. We will confine ourselves to points of more

univerfal application.

First, the abridgment of life, and privation of the enjoyments of life.

As to the abridgment of life we are scarcely competent judges, fince wealth, expended in fenfuality and indulgence, is fcarcely lefs inimical to the protraction of existence. Every one can fee however, that inordinate labour produces untimely decrepitude. Every one can conceive the varieties of pain and difeafe, which accrue from the restraint of our limbs, the intemperate exercife of the mufcles, and a continual expofure to the inclemency of the feafons.

That the poor are peculiarly fubjected to a privation of the enjoyments of life, and obliged to content themselves for the greater part of their exiftence with that negative happinets which confifts in the absence of pain, is a point too evident to need illuftration.

Secondly, the poor are condemned to a want of that leifure which is neceffary for the improvement of the mind. They are the predeftinated victims of ignorance and prejudice. They are compelled for the most part to rank with thofe creatures, that exift only for a few years, and then are as if they had never been. They

merely

merely vegetate. The whole of the powers they poffefs, is engaged in the purfuit of miferable. expedients to protract their exiftence. Whatever be the prejudice, the weakness or the fuperftition of their age and country, they have fcarcely any chance to escape from it. It is melancholy to reflect, how few moments they can have of complacence, of exultation, of honest pride, or of joy. Theirs is a neutral existence. They go forward with their heads bowed down to the earth, in a mournful fiate of inanity and torpor. Yet, like the victims of Circe, they have the understanding left ever and anon to afford them a glimpse of what they might have been. In this refpect they are more unfortunate than the beafts.

Thirdly, even those who efcape from the general fentence of ignorance, are haunted with the ills of poverty in another fhape. Leifure well employed is the moft invaluable benefit that can fall to the lot of man. If they have had leifure to accumulate the rudiments of knowledge, they have not the leifure to conftruct them. Even if their immediate avocation have fomething in it analogous to the cultivation of intellect, ftill they are not carried whither they would, but whither they would not. Wherever almoft we find the records of talents

and genius, we find a man impelled by accident, hurried by neceffity, and the nobleft conceptions of his mind rendered abortive by the ills of fortune. There is no plant that requires to be fo affiduously tended, and fo much favoured by every incidental and fubordinate circumftance, as the effufions of fancy, and the difcoveries of fcience.

of

While fuch appear to me the genuine effects poverty, never will I infult the facred prefence of its victims, by telling them that poverty is no evil!

Hence also we may be led to perceive the

1

mistake of thofe perfons who affirm, that the wants which are of the first neceffity, are inconfiderable, and are easily supplied.

No; that is not inconfiderable, which cannot 'be purchased but by the facrifice of the best part of my time, and the firft fruit of my labours.

This is the ftate of fociety at the period in which I am born into the world. I cannot re'medy the evil, and therefore muft fubmit to it. I ought to work up my mind to endure it with courage; I fhould yield with a chearful and active temper to the inequality of my burthen; but it is neither neceffary nor defirable that I Thould be infenfible to the true ftate of the cafe.

Addifon

1

Addifon ludicrously exclaims in his tragedy of Cato:

What pity 'tis

That we can die but once to serve our country!

If the condition of human life correfponded indeed with this patriotic wifh, a man might content himself to pafs through one of its repetitions under the preffure of great difadvantages. But, when we recollect that we appear but once upon this theatre, that our life is fhort and precarious, that we rife out of nothing, and that, when we die, we "pafs a bourne from which no traveller returns*;" we cannot but deeply regret, that our exertions are fo many ways fettered and drawn afide from their true direction, and that the life we would improve for happiness or for honour, is almost inevitably rendered in a great degree abortive.

The genuine wealth of man is leifure, when it meets with a difpofition to improve it. Ail other riches are of petty and inconfiderable value.

Is there not a ftate of fociety practicable, in which leifure fhall be made the inheritance of every one of its members?

ESSAY II.

OF AVARICE AND PROFUSION.

WHICH character deferves our preference, the man of avaricious habits, or of profufe ones? Which of the two conducts himself in the manner moft beneficial to fociety? Which of the two is actuated by motives the most confonant to juftice and virtue?

Riches and poverty are in fome degree neccffarily incidental to the focial exiftence of man. There is no alternative, but that men must either have their portion of labour affigned them by the fociety at large, and the produce collected into a common stock; or that each man must be left to exert the portion of industry, and cultivate the habits of economy, to which his mind fhall prompt him.

The firft of thefe modes of existence deferves our fixed difapprobation*. It is a state of flavery and imbecility. It reduces the exertions of a human being to the level of a piece of mechanifm, prompted by no perfonal motives, com* Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. II, octavo edition.

penfated