tions operating to the destruction of their countries, or by other instances of misconduct either in individuals or soci eties, are all to be resolved into the character of man as a free agent. Free agency in its very essence contains liability to abuse. Yet, if you deprive man of his free agency, you subvert 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 observation, that even the bad qualities of mankind have an origin in their good ones. The case is this: human passions are either necessary to human welfare, or capable of being made, and, in a great majority of instances, in fact made, conducive to its happiness. These passions are strong and general; and perhaps would not answer their purpose unless they were so. But strength and generality, when it is expedient that particular circumstances should be respected, become, if left to themselves, excess and misdirection. From which excess and misdirection, the vices of mankind (the causes no doubt of much misery) appear to spring. This account, whilst it 'shows us the principle of vice, shows us, at the same time, the province of reason and of self-government; the want also of every support which can be procured to either from the aids of religion; and it shows this, without having recourse to any native gratuitous malignity in the human constitution. Mr. Hume, in his posthumous dialogues, asserts indeed of idleness, or aversion to labor (which he states to lie at the root of a considerable part of the evils which mankind suffer,) that it is simply and merely bad. But how does he distinguish idleness from the love of ease? or is he sure, that the love of ease in individuals is not the chief foundation of social tranquillity? It will be found, I believe, to be true, that in every community there is a large class of its members, whose idleness is the best quality about them, being the corrective of other bad ones. If it were possible, in every instance, to give a right determination to industry, we could never have too much of it. But this is not possible, if men are to be free. And without this, nothing would be so dangerous as an incessant, universal, indefatigable activity. In the civil world, as well as in the material, it is the vis inertia which keeps things ir heir places.

NATURAL THEOLOGY has ever been pressed with this question: Why, under the regency of a supreme and benevolent Will, should there be, in the world, so much as there is of the appearance of chance?

The question in its whole compass lies beyond our reach: but there are not wanting, as in the origin of evil, answers which seem to have considerable weight in particular cases, and also to embrace a considerable number of

cases.

I. There must be chance in the midst of design: by which we mean, that events which are not designed, necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed. One man travelling to York, meets another man travelling to London. Their meeting is by chance, is accidental, and so would be called and reckoned, though the journeys which produced the meeting were, both of them, undertaken with design and from deliberation. The meeting, though accidental, was nevertheless hypothetically necessary, (which is the only sort of necessity that is intelligible:) for, if the two journeys were commenced at the time, pursued in the direction, and with the speed, in which and with which they were in fact begun and performed, the meeting could not be avoided. There was not, therefore, the less necessity in it for its being by chance. Again, the rencounter might be most unfortunate, though the errands, upon which each party set out upon his journey, were the most innocent or the most laudable. The by effect may be unfavorable, without impeachment of the proper purpose, for the sake of which the train, from the operation of which these consequences ensued, was put in motion. Although no cause acts without a good purpose, accidental consequences, like these, may be either good or bad.

II. The appearance of chance will always bear a proportion to the ignorance of the observer. The cast of a die as regularly follows the laws of motion, as the going of a watch; yet, because we can trace the operation of those laws through the works and movements of the watch, and cannot trace them in the shaking and throwing of the die, (though the laws be the same, and prevail equally in both cases,) we call the turning up of the number of the die chance, the pointing of the index of the watch machinery, order, or by some name which excludes chance. It is the same in those events which depend upon the will of a free a id rational agent. The verdict of a jury, the sentence of

a judge, the resolution of an assembly, the issue of a con tested election, will have more or less of the appearance of chance, might be more or less the subject of a wager, according as we were less or more acquainted with the reasons which influenced the deliberation. The difference resides in the information of the observer, and not in the thing itself; which, in all the cases proposed, proceeds from intelligence, from mind, from counsel, from design.

Now when this one cause of the appearance of chance, viz. the ignorance of the observer, comes to be applied to the operations of the Deity, it is easy to foresee how fruitfil it must prove of difficulties, and of seeming confusion. It is only to think of the Deity, to perceive, what variety of objects, what distance of time, what extent of space and action, his counsels may, or rather must, comprehend. Can it be wondered at, that, of the purposes which dwell in such a mind as this, so small a part should be known to us? It is only necessary, therefore, to bear in our thought, that in proportion to the inadequateness of our information, will be the quantity, in the world, of apparent chance.

