extraordinary expenses. Her chief care, however, was to appease the resentment, or to gain the friendship, of the king of England; and from that quarter the first ray of comfort broke in upon the French.

W. ROBERTSON

Education and

41. REASON, WHEN ITS USE BEGINS. instruction are the means, the one by use, the other by precept, to make our natural faculty of reason both the better and the sooner able to judge rightly between truth and error, good and evil. But at what time a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason, as sufficeth to make him capable of those Laws whereby he is then bound to guide his actions; this is a great deal more easy for common sense to discern, than for any man by skill and learning to determine; even as it is not in Philosophers, who best know the nature both of fire and gold, to teach what degree of the one will serve to purify the other, so Iwell as the artisan discerneth by sense when the fire hath that degree of heat which sufficeth for his purpose. By reason Man attaineth to knowledge of things that are, and are not sensible. It resteth therefore, that we search how Man attaineth unto the knowledge of such things unsensible, as are to be known that they may be done.

R. HOOKER

42.

And as it

PURITY OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. is essential to the very being of Parliament, that elections should be absolutely free, therefore all undue influences upon the electors are illegal, and strongly prohibited. For Mr Locke ranks it among those breaches of trust in the executive magistrate, which according to his notions amount to a dissolution of the government, if he employs the force, treasure, and officers of the society to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes, or openly preengages the electors, and prescribes to their choice such whom he has by solicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs. For thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it (says he) but to cut up the government by the roots; and poison the very fountain of public security?' As soon therefore as the time and place of election, either in counties or boroughs, are fixed, all soldiers quartered in the place are to

remove, at least one day before the election, to the distance of two miles or more; and not to return till one day after the poll is ended.

43. RELIGION ALONE DETERMINES TO RIGHT CONDUCT. Man is a very busy and active creature, which cannot live and do nothing, whose thoughts are in restless motion, whose desires are ever stretching at somewhat, who perpetually will be working either good or evil to himself: wherefore greatly profitable must that thing be, which determineth him to act well, to spend his care and pain on that which is truly advantageous to him: and that is religion only. It alone fasteneth our thoughts, affections and endeavours, upon occupations worthy the dignity of our nature, suiting the excellency of our natural capacities and endowments, tending to the perfection and advancement of our reason, to the enriching and ennobling of our souls. Secluding that, we have nothing in the world to study, to affect, to pursue, not very mean and below us, not very base and misbecoming us, as men of reason and judgment.

he

44. ON THE WRITING OF HISTORY. The historian must have no idol but truth, entirely disregarding all things else: he must make it a rule not to regard his own age, but posterity, lest he be accounted a mere flatterer, which is a vice utterly contrary to history, and as inconsistent as for a champion to use cosmetics. He must be undaunted; proof against a bribe; a free speaker, calling everything by its name; he must be, in his writings, without either love or hatred or shame or compassion; an equal judge to all; and he must give to no person more than their due, nor less; must seem a foreigner, a denizen of no city, a subject of no government, lord of himself, regardless of what may please people; merely a relater of what has happened. He must not set out at first with too much mettle, but with a peaceable even pace; his sense should be methodically disposed and lie close, his diction should be clear and polite, the main scope of the first being truth and liberty, and that of the latter expressiveness and intelligibility; let him explain his thoughts in a diction not obsolete, nor vulgar, so as that the common people may understand and the learned admire him.

FOL. CENT.

T. GRAY

23

45. FRENCH COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. A French governor is seldom chosen for any other reason than his qualification for his trust. To be a bankrupt at home, or to be so infamously vicious that he cannot be decently protected in his own country, seldom recommends any man to the government of a French colony. Their officers are commonly skilful either in war or commerce, and are taught to have no expectation of honor or preferment, but from the vigour and justice of their administration. Their great security is the friendship of the natives, and to this advantage they have certainly an indisputable right;-because it is the consequence of their virtue. It is ridiculous to imagihe, that the friendship of nations, whether civil or barbarous, can be gained and kept but by kind treatment; and surely they who intrude, uncalled, upon the country of a distant people, ought to consider the natives as worthy of common kindness, and content themselves to rob without insulting them.

