titles of nobility, noble-bearts, let them ennoble as much as they please. If not, you will do well to keep them, if you can, from being too busy in the manufacture of peers. At any rate, it will be ufeful to accustom your people to think no man nobler than his fellow-fubjects, unless he has a mind. better furnished with ufeful knowledge; a difpofition more happily turned to all that is great and godlike; a more fublime way of thinking, fpeaking, and acting, and a more confpicuous fuperiority to all that is mean, and unworthy the dignity of human: nature, than is to be feen in other men.. He, who poffeffes thefe divine qualifications, wants no external ornaments beftowed (to borrow Mr. Pope's phrafe) " by

kings, or by whores of kings." He,. who has them not, you may hang round: him all the ribbons, that have been manufactured at Coventry in the last seven years, and you may stick on his breast a star as large as the Devil's fhield in Milton; but he will be in reality, and in the estimation. of all men of fenfe, not a whit the greater

for:

for these paltry trappings*. Nay, they will, on the contrary, ferve to render the meanness of his character the more effec

tually confpicuous.

Whatever mock-honours you may have among you, I defire, that you will keep up fome, that may be real.

pendent people have it in

Let the inde

their power to bestow, and to refume them, by a fort of oftracifm. I fix nothing particular. Only, please to look back on the antient free republics, and you will fee what a fpur to in-. duftrious virtue honest fame was in former times, and coníequently may fill be made; and learn to lay hold on human nature by its proper handles, and to give it its proper. bent and direction. In this lies the mystery of government. A mystery indeed to our eighteenth-century politicians, which they neither understand, nor defire to underftand. If you ftudy it, and proceed accordingly, you will fee effects produced adequate to powerful caufes.

Let

*Strip the gay livery from the courtier's back; What marks the diff'rence 'twixt my lord and Jack? P. WHITEHEAD's Manners'

Let the honours conferred by the people die with the individual, on whom they were conferred; unless his fon fhews himself worthy of having them continued to him by an express act of the people. It is nothing to the public, that this blockhead, or that fcoundrel, is fon to a man of abilities, or of virtue, excepting only thus far, that it is the more to the infamy of the fon, that the father was eminent. Illuftrious extraction does indeed throw a light on families. But that light ferves only to fhew the real characters of the defcendents.

Let no body in your times depreciate the fenfe of the independent people, which never continues long erroneous, by drawing comparisons from the mistaken judgments of perfons, and of things, fometimes made by the antient republicans. There is a great difference between the opportunities, thofe honest, but uneducated and unread people, had for judging of characters, and of meafures; and thofe to be enjoyed by you twentieth-century-men, or even by us, your forefathers. Very few of them could

be

be fuppofed to know any thing without the limits of their own country, and of their own times. In our later and more enlightened ages, fuch is, by means of the inestimable art of printing, the univerfal diffufion of knowledge, that every gentleman has it in his power to draw, from the writings of hiftorians and politicians, a complete thefaurus of that knowledge, which is ufeful for judging of the merits of statesmen. In many inftances, private gentlemen, who will apply themselves duly to reading the paft, and obferving the prefent, may, in confequence of the advantage which leifure gives, be expected to pass founder judgments on political fubjects, than those, who fit at the helm; whofe judgment is difturbed by continual hurry, and not seldom biaffed by indirect views.

It is not the intrinfic value of a ftar, that, even in our corrupt times, gives it it's luftre, any more than formerly that of a wisp of hay (corona graminea) placed on the brow of an antient hero, occafioned its drawing the emulation of beholders. It is, even in our fordid times, in the power of

the

the great* (they know it to be so, whatever they may pretend) to raise in the degenerate minds of Britons the fame nobledifpofitions, which prevailed among the Romans in the time of the Scipio's, and to fupprefs the vices, which are the disgrace of our degenerate age.

Commerce and confequent riches are not more naturally or neceffarily connected with luxury and corruption, in a people, than in an individual. If riches do neceffarily produce, in individuals, corruption and luxury, we must conclude, that all our grandees are luxurious and corrupt; a, character which, I fuppofe, not one of them, would acknowledge to be his own; and which, I fuppofe nobody imagines to be universally applicable to them.

Teach

* When governors, either through want of thought,, or, which is often the cafe, from a wrong turn of thought, suffer thofe, of whom they have the care, to fink into all the exceffes of debauchery, they must not. expect, from those weak and effeminate men, either generous thoughts, or gallant actions. Univ. Hift. Vol. viii. p. 480.