! No. XLV. Tuesday April 10. 1753. Nulla fides regni fociis, omni que poteslas Impatiens confortis erit. LUCAN No faith of partnership dominion owns : It is well known, that many things appear plausible in voyage however romantic and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century, who began to doat upon their gloffy plumes, and fluttered with impatience for the hour of their departure : Pereant vestigia mille. campum. Hills, vales, and floods appear already crost; Por E Among Among the fallacies which only experience can detect, there are some, of which scarcely experience itself can destroy the influence: some which, by a captivating fhew of indubitable certainty, are perpetually gaining upon the human mind; and which, though every trial ends in disappointment, obtain new credit as the sense of miscarriage wears gradually away, persuade us to try again what we have tried already, and expose us by the same failure to double vexation. Of this tempting, this delusive kind, is the expecpectation of great performances by confederated strength. The speculatift, when he has carefully observed how much may be performed by a single hand, calculates by a very easy operation the force of thousands, and goes on accumulating power till resistance vanishes before it; then rejoices in the success of his new scheme, and wonders at the folly or idleness of former ages, who have lived in want of what might so readily be procured, and suffered them felves to be debarred from happiness by obstacles which one united effort would have so easily furmounted. But this gigantic phantom of collective power vanishes at once into air and emptiness, at the first attempt to put it into action. The different apprehenfions, the discordant passions, the jarring interests of men, will scarcely permit that many should unite in one undertaking. Of a great and complicated design, fome will never be brought to discern the end ; and of the several means by which it may be accomplished, the choice will be a perpetual subject of debate, as every man is fwayed in his determination by his own knowledge or conveni ܪ ence. ence. a In a long series of action, fome will languish with fatigue, and some be drawn off by present gratifications; some will loiter because others labour, and some will cease to labour because others loiter : and if once they come within prospect of success and profit, fome will be greedy and others envious : some will undertake more than they can perform, to enlarge their claims of advantage ; fome will perform less than they undertake, left their labours should chiefly turn to the benefit of others. The history of mankind informs us that a single power is very feldom broken by a confederacy. States of different interests, and aspects malevolent to each other, may be united for a time by common distress; and in the ardour of self-preservation fall unanimously upon an enemy, by whom they are all equally endangered. But if their first attack can be withstood, time will never fail to diffolve their union : success and mif. carriage will be equally destructive: after the conquest of a province, they will quarrel in the division; after the loss of a battle, all will be endeavouring to secure themselves by abandoning the rest. From the imposibility of confining humbers to the constant and uniform profecution of a common interest, arises the difficulty of securing subjects against the encroachment of governors. Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent; it still contracts to a smaller number, till in time it centers in a single person. Thus all the forms of government instituted among mankind, perpetually tend towards monarchy; and power, however diffused through the whole communi. ty, a 66 a ty, is by negligence or corruption, commotion or distress, reposed at last in the chief magistrate. “ There never appear,” says Swift, more than 6 five or fix men of genius in an age ; but if they were . * united, the world could not stand before them.” It is happy, therefore, for mankind, that of this union there is no probability. As men take in a wider compass of intellectual survey, they are more likely to chufe different objects of pursuit; as they see more ways to the same end, they will be less eafily perfuaded to travel together; as each is better qualified to form an independent scheme of private greatness, he will reject with greater obftinacy the project of another; as each is more able to distinguish himself as the head of a party, he will less readily be made a follower or an associate. The reigning philosophy informs, us, that the vast bodies which constitute the universe, are regulated in their progress through the etherial spaces, by the perpetual agency of contrary forces; by one of which they are restrained from deserting their orbits, and losing themselves in the immensity of heaven ; and held off by the other from rushing together, and clustering round their center with everlasting cohesion, The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men : we are formed for fociety, not for combination; we are equally unqualified. to live in a close connection with our fellow-beings, and in total separation from them; we are attracted towards each other by general sympathy, but kept back from contact by private interefls. Some philosophers have been foolish enough to ima. gine, that improvements might be made in the system of : of the universe, by a different arrangement of the orbs of heaven; and politicians equally ignorant and equally presumptuous, may easily be led to suppose, that the happiness of our world would be promoted by a different tendency of the human mind. It appears, indeed, , to a flight and superficial observer, that many things impracticable in our present state, might be eafily ef. fected, if mankind were better disposed to union and co-operation : but a little reflection will discover, that if confederacies were easily formed, they would lose their efficacy, since numbers would be opposed to numbers, and unanimity to unanimity; and instead of the present petty, competitions of individuals or fingle families, multitudes would be supplanting multitudes, and thousands plotting against thousands There is no class of the human species, of which the union seems to have been more expected, than of the learned : the rest of the world have almost always agreed, to shut scholars up together in colleges and cloisters; surely not without hope, that they would look for that happiness in concord, which they were debarred from finding in variety; and that such conjunctions of intellect wonld recompense the munificence of founders and patrons, by performances above the reach of any single mind. But discord, who found means to roll her apple into the banqueting chamber of the Goddesses, has had the address to scatter her laurels in the seminaries of learning. The friendship of students and of beauties is , for the most part equally sincere, and equally durable : as both depend for happiness on the regard of others, on that of which the value arises merely from compa: rison, they are both exposed to perpetual jealousies, and botha |