primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is requisite to form taste, and the ground-work of all these is the same in the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on these matters.

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Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure; and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.

TAXATION OF SALARIES RECEIVED FROM THE

STATE.

I HAVE always thought employments a very proper subject of regulation, but a very ill-chosen subject for a tax. An equal tax upon property is reasonable; because the object is of the same quality throughout. The species is the same, it differs only in its quantity: but a tax upon salaries is totally of a different nature; there can be no equality,, and consequently no justice, in taxing them by the hundred, in the gross.

We have, Sir, on our establishment, several offices which perform real service-We have also places that provide large rewards for no service at all. We have stations which are made for the public decorum; made for preserving the grace and majesty of a great people-We have likewise expensive formalities, which tend rather to the disgrace than the ornament of the state and the court. This, Sir, is the real condition of our establishments. To fall with the same severity on objects so perfectly dissimilar, is the very reverse of a reformation. I mean are formation framed, as all serious things ought to be, in number, weight, and measure.

TAXES.

OUR taxes, for the far greater portion, fly over the heads of the lowest classes. They escape too who, with better ability, voluntarily subject themselves to the harsh discipline of a rigid necessity. With us, labour and frugality, the parents of riches, are spared, and wisely too. The moment men cease to augment the common stock, the moment they no longer enrich it by their industry or their self-denial, their luxury and even their ease are obliged to pay contribution to the public; not because they are vicious principles, but because they are unproductive.

TEACHING.

I AM convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to

the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.

TEMPERANCE.

THE excesses of delicacy, repose, and satiety, are as unfavourable as the extremes of hardship, toil, and want, to the increase and multiplication of our kind. Indeed, the abuse of the bounties of nature, much more surely than any partial privation of them, tends to intercept that precious boon of a second and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed in the first great command to man from the All-gracious Giver of all, whose name be blessed, whether he gives or takes away. His hand, in every page of his book, has written the lesson of moderation. Our physical well-being, our moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all depend on that controul of all our appetites and passions, which the ancients designed by the cardinal virtue of Temperance.

THE THEATRE.

THE dresses, the scenes, the decorations of every kind, I am told, are in a new style of splendour and magnificence, whether to the advantage of our dramatic taste, upon the whole, I very much doubt. It is a shew, and a spectacle, not a play, that is exhibited. This is undoubtedly in the genuine manner of the

Augustan age, but in a manner, which was censured by one of the best poets and critics of that or any age:

-migravit ab aure voluptas

Omnis ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana :

Quatuor aut plures aulæa premuntur in horas,

Dum fugiunt equitum turmæ, peditumque catervæ ;

I must interrupt the passage, most fervently to deprecate and abominate the sequel,

Mox trahitur manibus Regum fortuna retortis.

I hope, that no French fraternization, which the relations of peace and amity with systematized regicide, would assuredly, sooner or later, draw after them, even if it should overturn our happy constitution itself, could so change the hearts of Englishmen, as to make them delight in representations and processions, which have no other merit than that of degrading and insulting the name of royalty.

THREATS.

NOTHING, in my opinion, can contribute more effectually to lower any sovereign in the public estimation, and to turn his defeats into disgraces, than to threaten in a moment of impotence. The second manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick appeared therefore to the world to be extremely ill-timed.

TRADE.

OBJECTS like trade and manufacture, which the very attempt to confine would certainly destroy, frequently

change their place; and thereby, far from being lost, are often highly-improved. Thus some manufactures have decayed in the west and south, which have made new and more vigorous shoots when transplanted into the north.

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Beggary and bankruptcy are not the circumstances which invite to an intercourse with that or with any country; and I believe it will be found invariably true, that the superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found every where.

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Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is the most dangerous, and it is always worst in the time when men are most disposed to it: that is, in the time of scarcity. Because there is nothing on which the passions of men are so violent, and their judgment so weak, and on which there exists such a multitude of ill-founded popular prejudices.

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The universal alarm of the whole trading body of England will never be laughed at by them as an illgrounded or a pretended panic. The universal desire of that body will always have great weight with them in every consideration connected with commerce ; neither ought the opinion of that body to be slighted (notwithstanding the contemptuous and indecent language of this author and his associates) in any consideration whatsoever of revenue. Nothing amongst