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poffible, and debauched as many married women as they can. Our youth at home are proud to learn of fuch accomplished mafters, and impatient to figure in the fame, or as nearly as may be in the fame, ftyle, at whatever expence of fortune, or health, or honour, or fociety.

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Here let us pause for a momentalarming profpect rifes to view-What great and powerful nation has ever existed, that tended not, by the natural operation of commerce, wealth, and dominion, to a felfish, vain, and luxurious effeminacy, till at laft it funk into a total depravation of morals and principles, which, by a close and obvious connexion, ended fooner or later in weakneís, difgrace, and ruin? But if wife men and prophets fay true, this nation yes, my friends and countrymen, Britain, our common mother, nurse, and protectress, Britain is not removed very far from fuch a ftate. May the gracious Power who has fo often interpofed

for her fafety, disappoint their forebodings, and avert the omens that excite them!

Among these have been chiefly reckoned a fet of youth, diffipated in idleness, plunged in debauchery, infected with avarice, maddened with gaming; a fet of youth, wafting their substance, if any they have, in prodigality, or practifing, if they have none, every method that meanneis or artifice can fuggeft, to get money, for the fake of what?of spending it in every folly that appetite or vanity can prompt; a fet of youth, who, not content with throwing down the ramparts of virtue, which natural modefty had erected in their minds, have, for the purpose of indulging their paffions without controul, proceeded to the effrontery of "glorying "in their fhame," and putting every mark of contumely on fuch as will not "run "with them to the fame excefs of riot;" a fet of youth, that fneer at the names of Chastity, Temperance, and Religion; that

place the highest proofs of Spirit in bidding defiance to these, and laughing to fcorn the antiquated notions of a found faith and an unblemished deportment; that think nothing fo fhrewd as to pick the pocket of a companion at cards, nothing fo genteel as to keep a mistress, nothing fo gallant as to commit adultery, and nothing fo brave as to make a jest of damnation what fhall we fay more?a fet of youth languid, enervated, perhaps diftempered, perhaps putrid, in confequence of their own irregularities, and those, it may be, of their parents.

But Pleafure, we are told, Elegant Pleasure, is the object to which every thing elfe muft yield. Alas! it is not underfood, it is totally mistaken, by those halfwitted, half-fouled fons of Effeminacy. Where, ye wretched pretenders to refined delight, where are the interefting energies of a useful and honourable activity, the animated emanations of a found and

enlightened understanding; where are the deep-felt thrillings of generous affection and tender fympathy, the sweet reciprocations of confidence and efteem, the lovely, the raptured perceptions of moral beauty and intellectual good, the modest but joyful fenfe of confcious worth, the towerings of a noble ambition, the transporting hopes of immortality ;-where, I ask, are those highest fatisfactions which give the chief relish and dignity to life, and without which it is at beft but a vulgar and infipid thing? To them indeed you, whom I just described, are utter strangers. You have neither fpirit to cultivate, nor fentiment to comprehend them: your internal fight is dimmed by prejudice, or diftracted by folly: you perceive not the living forms of Truth and Virtue, which have been admired by the wife, the pious, and the manly, in all ages: or, if at any time Providence recalls your attention to thofe fuperior objects, and roufes you for a while out of the lethargy that has lulled

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your faculties, you dare not truft yourselves with your own convictions; you want the courage and the vigour, as well as honesty, that are requifite to follow the voice of "Conscience; the tone of your minds is broken; you are frittered by vanity; you are diffolved in vice.

What the well-wishers of Britain, and of mankind, are to expect from such a race, I leave them to judge. That the picture is too like the generality of our fashionable young men in the upper claffes, and of their fond imitators in the lower, it were not candour, but ignorance, to deny.

Are these then the perfons who must, ere long, poffefs the various departments in the great scale of fociety? Are these the persons that must shortly sustain the characters of lovers, husbands, fathers, mafters, friends? Say, my Country, are these the young men whom thou haft destined to protect thy daughters, to educate their pofterity, to execute thy plans, to

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