a lasting monument of the folly of ambition, and of the uncertainty of all projects of worldly grandeur.

But the monarch, on the contrary, whose nobler and more virtuous ambition prompts him to employ his superior power in promoting the internal prosperity and comfort of his subjects, is not liable to such defeats. His path is plain; his duty is clear. By a vigilant, prompt, and impartial administration of justice, his object is to secure to the industrious the enjoyment of their honest gains; by a judicious use of his supreme power, to remove difficulties and obstructions out of the way of commercial enterprise, and to facilitate its progress; to reward and foster ingenuity; and to encourage and promote the various arts by which civilized societies are distinguished and embellished; above all, to countenance and favour religion, morality, good order, and all the social and domestic virtues. A monarch, who makes these benevolent ends the objects of his pursuit, will not so easily be disappointed. The reason is obvious; nothing depends on a single individual. His plans are carrying on through ten thousand channels, and by ten thousand agents, who, while they are all labouring for the promotion of their own peculiar object, are, at the same time, unconsciously performing their function in the great machine of civil society. It is not, if we may change the metaphor, a single plant, perhaps an exotic, in a churlish climate and an unwilling soil, which, raised with anxious care, a sudden frost may nip, or a sudden blight may wither; but it is the wide-spread vegetåtion of the meadow, which abundantly springs up in one unvaried face of verdure, beauty, and fertility. While the happy monarch, whose large and liberal mind has projected and promoted this scene of peaceful industry, has the satisfaction of witnessing the gradual diffusion of comfort; of comfort, which, enlarging with

the progress of his plans to their full establishment, has been completed, not like the successful projects of triumphant ambition, in the oppression and misery of subjugated slaves, but in the freedom and happiness of a contented people.

To the above important objects of royal attention, such a sovereign as we are contemplating, will naturally add a disposition for the promotion of charitable and religious institutions, as well as of those whose more immediate object is political utility; proportioning, with a judicious discrimination, the measure of support, and countenance, to the respective degree of excellence. To these will be superadded a beneficent patronage to men of genius, learning, and science. Royal patronage will be likely not only to contribute to the carrying of talents into beneficial channels, but may be the means of preventing them from being diverted into such as are dangerous. And when it is received as an universally established principle, that the direction of the best abilities to none but the soundest purposes, is the way to ensure the favour of the prince, will be an additional spur to genius to turn its efforts to the promotion of virtue and of public utility. Such are the views, such the exertions, such the felicities of a patriot king, of a Christian politician!

The importance of royal example in promoting loyalty.-On false patriotism.-Public spirit.

A WISE prince will be virtuous, were it only through policy. The measure of his power is the rule of his duty. He who practises virtue and piety himself, not only holds out a broad shelter to the piety

and virtue of others, but his example is a living law, efficacious to many of those who would treat written laws with contempt. The good conduct of the prince will make others virtuous; and the virtuous are always the peaceable. It is the voluptuous, the prodigal, and the licentious who are the needy, the unsettled, and the discontented, who love change, and promote disturbance. If sometimes the affluent and the independent swell the catalogue of public disturbers, they will frequently be found to be men of inferior abilities, used by the designing as necessary implements to accomplish their work. The one set furnish mischief, the other means. Sallust has, in four exquisitely chosen words, given, in the character of one innovator, that of almost the whole tribe,—Alieni appetens, sui profusus. But allegiance is the fruit of sober integrity; and fidelity grows on the stock of independent honesty. As there is little public honour. where there is little private principle, so it is to be feared, there will be little private principle, at least, among young persons of rank, where the throne holds out the example of a contrary conduct.

It is true, that public virtue and public spirit are things which all men, of all parties, and all characters, equally agree to extol, equally desire to have the credit of possessing. The reputation of patriotism is eagerly coveted by the most opposite characters, and pursued by the most contradictory means; by those who sedulously support the throne and constitution, and by those who labour no less sedulously to subvert them. Even the most factious, those who are governed by the basest selfishness, aspire to the dignity of a character, against which their leading principle and their actual practice constantly militate.

But patriots of this stamp are chiefly on the watch to exemplify their public spirit in their own.

restless way; they are anxiously looking out for some probable occurrence, which may draw them into notice, and are more eager to fish for fame in the troubled waters of public commotion, than disposed to live in the quiet exercise of those habitual virtues, which, if general, would preclude the possibility of any commotion at all. These innovating reformers always affect to suppose more virtue in mankind, than they know they shall find; while their own practice commonly exhibits a low standard of that imaginary perfection on which their fallacious reasonings are grounded. There is scarcely any disposition which leads to this factious spirit more than a restless vanity, because it is a temper which induces a man to be making a continual comparison of himself with others. His sense of his own superior merit and inferior fortune, will fill his mind with perpetual competition with the inferior merit and superior fortune of those above him. He will ever prefer a storm in which he may become conspicuous, to a calm in which he is already secure. Such a soi-disant patriot does not feel for the general interests of his country, but only for that portion of it which he himself may have a chance of obtaining. Though a loud declaimer for the privileges of universal man, he really sees no part of the whole circle of human happiness, except that segment which he is carving for himself. He does not rejoice in those plentiful dews of heaven which are fertilizing the general soil, but in those which fatten his own pastures. "It is not," says the admirable South, "from the common, but the enclosure, from which he calculates his advantages."

But true public spirit is not the new-born offspring of sudden occasion, nor the incidental fruit of casual emergency, nor the golden apple thrown out to contentious ambition. It is that genuine

patriotism, which best prevents disturbance, by discouraging every vice that leads to it. It springs from a combination of disinterestedness, integrity, and content. It is the result of many long-cherished domestic charities. Its seminal principles exist in a sober love of liberty, order, law, peace, and justice, the best safeguards of the throne, and the only happiness of the people. Instead of that selfish patriotism which, in ancient Rome, consisted in subverting the comfort of the rest of the world, the public spirit of a British patriot is not only consistent with Christianity, but (maugre the assertion of a wit already quoted*) in a good degree dictated by it. His religion, so far from forbidding, even enjoins him to consider himself as such a member of the body politic, such a joint of the great machine, that, remembering the defect of a pin may disconcert a system, he labours to fill up his individual part as assiduously as if the motion of every wheel, the effect of every spring, the success of the whole operation, the safety of the entire community, depended on his single conduct. This patriotism evinces itself by sacrifices in the rich, by submission in the poor, by exertions in the able, strong in their energy, but quiet in their operation; it evinces itself by the sober satisfaction of each in cheerfully filling the station which is assigned him by Providence, instead of aspiring to that which is pointed out by ambition; by each man performing with conscientious strictness his own proper duty, instead of descanting with misleading plausibility, and unprofitable eloquence, on the duties of other men.

*Soame Jenyns.