fhall meet his deferts, or escape with impunity, or whether the best man in the fociety fhall not be reduced to the lowest and most defpicable condition it affords. In a word, my Lord, the injuftice, delay, puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are fuch, that many who live under it come to admire and envy the expedition, fimplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need infift the lefs on this article to your Lordship, as you have frequently lamented the miferies derived to us from artificial law, and your candour is the more to be admired and applauded in this, as your Lordship's noble house has derived its wealth and its honours from that profeffion.

Before we finish our examination of artificial fociety, I fhall lead your Lordship into a closer confideration of the relations which it gives birth to, and the benefits, if fuch they are, which refult from these relations. The moft obvious divifion of society is into rich and poor; and it is no lefs obvious, that the number of the former bear a great difproportion to thofe of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the flavery and increafing the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquifitions are in proportion to his labours. In a ftate of artificial fociety,

F 3

fociety, it is a law as conftant and as invariable, that those who labour most, enjoy the feweft things; and that thofe who labour not at all, have the greatest number of enjoyments. A conftitution of things this, ftrange and ridiculous beyond expreffion. We fcarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually fee before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised. I fuppofe that there are in Great-Britain upwards of an hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines; thefe unhappy wretches fcarce ever fee the light of the fun; they are buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a fevere and dismal task, without the leaft profpect of being delivered from it; they fubfift upon the coarseft and worst fort of fare; they have their health miferably impaired, and their lives cut short, by being perpetually confined in the close vapour of thefe malignant minerals. hundred thousand more at least are tortured without remiffion by the fuffocating smoke, intense fires, and conftant drudgery neceffary in refining and managing the products of thofe mines. If any man informed us that two hundred thousand innocent perfons were condemned to fo intolerable flavery, how should we pity the unhappy fufferers, and how great would be our juft indignation. against those who inflicted fo cruel and ignominious a punishment! This is an inftance, I could

An

not

not with a stronger, of the numberless things which we pafs by in their common drefs, yet which fhock us when they are nakedly reprefented. But this number, confiderable as it is, and the flavery, with all its bafeness and horrour, which we have at home, is nothing to what the reft of the world affords of the fame nature. Millions daily bathed in the poisonous damps and deftructive effluvia of lead, filver, copper, and arsenick. To fay nothing of thofe other employments, thofe ftations of wretchednefs and contempt, in which civil fociety has placed the numerous enfans perdus of her army. Would any rational man fubmit to one of the moft tolerable of these drud geries, for all the artificial enjoyments which policy has made to refult from them? By no means. And yet need I fuggeft to your Lordship, that thofe who find the means, and thofe who arrive at the end, are not at all the fame perfons. On confidering the ftrange and unaccountable fancies and contrivances of artificial reafon, I have fomewhere called this earth the Bedlam of our system. Looking now upon the effects of fome of thofe fancies, may we not with equal reafon call it likewife the Newgate and the Bridewell of the univerfe? Indeed the blindncfs of one part of mankind co-operating with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of this refpectable fabrick of political fociety: and as the blind

nefs of mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of flavery is made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blindness; for the politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude difqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies them with no other than mean and infufficient ideas. This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame fuch inftitutions.

In a mifery of this fort, admitting fome few lenitives, and those too but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that, at least, the rich few find a confiderable and real benefit from the wretchedness of the many. But is this fo in fact? Let us examine the point with a little more attention. For this purpose the rich in all focieties may be thrown into two claffes. The firft is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquifition of pleasure. As to the first fort, their continual care, and anxiety, their toilfome days, and fleeplefs nights, are next to proverbial, Thefe circumftances are fufficient almoft to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumftances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings

labour

labour continually, which is the feverest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all paffions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has reft. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high ftations. Vera amicitiæ rariffime inveniuntur in iis qui in honoribus reque publica verfantur, fays Cicero. And indeed, courts are the schools where cruelty, pride, diffimulation and treachery are ftudied and taught in the most vicious perfection. This is a point fo clear and acknowledged, that if it did not make a neceffary part of my fubject, I should pass it by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and in the moft ftriking colours, this fhocking picture of the degeneracy and wretchednefs of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its happiest and most amiable ftate. You know from what originals I could copy fuch pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them to know the little value of the poffeffors of fuch things, and of all that they poffefs; and happy they who have been fnatched from that poft of danger which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; lofs of honours, wealth, titles, and even the lofs of one's country, is nothing in balance with fo great an advantage.

Let