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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
Shin'd in my angell-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestiall thought;
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flowre
My gazing soul would dwell an houre,
And in these weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity:

Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinfull sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
O how I long to travell back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plaine,
Where first I left my glorious traine;
From whence th' enlightened spirit sees
That shady city of palme trees.
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way!
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;
And, when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.

BURKE.

H. VAUGHAN. Silex Scintillans.

WHY should men love

A wolf, more than a lamb or dove?

Or choose hell-fire and brimstone streams
Before bright stars and God's own beams?
Who kisseth thorns will hurt his face,
But flowers do both refresh and grace;
And sweetly living (fie on men!)
Are when dead medicinal then.

If seeing much should make staid eyes,
And long experience should make wise;
Since all that age doth teach is ill,
Why should I not love childe-hood still?
Why, if I see a rock or shelf,

Shall I from thence cast down myself,
Or by complying with the world,
From the same precipice be hurl'd?
Those observations are but foul,
Which make me wise to lose my soul.

And yet the practice worldlings call
Business and weighty action all,
Checking the poor childe for his play,
But gravely cast themselves away.
Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span
Where weeping virtue parts with man;
Where love without lust dwells, and bends
What way we please without self-ends.

An age of mysteries! which he

Must live twice that would God's face see;
Which angels guard, and with it play,
Angels! which foul men drive away.

H. VAUGHAN. Silex Scintillans.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight

To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore;-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more!

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;

The moon does with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night

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
shepherd boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning

This sweet May morning;
And the children are pulling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm;-
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
But there's a tree of many, one,

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
What wood a cudgel's of by the blow:
Some kick'd until they can feel whether

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.

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