well watered every where, even as the garden of the Lord. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan, and journeyed cast, and Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan."

Upon the same principle was founded the right of migration, or sending colonies to find out new habitations, when the mother-country was over-charged with inhabitants; which was practised as well by the Phoenicians and Greeks, as the Germans, Scythians, and other northern people. And so long as it was confined to the stocking and cultivation of desart uninhabited countries, it kept strictly within the limits of the law of nature. But how far the seizing on countries already peopled, and driving out or massacring the innocent and defenceless natives, merely because they differed from their invaders in language, in religion, in customs, in government, or in colour; how far such a conduct was consonant to nature, to reason, or to Christianity, deserved well to be considered by those who have rendered their names immortal by thus civilizing mankind.

As the world by degrees grew more populous, it daily became more difficult to find out new spots to inhabit, without encroaching upon former occupants; and, by constantly occupying the same individual spot, the fruits of the earth were consumed and its spontaneous produce destroyed, without any provision for a future supply or succession. It therefore became necessary to pursue some regular method of providing a constant subsistence; and this necessity produced, or at least promoted and encouraged, the art of agriculture. And the art of agriculture, by a regular connection and consequence, introduced and established the idea of a more permanent property in the soil, than had hitherto been received and adopted. It was clear, that the earth would not produce her fruits in sufficient quantities, without the assistance of tillage: but who would be at the pains of tilling it, if another might watch an opportunity to seize upon and enjoy the product of his industry, art, and labour? Had not therefore a separate property in lands, as moveables, been vested in some individuals the world must have continued a forest, and men have been mere animals of prey; which, according to some philosophers, is the genuine state of nature. Whereas now (so graciously has Provi

dence interwoven our duty and our happiness together) the result of this very necessity has been the ennobling of the human species, by giving it opportunities of im proving its rational faculties, as well as of exerting its natural. Necessity begat property; and, in order to insure that property, recourse was had to civil society, which brought along with it a long trainof inseparable concomitants; states, governments, laws, punishments, and the public exercise of religious duties. Thus connected together, it was found that a part only of society was sufficient to provide, by their manual labour, for the necessary subsistence of all; and leisure was given to others to cultivate the human mind, to invent useful arts, and to lay the foundations of science.

The only question remaining is, How this property became actually vested; or what it is that gave a man an exclusive right to retain in a permanent manner, that specific land which before belonged ge nerally to every body, but particularly to nobody? And, as we before observed that occupancy gave the right to the temporary use of the soil, so it is agreed upon all hands that occupancy also gave the original right to the permanent property in the substance of the earth itself; which excludes every one else but the owner from the use of it. There is indeed some difference among the writers on natural law, concerning the reason why occupancy should convey this right, and invest one with this absolute property: Grotius and Puffendorf insist ing that this right of occupancy is founded upon a tacit and implied assent of all man kind, that the first occupant should become the owner and Barbeyrac, Titius, Mr. Locke, and others, holding, that there no such implied assent, neither is it nece sary that there should be; for that the very act of occupancy alone, being a degree ci bodily labour, is, from a principle of na tural justice, without any consent or com pact, sufficient of itself to gain a title. A dispute that savours too much of nice and scholastic refinement! However, both sides agree in this, that occupancy is the thing by which the title was in fact originally gained; every man seizing to his one continued use, such spots of ground as be found most agreeable to his own conve nience, provided he found them unoccu pied by any one else.

Blackstone's Commentarys.

80. Retirement of no Use to some. To lead the life I propose with satisfaction and profit, renouncing the pleasures and business of the world, and breaking the habits of both, is not sufficient: the supine creature, whose understanding is superficially employed through life, about a few general notions, and is never bent to a close and steady pursuit of truth, may renounce the pleasures and business of the world, for even in the business of the world we see such creatures often employed, and may break the habits; nay, he may retire and drone away life in solitude like a monk, or like him over the door of whose house, as if his house had been his tomb, somebody writ, "Here lies such an one:" but no such man will be able to make the true use of retirement. The employment of his mind, that would have been agreeable and easy if he had accustomed himself to it early, will be unpleasant and impracticable late: such men lose their intellectual powers for want of exerting them, and, having trifled away youth, are reduced to the necessity of trifling away age. It fares with the mind just as it does with the body. He who was born with a texture of brain as strong as that of Newton, may become unable to perform the common rules of arithmetic; just as he who has the same elasticity in his muscles, the same suppleness in his joints, and all his nerves and sinews as well braced as Jacob Hall, may become a fat unwieldy sluggard. Yet further; the implicit creature, who has thought it all his life needless, or unlawful, to examine the principles of facts that he took originally on trust, will be as little able as the other to improve his solitude to any good purpose: unless we call it a good purpose, for that sometimes happens, to confirm and exalt his prejudices, so that he may live and die in one continued delirium. The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life, are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life: and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labour on in a maze of error, because they have wandered there too long

