146. The Dislike of Change.-The antipathy of ignorance to change of custom, originates in the attachment to existing customs, merely because they exist. It is the attachment of Mahometans to opium and to two wives, and of Christians to alcohol and one wife. It is the attachment of Christians and Mahometans to the custom, that when the father dies, the mother shall protect their children. It is the attachment of the Hindoos to the custom that upon the death of the father, the widow shall burn herself at his funeral, and leave their children orphans. It is the attachment of the peasants, who in a particular district of Italy, loaded their panniers with vegetables on one side, and balanced the opposite panniers by filling it with stones; and when a traveller pointed out the advantage to be gained by loading both panniers with vegetables; he was answered "that their forefathers, from time immemorial, had so prepared their produce for market; that they were very wise and good men, and that a stranger showed very little understanding or decency who interfered in the established customs of a country."

Basil Montagu's Preface to the 5th vol. of Lord Bacon's Works.

147. The Feudal Tenure.-The first quality of the feudal tenure is to confine the descendible property to the eldest male issue. To say that this is contrary to nature, is but a feeble expression. So abominable is its operation, that it has seduced and perverted nature; her voice is stifled, interest itself is laid asleep, and nothing but the eloquence of an incomprehensible pride is heard on the occasion. You will hear father and mother, younger brothers and sisters, rejoice in this provision of the law; the former consigning their daughters to the gloomy prison of a convent, and their younger sons to the church or the army, to insure their celibacy; that no remnant of the family may remain but the heir of the estate entire; the latter congratulating each other, that the elder brother will transmit unimpaired the title and the property, while they themselves are content to perish in the obscurity of their several destinations.

Barlow's Advice to the Privileged Orders.

148. Scepticism. In proportion as men are rude, uncultivated, and uncivilized, they are determined in their opinions, bold in their presumptions, and obstinate in their prejudices. When they begin to doubt it may be concluded they begin to be refined. The savage is seldom a scepticthe barbarian is rarely incredulous. The less men know, the less they are embarrassed to find a cause for any event.

Drummond's Academical Questions.

149. Friends.-There are a sort of friends, who in your poverty do nothing but torment and taunt you with accounts of what you might have been had you followed their advice: and this privilege comes from the comparative state of their finances and yours.-Zimmerman.

150. Books have more influence on the happiness of mankind than all the governments on earth.

151. Comparison between True History and Poetry.-Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence; because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations; so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things. And we see, that by these insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood excluded.

Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning.

152. Cunning in Public Men.-In public affairs, cunning, let it be ever so well wrought, will not conduct a man honourably through life. Like bad money, it may be current for a time, but it will soon be cried down. It cannot consist with a liberal spirit, though it be sometimes united with extraordinary abilities.-Junius.

153. On the Formation of Opinions.—Our opinions are formed. 1st. By impressions made on our senses. 2nd. By confidence in the communication of others: and 3rdly. By our reasonings upon these impressions and communications. Although our opinions are traceable to impressions, communications, and reasonings, the opinion of the generality of men must unavoidably be formed by confidence in communication. The opinions, for instance, entertained by the generality of the Turks, of the truth of the Alcoran, is formed by the constant communication made by their parents, their preceptors, and by the whole community. The opinion by the generality of Europeans of the truths of Christianity are formed in the same manner. Montague's Thoughts, &c.

154. Gaudy Attire.-Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much, by gaudy attire. Lysander knew this was in part true, and refused the rich garments that the tyrant Dionysius proffered to his daughters, saying, "That they were fit only to make unhappy faces more remarkable." Zimmerman.

155. The Science of Politics is not fixed and unchangeable, like a system of abstract truth; but is progressive of civilization, and fluctuating with the exigences of society.-Examiner.

156. Opinions no crimes. It is the business of government to control men's actions, not their opinions; and those are recorded as the happiest times, in which the most uncontrolled freedom was allowed to the declaration of opinions.

"Rara temporum felicitate," says the Historian, " Ubi sentire quæ velis," and "quæ sentias dicere licet." All the terror of the tribunal of the Porte di sopiri at Venice, cannot make one who thinks monarchy a preferable form of government to republicanism change his opinion; nor all the thunder of the Ultima ratio regum, make a republican prefer monarchy. The utmost that severity can do is to make men hypocrites, it is impossible to make them converts. Opinions, so far from being under the power of other men's will, is not under a man's own; it is the offspring of his reason, whether he be well, or ill-informed. Opinions therefore cannot be justly imputed to any man as crimes. Even one of those bloody revolutionary Judges in France, who examined one of their victims in the prison of the Abbaye at Paris, in September, 1792, was sensible of it. When that intrepid victim avowed himself a royalist, an universal murmur arose from the circle who heard him.

"Ce n'est pas from juger les opinions que nous sommes ici," said the judge, "c'est pour en juger les resultats."

Men of the greatest worth have had and always will have different speculative opinions on the different forms of government. Every man has a right to speculate on this, as well as on any other subject, and while he confines himself to speculation he is not the just object of punishment; but when from speculation he proceeds to action, the case is totally different. The peace of society is not to be with impunity disturbed with insurrection; and the men against whom such action is proved become the just objects of punishment.-Dr John Moore.

