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on the amount of moral good and evil in the world, in every ture generation, an influence, which it is as little possible for them to shake off, as for the sovereign of many states to abdicate his moral sway, and to be a sovereign only with his sceptre or his sword.

From this inevitable influence of example, by which every moral or immoral action that is performed by us, may have consequences that never entered into our design or our wish, when we planned or performed it, arises one very important duty, the du ty of attending to the appearances of our actions. It is not enough for us to have willed what is virtuous, and to have executed it, by means that in themselves imply no immorality, if they have been such as might lead others to suspect the purity of what was truly pure. The loss which we might, ourselves, suffer in this way, in our character and authority, is not the only evil, nor, in many cases, the greatest evil, of such seeming improprieties. We may, without due care as to appearances, act virtuously, and yet give all the authority of our station and character to vice,-misleading those to whom our example may have the force of precept, and, perhaps, by some of the most generous sacrifices of which our nature is capable, inducing the inconsiderate, who suppose that they are imitating us, to quit that moral good which we truly sought, for the evil which we only seemed to them to pursue.

The only remaining species of injury to others, the duty of abstaining from which, we have still to consider, is that which relates to their mental tranquillity.

This, indeed, all the other species of injury already considered by us, tend indirectly to disturb. But the injury of which I speak at present, is the direct violation of the peace of others, by our immediate intentional influence on their feelings.

In treating of the emotions of pride, particularly in the form of that haughtiness which the proud are so apt to assume,-I have already treated of one of the most injurious influences of this sort, my remarks on which it would be unnecessary now to repeat. You must be sufficiently aware, that the aim of the haughty is to excite in others the mortifying feeling of their abject inferiority; and that, if they could always produce the feelings which they wish to excite, they would not merely have all the guilt of a cru

el tyranny, for that they have, even in their most powerless wishes, but would truly, in their very effects, be the most severe of human tyrants.

It is not the insolence of the haughty, however, which is the only intentional disquieter of others. There is a power in every individual, over the tranquillity of almost every individual. There are emotions, latent in the mind of those whom we meet, which a few words of ours may at any time call forth; and the moral influence which keeps this power over the uneasy feelings of others, under due restraint, is not the least important of the moral influences, in its relation to general happiness.

There are minds which can delight in exercising this cruel sway, which rejoice in suggesting thoughts that may poison the confidence of friends, and render the very virtues that were loved, objects of suspicion to him who loved them. In the daily and hourly intercourse of human life, there are human beings, who exert their malicious skill, in devising what subjects may be most likely to bring into the mind of him with whom they converse, the most mortifying remembrances;-who pay visits of condolence, that they may be sure of making grief a little more severely felt ;-who are faithful in conveying to every one the whispers of unmerited scandal, of which, otherwise, he never would have heard, as he never could have suspected them, though, in exercising this friendly office, they are careful to express sufficient indignation against the slanderer, and to bring forward as many grounds of suspicion against different individuals, as their fancy can call up ;—who talk to some disappointed beauty, of all the splendid preparations for the marriage of her rival,-to the unfortunate dramatic poet, of the success of the last night's piece, and of the great improvement, which has taken place in modern taste;—and who, if they could have the peculiar good fortune of meeting with any one, whose father was hanged, would probably find no subject so attractive to their eloquence, as the number of executions that were speedily to take place.

Such power man may exercise over the feelings of man; and, as it is impossible to frame laws which can comprehend injuries of this sort, such power man may exercise over man with legal impunity. But it is a power, of which the virtuous man will as little think of availing himself, for purposes of cruelty, as if a

thousand laws had made it as criminal as it is immoral;-a power which he will as little think of exercising, because it would require only the utterance of a few easy words, as if inflicting a mortal blow, because it would require only a single motion of his hand.

The true preservative against this power, is that which is the protector of the virtuous from all other injury-their own purity of conscience. It is not easy to excite permanently, any unpleas ant images in the mind of one who, in the retrospect of life, has only virtuous actions or virtuous desires to remember-who has wished to keep nothing secret from the worid, but the benefactions that provided as carefully for the virtuous shame, as for the very wants of poverty; and who, therefore, if his whole mind, could become visible, would be not less, but more beloved. The tranquillity of such a mind may, indeed, be disturbed, for a moment, by the petty malice that would strive to awake in it, disagreeable remembrances; but, even when it may be thus disturbed, there is no painful feeling so likely to arise in it, as regret for that malice itself which it disdains, indeed, but which it cannot disdain without some accompanying pity.

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LECTURE LXXXVI.

ON OUR POSITIVE DUTIES; ON THE DUTIES OF BENEVOLENCE.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I concluded my remarks on the order of our general duties, which are negative only-that is say, which consist in abstinence from the different sorts of injury, which it is in our power, directly or indirectly, to occasion to others.

to

These we considered under seven heads-as our actions may be injurious to others, in their person—in their property-in the affection of those whom they love—in their general character—in their knowledge or belief, as affected by the confidence which they place in the truth of our declarations in their virtue, as subject to the influence of our intentional seductions, or to the unintended influence of our mere example; and, lastly in their peace of mind, —which, as liable to be disturbed by mortifying reflections, that are in most cases easy to be excited, is in some measure under our control,-from the power which the principle of suggestion gives us over the trains of thought of others, and consequently over the general emotions, pleasing or unpleasing, which result from those trains of thought, or form a part of them.

To abstain, however, from every species of injury, which it is in our power to occasion to others, though it is an important part of virtue, is but a part of it. Even in our most scrupulous forbearance from all the evil which we might produce, if this abstinence, however complete, were all, the world would still be only as if we had not been. There might be before our very eyes misery, which, though not produced by ourselves, was not the less an evil, and which a slight effort on our part-a word—a very look expressive of a wish-might have been sufficient to

remove. There might, in like manner, be means of easy happiness to individuals or whole families, which required only the same simple wishes on our part, to convert them into happiness itself, but which would be wholly unproductive without us; and yet, if we had no feelings which led us to be more than passively and negatively good, the misery would remain unrelieved, and the happiness be unproduced or unpromoted.

Nature, then, when she conferred on us, in so many noble powers of mind and body, such abundant facilities of usefulness, did not leave us destitute of the wishes, which alone could make these facilities valuable. She has given us a benevolence that desires the good of all, and a principle of moral feeling, which, when we allow an opportunity of being widely beneficial to escape, speaks to us with a voice of reproach, which it is not easy for us to still. By the one, we merely desire the happiness of mankind by the other, we feel, that to promote this happiness of mankind is a duty.

It is in this latter respect, that we are at present to consider our power of being beneficial, as giving occasion to a duty, or set of duties, corresponding with the particular species of good, which any exertion on our part can occasion or further.

So important is this duty of benevolence, that, as I formerly mentioned, some very eminent moralists have been led to maintain, that whatever is felt by us to be virtuous, is felt to deserve that name merely as involving some benevolent desire,-an opinion which is evidently founded on a partial view of the phenomena; since the experience of every one, if he attend sufficiently to his own feelings, without regard to any system, must convince him, that he has a similar emotion of moral regard, in cases in which, the thought of personal duty, as in many of the noblest efforts of self-command, was all which could have been present to the mind of the agent; or in which, though it might be possible to invent some benevolent motive, as what might influence the fortitude of the heroic sufferer, the moral admiration was at least far more rapid than the tardy invention of the benevolence. The doctrine of virtue, false as it is when maintained, as consisting in benevolence, as universal and exclusive, is yet, when considered as having the sanction of so many enlightened men, a proof at least of the very extensive diffusion of benevolence in the modes