The

nor of the method of funding that immediately took place; which, absurd as they are, have continued ever since, till it is become scarce possible to alter them. Few people, I say, foresaw how the creation of funds, and the multiplication of taxes, would increase yearly the power of the crown, and bring our liberties, by a natural and necessary progression, into more real, though less apparent danger, than they were in before the Revolution. excessive ill husbandry practised from the very beginning of king William's reign, and which laid the foundations of all we feel and all we fear, was not the effect of ignorance, mistake, or what we call chance, but of design and scheme in those who had the sway at that time. I am not so uncharitable, however, as to believe, that they intended to bring upon their country all the mischiefs that we, who came after them, experience and apprehend. No; they saw the measures they took singly, and unrelatively, or relatively alone to some immediate object. The notion of attaching men to the new government, by tempting them to embark their fortunes on the same bottom, was a reason of state to some: the notion of creating a new, that is, a monied interest, in opposition to the landed interest, or as a balance to it, and of acquiring a superior influence in the city of London, at least, by establishment of great corporations, was a reason of party to others and I make no doubt that the opportunity of amassing immense estates by the managements of funds, by trafficking in paper, and by all the arts of jobbing, was a reason of private interest to those who supported and improved this scheme of iniquity, if not to those who devised it. They looked no farther. Nay, we who came after them, and have long tasted the bitter fruits of the corruption they planted, were far from taking such an alarm at ou distress, and our danger, as they deserved, till the most remote and fatal effect of causes, laid by the last generation, was very near becoming an object of experience in this.

Ibid.

§ 81, Consequences of the Revolution of

1688.

Few men at that time looked forward enough, to foresee the necessary consequences of the new constitution of the revenue that was soon afterwards formed,

a Lady.

It has often been alledged, that the passions can never be wholly deposed, and that by appealing to these, a good writer will always be able to force himself into the hearts of his readers; but even the strongest passions are weakened, nay, some times totally extinguished and destroyed, by mutual opposition, dissipation, and acquired insensibility. How often at our theatre, has the tear of sympathy and burst of laughter been repressed by a malignant species of pride, refusing approbation to the author and actor, and renouncing society with the audience! I have seen a young creature, possessed of the most delicate complexion, and exhibiting features that indicate sensibility, sit without the least emotion, and behold the most tender and pathetic scenes of Otway, represented with all the energy of action; so happy had she been in her efforts to conquer the prejudices of nature. She had been trained up in the belief that nothing was more aukward, than to betray a sense of shame or sympathy; she seemed to think that a consent of passion with the vulgar, would impair the dignity of her character; and that she herself ought to be the only object of approbation. But she did not consider that such approbation is seldom acquired by disdain; and that want of feeling is a very bad recommendation to the human heart. For my own share, I never fail to take a survey of the female part of an audience, at every interesting incident of the drama. When I perceive the tear stealing down a lady's cheek, and the sudden sigh escape from her breast, I am attracted towards her by an irresistible emotion of tenderness and esteem; her eyes shine with enchanting lustre, through the pearly moisture that surrounds them; my heart warms at the glow which humanity kindles on her cheek, and keeps time with the accelerated heavings of her snowy bosom; I at once love her benevolence, and revere her discernment. On the contrary, when I see a une woman's face unaltered by the distress of the scene, with which I myself am affected, I resent her indifference as an insult on my own understanding; I suppose her heart to be savage, her disposition unsocial, her organs indelicate, and exclaim with the fox in the fable, O pulchrum caput, sed cerebrum non habet!

Yet this insensibility is not perhaps owing to any original defect. Nature may have stretched the string, though it has long ceased to vibrate. It may have been

displaced and distracted by the first violence offered to the native machine; it may have lost its tone through long disuse; or be so twisted and overstrained as to produce an effect very different from that which was primarily intended. If so little regard is paid to nature when she knocks so powerfully at the breast, she must be altogether neglected and despised in her calmer mood of serene tranquility, when nothing appears to recommend her but simplicity, propriety and innocence. A clear, blue sky, spangled with stars, will prove a homely and insipid object to eyes accustomed to the glare of torches, tapers, gilding, and glitter: they will be turned with loathing and disgust from the green mantle of the spring, so gorgeously adorned with buds and foliage, flowers, and blossoms, to contemplate a gaudy negligée, striped and intersected with abrupt unfriendly tints that fetter the masses of light, and distract the vision; and cut and pinked into the most fantastic forms: and flounced and furbelowed, patched and fringed with all the littleness of art, unknown to elegance. Those ears that are offended by the sweetly wild notes of the thrush, the black-bird, and the nightingale, the distant cawing of the rook, the tender cooing of the turtle, the soft sighing of reeds and osiers, the magic murmur of lapsing streams; will be regaled and ravished by the extravagant and alarming notes of a squeaking fiddle, extracted by a musician who has no other genius than that which lies in his fingers; they will even be entertained with the rattling of coaches, the rumbling of carts, and the delicate cry of cod and mackarel.

