partnership all men have equal rights: but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has £500 has to the larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock. And as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention. If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory powers are its creatures. They can have no other being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence? Rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental laws, is that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is to judge for himself and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively in a great measure abandons the right of selfdefence, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and a civil state together. That he may obtain justice he gives up the right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Amongst these wants is to be reckoned the want out of civil society of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should be frequently thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves; and not in the exercise of its functions subject to that will and those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. For as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle. CHILDHOOD. HAPPY those early dayes, when I Before I taught my tongue to wound BURKE. H. VAUGHAN. Silex Scintillans. WHY should men love A wolf, more than a lamb or dove? Or choose hell-fire and brimstone streams If seeing much should make staid eyes, Shall I from thence cast down myself, And yet the practice worldlings call An age of mysteries! which he Must live twice that would God's face see; H. VAUGHAN. Silex Scintillans. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, To me did seem The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more! The rainbow comes and goes, The moon does with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. No more shall grief of mine the season wrong: All the earth is gay. Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday ;— Thou child of joy Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all. This sweet May morning; On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, A single field that I have look'd upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? WORDSWORTH. CUNNING. A MAN may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than all others.* ROCHEFOUCAULD. THE true method of being deceived is to think oneself more cunning than others. Ibid. THE most subtle of all artifices is the power of cleverly feigning to fall into the snares laid for us; and we are never so easily deceived as when we think we are deceiving others. Ibid. CUNNING AND DISCRETION. CUNNING has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon: cunning is a sort of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance. Discretion, the more it is discovered, gives a greater authority to the person who possesses it: cunning, when it is once detected, loses its force, and makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done, had he passed only for a plain man. Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life: cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interest and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understandings: cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them. In short, cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men, in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom. SPECTATOR. HUDIBRAS.-HIS RELIGION. FOR his Religion it was fit To match his learning and his wit: Some have been beaten till they know A shoe be Spanish or neat's leather; And yet have met after long running, With some whom they have taught that cunning. Hudibras, Part II., Canto 1. A A |