aim, and to that, and that only, bow. You have but one cause to serve: yes, understand me well! you must serve the cause of goodness, and that cause alone, or your acquirements will be a curse to you rather than a blessing, and a reproach rather than an honour. Recollect that as nothing more highly ennobles the character of man than the right use of the faculty of speech, so nothing degrades it lower than the employment of this power to vile purposes. If you condescend to stoop from the lofty pedestal of honour, and employ your strength to promote vice and error, mistake me not! you will be made bitterly to feel your degradation, and the shafts you point at truth will turn into your own bosom. He who stirs the passions of men to enlist them on the side of infidelity and vice, must necessarily lead a life of hypocrisy and dissimulation; and who will say that such a life can be a happy one? whilst, on the other hand, he who uses his faculties to promote virtue and honour cannot fail to live a life of peace and pleasure, of peace that is steady and unvarying, of pleasure that is pure and holy. "Let your aim," I would say to him in conclusion, "be the interest and the good of those around you: let the means you employ be honour and sincerity, and then you will find that in seeking the happiness of your fellow-beings, you have taken the best and most effectual method to advance your own. See EDINBURGH REVIEW, vol. vii. pp. 296-315.; vol. xxviii. p. 60.; vol. xxxiii. pp. 240, 241.; vol. xxxv. pp. 171-173. HUME'S ESSAY ON ELOQUENCE. WHATELY'S RHETORIC. BRANDE'S DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART. Art. " Eloquence," and the authorities there quoted. AUSTIN'S CHIRONOMIA. LORD BROUGHAM'S ESSAY ON THE ELOQUENCE PART II. OUTLINES OF DEBATES. QUESTION: Which does the greater Injury to Society, the Miser or the Spendthrift? IT may be contended that the Miser does more to injure society than the Spendthrift : I. Because he withdraws capital from circulation, whilst the other causes its distribution. II. Because he leads people by the influence of example to devote themselves to Mammonworship, than which there is not a more wicked or more pernicious crime. III. Because his avarice tends to abridge the comforts of those around him, to limit the education of his children in knowledge and virtue, and to set an example of selfishness to the world. IV. Because the hoarding of money tends to the production of that worst state in which a nation can be placed, when a few are rich and the many poor. V. Because the love of money being the root of all evil, avarice tends to nourish and develope every sort of crime. On the other hand it may be argued that the Spendthrift is more injurious to society than the Miser: I. Inasmuch as, by distributing capital, he prevents those large accumulations which are the bases of all extensive enterprises in trade or commerce. II. Because he, in effect, discourages industry and frugality in the heads of families; for what father would hoard for a spendthrift son? III. Because he brings to utter ruin those who are dependent upon him. IV. Because his miserable courses tend to give us a degraded and vile idea of our species, and so to check friendship and sympathy. V. Because he offers a bad example to the world. Upon the question generally, it may be said that the injury done to society by these two characters is nearly, if not entirely, equal. The Spendthrift is as far away from virtue on the one side, as the Miser is on the other; and the effects of prodigality are as bad as those of avarice. The characters are extremes, and are seemingly set up by nature to be mutually counteractive. Thus the world is generally secured from the effects of hoarding avarice by the fact that miserly fathers usually leave their fortunes to spendthrift sons. The accumulated heaps of one generation are generally dispersed in the next: and in this manner the equilibrium of character is tolerably well preserved. See M'CULLOCH'S POLITICAL ECONOMY, pp. 504— 509. ADAM SMITH'S WEALTH OF NATIONS. RAMSAY. ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. |