East; insomuch that Sallust represents a taste for painting as a vice, no less than lewdness and drinking. And so popular were these sentiments during the latter ages of the republic, that this author abounds in praises of the old rigid Roman virtue, though himself the most egregious instance of modern luxury and corruption; speaks contemptuously of the Grecian eloquence, though the most elegant writer in the world; nay, employs preposterous digressions and declamations to this purpose, though a model of taste and correctness.

But it would be easy to prove that these writers mistook the cause of the disorders in the Roman state, and ascribed to luxury and the arts what really proceeded from an ill-modelled government, and the unlimited extent of conquests. Refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life has no natural tendency to beget venality and corruption. The value which all men put upon any particular pleasure depends on comparison and experience; nor is a porter less greedy of money which he spends on bacon and brandy, than a courtier who purchases champagne and ortolans. Riches are valuable at all times and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire: nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honour and virtue; which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

To declaim against present times, and magnify the virtue of remote ancestors, is a propensity almost inherent in human nature: and as the sentiments and opinions of civilised ages alone are transmitted to posterity, hence it is that we meet with so many severe judgments pronounced against luxury, and even science; and hence it is that at present we give so ready an assent to them. But the fallacy is easily perceived by comparing different nations that are contemporaries; where we both judge more impartially, and can better set in opposition those manners with which we are sufficiently acquainted. Treachery and cruelty, the most pernicious and most odious of all vices, seem peculiar to uncivilised ages, and by the refined Greeks and Romans were ascribed to all the barbarous nations which surrounded them. They might justly, therefore, have presumed that their own ancestors, so highly celebrated, possessed no greater virtue, and were as much inferior to their posterity in honour and humanity as in taste and science. An ancient Frank or Saxon may be highly extolled; but I believe every man would think his life or fortune much less secure in the hands of a Moor or Tartar than those of a French or English gentleman, the rank of men the most civilised in the most civilised

nations.

We come now to the second position which we proposed to illustrate, to wit, that as innocent luxury or a refinement in the arts and conveniences of life is advantageous to the public, so wherever luxury ceases to be innocent, it also ceases to be beneficial; and when carried a degree further, begins to be a quality pernicious, though perhaps not the most pernicious, to political society.

Let us consider what we call vicious luxury. No gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious. A gratification is only vicious when it engrosses all a man's expense, and leaves no ability for such acts of duty and generosity as are required by his situation and fortune. Suppose that he correct the vice, and employ part of his expense in the education of his children, in the support of his friends, and in relieving the poor, would any prejudice result to society? On the contrary, the same consumption would arise; and that labour which at present is employed only in producing a slender gratification to one man, would relieve the necessitous, and bestow satisfaction on hundreds. The same care and toil that raise a dish of peas at Christmas, would give bread to a whole family during six months. To say that without a vicious luxury the

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labour would not have been employed at all, is only to say that there is some other defect in human nature, such as indolence, selfishness, inattention to others, for which luxury in some measure provides a remedy; as one poison may be an antidote to another. But virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected.

Suppose the same number of men that are at present in Great Britain, with the same soil and climate; I ask, is it not possible for them to be happier, by the most perfect way of life that can be imagined, and by the greatest reformation that omnipotence itself could work in their temper and disposition? To assert that they cannot, appears evidently ridiculous. As the land is able to maintain more than all its present inhabitants, they could never, in such a Utopian state, feel any other ills than those which arise from bodily sickness, and these are not the half of human miseries. All other ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices, and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men's charity or their generosity. Let us, therefore, rest contented with asserting that two opposite vices in a state may be more advantageous than either of them alone; but let us never pronounce vice in itself advantageous. Is it not very inconsistent for an author to assert in one page that moral distinctions are inventions of politicians for public interest, and in the next page maintain that vice is advantageous to the public? And indeed it seems, upon any system of morality, little less than a contradiction in terms to talk of a vice which is in general beneficial to society.

I thought this reasoning necessary, in order to give some light to a philosophical question which has been much disputed in England. I call it a philosophical question, not a political one; for whatever may be the consequence of such a miraculous transformation of mankind as would endow them with every species of virtue, and free them from every species of vice, this concerns not the magistrate who aims only at possibilities. He cannot cure every vice by substituting a virtue in its place. Very often he can only cure one vice by another, and in that case he ought to prefer what is least pernicious to society. Luxury, when excessive, is the source of many ills, but is in general preferable to sloth and idleness, which would commonly succeed in its place, and are more hurtful both to private persons and to the public. When sloth reigns, a mean uncultivated way of life prevails amongst individuals, without society, without enjoyment. And if the sovereign, in such a situation, demands the service of his subjects, the labour of the state suffices only to furnish the necessaries of life to the labourers, and can afford nothing to those who are employed in the public service.

JONATHAN EDWARDS.

