is worse, this conftant application to pleasure takes away from the enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burthenfome and laborious bufinefs. It has confequences much more fatal. It produces a weak valetudinary ftate of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the refult of luxury on one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other. The pleafures of fuch men are fcarcely felt as pleasures; at the fame time that they bring on pains. and diseases, which are felt but too feverely. The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing real happiness. The poor by their exceffive labour, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil society. The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel oppreffion; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing worse evils on themselves, than their tyranny could poffibly inflict on those below them. Very different is the profpect of the natural state. Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be sensible of no other wants, which are not to be fupplied by a very moderate degree of labour; therefore there is no flavery. Neither is there any luxury, because no fingle man can fupply the materials of it. Life is fimple, and therefore it is happy.

I am conscious, my LORD, that your politician will urge in his defence, that this unequal state is highly useful. That without dooming fome part of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could not be exercised. But I demand of this politician, how fuch arts came to be VOL. I. neceffary?

I

neceffary? He anfwers, that civil fociety could not well exift without them. So that thefe arts are neceffary to civil fociety, and civil fociety neceffary again to these arts. Thus running in a circle, without modefty, and without end, and making one error and extravagance an excufe for the other. My fentiments about these arts and their cause, I have often difcourfed with my friends at large. Pope has expreffed them in good verfe, where he talks with fo much force of reafon and elegance of language in praise of the state of

nature:

Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,
Man walk'd with beaft, joint-tenant of the shade.

On the whole, my Lord, if political fociety, in whatever form, has still made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labours unneceffary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and renders those of millions more utterly abject and miferable, fhall we still worship fo deftructive an idol, and daily facrifice to it our health, our liberty, and our peace? Or fhall we pafs by this monftrous heap of abfurd notions, and abominable practices, thinking we have fufficiently discharged our duty in expofing the trifling cheats, and ridiculous juggles of a few mad, defigning, or ambitious priests? Alas! my Lord, we labour under a mortal confumption, whilft we are fo anxious about the cure of a fore finger. For has not this leviathan of civil power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to disport and play therein? We have shewn, that political fociety, on a moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its fhort existence, not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.

But we have faid nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad confequence of these wars, which have spilled fuch feas of blood, and reduced fo many millions to a merciless flavery. But these are only the ceremonies performed in the porch of the political temple. Much more horrid ones are feen as you enter it. The feveral fpecics of government vie with each other in the abfurdity of their conftitutions, and the oppreffion which they make their fubjects endure. Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a defpotifm, and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel and deteftable fpecies of tyranny; which I rather call it, because we have been educated under another form, than that this is of worfe confequences to mankind. For the free governments, for the point of their space, and the moment of their duration, have felt more confufion, and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect defpotic governments which we have ever known. Turn your eye next to the labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intricate receffes. Confider the ravages committed in the bowels of all commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and pretended friendship; vices which could draw little fupport from a state of nature, but which bloffom and flourish in the rankness of political fociety. Revolve our whole difcourfe; add to it all thofe reflections which your own good understanding shall fuggeft, and make a strenuous effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confefs that the cause of artificial fociety is more defenceless even than that of artificial religion; that it is as derogatory from the honour of the Creator, as fubverfive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mifchief to the human race..

If pretended revelations have caufed wars where they I 2

were

were oppofed, and flavery where they were received, the pretended wife inventions of politicians have done the fame. But the flavery has been much heavier, the wars far more bloody, and both more univerfal by many degrees. Shew me any mischief produced by the madness or wickedness of theologians, and I will fhew you an hundred, resulting from the ambition and villany of conquerors and statesmen. Shew me an absurdity in religion, I will undertake to shew you an hundred for one in political laws and institutions. If you fay, that natural religion is a sufficient guide without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle fhould political laws become neceffary? Is not the fame reafon available in theology and in politicks? If the laws of nature are the laws of God, is it confiftent with the divine wisdom to prescribe rules to us, and leave the enforcement of them to the folly of human institutions? Will you follow truth but to a certain point?

We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust of that guide, which Providence thought fufficient for our condition, our own natural reason, which rejecting both in human and divine things, we have given our necks to the yoke of political and theological flavery. We have renounced the prerogative of man, and it is no wonder that we should be treated like beafts. But our misery is much greater than theirs, as the crime we commit in rejecting the lawful dominion of our reafon is greater than any which they can commit. If after all, you should confefs all these things, yet plead the neceffity of political institutions, weak and wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps fuperior force concerning the neceffity of artificial religion; and every step you advance in your argument, you add a ftrength to mine. So that if we are refolved to fubmit our reafon and our liberty to civil ufurpation, we have nothing

to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar notions which are connected with this, and take up the theology of the vulgar as well as their politicks. But if we think this neceffity rather imaginary than real, we should renounce their dreams of fociety, together with their vifions of religion, and vindicate ourselves into perfect liberty.

You are, my Lord, but just entering into the world; I am going out of it. I have played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether I have acted my part in it well or ill, pofterity will judge with more candor than I, or than the present age, with our prefent paffions, can posfibly pretend to. For my part, I quit it without a figh, and fubmit to the fovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we approach to the goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our existence, and the real weight of our opinions. We fet out much in love with both; but we leave much behind us as we advance. We first throw away the tales along with the rattles of our nurses; those of the priest keep their hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of all. But the paffions which prop thefe opinions are withdrawn one after another; and the cool light of reafon at the setting of our life, shews us what a false splendor played upon these objects during our more fanguine seasons. Happy, my Lord, if inftructed by my experience, and even by my errors, you come early to make such an estimate of things, as may give freedom and ease to your life. I am happy that fuch an estimate promises me comfort at my death.

A PHILO