charity of particulars, can preserve many from feeling openly, and many fecretly.

That hope and fear are infeparably or very frequently connected with poverty, and riches, my furveys of life have not informed me. The milder degrees of poverty are fometimes fupported by hope, but the more fevere often fink down in motionless defpondence. Life must be seen before it can be known. This author and Pope perhaps never faw the miseries which they imagine thus easy to be borne. The poor indeed are infenfible of many little vexations which fometimes embitter the poffeffions and pollute the enjoyments of the rich. They are not pained by cafual incivility, or mortified by the mutilation of a compliment; but this happiness is like that of a malefactor, who ceases to feel the cords that bind him when the pincers are tearing his flesh.

That want of tafte for one enjoyment is fupplied by the pleasures of fome other, may be fairly allowed. But the compensations of fickness I have never found near to equivalence, and the transports of recovery only prove the intenseness of the pain.

With folly no man is willing to confess himself very intimately acquainted, and therefore its pains and pleasures are kept fecret. But what the author fays of its happiness seems applicable only to fatuity, or grofs dulnefs; for that inferiority of understanding which makes one man without any other reafon the flave, or tool, or property of another, which makes him fometimes useless, and fometimes ridiculous, is often felt with very quick fenfibility. On the happiness of madmen, as the cafe is not very frequent, VOL. VIII.

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it is not neceffary to raise a difquifition, but I cannot forbear to observe, that I never yet knew diforders of mind increase felicity: every madman is either arrogant and irafcible, or gloomy and fufpicious, or posfeffed by fome paffion or notion deftructive to his quiet. He has always discontent in his look, and malignity in his bofom. And, if he had the power of choice, he would foon repent who fhould refign his reafon to fecure his peace.

Concerning the portion of ignorance neceffary to make the condition of the lower claffes of mankind fafe to the publick and tolerable to themfelves, both morals and policy exact a nicer enquiry than will be very foon or very eafily made. There is undoubtedly a degree of knowledge which will direct a man to refer all to Providence, and to acquiefce in the condition with which omnifcient Goodness has determined to allot him; to confider this world as a phantom that must foon glide from before his eyes, and the diftreffes and vexations that encompass bim, as duft fcattered in his path, as a blast that chills him for a moment, and paffes off for ever.

Such wisdom, arifing from the comparison of a part with the whole of our existence, those that want it most cannot poffibly obtain from philofophy; nor unless the method of education, and the general tenor of life are changed, will very easily receive it from religion. The bulk of mankind is not likely to be very wife or very good: and I know not whether there are not many states of life, in which all knowledge, less than the highest wisdom, will produce difcontent and danger. I believe it may be fometimes

found,

found, that a little learning is to a poor man a dangerous thing. But fuch is the condition of humanity, that we eafily fee, or quickly feel the wrong, but cannot always diftinguifh the right. Whatever knowledge is fuperfluous, in irremediable poverty, is hurtful, but the difficulty is to determine when poverty is irremediable, and at what point fuperfluity begins. Grofs ignorance every man has found equally dangerous with perverted knowledge. Men left wholly to their appetites and their inftincts, with little fenfe of moral or religious obligation, and with very faint diftinctions of right and wrong, can never be fafely employed, or confidently trusted: they can be honeft only by obftinacy, and diligent only by compulfion or caprice. Some instruction, therefore, is neceffary, and much perhaps may be dangerous.

Though it should be granted that those who are born to poverty and drudgery fhould not be deprived by an improper education of the opiate of ignorance; even this conceffion will not be of much ufe to direct our practice, unless it be determined who are those that are born to poverty. To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after generation, only because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel, if not unjuft, and is wholly contrary to the maxims of a commercial nation, which always fuppofe and promote a rotation of property, and offer every individual a chance of mending his condition by his diligence. Those who communicate literature to the fon of a poor man, consider him as one not born to poverty, but to the neceffity of deriving a better fortune from himself. In this attempt, as D 2

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in others, many fail, and many fucceed. Thofe that fail will feel their mifery more acutely; but fince poverty is now confeffed to be fuch a calamity as cannot be borne without the opiate of infenfibility, I hope the happiness of those whom education enables to escape from it, may turn the balance against that exacerbation which the others fuffer.

I am always afraid of determining on the fide of envy or cruelty. The privileges of education may fometimes be improperly bestowed, but I fhall always fear to with-hold them left I should be yielding to the fuggeftions of pride, while I perfuade myself that I am following the maxims of policy; and under the appearance of falutary reftraints, fhould be indulging the luft of dominion, and that malevolence which delights in feeing others depreffed.

Pope's doctrine is at last exhibited in a compa rifon, which, like other proofs of the fame kind, is better adapted to delight the fancy than convince the reafon.

"Thus the universe resembles a large and well-regulated family, in which all the officers and fervants, "and even the domeftick animals, are fubfervient to " each other in a proper fubordination: each enjoys "the privileges and perquifites peculiar to his place,

and at the fame time contributes by that just sub"ordination to the magnificence and happiness of "the whole."

The magnificence of a houfe is of use or pleasure always to the mafter, and fometimes to the domefticks. But the magnificence of the univerfe adds

nothing

nothing to the Supreme Being; for any part of its inhabitants with which human knowledge is acquainted, an universe much less spacious or splendid would have been fufficient; and of happiness it does not appear that any is communicated from the beings of a lower world to those of a higher.

The Enquiry after the cause of natural Evil is continued in the third Letter, in which, as in the former, there is mixture of borrowed truth, and native folly, of fome notions juft and trite, with others uncommon and ridiculous.

His opinion of the value and importance of happiness is certainly just, and I shall infert it, not that it will give any information to any reader, but it may serve to fhew how the most common notion may be fwelled in found, and diffused in bulk, till it fhall perhaps aftonish the author himself.

"Happiness is the only thing of real value in ex"iftence; neither riches, nor power, nor wisdom, nor learning, nor ftrength, nor beauty, nor virtue, nor " 'religion, nor even life itself, being of any importance, "but as they contribute to its production. All these

are in themselves neither good nor evil: happiness alone is their great end, and they are defirable only as they tend to promote it."

Success produces confidence. After this discovery of the value of happiness, he proceeds, without any diftruft of himself, to tell us what has been hid from all former enquirers.

"The true folution of this important queftion, fo "long and fo vainly fearched for by the philofophers of all ages and all countries, I take to be at last no "more

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