The great metaphysician and divine of America, JONATHAN EDWARDS, was born in 1703 at Windsor in Connecticut, and died in 1758 at Princeton in New Jersey. By his power of subtle argument, his religious fervour, and his peculiar doctrines respecting free-will, Edwards has obtained a high and lasting reputation. He has perhaps never been surpassed as a dialectician. Educated among the Calvinistic Puritans of New England, he imbibed their religious opinions and sentiments, and went so far as to assert that if the doctrines of Calvinism, in their whole length and breadth, were not rigidly maintained, a man could nowhere set his foot down with consistency

and his latter days were spent in ease and opulence. He died in 1790.

The philosophical doctrines of Smith are vastly inferior in value to the language and illustrations he employs in enforcing them. He has been styled the most eloquent of modern moralists; and his work is embellished with such a variety of examples, with such true pictures of the passions, and of life and manners, that it may be read with pleasure and advantage by those who, like Gray the poet, cannot see in the darkness of metaphysics. His leading doctrine, that sympathy must necessarily precede our moral approbation or disapprobation, has been generally abandoned. 'To derive our moral sentiments,' says Brown, 'which are as universal as the actions of mankind that come under our review, from the occasional sympathies that warm or sadden us with joys, and griefs, and resentments which are not our own, seems to me very nearly the same sort of error as

it would be to derive the waters of an overflowing stream from the sunshine or shade which may occasionally gleam over it.'

The Results of Misdirected and Guilty Ambition. To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the lustre of his future conduct will entirely cover or efface the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments the candidates for the highest stations are above the law, and if they can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often endeavour, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal, but sometimes by the perpetration of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than succeed, and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment which is due to their crimes. But though they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the happiness which they expect to enjoy in it. It is not ease or pleasure, but always honour, of one kind or another, though frequently an honour very ill understood, that the ambitious man really pursues. But the honour of his exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the means through which he rose to it. Though by the profusion of every liberal expense; though by excessive indulgence in every profligate pleasure the wretched but usual resource of ruined characters; though by the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and more dazzling tumult of war, he may endeavour to efface, both from his own memory and from that of other people, the remembrance of what he has done, that remembrance never fails to pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the great and of the learned, amidst the more innocent though more foolish acclamations of the common people,

amidst all the pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by the avenging furies of shame and remorse; and while glory seems to surround him on all sides, he himself, in his own imagination, sees black and foul infamy fast pursuing him, and every moment ready to overtake him from behind. Even the great Caesar, though he had the his suspicions. The remembrance of Pharsalia still magnanimity to dismiss his guards, could not dismiss haunted and pursued him. When, at the request of the senate, he had the generosity to pardon Marcellus, he told that assembly that he was not unaware of the designs which were carrying on against his life; but that, as he had lived long enough both for nature and for glory, he was contented to die, and therefore despised all conspiracies. He had, perhaps, lived long enough for nature; but the man who felt himself the object of such deadly resentment, from those whose favour he wished to gain, and whom he still wished to consider as his friends, had certainly lived too long for real glory, or for all the happiness which he could ever hope to

enjoy in the love and esteem of his equals.

DR RICHARD PRICE.

DR RICHARD PRICE (1723-1791), a Nonconformist divine, published, in 1758, A Review of the which attracted attention as an attempt to revive Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, the intellectual theory of moral obligation, which seemed to have fallen under the attacks of Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume, even before Smith.' Price, after Cudworth, supports the doctrine that moral distinctions being perceived by reason, or the understanding, are equally immutable with all other kinds of truth. On the other side, it is argued that reason is but a principle of our mental frame, like the principle which is the source of moral emotion, and has no peculiar claim to remain unaltered in the supposed general alteration of our mental constitution. Price was an able writer on finance and political economy, and took an active part in the political questions of the day at the time of the French Revolution. He was a republican in principle, and is attacked by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution.

DR GEORGE CAMPBELL.

DR GEORGE CAMPBELL (1719–1796), professor of divinity, and afterwards principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, was a theologian and critic of vigorous intellect and various learning. His Dissertation on Miracles, written in reply to Hume, is a conclusive and masterly piece of reasoning, and his Philosophy of Rhetoric, published in 1776, is perhaps the best book of the kind since Aristotle. Most of the other works on this subject are little else but compilations, but Campbell brought to it a high degree of philosophical acumen and learned research. Its utility is also equal to its depth and originality: the philosopher finds in it exercise for his ingenuity, and the student may safely consult it for its practical suggestions and illustrations. Dr Campbell's other works are-a Translation of the Four Gospels, worthy of his talents; some sermons preached on public occa sions; and a series of Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, which were not published till after his death. It is worthy of remark that Hume himself admitted the 'ingenuity' of Campbell's reply to his sceptical opinions, and the 'great learning of the author. The well-known hypothesis of

Hume is, that no testimony for any kind of miracle can ever amount to a probability, much less to a proof. To this Dr Campbell opposed the argument that testimony has a natural and original influence on belief, antecedent to experience; in illustration of which he remarked, that the earliest assent which is given to testimony by children, and which is previous to all experience, is in fact the most unlimited. His answer is divided into two parts; first, that miracles are capable of proof from testimony, and religious miracles not less than others; and, secondly, that the miracles on which the belief of Christianity is founded are sufficiently attested.

