commencing governments, that have the print of nature still strong upon them, scarce any crime is held capital.

It is among the citizens of a refined community, that penal laws, which are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor. Government, while it grows older, seems to acquire the moroseness of age; and as if our property were become dearer in proportion as it increased; as if the more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets, to scare every invader.

I cannot tell whether it is from the number of our penal laws, or the licentiousness of our people, that this country should show more convicts in a year than half the dominions of Europe united. Perhaps it is owing to both; for they mutually produce each other. When, by indiscriminate penal laws, a nation beholds the same punishment affixed to dissimilar degrees of guilt, from perceiving no distinction in the penalty, the people are led to lose all sense of distinction in the crime; yet this distinction is the bulwark of all morality: thus, the multitude of laws produces new vices, and new vices call for fresh restraints.

It were to be wished, then, that power, instead of contriving new laws to punish vice, instead of drawing hard the cords of society till a convulsion came to burst them, instead of cutting away wretches as useless, before we had tried their utility, instead of converting correction into vengeance, it were to be wished that we tried the restrictive arts of government, and made law the protector, but not the tyrant, of the people. We should then find, that creatures whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve

to sinew the state in times of danger; that, as their faces are like ours, their hearts are so too; that few minds are so base, as that perseverance cannot amend; that a man may see his last crime without dying for it; and that very little blood will serve to cement our security.

EXTRACT XIV.

Present Suffering enhances the prospect of future Feli

city.

GOLDSMITH.

When I reflect on the distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been given to man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who, by suicide, show us they have nothing left to hope. In this life, then, it appears that we cannot be entirely blest; but yet we may be completely miserable.

Why man should thus feel pain; why our wretchedness should be requisite in the formation of universal felicity; why, when all other systems are made perfect by the perfection of their subordinate parts, the great system should require for its perfection, parts that are not only subordinate to others, but imperfect in themselves, these are questions that never can be explained, and might be useless if known. On this subject Providence has thought fit to elude our curiosity, satisfied with granting us motives to consolation.

In this situation, man has called in the friendly assistance of philosophy; and Heaven, seeing the incapacity of that to console him, has given him the

aid of religion. The consolations of philosophy are very amusing, but often fallacious. It tells us, that life is filled with comforts, if we will but enjoy them; and, on the other hand, that, though we unavoidably have miseries here, life is short, and they will soon be over. Thus do these consolations destroy each other: for if life is a place of comfort, its shortness must be misery; and if it be long, our griefs are protracted. Thus, philosophy is weak; but religion. comforts in a higher strain. Man is here, it tells us, fitting up his mind, and preparing it for another abode. When the good man leaves the body, and is all a glorious mind, he will find he has been making himself a heaven of happiness here; while the wretch that has been maimed and contaminated by his vices, shrinks from his body with terror, and finds that he has anticipated the vengeance of Heaven. To religion, then, we must hold in every circumstance of life, for our truest comfort: for if already we are happy, it is a pleasure to think that we can make that happiness unending; and, if we are miserable, it is very consoling to think that there is a place of rest. Thus, to the fortunate, religion holds out a continuance of bliss; to the wretched, a change from pain.

But though religion is very kind to all men, it has promised peculiar rewards to the unhappy: the sick, the naked, the houseless, the heavy-laden, and the prisoner, has ever most frequent promises in our sacred law. The Author of our religion everywhere professes himself the wretch's friend; and, unlike the false ones of this world, bestows all his caresses upon the forlorn. The unthinking have censured this as partiality, as a preference without merit to deserve it. But they never reflect, that it is not in the power, even of Heaven itself, to make the offer of unceasing felicity as great a gift to the happy as to the miserable. To the first, eternity is but a single

blessing; since, at most, it but increases what they already possess. To the latter, it is a double advantage; for it diminishes their pain here, and rewards them with heavenly bliss hereafter.

But Providence is, in another respect, kinder to the poor than to the rich; for, as it thus makes the life after death more desirable, so it smooths the passage there. The wretched have had a long familiarity with every face of terror. The man of sorrow lays himself quietly down, with no possessions to regret, and but few ties to stop his departure; he feels only nature's pang in the final separation, and this is no way greater than he has often fainted under before; for, after a certain degree of pain, every new breach that death opens in the constitution, nature kindly covers with insensibility.

Thus, Providence has given to the wretched two advantages over the happy in this life,greater felicity in dying, and, in heaven, all that superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment. And this superiority is no small advantage, and seems to be one of the pleasures of the poor man in the parable; for though he was already in heaven, and felt all the raptures it could give, yet it was mentioned, as an addition to his happiness, that he had once been wretched, and now was comforted; that he had known what it was to be miserable, and now felt what it was to be happy.

Thus, religion does what philosophy could never do: it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it; but, if the rich have the advantage of enjoying pleasure here, the poor have the endless satisfaction of knowing what it was once to be miserable, when crowned with endless felicity hereafter; and, even though this

should be called a small advantage, yet, being an eternal one, it must make up, by duration, what the temporal happiness of the great may have exceeded by intenseness.

EXTRACT XV.

True Respectability.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

It is said that the Persians, in their ancient constitution, had public schools, in which virtue was taught as a liberal art or science; and it is certainly of more consequence to a man, that he has learned to govern his passions;-in spite of temptation, to be just in his dealings; to be temperate in his pleasures; to support himself with fortitude under his misfortunes; to behave with prudence in all his affairs, and in every circumstance of life:- I say it is of much more real advantage to him, to be thus qualified, than to be a master of all the arts and sciences in the world. - Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy.

He that is acquainted with Cato, as I am, cannot help thinking as I do now, and will acknowledge he deserves the name, without being honored by it. Cato is a man whom fortune has placed in the most obscure part of the country. His circumstances are such as only put him above necessity, without affording him many superfluities: yet who is greater than Cato?

I happened, but the other day, to be at a house in town, where, among others, were met men of the most note in this place. Cato had business with some of them, and knocked at the door. The most trifling actions of a man, in my opinion, as well as the smallest features and lineaments of the face,