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my voluntary misconduct, will require both from them and from mine and their Almighty and most Merciful Father."

THE PECULIAR PROPRIETY OF EXCITING PERSONAL MERIT AND MANLY VIRTUE IN A TIME OF PUBLIC DISTRESS AND DIFFICULTY.

THE dignity and rational happiness of human nature are always proportionate to its real improvements. Moral instruction can never be superfluous or unseasonable; for human virtue, like the stone of Sisyphus, has a continual tendency to roll down the hill, and requires to be forced up again by the never-ceasing efforts of succeeding moralists and divines.

But with respect to the influence of virtue on the prosperity of a state, it is certain that emergencies arise, when extraordinary degrees of it, throughout the whole body of the people, are peculiarly necessary. National adversity, like adversity in private life, prohibits the indulgence of a supine indolence, and calls for the most energetic activity. Virtues which have lain dormant, like arms in the arsenal, during the soft season of peace and plenty, must be brought forth to be, if I may so express it, brightened and sharpened in the day of danger and distress. And, perhaps, no time can demand them more loudly than when the nation is engaged in war with formidable powers, and weakened by internal corruption.

The strength of empire consists in the spirit of its members, and not altogether in its possessions and pecuniary resources. But how is that spirit to be roused or properly directed? The understanding must be enlightened, the ideas elevated, the heart enlarged. Ignorance, avarice, and luxury, render men indifferent under what form of government, or in what state of society, they live. They superinduce a weakness and a meanness, which, for the sake of sensual gratification or sordid interest, rejoice in submitting to the sceptre of tyranny.

Liberty, without which we might almost venture to repine at our existence as an useless and a baneful gift of God, cannot be understood or valued, and consequently will not be duly supported, without a competent share of improvement, moral and intellectual. The vain, the vicious, and the mercenary, seldom extend their cares beyond themselves; and the poor plebeian, though he may vociferate the word Liberty, knows not how to give it an effectual support. What avails empty breath when opposed to the bayonet or the bullet of a despotical invader? Nothing but a steady, firm, systematic, and unshaken opposition to the encroachments of those to whom fortune has given power, and nature an inclination to abuse it, can secure those blessings to our children, for which a Hampden and a Sydney bled. The glorious liberties of Americans, such as the right of trial by juries, a participation of the legislature, the freedom of the press, and the

privilege of speaking, acting, and thinking, without arbitrary control, are such as to render our country, in comparison with some European nations, a terrestrial paradise; but yet they are advantages too remote to affect the sensual and self-interested, and too complicated to be completely understood, or rationally valued, by a gross and uncultivated understanding.

I venture, then, to assert, that the writer who effectually recommends pure morals, manly virtues, and the culture of the intellectual powers, by a liberal and virtuous education, not only serves the cause of learning, morality, and religion, but effects political good of a species the most permanent and substantial. His labours tend to advance the members of his society to all the perfection of which humanity is susceptible. He enlightens their understandings, that they may see the great and solid objects of public good; and he emboldens their hearts to pursue it like men—like men, not such as grovel on the earth in modern Greece and modern Italy, in Asia, Africa, South America; but such as opposed a Xerxes in the straits of Thermopyla, waged war with a Philip, or put an end to the ambition of a Tarquin and a Cæsar.

The generous love of liberty which warmed the bosom of a Hampden and a Sydney, was not the mean offspring of envy or malice, nor of a proud and peevish opposition to the ruling powers, whatever they might be; but it was acquired in the schools of rigid discipline and

sublime philosophy. It was accompanied with singular gravity of manners, and dignity of sentiment. Now, let us suppose a nation, in which those who have most influence in its government are become, through a general and fashionable depravity, addicted to sordid interest, to luxury, to vanity, to servility for the sake of emolument; can any thing like the virtue of Leonidas or Brutus subsist in such men? Will they, in an extremity, be ready to sacrifice for the public their estates, their places, their pensions, their expectations, which furnish them with their chief good,-selfish gratifications, the indulgence of voluptuousness or pride?Will they not rather rejoice to be dependent on a court, which is able to gratify their vanity, supply their pleasures, and reward their meanest submission?

From the most impartial review of history, and from considerations on the nature of man, I am convinced, that good morals and intellectual improvement are necessary to the existence of civil liberty and to the continuance of national prosperity. At a time, then, when both liberty and prosperity are endangered, exhortations to virtue, and every excellence at which an ingenuous nature can aspire, are peculiarly seasonable. They brace the nerves and sinews of the body politic, and enable it to lift its arm in self-defence with irresistible vigour. They add strength to the foundation of empire, so that the assaults of united nations shall not shake the noble fabric.

In this view, and under these circumstances, I cannot help thinking that even my lucubrations may be in some measure useful to my countrymen. It has been my invariable object to enlighten their understandings, to exalt and improve their nature, to ascertain and vindicate their rights as men and as members of a society, and to teach them to pay no implicit submission but to truth, reason, law, their conscience, and their God.

ON THE PROPRIETY OF ADORNING LIFE, AND SERVING SOCIETY, BY LAUDABLE EXERTION.

In an age of opulence and luxury, when the native powers of the mind are weakened by vice, and general habits of indolence are superinduced by general indulgence, the moralist can seldom expect to see examples of that unwearied perseverance, of that noble and disinterested exertion, which has sometimes appeared in the world, and has been called heroic virtue. Indeed, it must be allowed, that in the early periods of society there is greater occasion, as well as greater scope, for this exalted species of public spirit, than when all its real wants are supplied, and all its securities established, and the minds of men are enervated by luxury.

Under these disadvantages there is, indeed, little opportunity for that uncommon heroism which leads an individual to desert his sphere,

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