will lay before you the state of the case, supposing that you had it in your power to make me your mistress or your wife, and hope to convince you that the latter is more for your interest, and will contribute more to your pleasure.

you two will eternally have the air of a bargain, between us of a friendship: joy will ever enter into the room with you, and kind wishes attend my benefactor when he leaves it. Ask yourself, how would you be pleased to enjoy for ever the pleasure of having laid an immediate obligation on a grateful mind? Such will be your case with me. In the other marriage you will live in a constant comparison of benefits, and never know the happiness of conferring or receiving any.

whom of the two will you choose? You, perhaps, will think fit to spend a day abroad in the common entertainments of men of sense and fortune; she will think herself illused in that absence, and contrive at home an expense proportioned to the appearance We will suppose, then, the scene was which you make in the world. She is in all laid, and you were now in expectation of things to have a regard to the fortune which the approaching evening wherein I was to she brought you; I to the fortune to which meet you, and be carried to what conve-you introduce me. The commerce between nient corner of the town you thought fit, to consummate all which your wanton imagination has promised to you in the possession of one who is in the bloom of youth, and in the reputation of innocence. You would soon have enough of me, as I am sprightly, young, gay, and airy. When fancy is sated, and finds all the promises it made itself false, where is now the innocence which charmed you? The first hour you are alone, you will find that the pleasure of a debauchee is only that of a destroyer. He blasts all the fruit he tastes; and where the brute has been devouring, there is nothing left worthy the relish of the man. Reason resumes her place after imagination is cloyed; and I am with the utmost distress and confusion to behold myself the cause of uneasy reflections to you, to be visited by stealth, and dwell for the future with two companions (the most unfit for each other in the world) solitude and guilt. I will not No. 200.] Friday, October 19, 1711. insist upon the shameful obscurity we should pass our time in, nor run over the little short snatches of fresh air, and free commerce, which all people must be satisfied with, whose actions will not bear examination, but leave them to your reflections, who have seen enough of that life, of which I have but a mere idea.

It may be you will, after all, act rather in the prudential way, according to the sense of the ordinary world. I know not what I think or say, when that melancholy reflection comes upon me; but shall only add more, that it is in your power to make me your grateful wife, but never your abandoned mistress.'

Vincit amor patriæ

T.

Virg. Æn. vi. 823. The noblest motive is the public good. THE ambition of princes is many times as hurtful to themselves as to their people. This cannot be doubted of such as prove unfortunate in their wars, but it is often true too of those who are celebrated for their successes. If a severe view were to be taken of their conduct, if the profit and loss by their wars could be justly balanced, it would be rarely found that the conquest is sufficient to repay the cost.

As I was the other day looking over the letters of my correspondents, I took this hint from that of Philarithmus; which has turned my present thoughts upon political arithmetic, an art of greater use than entertainment. My friend has offered an Essay towards proving that Louis XIV. with all his acquisitions is not master of more people than at the beginning of his wars, nay, that for every subject he had acquired, he had lost three that were his inheritance. If Philarithmus is not mistaken in his calculations, Louis must have been impoverished by his ambition.

'On the other hand, if you can be so good and generous as to make me your wife, you may promise yourself all the obedience and tenderness with which gratitude can inspire a virtuous woman. Whatever gratifications you may promise yourself from an agreeable person, whatever compliances from an easy temper, whatever consolation from a sincere friendship, you may expect as the due of your generosity. What at present in your ill view you promise yourself from me, will be followed with distaste and satiety; but the transports of a virtuous love are the least part of its happiness. The raptures of innocent passion are but like lightning to the day, they rather interrupt than advance the pleasure of it. How happy then is that life to be, where the highest pleasures of sense are but the lowest parts of its felicity? The prince for the public good has a 'Now I am to repeat to you the unnatural sovereign property in every private perrequest of taking me in direct terms. I son's estate; and consequently his riches know there stands between me and that must increase or decrease in proportion_to happiness, the haughty daughter of a man the number and riches of his subjects. For who can give you suitably to your fortune. example; if sword or pestilence should deBut if you weigh the attendance and beha-stroy all the people of this metropolis, (God viour of her who comes to you in partnership of your fortune, and expects an equivalent, with that of her who enters your house as honoured and obliged by that permission,

forbid there should be room for such a supposition! but if this should be the case) the queen must needs lose a great part of her revenue, or, at least, what is charged upon

the city, must increase the burden upon the rest of her subjects. Perhaps the inhabitants here are not above a tenth part of the whole; yet as they are better fed, and clothed, and lodged, than her other subjects, the customs and excises upon their consumption, the imposts upon their houses, and other taxes, do very probably make a fifth part of the whole revenue of the crown. But this is not all; the consumption of the city takes off a great part of the fruits of the whole island; and as it pays such a proportion of the rent or yearly value of the lands in the country, so it is the cause of paying such a proportion of taxes upon those lands. The loss then of such a people must needs be sensible to the prince, and visible to the whole kingdom.