Christianity need not fear Discussion.

I do not hesitate to affirm that our religion has been indebted to the attempts, though not to the intentions, of its bitterest enemies. They have tried its strength, indeed, and, by trying, they have displayed its strength; and that in so clear a light, as we could never have hoped, without such a trial, to have viewed it in. Let them, therefore, write; let them argue, and when arguments fail, even let them cavil against religion as much as they please; I should be heartily sorry that ever in this island, the asylum of liberty, where the spirit of Christianity is better understood-however defective the inhabitants are in the observance of its pre: cepts-than in any other part of the Christian world; I should, I say, be sorry that in this island so great a disservice were done to religion as to check its adversaries in any other way than by returning a candid answer to their objections. I must at the same time acknowledge, that I am both ashamed and grieved when I observe any friends of religion betray so great a diffidence in the goodness of their cause for to this diffidence alone can it be imputed-as to shew an inclination for recurring to more forcible methods. The assaults of infidels, may venture to prophesy, will never overturn our religion. They will prove not more hurtful to the Christian system, if it be allowed to compare small things with the greatest, than the boisterous winds are said to prove to the sturdy oak. They shake it impetuously for a time, and loudly threaten its subversion; whilst, in effect, they only serve to make it strike its roots the deeper, and stand the firmer ever after.

In the same manly spirit, and reliance on the ultimate triumph of truth, Dr Campbell was opposed to the penal laws against the Catholics; and in 1779, when the country was agitated with that intolerant zeal against popery, which in the following year burst out in riots in London, he issued an Address to the People of Scotland, remarkable for its cogency of argument and its just and enlightened sentiments. For this service to true religion and toleration the mob of Aberdeen broke the author's windows, and nicknamed him 'Pope Campbell.' In 1795, when far advanced in life, Dr Campbell received a pension of £300 from the crown, on which he resigned his professorship, and his situation as principal of Marischal College. He enjoyed this well-earned reward only one year, dying in 1796, in his seventy-seventh year. With the single exception of Dr Robertson, the historian-who shone in a totally different walk-the name of Dr Campbell is the greatest which the Scottish church, since the days of Knox, can number among its clergy.

DR REID.

The novelty and boldness of Hume's speculations, and the great talent and ingenuity with which

they were propounded and illustrated, continued the taste for metaphysical studies, especially in Scotland.

DR THOMAS REID's Inquiry into the Human Mind, published in 1764, was an attack on the ideal theory, and on the sceptical conclusions which Hume deduced from it. The author had the candour to submit it to Hume before publication; and the latter, with his usual complacency and good-nature, acknowledged the merit of the treatise. In 1785 Reid published his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, and in 1788 those on the Active Powers. The merit of Reid as a correct reasoner and original thinker on moral science, free from the jargon of the schools, and basing his speculations on inductive reasoning, The ideal theory has been generally admitted. which he combated, taught that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it; that we really do not perceive things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas.' This doctrine Reid had himself believed, till, finding it led to important consequences, he asked himself the question: What evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind?' He set about an inquiry, but could find no evidence for the principle, he says, excepting the authority of philosophers. Dugald Stewart says of Reid, that it is by the logical rigour of his method of investigating metaphysical subjectsimperfectly understood even by the disciples of Locke-still more than by the importance of his particular conclusions, that he stands so conspicuously distinguished among those who have hitherto prosecuted analytically the study of man. dedication of his Inquiry, Reid incidentally makes a definition which strikes us as very happy: 'The productions of imagination,' he says, require a genius which soars above the common rank; but the treasures of knowledge are commonly buried deep, and may be reached by those drudges who can dig with labour and patience, though they have not wings to fly.' Dr Reid was a native of Strachan, in Kincardineshire, where he was born on the 26th of April 1710. He was bred to the church, and obtained the living of New Machar, Aberdeenshire. In 1752 he was appointed professor of moral philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen, which he quitted in 1763 for the chair of moral philosophy in Glasgow. He died on the 7th of October 1796.

LORD KAMES.

In the

HENRY HOME (1696-1782) was a native of Kames, in Berwickshire. Having studied for the legal profession, he was called to the bar in 1723. In 1752 he was raised to the bench, assuming the title of Lord Kames, and in 1763 he was made one of the Lords of Justiciary. In 1728 he published a report of Remarkable Decisions of the Court of Session, but it is as a writer on metaphysical subjects that he is now known. work, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751), combats those theories of human nature which deduce all actions from some single principle, and attempts to establish several principles of action. He here maintained philosophical necessity, but in a connection with the

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His