It would not be easy

46. CHARACTER OF DIOCLETIAN. to persuade us of the cowardice of a soldier of fortune, who acquired and preserved the esteem of the legions, as well as the favour of so many warlike princes. Yet even calumny is sagacious enough to discover and to attack the most vulnerable part. The valour of Diocletian was never found inadequate to his duty or to the occasion; but he appears not to have possessed the daring and generous spirit of a hero, who courts danger and fame, disdains artifice, and boldly challenges the allegiance of his equals. His abilities were useful rather than splendid; a vigorous mind, improved by the experience and study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigour; profound dissimulation under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of colouring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility. Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire. Like the adopted son of Cæsar, he was distinguished as a statesman rather than as a warrior; nor did either of those princes employ force, whenever their purpose could be effected by policy.

E. GIBBON

47. DOM.

FRANCE AND AMERICA-THEIR STRUGGLE FOR FREE

I will now beg of my hearer to pause a moment, and to review in his own mind the whole of what has been laid before him. He has seen of what kind, and how great have been the injuries endured by these two nations; what they have suffered, and what they have to fear; he has seen that they have felt with that unanimity which has led Philosophers upon like occasions to assert, that the voice of the people is the voice of God. He has seen that they have submitted as far as human nature could bear; and that at last these millions of suffering people have risen almost like one man, with one hope for whether they look to triumph or defeat, to victory or death, they are full of hope, each individual knows the danger, and, strong in the magnitude of it, grasps eagerly at the thought that he himself is to perish; and more eagerly, and with higher confidence, does he lay to his heart the faith that the nation will survive and be victorious; or, at the worst, let the contest terminate how it may as to superiority of outward strength, that the fortitude and the martyrdom, the justice and the blessing, are theirs and cannot be relinquished. Woe, then, to the unworthy who intrude with their help to maintain this most sacred cause! It calls aloud for the aid of intellect, knowledge, and love, and rejects every other. It is in vain to send forth armies if these do not inspire and direct them. The stream is as pure as it is mighty, any augmentation from the kennels and sewers of guilt and baseness may clog, but cannot strengthen it. For the contest is not for the concerns of a day, but for the security and happiness of ages; not for an insulated privilege, but for the rights of human nature; not for temporal blessings, but for eternal happiness; not for the benefit of one nation, but for all mankind.

48. AMERICA NOT PEOPLED FROM THE SOUTHERN REGIONS OF OUR CONTINENT. It appears no less evident that America was not peopled by any colony from the more southern nations of the ancient continent. None of the rude tribes settled in that part of our hemisphere can be supposed to have visited a country so remote. They possessed neither enterprise, nor ingenuity, nor power, that could prompt them to undertake, or enable them to perform, such a distant voyage. That the more civilized nations in Asia or Africa are

not the progenitors of the Americans is manifest, not only from the observations which I have already made concerning their ignorance of the most simple and necessary arts, but from an additional circumstance. Whenever any people have experienced the advantages which men enjoy by their dominion over the inferior animals, they can neither subsist without the nourishment which these afford, nor carry on any considerable operation independent of their ministry and labour. Accordingly, the first care of the Spaniards, when they settled in America, was to stock it with all the domestic animals of Europe; and if, prior to them, the Tyrians, the Carthaginians, the Chinese, or any other polished people, had taken possession of that continent, we should have found there the animals peculiar to those regions of the globe where they were originally seated.

W. ROBERTSON

49. PROPER CONSTITUTION OF BOARDS. Such boards or other co-operative bodies should be so formed that youthfulness and elderliness may meet in due proportion in their counsels. If any such body be composed wholly of elderly men, it will commonly be found to be ineffective so far as invention of new courses and intrepidity of purpose is required; and perhaps also unequal to any unusual amount of spontaneous activity. If, on the other hand, it be composed wholly of young men, its operations will probably be wanting in circumspection; and the foresight by which it will be guided will be too keenly directed to the objects of a sanguine expectation, too dully to prospects of evil and counteraction. The respective positions in life of the young and the old operate to these results not less than their temperaments. For the young have their way to make, their reputation to earn; and it is for their interest to be enterprising as well as in their nature: the old have ascertained their place in life, and they have perhaps a reputation to lose.

50.

CONTEMPLATION OF MISERY. The most unpardonable malefactor in the world going to his death and bearing it with composure, would win the pity of those who should behold him; and this not because his calamity is deplorable, but because he seems himself not to deplore it. We suffer for him who seems less sensible of his own misery, and are