On the other hand, if it should please God to drop from heaven a new people equal in number and riches to the city, I should be ready to think their excises, customs, and house-rent would raise as great a revenue to the crown as would be lost in the former case. And as the consumption of this new body would be a new market for the fruits of the country, all the lands, especially those most adjacent, would rise in their yearly value, and pay greater yearly taxes to the public. The gain in this case would be as sensible as the former loss.

Whatsoever is assessed upon the general, is levied upon individuals. It were worth the while then to consider what is paid by, or by means of, the meanest subjects, in order to compute the value of every subject to the prince.

much then the queen loses with every one of her old, and gains with every one of her new subjects.

When I was got into this way of thinking, I presently grew conceited of the argument, and was just preparing to write a letter of advice to a member of parliament, for opening the freedom of our towns and trades, for taking away all manner of distinctions between the natives and foreigners, for repealing our laws of parish settlements, and removing every other obstacle to the increase of the people. But as soon as I had recollected with what inimitable eloquence my fellow-labourers had exaggerated the mischiefs of selling the birthright of Britons for a shilling, of spoiling the pure British blood with foreign mixtures, of introducing a confusion of languages and religions, and of letting in strangers to eat the bread out of the mouths of our own people, I became so humble as to let my project fall to the ground, and leave my country to increase by the ordinary way of generation.

As I have always at heart the public good, so I am ever contriving schemes to promote it: and I think I may without vanity pretend to have contrived some as wise as any of the castle-builders. I had no sooner given up my former project, but my head was presently full of draining fens and marshes, banking out the sea, and joining new lands to my country; for since it is thought impracticable to increase the people to the land, I fell immediately to consider how much would be gained to the prince by increasing the land to the people.

For my own part, I should believe that If the same omnipotent Power which seven-eighths of the people are without made the world, should at this time raise property in themselves, or the heads of out of the ocean, and join to Great Britain, their families, and forced to work for their an equal extent of land, with equal builddaily bread; and that of this sort there are ings, corn, cattle, and other conveniences seven millions in the whole island of Great and necessaries of life, but no men, women, Britain: and yet one would imagine that nor children, I should hardly believe this seven-eighths of the whole people should would add either to the riches of the people, consume at least three-fourths of the whole or revenue of the prince; for since the prefruits of the country. If this is the case, sent buildings are sufficient for all the inthe subjects without property pay three-habitants, if any of them should forsake the fourths of the rents, and consequently enable old to inhabit the new part of the island, the landed men to pay three-fourths of their the increase of house-rent in this would be taxes. Now, if so great a part of the land-tax attended with at least an equal decrease of were to be divided by seven millions, it would it in the other. Besides, we have such a amount to more than three shillings to every sufficiency of corn and cattle, that we give head. And thus, as the poor are the cause, bounties to our neighbours to take what without which the rich could not pay this exceeds of the former off our hands, and tax, even the poorest subject is, upon this we will not suffer any of the latter to be account, worth three shillings yearly to the imported upon us by our fellow-subjects; prince. and for the remaining product of the counAgain; one would imagine the consump-try, 'tis already equal to all our markets. tion of seven-eighths of the whole people should pay two-thirds of all the customs and excises. And if this sum too should be divided by seven millions, viz. the number of poor people, it would amount to more than seven shillings to every head: and therefore with this and the former sum, every poor subject, without property, except of his limbs or labour, is worth at least ten shillings yearly to the sovereign. So

But if all these things should be doubled to the same buyers, the owners must be glad with half their present prices; the landlords with half their present rents: and thus by so great an enlargement of the country, the rents in the whole would not increase, nor the taxes to the public.

*This is an ironical allusion to some of the popular arguments which were urged in the year 1708, against a bill for the naturalization of forein D

On the contrary, I should believe they | No. 201.] Saturday, October 20, 1711. would be very much diminished: for as the land is only valuable for its fruits, and these are all perishable, and for the most part 'must either be used within the year, or perish without use, the owners will get rid of them at any rate, rather than that they should waste in their possession: so that it is probable the annual production of those perishable things, even of the tenth part of them, beyond all possibility of use, will reduce one half of their value. It seems to be for this reason that our neighbour merchants who engross all the spices, and know how great a quantity is equal to the demand, destroy all that exceeds it. It were natural then to think that the annual production of twice as much as can be used, must reduce all to an eighth part of their present prices; and thus this extended island would not exceed one-fourth part of its present value, or pay more than one-fourth part of the present tax.

