he finds it, with all its concomitant excellencies, with all its imperfections on its head. It is his part, in this case, as it is in all other cases, where he is to make use of the general energies of nature, to take them as he finds them.-Second Letter on Reg. Peace.

MEN LOOK FOR PERMANENCY IN THEIR

POSSESSIONS.

The desire of acquisition is always a passion of long views. Confine a man to momentary possession, and you at once cut off that laudable avarice which every wise state has cherished as one of the first principles of its greatness. Allow a man but a temporary possession, lay it down as a maxim that he never can have any other, and you immediately and infallibly turn him to temporary enjoyments; and these enjoyments are never the pleasures of labour and free industry, whose quality it is to famish the present hours and squander all upon

prospect and futurity; they are, on the contrary, those of a thoughtless, loitering, and dissipated life.—Tracts on Popery Laws.

WEALTH MUST BE SUBORDINATE TO
VIRTUE AND HONOUR.

If wealth is the obedient and laborious slave of virtue and of public honour, then wealth is in its place, and has its use but if this order is changed, and honour is to be sacrificed to the conservation of riches, riches which have neither eyes nor hands, nor anything truly vital in them, cannot long survive the being of their vivifying powers, their legitimate masters, and their potent protectors. If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free if our wealth command us, we are poor indeed. First Letter on Reg. Peace.

IN A MONARCHY WEALTH CANNOT

RANK FIRST.

It is the natural operation of things where there exists a crown, a court, splendid

orders of knighthood, and a hereditary nobility; where there exists a fixed, permanent, landed gentry, continued in greatness and opulence by the law of primogeniture, and by a protection given to family settlements; where there exists a standing army and navy-where there exists a church establishment, which bestows on learning and parts an interest combined with that of religion and the state; in a country where such things exist, wealth, new in its acquisition, and precarious in its duration, can never rank first, or even near the first; though wealth has its natural weight further than it is balanced and even preponderated amongst us as amongst other nations, by artificial institutions and opinions growing out of them. Thoughts on French Affairs.

OUR COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES NOT
INDEPENDENT OF MANNERS.

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more

than they are always willing to own to

Even

ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full as much as they are worth. commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures; are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They too may decay with their natural protecting principles.- Reflect. on Rev. in France.

THE TRUE SOURCES OF NATIONAL WEALTH.

The stock of materials, by which any nation is rendered flourishing and prosperous, are its industry; its knowledge, or skill; its morals; its execution of justice; its courage; and the national union in directing these powers to one point, and making them all centre in the public benefit. Other than these I do not know, and scarcely can conceive any means by which a community may flourish.-Tracts on Popery Laws.

CIVILISATION AND ITS CAUSES.

We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilisation, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilisation, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion.— Reflect, on Rev. in France.

TAXATION.

It

Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favourite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. happened, you know, sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question