Слике страница
PDF
ePub

who may expect death every day; and extravagance chiefly in the young, who may reasonably hope to live long; as if old people hoarded money, because they cannot want it; and young ones threw it away, because it is necessary to their subsistence. This conduct must be ascribed to the inconsiderate passions, or folly of man; for I can see no sense or reason in it.-The Reflector.

LXXXIX.

American Indians.-The Muscogulges, and other American Indians, eminently deserve the encomiums of all nations, for their wisdom and virtue in abstaining wholly from spirituous liquors. In all their treaties with the white people, the first and most cogent article is, that there shall not be any kind of spirituous liquors sold or brought into their towns; and the traders are allowed but two kegs, of five gallons each, for a company, as sufficient to serve them on the road: if any of this remain on their approaching the towns, they must spill it on the ground or secrete it on the road, for it must not come into the towns.-Bartram's Travels.

XC.

Popular Errors.-Private persons would not be unhappy (though with less possessions of land or money,) and civil life would not be so obnoxious to law, contentions, fraud, perjury, and depression, if men would set some bounds to their desire of having. Commonwealths, well founded, would be eternal if they could contain themselves within a reasonable extent of territory; and princes would make their own, and the condition of their people much more happy, if, instead of leading them out to foreign conquests, they would endeavour to rule them

with wholesome laws, piety, and justice. But how have these errors, public and private, taken their rise? In all appearance it is from hence, that ever since the corruption of nature, (which is very ancient) we have given wrong names to things, and have allotted to vice the stamps and attributes of virtue. We term avarice, prudence and economy; we think none wise, who abound not in wealth; and none honest, but whom fortune favours: we call the false arts of statesmen, and the evil faith, perjury, and dissimulation of princes, wisdom and deep policy; temerity, we style high courage; ambition, we call a noble thirst after glory; and they who vex, rob, and disturb the world, we dignify with the names of conquerors and heroes.D'Avenant's Essay on Universal Monarchy.

XCI.

Who are the Truly Valuable in Society.-The value set upon a member of society, should be not according to the fineness or intensity of his feelings, to the acuteness of his sensibility, or his readiness to weep for, or deplore the misery he may meet with in the world; but in proportion to the sacrifices which he is ready to make, and to the knowledge and talents which he is able and willing to contribute towards removing this misery. To benefit mankind is a much more difficult task than some seem to imagine; it is not quite so easy as to make a display of amiable sensibility: the first requires long study and pain. ful abstinence from the various alluring pleasures by which we are surrounded; the second in most cases demands only a little acting, and even when sincere, is utterly useless to the public.-Westminster Review-No. 3. VOL. I.-5

XCII.

Duelling. We read in Swedish history, that Adolphus, King of Sweden, determining to suppress these false notions of honour, issued a severe edict against the practice. Two gentlemen, however, generals in his service, on a quarrel, agreed to solicit the King's permission to decide their difference by the laws of honour. The King consented, and said, he would be present at the combat. He was, attended by a body of guards and the public executioner, and before they proceeded to the onset, he told these gentlemen, that they must fight till one of them died. Then turning to the executioner, he added, do you immediately strike off the head of the survivor.

This had the intended effect; the difference between the two officers was adjusted, and no more challenges were heard of in the army of Gustavus Adolphus.— Trusler's Memoirs.

XCIII.

Signs of the Times.-If the attention be turned to con. tinental affairs, it meets with an assemblage of heterogeneous elements, held together by the operation of force, and in compliance with the interests of a few individuals, not united by the cementing bond of public utility and the common good.

In circumstances thus unnatural and perverted, it is not surprising that revolutionary principles have disseminated themselves from the Tagus to the Neva; and that a spirit of liberty, the eldest born offspring of the Art of Printing, continues to impress indelible changes upon every nation of the civilized world; before this influence, existing institutions must bend; before this illumination,

abuses and absurd combinations must disappear, or society will eventually dissolve and founder, to be recast in a mould more adapted to existing feelings, and co-ordinate with the interest, and commensurate with the neeessities, of the great mass of mankind.-Sir T. Morgan.

XCIV.

The Laws of England not known to the People.-Neither in great characters nor small, neither in public places nor private, are the laws of England promulgated to the people of England. They are not even advertised, as common pamphlets are. They may indeed be had from the shops, and read, some time after, among the statutes at large, by men of the profession, and a few others; but the multitude are left to know as they can, or, to speak more properly, not to know them at all. In short, when I consider the egregious ignorance of the people of England touching their laws, it calls to my mind that period in the Roman government, when "the calendar was so profound a mystery, that application was usually made to a few lawyers in the secret, in order to know the days of pleading."-Sylva, or the Wood.

XCV.

Penal Laws.-The disorders that may arise from a rigorous observance of the letter of penal laws, are not to be compared with those produced by the interpretation of them. The first are temporary inconveniences, which oblige the legislature to correct the letter of the law (the want of precision, and uncertainty of which have occasioned these disorders,) and this will put a stop to the fatal liberty of explaining, a source of arbitrary and venal declamations. When a code of laws is once fixed, it

1

should be observed in the literal sense, and nothing more left to the judge, than to determine, whether an action be or be not comformable to the written law. When the rule

of right, which ought to direct the actions of philosophers as well as the ignorant, is a matter of controversy, not of fact the people are slaves to the magistrates. The despotism of this multitude of tyrants is more insupportable, the less the distance is between the oppressor and the oppressed; more fatal than that of one, for the tyranny of many is not to be shaken off, but by fleeing to that of one alone; it is more cruel as it meets with more opposition, for the cruelty of a tyrant is not in proportion to his strength, but to the obstacles that oppose him.-Marquis Beccaria-Essay on Crimes and Punishments.

XCVI.

Of Courage. That prowess is often occasional and the effect of frame, is evident by a man's being more courageous at one time than another, from better health and better spirits; we have numberless instances of this. The Honourable and Reverend Mr. Cholmondley, Rector of Hertingfordbury, Herts, once an officer, broke for cowardice at the battle of Dettingen, had acquitted himself with marked bravery on some former occasion; Sir Eyre Coote, who, when a subaltern, was broke for running away at the battle of Falkirk, signalized himself in more advanced life with uncommon heroism in India; and Lord George Sackville, broke for cowardice at the battle of Minden, acquitted himself afterwards manly in a duel; and yet Lord Ligonier, who delivered him the orders, from Prince Ferdinand, declared to me that he was a rank coward. Death, therefore, should never be inflicted for want of courage. When Admiral Byng was

« ПретходнаНастави »