Religentem esse oportet, religiosum nefas.

Incerti Autoris apud Aul. Gell.

A man should be religious, not superstitious. Ir is of the last importance to season the passions of a child with devotion, which seldom dies in a mind that has received an early tincture of it. Though it may seem extinguished for a while by the cares of the world, the heats of youth, or the allurements of vice, it generally breaks out and discovers itself again as soon as discretion, consideration, age, or misfortunes have brought the man to himself. The fire may be covered and overlaid, but cannot be entirely quenched and smothered.

It is generally observed, that in countries of the greatest plenty there is the poorest living; like the schoolman's ass in one of my speculations, the people almost starve between two meals. The truth is, the poor, which are the bulk of a nation, work only that they may live; and if with two days' labour they can get a wretched subsistence, they will hardly be brought to work the other four. But then with the wages of two days they can neither pay such prices for their provisions, nor such excises to the government.

A state of temperance, sobriety, and justice, without devotion, is a cold, lifeless, insipid condition of virtue; and is rather to be styled philosophy than religion. Devotion opens the mind to great conceptions, and fills it with more sublime ideas than any that are to be met with in the most exalted science; and at the same time warms and agitates the soul more than sensual pleasure.

It has been observed by some writers, that man is more distinguished from the animal world by devotion than by reason, as several brute creatures discover in their actions something like a faint glimmering of reason, though they betray in no single circumstance of their behaviour any thing that bears the least affinity to devotion. It is certain, the propensity of the mind to religious worship, the natural tendency of the That paradox, therefore. in old Hesiod, soul to fly to some superior being for sucI TOL, Or, half is more than the cour in dangers and distresses, the gratiwhole,' is very applicable to the present tude to an invisible superintendent which case; since nothing is more true in political arises in us upon receiving any extraordiarithmetic, than that the same people with nary and unexpected good fortune, the acts half the country is more valuable than with of love and admiration with which the the whole. I begin to think there was thoughts of men are so wonderfully transnothing absurd in Sir W. Petty, when he ported in meditating upon the divine perfancied if all the highlands of Scotland and fections, and the universal concurrence of the whole kingdom of Ireland were sunk all the nations under heaven in the great in the ocean, so that the people were all article of adoration, plainly show that desaved and brought into the lowlands of votion or religious worship must be the Great Britain; nay, though they were to effect of tradition from some first founder be reimbursed the value of their estates by of mankind, or that it is conformable to the the body of the people, yet both the sove-natural light of reason, or that it proceeds reign and the subjects in general would be enriched by the very loss.

If the people only make the riches, the father of ten children is a greater benefactor to the country than he who has added to it 10,000 acres of land, and no people. It is certain Lewis has joined vast tracts of land to his dominions: but if Philarithmus says true, that he is not now master of so many subjects as before; we may then account for his not being able to bring such mighty armies into the field, and for their being neither so well fed, nor clothed, nor paid as formerly. The reason is plainLewis must needs have been impoverished not only by his loss of subjects, but by his acquisition of lands.

T.

from an instinct implanted in the soul itself. For my part, I look upon all these to be the concurrent causes; but whichever of them shall be assigned as the principle of divine worship, it manifestly points to a Supreme Being as the first author of it.

I may take some other opportunity of considering those particular forms and methods of devotion which are taught us by Christianity; but shall here observe into what errors even this divine principle may sometimes lead us, when it is not moderated by that right reason which was given us as the guide of all our actions.

The two great errors into which a mistaken devotion may betray us, are enthusiasm and superstition.

As enthusiasm is a kind of excess in devotion, superstition is the excess, not only No. 202.] Monday, October 22, 1711.

of devotion, but of religion in general, according to an old heathen saying, quoted by Aulus Gellius,* Religentem esse oportet, religiosum nefas;' A man should be religious, not superstitious.' For as the author tells us, Nigidius observed upon this THE other day as I passed along the passage, that the Latin words which ter- street, I saw a sturdy 'prentice-boy disminate in osus generally imply vicious cha-puting with a hackney-coachman; and in racters, and the having of any quality to an

man was, methought, what created him | following letters and petition are made up good-will from his present equality with of proper sentiments on this occasion. the mob about him. Add to this, that he was not so much a gentleman, as not, at the same time that he called himself such, to use as rough methods for his defence as his antagonist. The advantage of his having good friends, as his master expressed it, was not lazily urged; but he showed himself superior to the coachman in the personal qualities of courage and activity, to confirm that of his being well allied, before his birth was of any service to him.