is even worse than diffipation, and is the most unroyal of all the qualities of the heart; without the spirit of generofity, with justice, mercy, understanding, and all other virtues, a crowned head receives no applaufe, nothing more than a frigid approbation from the voice of fame.

Now tho' all men may be faid to be born free, yet none can be faid to be born independant; that never was the state of nature fince the first race became men; all that is in liberty is a right to that which is the common lot of mankind: the child is born in a state of dependancy on the parents, and even when grown up, in nations where there is the leaft property. Amongst the Indians men are not independant; there is a due fubmiffion to the man of the first understanding, to courage, to ftrength, and many other qualities of the foul and body, which naturally take off the independancy of most, tho' not the liberty. And tho' thefe individuals fo endowed may seem less dependant than the rest, yet numbers render them dependant alfo: independant no man can be, in a nation which stands in need of the qualities and capacities of particular men to fupport it; yet he is free because

they have no right to deprive him of his poffeffions,

FROM these attributes of fuperior understanding, fuperior courage, and fuperior ftrength, in uncivilized states is derived the authority which one man has over another; this is naturally yielded to him by those who taste the advantage that he is of to the community; thence arose the ideas of chiefs and kings in the favage nations, from a fenfe of fuperior abilities and a fenfe of gratitude mixt, and yet without lofs of liberty. In countries long civilized the fame exalted talents, added to thofe of generofity and many other humane qualities which wealth brings, or fhould bring into fashion, will obtain an authority undifputed; and the great people, exerting thofe qualifications, will find that men, from their dependant ftate in nature, let their country be ever so free, will pay that due fubordination which is established in the first principles of all things.

YET if they chufe another method, and strive to render themselves independant, by exerting the powers which riches procure them against

their fellow-countrymen, by keeping them in continual fear; the mind, instead of acknowledg ing an authority in those defpotic tempers, detests the cause, and only lies filent till fome occafion offers of exerting its endeavours, against this which they feel with fo much anguish.

KINGS then, tho' born to power, should support it with generofity, and making that which they have a right to by the laws and customs of their country, to proceed from the natural difpofitions of human kind, obtain an authority in the heart of a nation, which is not to be purchafed by any other means.

IT was this difpofition in Lewis the fourteenth which made him the darling of the French: he instituted honors, rewarded merit, fupported and cherished sciences and arts, was polite to all, and thus became the idol of that people whom his ambition and wars brought more than once to die without regret, of the fword, famine and disease,

If any thing can create genius, it must be fuch a difpofition; when the rewards for excellent productions come from thofe hands which are

the

the most esteemed by the fons of men: if it cannot create genius, it begets the next of all things to it; it animates a common foul to moments of fuperior conception, and paffages of exalted understanding. That the English nation has richly deserved encouragement from their princes, is furely indifputable; yet to this hour there is not an establishment in their favour. The ministry seem to fhun men of great sense, and liberality has fled the land. No man of letters is acceptable to the great, they look on him as a kind of fatire on their actions, and feeling within their own vacuity, are by no means" pleased with beholding in another what they want themselves.

THIS is not the practice of other nations: men of letters are received with peculiar honors in France and Italy by the nobility; and by that means the liberal behaviour begets an authority over the man of fcience, which makes bim the dependant of that perfon, and unites his knowledge with the other's power and interest.

THIS management is well understood in France, where minifters, and other great men, apply the

talents

talents of men of letters to their use and the public advantage; and thus liberality begets authority, and every idea of arbitrary power is loft. From this it is that those who live in France, tho' their government is more defpotic than the English, have more apparent freedom and ease than is to be seen in this island.

THE exertion of power is feen there in nothing but in cafes of much ill behaviour; and all that which might be carried by the fuperiority of one man above another, by a kind of force which would make it arbitrary, is converted by politeness into that fenfe of authority and dependance, which is natural for men to have over and from one another: this being the cuf tom univerfally in ufe in that country, whatever may be the establishment, it is really and in fact liberty and after all the examination which I can make, from the fecurity of property, ease of mind, and gaiety of temper of the two people, taking into the account the defire which almost all Englishmen have of poffeffing power by fear or force, and Frenchmen of obtaining authority by politeness and liberality; I affure you that I think the citizens of Paris as free as the citizens of London,