voice of conscience be heard by those who live in the noise and tumult of pleasurable pursuits? or can the mild doctrines of the humble Jesus be attended to amid the agitations of the gaming table and the debaucheries of a brothel? A vicious nobleman, or profligate man of fashion, contributes more to extirpate morality, and diminish the little portion of happiness which is allowed to mankind than all the malignant writings of the sceptics, from Mandeville and Bolingbroke, down to the feeble and cowardly, yet conceited writer, who insinuates his corrupt and infidel opinions under the fair semblance of an elegant history. I cannot help observing, when I think of this last and recent attempt, that it resembles that of the evil spirit, who, when he beguiled the mother of mankind, and ruined all her progeny, used the soft words of an affected eloquence. The serpent was however cursed; but the wily historian is invited to a court, rewarded with places of honour and advantage, and eagerly enroled In the legislative body of a mighty and a Christian nation.

It is certainly true, that when a government bestows peculiar honour on men who have written against the religion of the country, and who have impiously fought against the King of kings, it must lose the respect and attachment of all good men. The religion of a country is unquestionably worthy of more solicitude in its preservation than the political constitution, however excellent and admirable. Kings, with all their minions and prerogatives, lawgivers and laws, are trifles compared to that system of religion, on which depends the temporal and eternal welfare of every individual throughout the empire. What avails it, that under a successful administration the French are beaten and the Americans scourged for the sin of rebellion, if the same administration ruins our best our sweetest hopes;

those which rely on the protection of a kind Providence, and those which cheer us in this vale of misery, by the bright gleams of a sun which shall rise to set no more?

But supposing the narrow minded ministers of a government so involved in gaming, sensuality, and temporal concerns, as to view all religion as imposture, and all modes of faith as political contrivances; yet surely they act inconsistently with the dictates of their own mean and low species of wisdom, when they extirpate, by their example, that religion which they allow to be politically useful. What ideas can the multitude entertain of the truth or advantages of a religion, when they see those who openly deride and profess to disbelieve it, possessing the greatest power of the state, appointing bishops and archbishops, and signing, while they sit at the table with a strumpet, presentations to the cure of half the souls in the three kingdoms? Who, unless he is corrupted by these instances, but must feel an honest indignation, if a man were raised to the chancellorship of England, in whose disposal are so many ecclesiastical preferments, were a bully in his profession, and in private life a whoremaster? Who can wonder that the thousand little imitators of him should think it a mark of spirit, wisdom, and abilities, to follow his steps in the paths of vice, and, if possible, to exceed his enormities? What must the common people think when profligate men are advanced to the head of a profession? They cannot but believe, that those who are reputed to be so much wiser than themselves, and who are evidently greater, in a worldly sense of the epithet, must have chosen that system of opinions and that plan of conduct which are most likely to be just and rational, safe and pleasant. "If my Lord, or his Grace," says the mechanic, "of whose wisdom listening senates stand in awe, is a debauchee and an infidel, I must conclude, that

my parish preacher, an obscure and homely man, is a hypocrite, religion a farce, morality a useless restraint on the liberty of nature. Welcome then, universal libertinism! and let us hasten to the house of the harlot; let us drink the sweet cup of intoxication; let us scorn the creeping manners of vulgar industry, and, like men of spirit, seek our fortune 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 virtues 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 on 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 carcass.

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 beholds 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 ex

plode, 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 occasioned 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