more advantageous to mankind, than the conduct of the man who, with honourable intentions, is continually misapplying his wealth to what he calls public benefits and charitable uses.

It deserves to be remarked that the prejudice and folly of the world has frequently bestowed the epithet of miser upon a man, merely for the parsimony and simplicity of his style of living, who has been found, whenever a real and unquestionable occasion occurred, to be actuated by the best charities and the most liberal spirit in his treatment of others. Such a man might answer his calumniators in the words of Louis the twelfth of France, I had rather my countrymen should laugh at my parsimony, than weep for my injustice and oppression.

This speculation upon the comparative merits of avarice and profusion, may perhaps be found to be of greater importance than at first sight might be imagined. It includes in it the first principles of morality, and of justice between man and man. It strikes at the root of a deception that has long been continued, and long proved a curse to all the civilised nations of the earth. It tends to familiarise the mind to those strict and severe

principles of judging, without which our energy, as well as our usefulness, will lie in a very narrow compass. It contains the germs of a code of political science, and may perhaps be found inti

mately connected with the extensive diffusion of liberty and happiness.

ESSAY III.

OF BEGGARS.

THE use of wealth is a science attended with uncommon difficulties.

This is a proposition that would prove extremely revolting to those whom fortune has placed under no very urgent necessity of studying this science. The poor imagine they can very easily tell in what manner a rich man ought to dispose of his wealth. They scarcely ever impute to him ignorance, scruples or difficulties. If he do not act as they would have him, they ascribe it to the want of will to perform his duty, not to the want of knowledge as to what duty prescribes.

The first observation that offers itself, is, that he cannot give to all that ask, nor even to all that want, for his faculty in this respect is limited. There must therefore be a selection.

The limitation of his faculties is however by no means the only difficulty that presents itself to a rich man in the employment of his riches.

Knotty points, uncertainties, and a balance of good and evil as to almost every case that can occur, present themselves on every side.

This may be illustrated from the trite question respecting the relief of common beggars. Much has been written and remarked upon this subject, but perhaps it is not yet exhausted.

The case in their favour is an obvious one. What they appear to stand in need of, is food and shelter, articles of the first necessity. I can scarcely look at them without imagining their wants to be urgent. It is past dispute that their situation is unfortunate, worthy of interference and pity. What they ask is of very trivial value. No man can be so dead to the first feelings of the heart, so hardened by long practice of the world and the frequent sight of calamity, as not to know that the first impulse of the mind is to direct us to comply. If an angelic being were to descend from a superior sphere, ignorant of the modes of human life and the nature of human character, and were to see a poor, half-naked, shivering creature, entreating in the most doleful accents the gift of the smallest coin, while another creature, with all the exterior of ease and comfort, passed by, and turned a deaf ear to the complaint, he would pronounce this man corrupt, cruel, and unfeeling, the disgrace of a rational nature.

Yet there are men that do honour to our na❤ ture, who regard it as a duty to conduct themselves in this manner.

Riches is a relative term. Many men who are enabled to maintain an appearance of ease and comfort, and have something to spare, if they have daily occasion to traverse the streets of this metropolis, would find their purse exhausted, and themselves unable to support the drain, if they were to give, to every beggar they met, no more than the precise sum which custom has taught him to demand. The richest nobleman would find a liberal relief of common beggars amount to so serious a sum, as would oblige him, if he were prudent and conscientious, to consider maturely whether this were the most useful mode in which it could be expended. It was the multiplicity of common beggars, that first taught men at ease in their circumstances to hesitate respecting the propriety of indiscriminately relieving them.

Another circumstance which was calculated to suggest doubts, is the impudence and importunity which are frequently practised by those who pursue the trade of a common beggar. It is sufficiently evident respecting many that infest the streets of London, that they depend upon this as their principal resource. Their cry is loud; their demand is incessantly repeated; they obstinately

attach themselves to your steps; and it is only by a manner as resolute as theirs that you can shake them off. There is something in the human mind that lends its aid to their project. We are at least not sure but that we shall do right in relieving them. A suspicion of duty joins itself with the desire to rid ourselves of a troublesome intrusion, and we yield to their demand. This is not however an action that we review with much complacency; and it inevitably communicates a sentiment of scepticism to the whole system.

A third circumstance which produces a similar effect, is the impostures which we frequently discover in this species of suitors. The whole avocation seems reduced to an art. They cannot be always in that paroxysm of sorrow, the expression of which so many of them endeavour to throw into their voice. If we observe them from a distance, we frequently perceive that they are talking tranquilly and at their ease, and we discover that a part of their misery is made for other persons to see, not for themselves to feel. They are careful to expose the parts of their bodies that are diseased; they affect an appearance of being more wretched than they are; not seldom they assume the guise of infirmities to which they are really strangers.

Beggars are of two classes. Those who practice the vocation for a time only, driven by the