The sense of smelling that delights in the scent of excrementitious animal juices, such as musk, civet, and urinous salts, will loath the fragrancy of new mown hay, the hawthorn's bloom, the sweet briar, the honey-suckle, and the rose; and the organs that are gratified with the taste of sickly veal which has been bled into the palsy, rotten pullets crammed into fevers, brawn made up of dropsical pig, the abortion of pigeons and of poultry, 'sparagus gorged with the crude unwholesome juice of dung, pease without substance, peaches without taste, and pine-apples without flavour, will certainly nauseate the native, genuine, and salutary taste of Welsh beef, Banstead mutton, Hampshire pork, and barn-door fowls; whose juices are concocted by a natural digestion, and whose flesh is consolidated by free air and exercise.

In such a total perversion of the senses, the ideas must be misrepresented, the powers of the imagination disordered, and the judgment of consequence unsound. The disease is attended with a false appetite, which the natural food of the mind will not satisfy. It must have sauces compounded of the most heterogeneous trash. The soul seems to sink into a kind of sleepy idiotism, or childish vacancy of thought. It is diverted by toys and baubles, which can only be pleasing to the most superficial curiosity. It is enlivened by a quick suc cession of trivial objects, that glisten, and glance, and dance before the eye; and, like an infant kept awake and inspirited by the sound of a rattle, it must not only be dazzled and aroused, but also cheated, hurried, and perplexed by the artifice of deception, business, intricacy, and intrigue, which is a kind of low juggle that may be termed the legerdemain of genius. This being the case, it cannot enjoy, nor indeed distinguish, the charms of natural and moral beauty or decorum. The ingenuous blush of native innocence, the plain language of ancient faith and sincerity, the cheerful resignation to the will of heaven, the mutual affection of the charities, the voluntary respect paid to superior dignity or station, the virtue of beneficence extended even to the brute creation, nay, the very crimson glow of health and swelling lines of beauty, are despised, detested, scorned, and ridiculed, as ignorance, rudeness, rusticity, and superstition.

Smollet.

84. Simplicity a principal Beauty in Writing.

If we examine the writers whose compositions have stood the test of ages, and ob#tained that highest honour, the concurrent approbation of distant times and nations, we shall find that the character of simplicity is the unvarying circumstance, which alone hath been able to gain this universal homage from mankind. Among the Greeks, whose writers in general are of the simple kind, the divinest poet, the most commanding orator, the finest historian, the deepest philosopher, are, above the rest, conspicuously eminent in this great quality. The Roman writers rise towards perfection, according to that measure of true simplicity which they mingle in their works. Indeed they are all inferior to the Greck models. But who will deny, that Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Livy, Te

rence, Tully, are at once the simplest and best Roman writers? unless we add the noble Annalist, who appeared in after times; who, notwithstanding the political turn of his genius, which sometimes interferes, is admirable in this great quality; and by it, far superior to his contemporaries. It is this one circumstance that hath raised the venerable Dante, the father of modern poetry, above the succeeding poets of his country, who could never long maintain the local and temporary honours bestowed upon them; but have fallen under that just neglect, which time will ever decree to those who desert a just simplicity for the florid colourings of style, contrasted phrases, affected conceits, the mere trappings of composition, and Gothic minutiæ. It is this hath given to Boileau the most lasting wreath in France, and to Shakespeare and Milton in England; especially to the last, whose writings are more unmixed in this respect, and who had formed himself entirely on the simple model of the best Greek writers and the sacred scriptures, As it appears from these instances, that simplicity is the only universal characteristic of just writing; so the superior eminence of the sacred scriptures in this prime qua lity hath been generally acknowledged. One of the greatest critics in antiquity, himself conspicuous in the sublime and simple manner, hath borne this testimony to the writings of Moses and St. Paul; and by parity of reason we must conclude, that had he been conversant with the other sacred writers, his taste and candour would have allowed them the same encomium.

Brown's Essays.

§ 85. Simplicity conspicuous in the Scrip

tures.

It hath been often observed, even by writers of no mean rank, that the " scrip tures suffer in their credit by the disadvan tage of a literal version, while other ancient writings enjoy the advantage of a free and embellished translation." But in reality these gentlemen's concern is ill placed and groundless. For the truth is, "That most other writings are indeed impaired by a literal translation? whereas, giving only a due regard to the idioms of different languages, the sacred writings, when terally translated, are then in their full perfection."

Now this is an internal proof, that in 2 other writings there is a mixture of lecz relative, exterior ornament; which is often lost in the translation from one langua