beneficial arts and employments. Now did affluence, when poffeffed, contribute nothing to happiness, or nothing beyond the mere fupply of neceffaries; and the fecret should come to be discovered; we might be in danger of lofing great part of the ufes, which are, at prefent, derived to us through this important medium. Not only would the tranquillity of focial life be put in peril by. the want of a motive to attach men to their private concerns; but the fatisfaction which all men receive from fuccefs in their refpective occupations, which collectively conftitutes the great mass of huin its very man comfort, would be done away

principle.

With respect to ftation, as it is diftinguished from riches, whether it confer authority over others, or be invested with honors which apply folely to fentiment and imagination, the truth is, that what is gained by rifing through the ranks of life, is not more than fufficient to draw forth the exertions of those who are engaged in the purfuits which lead to advancement, and which, in general, are fuch as ought to be encouraged. Diftinctions of this fort are fubjects much more of competition than of enjoyment and in that competition their use confifts.

confifts. It is not, as hath been rightly observed, by what the Lord Mayor feels in his coach, but by what the apprentice feels who gazes at him, that the public is ferved.

As we approach the fummits of human greatness, the comparison of good and evil, with respect to personal comfort, becomes still more problematical; even allowing to ambition all its pleasures. The poet afks, "What is grandeur, what is power?" The philofopher an fwers, "Constraint and plague; et in maximâ quâque fortunâ minimum licere." One very common error misleads the opinion of mankind upon this head, viz. that, univerfally, authority is pleasant, fubmiffion painful. In the general course of human affairs, the very reverse of this is nearer to the truth. Command is anxiety, obedience ease.

Artificial distinctions fometimes promote real equality. Whether they be hereditary, or be the homage paid to office, or the respect attached by public opinion to particular profeffions, they ferve to confront that grand and unavoidable diftinction which arifes from property, and which is moft overbearing where there is no other. It is of the nature of property, not only to be irregularly diftributed,

but to run into large maffes. Public laws fhould be fo conftructed as to favor its diffufion as much as they can. But all that can be done by laws, confiftently with that degree of government over his property which ought to be left to the subject, will not be fufficient to counteract this tendency. There must always therefore be the difference between rich and poor; and this difference will be the more grinding, when no pretenfion is allowed to be fet up against it.

So that the evils, if evils they must be called, which spring either from the necessary fubordinations of civil life, or from the diftinctions which have, naturally, though not neceffarily, grown up in most focieties, fo long as they are unaccompanied by privileges injurious or oppreffive to the reft of the community, are fuch, as may, even by the most depreffed ranks, be endured, with little very judice to their comfort.

pre

The mischiefs of which mankind are the occafion to one another, by their private wickedneffes and cruelties; by tyrannical exercises of power, by rebellions against just authority, by wars, by national jealoufies and competitions operating to the deftruction of third countries, or by other inftances of mifconduct either in individuals

individuals or focieties, are all to be refolved into the character of man, as a free agent. Free agency in its very effence contains liability to abuse. Yet, if you deprive man of his free agency, you fubvert his nature. You may have order from him and regularity, as you may from the tides or the trade winds, but you put an end to his moral character, to virtue, to merit, to accountableness, to the use indeed of reason. To which must be added the obfervation, that even the bad qualities of mankind have an origin in their good ones. The cafe is this. Human paffions are either neceffary to human welfare, or capable of being made, and, in a great majority of inftances, in fact made, conducive to its happiness. These paffions are strong and general; and, perhaps, would not answer their purpose unless they were fo. But strength and generality, when it is expedient that particular circumftances fhould be refpected, become, if left to themfelves, excefs and mifdirection. From which excess and mifdirection the vices of mankind (the caufes, no doubt, of much mifery) appear to fpring. This account, whilst it fhews us the principle of vice, fhews us, at the fame time, the province of reaton and of felf-government; the want alfo

of every support which can be procured to either from the aids of religion; and that, without having recourfe to any native gratuitous malignity in the human conftitution. Mr. Hume in his pofthumous dialogues, afferts, indeed, of idleness or aversion to labour, (which he ftates to lie at the root of a confiderable part of the evils which mankind fuffer,) that it is fimply and merely bad. But how does he diftinguish idleness from the love of ease? or is he fure, that the love of ease in individuals is not the chief foundation of focial tranquillity? It will be found, I believe, to be true, that in every community there is a large clafs of its members, whofe idleness is the best quality about them, being the corrective of other bad ones. If it were poffible, in every inftance, to give a right determination to induftry, we could never have too much of it. But this is not poffible, if men are to be free. And without this, nothing would be fo dangerous, as an inceffant, univerfal, indefatigable activity. In the civil world as well as in the material, it is the vis inertia which keeps things in their order.

NATURAL