"tinism! and let us hasten to the house of the har"lot; let us drink the sweet cup of intoxication; let "us scorn the creeping manners of vulgar industry, ❝and, like men of spirit, seek our fortunes with a "pistol on the highway.'

We will suppose the case of a great officer of state, but of an abandoned character, residing at a great house in a populous street of the metropolis. His conspicuous station draws the eyes of all the neighbours on every part of his private as well as his public conduct. His neighbours, we will proceed to suppose, are honest men, bred in what he calls the prejudices, but which they really believed the vir tues, of their forefathers. They are faithful husbands, they are constant churchmen. They are temperate and economical. They are industrious in. their occupations, and just in the payment of their debts. But the great man produces in them a total metamorphosis. He lives in a state of fashionable separation from his wife, whom he treated cruelly: and wickedly. He keeps a mistress. His house is a constant scene of intemperate festivity. His Sundays are, in a peculiar manner, devoted to jollity, gaming, and debauchery. He would as soon think of going to heaven as to church; and as to paying debts, it is quite unfashionable, and he has genteeler methods of expending his money than on the low tradesmen who supply him with nothing else but necessaries. Who, that has any pretensions to fashion, could bear to neglect a horse-race and the gaming-table, merely to satisfy the greasy inhabitants of Clare-market? Such is sometimes the example of the great neighbour.

Now I ask, whether the restraints of a common education or of common principles, whether the maxims of books or the admonitions of preachers,' can counterbalance the weight of such an example,' rendered brilliant by riches and grandeur, and still farther recommended by the patronage of a king, and the authority of office? Vice and misery are communicated from him, first to his neighbourhood, and then to the public at large, like infectious and fatal diseases from the foul contagion of a putrid

carcase.

But if a king, a court, a ministry, a parliament, were to honour and reward those only, or chiefly, whose characters were unimpeached, and to brand with infamy, or at least to neglect, the abandoned libertine and the audacious blasphemer, however celebrated for eloquence and abilities, then would the empire be fixed on a basis of adamant: then would faction and rebellion be no more; and the rulers of this world would deserve to be honoured with a title to which they have usually but little claim, that of the Representatives of the Beneficent and Almighty Lord of all Creation.

NO. CXLVII. ON THE PROFLIGACY AND CONSEQUENT MISERY OF THE LOWER CLASSES, AND ON THE MEANS OF PREVENTION.

A CONTEMPLATIVE and benevolent man can scarcely look down for a moment on the lower walks of life without feeling his compassion powerfully excited. On whatever side he turns, he be holds human nature sadly degraded, and sinking

into the most deplorable wretchedness, in proportion as it recedes from its natural and its attainable perfection. Ye philosophers, who exert your ingenuity to explode, as unnecessary, the little virtue and religion that remain among us, leave your closets awhile, and survey mankind as they are found in the purlieus of a great metropolis, in the haunts of old Drury, of St. Giles's, of Duke's Place, of Hockley in the Hole, of the brothel, of the prison-house; and then say, whether your hearts do not smite you on the recollection, that you have exercised those talents which God Almighty gave you for benignant purposes, in breaking down the fences of morality! Let him who coolly controverts the distinction between moral good and evil, and who, instigated by vice and vanity, boldly fights against the religion of Jesus, and the comfortable doctrines. of grace and redemption, repair to the cells of the convict, to the condemned hole, and spend the midnight hour with the murderer who is doomed to fall a victim on the morrow to the justice of his country. Ah! little think the conceited sophists, who sit calmly at their desks, and teach men to laugh at all that is serious and sacred, to what an abyss of misery the actual practice of their speculative opinions will reduce the poor lost child of fallen Adam! If they thought on this, and possessed hearts capable of feeling, they would shudder at the tendency of their writings, and henceforth employ their abilities in restoring human nature to happiness and dignity.

The evils arising from the poverty of the lower ranks are trifling, when compared with those oc

cassioned by their depravity. There is, indeed, no real and substantial happiness, of which poverty, when accompanied with health and innocence, is not capable; but wallowing in vice, involved in the perplexities of fraud, haunted by the fears of detection, and distressed and tormented with the diseases of intemperance, it becomes such a state of wretchedness and wickedness as can only be exceeded in the regions of infernal torture. And can the rulers of this world possess a plenitude of power without attempting to exert it in its fullest force in the prevention, or at least the mitigation, of extreme misery among the lowest, the most numerous, and perhaps the most useful members of the community? I have no esteem for that species of politics which pretends to pursue a national good independently of the happiness of individuals; and I cannot help thinking, a system of government which derives any part of its wealth from the wretchedness of the greater part of its subjects, not only defective but diabolical. To encourage intoxication for the sake of increasing a revenue, though it may be natural in a confederacy of sharpers, is an idea so mean, so base, so cruel, that the statesman who entertains it, however loaded with civil honours, and renowned for his wisdom, deserves to be stigmatized with immortal infamy. That the vices and miseries of the lower classes chiefly arise from the multiplication of houses of public entertainment, is a truth which none have ever controverted. And perhaps no effectual and permanent remedy can be applied, without the in-, terposition of the legislature, in lessening the 1.umber of public-houses, and in exacting a strict scrutiny

into the characters of those to whom licences are allowed.

But in the present constitution of affairs, it is greatly to be feared, that the desire of raising a large revenue will usually supersede all moral considerations. What, indeed, is the moralist to the financier? The greatness of empire, like that of private life, is for the most part estimated by riches, exclusively of private virtue and of intellectual excellence. If then we vainly appeal to the legislature, we must seek, in other resources, for the alleviation of a disease which perhaps the legislature alone can radically cure.

Now it is certain, that much of the profligacy of the plebeian order arises from extreme ignorance. All men pursue with ardour the possession of some good, real or imaginary. What is it which must constitute this good, and appear superior to all other objects, in the mind of a wretch born in a cellar or a garret of Kent-street, or Broad St. Giles's, almost starved with cold and hunger during his infancy, beaten, reviled, abused, neglected while a boy, and conduct ed to manhood amidst the most shocking examples of cruelty and fraud, of drunkenness and debauchery? Is it probable that, for the most part, he should have an idea of any other good but the possession of money, and the indulgence of the grossest sensuality? Can he have any principles or habits of virtue to restrain him from secret fraud and open violence? His understanding is no less rude and uncultivated than that of the savage, and becomes at last incapable of admitting any instruction but in the low tricks of a thief, and the ar tifices of a prostitute. The world exists not to him,