157. Indolence of the Human Mind.-The human mind is fitted, from its own indolence, to be dazzled by the glare of a proposition; and to receive and utter for truth, what it never gives itself the trouble to examine. There is no paradox among all the enormities of despotism, but what finds its advocates from this very circumstance. We must not therefore scorn to encounter an argument because it is foolish. The business of sober philosophy is often a task of drudgery; it must sometimes listen to the most incoherent clamours, which would be unworthy of its attention, did they not form a part of the general din, by which mankind are deafened and misled. Barlow's Advice to the Privileged Orders.

158. The Love of Freedom.-None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence, which never hath more scope, or more indulgence, than under tyrants. Hence it is, that tyrants are not oft offended by, nor stand much in doubt of, bad men, as being all naturally servile; but in whom virtue and true worth most is eminent, them they fear in earnest, as by right their masters; against them lies all their hatred and suspicion.-Milton.

159. Power, habitually in the hands of a whole community, loses all the ordinary associated ideas of power. The exercise of power is a relative term; it supposes an opposition,-something to operate upon. We perceive no exertion of power in the motion of the planetary system, but a very strong one in the movement of a whirlwind; it is because we see obstructions to the latter, but none to the former. Where the government is not in the hands of the people, there you find opposition, you perceive two contending interests, and get an idea of the exercise of power; and whether this power be in the hands of the government or of the people, or whether it change from side to side, it is always to be dreaded. But the word people in America has a different meaning from what it has in Europe. It there means the whole community, and comprehends every human creature; here it means something else, more difficult to define.

Barlow's Advice to the Privileged Orders.

160. Equality. All men are born equal; but a burgess of Maroc does not suspect that this truth exists. This equality is not the annihilation of subordination; we are all equally men, but not all equal members of society. All natural rights belong equally to the Sultan and the Bostangi : both the one and the other ought to dispose, with the same power, of their persons, their families, and their fortunes. Men are therefore essentially equal, altho' they play on the theatre of life different parts.-Voltaire.

161. Advice is seldom well received, well intended, or productive of any good. It is seldom well received, because it implies a superiority of judgment in the giver; and it is seldom intended for any other end than to shew it it is seldom of any service to the giver, because it more frequently makes him an enemy than a friend; and as seldom to the receiver, because, if he is not wise enough to act properly without it, he will scarcely be wise enough to distinguish that which is good.

162. Romances.--'Tis probable that, of all the causes which have injured the health of women, the principal has been the prodigious multiplication of romances within the last century. From the cradle to the most advanced age, they read them with an eagerness which keeps them almost without motion and without sleep. A young girl, instead of running about and playing, reads, perpetually reads, and at twenty becomes full of vapours, instead of being qualified for the duties of a good wife or nurse. These causes, which influence the physical equality influence the moral man. I have known persons of both sexes, whose constitution would have been robust, weakened gradually by the too strong impressions of impassioned writings. The most tender romances hinder marriages, instead of promoting them. A woman while her heart is warmed by the languor of love, does not seek a husband; a hero must lay his laurels at her feet. The fire of love does not warm her heart, it only inflaines her imagination.

Tissot.

163. Opinion is omnipotent; it is more powerful than the fear o bodily pain or death, as appears in gladiators, and duellists, and soldiers, and in the agony of a young woman who, having erred and strayed, will suffer any thing to conceal her shame: and as appears also in religious devotees and martyrs. It is more powerful than the desire between the sexes, as appears in the sacred love between brother and sister, and in devotees and religious seclusions. It is more powerful than the love of friends, as appears in the duellist, who, to opinion, sacrifices the life of his friend, and exposes his widow and children to misery. It is more powerful than the love of a mother for her child, as in India where a mother throws her child to the sharks in the Ganges; or in England, where a misguided young woman destroys her infant, the pledge of her misplaced love. It may brand harmless or innocent acts as crimes, as in witchcraft, or the marriage of the clergy, or usury. It may inflict punishment of unlimited severity, as appears by the barbarities which at different periods of society have been inflicted by man in authority upon his offending or unoffending fellow-creatures.

The Gladiators, says Bishop Taylor, were exposed naked to each others short swords, and were to cut each others souls away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divisible as the life of worms; they did not sigh or groan; it was a shame to decline the blow, but according to the just measures of art. The women that saw the wound shriek out, and he that receives it holds his peace. He did not only stand bravely, but would also fall so; and when he was down, scorned to shrink his head, when the insolent conqueror came to lift it from his shoulders.-The soldier, says Bishop Taylor, will stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis atque solis, pale and faint, weary and watchful; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its own dimension; and all this for a man whom he never saw, or if he did, was not noted by him, but one that shall condemn him to the gallows if he runs from all this misery. Montague's Thoughts, &c.

164. Equality.-Let the people have time to become thoroughly and soberly grounded in the doctrine of equality, and there is no danger of oppression either from government or from anarchy. Very little instruction is necessary to teach a man his rights; and there is no person of common intellects in the most ignorant corner of Europe, but receives lessons enough, if they were of the proper kind.

Barlow's Advice to the Privileged Orders.

165.-The strength of Government does not consist in anything within itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest which the people feel in supporting it. When this is lost, government is but a child in power: and though like the old government of France, it may harrass individuals for a time, it but facilitates its own fall.-Paine.