those that are in authority to take care that the people may rejoice, and diligently to inquire, what is to be considered,

Secondly, By what means the happiness of the people may be most effectually promoted.

In political, as well as natural disorders, the greater error of those who commonly undertake either cure or preservation, is, that they rest in second causes, without extending their search to the remote and original sources of evil. They, therefore, obviate the immediate evil, but leave the destructive principle to operate again; and have their work for ever to begin, like the husbandman who mows down the heads of noisome weeds, instead of pulling up the roots.

The only uniform and perpetual cause of public happiness is public virtue. The effects of all other things which are considered advantages will be found casual and transitory. Without virtue, nothing can be securely possessed or properly enjoyed.

In a country like ours, the great demand, which is for ever repeated to our governors, is for the security of property, the confirmation of liberty, and the extension of commerce. All this we have obtained, and all this we possess, in a degree which, perhaps, was never granted to any other people : yet we still find something wanting to our happiness, and turn ourselves round on all sides, with perpetual restlessness, to find that remedy for our evils which neither power nor policy can afford.

That established property and inviolable freedom

are the greatest of political felicities, no man can be supposed likely to deny. To depend on the will of another, to labour for that, of which arbitrary power can prohibit the enjoyment, is the state to which want of reason has subjected the brute. To be happy, we must know our own rights; and we must know them to be safe.

But though this knowledge be necessary to happiness, this knowledge is not sufficient. Liberty, if not regulated by virtue, can be only licence to do evil; and property, if not virtuously enjoyed, can only corrupt the possessor, and give him the power to injure others. Trade may make us rich; but riches, without goodness, cannot make us happy.

Let us, however, suppose that these external goods have that power which wisdom cannot believe, and which experience never could confirm; let us suppose that riches and liberty could make us happy. It then remains to be considered, how riches and liberty can be secured. To this the politician has a ready answer, that they are to be secured by laws wisely formed and vigorously executed. But, as laws can be made only by a small part of an extensive empire, and must be executed by a part yet far smaller, what shall protect us against the laws themselves? And how shall we be certain that they shall not be made without regard to the public good, or shall not be perverted to oppression by the ministers of justice?

But if prosperity, and laws, by which, as far as the mutability of this world permits, that prosperity is made permanent and safe, cannot make the people happy, what is it the governors can do? How far is their care to be extended, and what more can

skill and vigilance perform? The wisdom of mankind has been exercised in inquiries how riches may be gained and kept; how the different claims of men may be adjusted without violence; and how one part of the community may be restrained from encroachments on the other. For this end governments have been instituted, in all their various forms, with much study, and too often with much bloodshed. But what is the use of all this, if, when these ends are obtained, there is yet so much wanting to felicity?

I am far from intending to insinuate, that the studies of political wisdom, or the labours of legislative patriotism, have been vain and idle. They are useful, but not effectual; they are conducive to that end, which yet they cannot fully gain. The legislator, who does what human power can attain towards the felicity of his fellow creatures, is not to be censured, because, by the imbecility of all human endeavours, he fails of his purpose; unless he has become culpable, by ascribing too much to his own powers, and arrogated to his industry or his wit, that efficacy which wit and industry must always want, unless some higher power lends them assistance, and cooperates with them.

The husbandman may plough his fields with industry, and sow them with skill; he may manure them copiously, and fence them carefully: but the harvest must depend at last on celestial influence; and all his diligence is frustrated, unless the sun 'sheds its warmth, and the clouds pour down their moisture.

Thus, in all human affairs, when prudence and industry have done their utmost, the work is left

to be completed by superior agency; and in the security of peace and stability of possession, our policy must at last call for help upon religion.

Human laws, however honestly instituted, or however vigorously enforced, must be limited in their effect, partly by our ignorance, and partly by our weakness. Daily experience may convince us that all the avenues by which injury and oppression may break in upon life, cannot be guarded by positive prohibitions. Every man sees, and may feel, evils which no law can punish. And not only will there always remain possibilities of guilt, which legislative foresight cannot discover, but the laws will be often violated by wicked men, whose subtilty eludes detection, and whom, therefore, vinIdictive justice cannot bring within the reach of punishment.

These deficiencies in civil life can be supplied only by religion. The mere observer of human laws avoids only such offences as the laws forbid, and those only when the laws can detect his delinquency. But he who acts with the perpetual consciousness of the Divine Presence, and considers himself as accountable for all his actions to the irreversible and unerring judgment of Omniscience, has other motives of action, and other reasons of forbearance. He is equally restrained from evil in public life and in secret solitude; and has only one rule of action, by which "he does to others what he would that others should do to him ;" and wants no other enforcement of his duty, than the fear of future punishment and the hope of future rewards.

The first duty, therefore, of a governor is to dif

fuse through the community a spirit of religion; to endeavour that a sense of the divine authority should prevail in all orders of men, and that the laws should be obeyed, in subordination to the universal and unchangeable edicts of the Creator and Ruler of the world.

How religion may be most effectually promoted, is an inquiry which every governor ought diligently to make; and he that inquires, with real wishes for information, will soon know his duty; for Providence has seldom made the same things necessary and abstruse.

That religion may be invigorated and diffused, it is necessary that the external order of religion be diligently maintained, that the solemnities of worship be duly observed, and a proper reverence preserved for the times and the places appropriated to piety. The appropriations of time and place are indeed only means to the great end of holiness; but they are means without which the end cannot be obtained; and every man must have observed how much corruption prevails where the attention to public worship and to holy seasons is broken or relaxed.

Those that have in their hands the disposal of riches or honours, ought to bestow them on persons who are most eminent for sanctity of life: for though no man ought to consider temporary goods as the proper rewards of religious duties, yet they who have them to give are obliged to distribute them in such a manner as may make them most useful to the public; and they will be most useful, when they increase the power of beneficence and enlarge the influence of piety.

VOL. II.

H