III. In a great variety of cases, and of cases comprehending numerous subdivisions, it appears, for many reasons, to be better that events rise up by chance, or, more properly speaking, with the appearance of chance, than according to any observable rule whatever. This is not seldom the case even in human arrangements. Each person's place and precendency in a public meeting, may be determined by lot. Work and labor may be allotted. Tasks and burdens may be allotted:—

-Operumque laborem

Partibus æquabat justis, aut sorte trahebat.

Military service and station may be allotted. The distribution of provision may be made by lot, as it is in a sailor's mess; in some cases also, the distribution of favors may be made by lot. In all these cases, it seems to be acknowledged, that there are advantages in permitting events to chance, superior to those which would or could arise from regulation. In all these cases, also, though events rise up in the way of chance, it is by appointment that they do so.

In other events, and such as are independent of human will, the reasons for this preference of uncertainty to rule, appear to be still stronger. For example, it seems to be expedient that the period of human life should be uncertain

Did mortality follow any fixed rule, it would produce a security in those that were at a distance from it, which would lead to the greatest disorders; and a horror in those who approached it, similar to that which a condemned prisoner feels on the night before his execution. But, that death be uncertain, the young must sometimes die, as well as the old. Also, were deaths never sudden, they who are in health would be too confident of life. The strong and the active, who want most to be warned and checked, would live without apprehension or restraint. On the other hand, were sudden deaths very frequent, the sense of constant jeopardy would interfere too much with the degree of ease and enjoyment intended for us; and human life be too precarious for the business and interests which belong to it. There could not be dependence either upon our own lives, or the lives of those with whom we are connected, sufficient to carry on the regular offices of human society. The manner, therefore, in which death is made to occur, conduces to the purposes of admonition, without overthrowing the necessary stability of human affairs.

Disease being the forerunner of death, there is the same reason for its attacks coming upon us under the appearance of chance, as there is for uncertainty in the time of death itself.

The seasons are a mixture of regularity and chance. They are regular enough to authorise expectation, whilst their being in a considerable degree irregular, induces, on the part of the cultivators of the soil, a necessity for personal attendance, for activity, vigilance, precaution. It is this necessity which creates farmers; which divides the profit of the soil between the owner and the occupier; which, by requiring expedients, by increasing employment, and by rewarding expenditure, promotes agricultural arts and agricultural life, of all modes of life the best, being the most conducive to health, to virtue, to enjoyment. I believe it to be found in fact, that where the soil is the most fruitful, and the seasons the most constant, there the condition of the cultivators of the earth is the most depressed. Uncertainty, therefore, has its use, even to those who sometimes complain of it the most. Seasons of scarcity themselves are not without their advantages. They call forth new exertions; they set contrivance and ingenuity at work; they give birth to improvements in agriculture and economy; they promote the investigation and management of public resources.

Again; there are strong intelligible reasons, why there should exist in human society great disparity of wealth and station; not only as these things are acquired in diferent degrees, but at the first setting out of life. In order, for instance, to answer the various demands of civil life, there ought to be amongst the members of every civil society a diversity of education, which can only belong to an original diversity of circumstances. As this sort of disparity, which ought to take place from the beginning of life, must, ex hypothesi, be previous to the merit or demerit of the persons upon whom it falls, can it be better disposed of than by chance? Parentage is that sort of chance: yet it is the commanding circumstance which in general fixes each man's place in civil life, along with everything which appertains to its distinctions. It may be the result of a beneficial rule that the fortunes or honors of the father devolve upon the son; and, as it should seem, of a still more necessary rule, that the low or laborious condition of the parent be communicated to his family; but with respect to the successor himself, it is the drawing of a ticket in a lottery. Inequalities therefore of fortune, at least the greatest part of them, viz. those which attend us from our birth, and depend upon our birth, may be left, as they are left, to chance, without any just cause for questioning the regency of a supreme Disposer of events.

But not only the donation, when by the necessity of the case they must be gifts, but even the acquirability of civil advantages, ought perhaps, in a considerable degree, to lie at the mercy of chance. Some would have all the virtuous rich, or at least removed from the evils of poverty, without perceiving, I suppose, the consequence, that all the poor must be wicked. And how such a society could be kept in subjection to government, has not been shown; for the poor, that is, they who seek their subsistence by constant manual labor, must still form the mass of the community; otherwise the necessary labor of life could not be carried on; the work would not be done, which the wants of mankind, in a state of civilisation, and still more in a state of refinement, require to be done.

It appears to be also true, that the exigencies of social life call not only for an original diversity of external circumstances, but for a mixture of different faculties, tastes, and tempers. Activity and contemplation, restlessness and quiet, courage and timidity, ambition and contentedness, not to say even indolence and dulness, are all wanted in the