cife: We fhall form jufter notions of life: Many things, which please or afflict others, will appear to us too frivolous to engage our attention: And we fhall lofe by degrees that fenfibility and delicacy of paffion, which is fo incommodious.

But perhaps I have gone too far in faying, That a cultivated tafte for the polite arts extinguishes the paffions, and renders us indifferent to those objects which are fo fondly pursued by the reft of mankind. On farther reflection, I find, that it rather improves our fenfibility for all the tender and agreeable paffions; at the fame time that it renders the mind incapable of the rougher and more boisterous emotions.

Ingenuas didiciffe fideliter artes,

Emollit mores, nec finit effe feros.

For this, I think there may be affigned two very natural reafons. In the first place, nothing is so improving to the temper as the ftudy of the beauties, either of poetry, eloquence, mufick, or painting. They give a certain elegance of sentiment, to which the rest of mankind are absolute strangers. The emotions they excite are foft and tender. They draw off the mind from the hurry of business and intereft; cherish reflection; difpofe to tranquillity; and produce an agrecable melancholy, which, of all difpofitions of the mind, is the best suited to love and friendship.

In the fecond place, a delicacy of tafte is favourable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and converfation of the greatest part of men. You will very feldom find, that mere men of the world, whatever ftrong fense they may be endowed with, are very nice in diftinguishing characters, or in marking

those infenfible differences and gradations which make one man preferable to another. Any one, that has competent sense, is fufficient for their entertainment: They talk to him, of their pleafures and affairs, with the fame franknefs as they would to another; and finding many, who are fit to supply his place, they never feel any vacancy or want in his abfence. But to make ufe of the allufion of a celebrated* FRENCH author, the judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most ordinary machine is fufficient to mark the hours; but the most elaborate and artificial alone can point out the minutes and feconds, and diftinguifh the fmalleft différences of time. One that has well digefted his knowledge both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions. He feels too sensibly, how much all the rest of mankind fall fhort of the notions which he has entertained. And, his affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no wonder he carries them further than if they were more general and undistinguished. The gaiety and frolic of a bottle companion improves with him into a folid friendship: And the ardours of a youthful appetite become an elegant paffion..

* Monf. FONTENELLE, Pluralité des Mondes. Soir 6.

(8)

ESSAY II.

OF THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

NOTHIN

Gis more apt to furprize a foreigner, than the extreme liberty, which we enjoy in this country, of communicating whatever we please to the public, and of openly cenfuring every measure, adopted by the king or his minifters. If the adminiftration refolve upon war, it is affirmed, that either wilfully or ignorantly they mistake the interest of the nation, and that peace, in the present situation of affairs, is infinitely preferable. If the paffion of the ministers lean towards peace, our political writers breathe nothing but war and devastation, and represent the pacific conduct of the government as mean and pufillanimous. As this liberty is not indulged any other government, either republican or monarchical; in HOLLAND and VENICE, no more than in FRANCE OF SPAIN; it may very naturally give rife to thefe two questions, How it happens that GREAT BRITAIN enjoys fuch a peculiar privilege? and Whether the unlimited exercife of this liberty be advantageous or prejudicial to the public?

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As to the firft queftion, Why the laws indulge us in fuch an extraordinary liberty? I believe the reafon may be derived from our mixed form of government, which is neither wholly monarchical, nor wholly republican. It will be found, if I

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mistake not, a true obfervation in politics, that the two extremes in government, liberty and flavery, commonly approach nearest to each other; and that as you depart from the extremes, and mix a little of monarchy with liberty, the government becomes always the more free; and on the other hand, when you mix a little of liberty with monarchy, the yoke becomes always the more grievous and intolerable. I fhall endeavour to explain myself. In a government, fuch as that of FRANCE, which is entirely abfolute, and where laws, cuftom, and religion concur, all of them, to make the people fully fatisfied with their condition, the monarch cannot entertain the leaft jealousy againft his fubjects, and therefore is apt to indulge them in great liberties both of speech and action. In a government altogether republican, fuch as that of HOLLAND, where there is no magistrate so eminent as to give jealousy to the ftate, there is no danger in intrusting the magistrates with very large discretionary powers; and though many advantages refult from fuch powers, in the preserving peace and order, yet they lay a confiderable restraint on men's actions, and make every private fubject pay a great refpect to the government. Thus it seems evident, that the two extremes of abfolute monarchy and of a republic, approach very near to each other in fome material circumftances. In the first, the magistrate has no jealousy of the people: In the fecond, the people have no jealousy of the magiftrate: Which want of jealoufy begets a mutual confidence and trust in both cafes, and produces a species of liberty in monarchies, and of arbitrary power in republics.

To juftify the other part of the foregoing obfervation, that in every government the means are most wide of each other, and that the mixtures of monarchy and liberty render the yoke VOL. I. C either

either more eafy or more grievous; I muft cite a remark of TACITUS with regard to the ROMANS under the emperors, that they neither could bear total flavery nor total liberty, Nec totam fervitutem, nec totam libertatem pati poffunt. This remark a celebrated poet has translated and applied to the ENGLISH, in his lively defcription of queen ELIZABETH'S policy and government.

Et fit aimer fon joug a l'Anglois indompté,
Qui ne peut ni fervir, ni vivre en liberté.

HENRIADE, Liv. 1.

According to these remarks, we are to confider the ROMAN government under the emperors as a mixture of defpotism and liberty, where the defpotism prevailed; and the ENGLISH government as a mixture of the fame kind, but where the liberty predominates. The confequences are exactly conformable to the foregoing obfervation; and fuch as may be expected from those mixed forms of government, which beget a mutual watchfulness and jealoufy. The ROMAN emperors were, many of them, the most frightful tyrants that ever disgraced human nature; and it is evident that their cruelty was chiefly excited by their jealousy, and by their obferving that all the great men of ROME bore with impatience the dominion of a family, which, but a little before, was no wife fuperior to their own.. On the other hand, as the republican part of the government. prevails in ENGLAND, though with a great mixture of monarchy, 'tis obliged, for its own preservation, to maintain a watchful jealousy over the magiftrates, to remove all difcretionary powers, and to secure every one's life and fortune by general and inflexible laws. No action must be deemed a crime but what the law has plainly determined to be fuch: No crime

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