil for so unmassy a reputation, that, when it is hammered out to the most stretching dimensions, will not yet reach the nearest towns of a neighbouring country: whereas, examine such as have but lately returned from travelling in most flourishing kingdoms, and though curiosity was their greatest errand, yet ye will find that they scarce know who is chancellor or president in these places; and in the exactest histories we hear but few news of the famousest pleaders, divines, or physicians; and by soldiers these are undervalued as pedants, and these by them as madcaps, and both by philosophers as fools. The True Path to Esteem. I have remarked in my own time that some, by taking too much care to be esteemed and admired, have by that course missed their aim; whilst others of them who shunned it, did meet with it, as if it had fallen on them whilst it was flying from the others; which proceeded from the unfit means these able and reasonable men took to establish their reputation. It is very strange to hear men value themselves upon their honour, and their being men of their word in trifles, when yet that same honour cannot tie them to pay the debts they have contracted upon solemn promise of secure and speedy repayment; starving poor widows and orphans to feed their lusts; and adding thus robbery and oppression to the dishonourable breach of And how can we think them men of honour, trust. who, when a potent and foreign monarch is oppressing his weaker neighbours, hazard their very lives to assist him, though they would rail at any of their acquaintance, that, meeting a strong man fighting with a weaker, should assist the stronger in his oppression? The surest and most pleasant path to universal esteem and true popularity is to be just; for all men esteem him most who secures most their private interest, and protects best their innocence. And all who have any notion of a Deity, believe that justice is one of his chief attributes; and that, therefore, whoever is just, is next in nature to Him, and the best picture of Him, and to be reverenced and loved. But yet how few trace this path! most men choosing rather to toil and vex themselves, in seeking popular applause, by living high, and in profuse prodigalities, which are entertained by injustice and oppression; as if rational men would pardon robbers because they feasted them upon a part of their own spoils; or did let them see fine and glorious shows, made for the honour of the giver upon the expense of the robbed spectators. But when a virtuous 459 |