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gravating circumstances, though liable to a certain degree of censure, can hardly be said to have any permanent influence upon the current estimate of a person's moral character. The contemplation of the mutual happiness of lovers, except in very benevolent hearts, always excites a certain degree of envy. It is dread of this envy, at least in part, which makes lovers so coy before third persons, and so impatient of their presence. It is this, quite as much as any thing really ridiculous in their words or conduct, which makes the endearments of lovers such favorite subjects of ridicule. This is the reason why, if a girl is suspected of having a lover, all her female acquaintance at once set to work to tease and torment her. This is the chief reason why women and men are so fond of ferreting out all sorts of love scandals. Vulcan, say the Greek mythologists, having discovered the amours of Venus and Mars, cunningly spread for them an invisible net of steel, caught in which he exposed them naked to the gaze and derision of the other Gods. Vulcan, as an injured husband, though what business had he with Venus for a wife? had reason for his conduct; but men and women, in general, with no other motive than pure envy would delight to see all happy lovers served much in the same way. Hence, whenever we witness the interruption of a commerce of love, the pleasure of triumphing over a person who had the audacity to be happier than we, makes us so insensible to the pain of the abandoned lover, that we are generally more disposed to laugh at him than to sympathize with him. Breaches of friendship are regarded in a much more serious light.

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6. We have shown in the First Part, how the sentiment of admiration tends to reënforce the sentiment of benevolence, and hence to establish towards persons who have any thing admirable about them, a higher standard of duty, than towards ordinary persons. This is the foundation of the duty of inferiors towards superiors.

7. The respect and reverence required from the young towards the old, is always greatest in those primitive communities, as among the savage tribes of Africa and America, in which the experience of age is the chief source of knowledge. It diminishes and even entirely disappears in those more civilized states of society, in which education and books supply, and more than supply, the acquisitions of age and observation.

8. The devotion of subjects towards kings, of the laity towards the clergy, of the commons towards the nobles, of the poor towards the rich, is always regulated, both in theory and practice, by the degree in which actual superiority on the part of kings, priests, the noble, and the rich, is generally felt, and acknowledged. For when the distance between ourselves and those above us is reduced or appears to us to be reduced, within a certain limit, self-comparison springs up, counteracts admiration, expels it, replaces it by envy, and changes what lately were objects of love, into objects of hate. Those who complain of the growing insolence of their inferiors, if they look carefully into the matter, will always find, that either they are falling, or those below them, rising; or that both these operations are

simultaneously going on; so that the superiority which alone can support their claims to respect, no longer exists; or at least not to the extent which they suppose.

9. Chivalrous gallantry towards women depends upon the same cause. It springs from admiration it is, as we have elsewhere shown, an acknowledgment of woman's superiority in the drawing-room, — an acknowledgment not incompatible with the idea of her inferiority everywhere else. By the rules of chivalry, this gallant devotion was due to the fair, the elegant, the accomplished, the noble, that is, to those women fit to be admired; it extended not to the ugly, the vulgar, and the old. Housemaids and peasants' wives were no objects of it. If modern courtesy has anywhere given to this sentiment a greater extension, it has proceeded upon the notion of honoring in each individual woman the beau ideal of woman; in the same way, that, in speaking of the "fair sex," we ascribe to all women that which in fact appertains but to a few.

10. Correlative to the duties of inferiors towards superior are the duties of superiors towards inferiors. Hence the duties of chieftains towards their clansmen, of patrons towards their clients, of the clergy to the laity, of kings towards their subjects, of masters towards their scholars, of the rich towards the poor. The duty of chieftains and leaders requires, in return for adhesion and obedience, not only protection and countenance, but, where the chieftainship is lucrative, the distribution among the followers of

almost its entire revenue. According to old Irish, Scotch, and Saxon ideas, the landlord was rather lord as respected the distribution among his tenants of proceeds of the domain, as to which he was allowed a very arbitrary authority, than lord in any such sense, that he could engross the whole to his own private use. It is absurd for modern British landlords, who let their lands at a rack-rent, to complain of the decay among the people, of old ideas of feudal reverence and attachment. They cannot have love and money too. Indeed, it remains to be seen, how long, after having forfeited and forgone the love, they will be able to keep the money.

11. It is well worthy the consideration of statesmen, that in all systems of positive law, the unlimited right to the disposal of property has been carried much beyond the point hitherto attained upon that subject in any current moral code. The law says that a man may do what he pleases with his own; all codes of morals have vigorously insisted upon Munificence and Charity as imperative duties. It has been attempted to distinguish these duties from those of justice, under which head respect for the rights of property is included, by describing them as duties of imperfect obligation. In fact, however, they rest, like all other duties, upon precisely the same grounds with duties of justice, and the two classes, those said to be of perfect, and those of imperfect, obligation pass imperceptibly into each other.

12. Munificence, otherwise called Liberality, is a duty of the rich, who are expected to dispense in

feasts and entertainments, or otherwise, the greater portion of their wealth. The neglect of this duty, subjects them to the stigma of parsimony, meanness,

avarice.

The performance of it implies but a very small degree of benevolence, and its neglect, therefore, a very great want of it, since, in the exercise of munificence, the sentiment of benevolence is strongly reinforced by the sentiment of self-comparison. The complacency a man naturally feels when presiding at a feast, and distributing his favors among many, perhaps, far his superiors, will account for numerous acts of liberality and munificence on the part of men of very limited benevolence. Such acts, too, are very sure never to lack the due tribute of praise. All those who gain by them, or who hope to gain hereafter by similar acts, join in extolling them. A contribution of ten pounds by a queen or a minister is recorded in all the newspapers, while the widow's mite drops unheeded. The managers of our charitable societies have well understood this part of human nature; and by the ingenious scheme of lists of donations periodically published they have contrived to stimulate even the widow's benevolence, by the prospect of fame and praise.

13. Charity is a duty of far greater scope. It is incumbent, not upon the rich only, but, to a greater or less extent, upon all who have any thing to give. It consists in bestowing a part of what we have to relieve those who have less, and who are suffering from want. The sentiment of benevolence when thus excited, is called Pity. Pity, it has been observed, if on the one hand it be the sister of love, on

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