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telling a lie, or for a snotty nose, he must of course think them equally criminal. Reason him, by fair means, out of all those things for which he will not be the worse man; and flog him severely for those things only for which the law would punish him as a man.

COMMON-PLACE OBSERVATIONS.

Having mentioned common-] n-place observa tions, I will particularly caution you against either using, believing, or approving them They are the common topics of witlings and coxcombs; those who really have wit have the utmost contempt for them, and scorn even laugh at the pert things that those would-be wits say upon such subjects.

Religion is one of their favourite topics; it is all priest-craft; and an invention contrived and carried on by priests, of all religions, for their own power and profit: from this absurd and false principle flow the common-place, insipid jokes and insults upon the clergy. With these people, every priest, of every religion, is either a public or concealed unbeliever, drunkard and whoremaster. Whereas I conceive that. priests are extremely like other men, and neither the better nor the worse for wearing a gown or surplice; but, if they are different from other people, probably it is rather on the side of religion and morality, or at least decency, from their education and manner of life.

Another common topic for false wit, and cold raillery, is matrimony. Every man and his wife hate each other cordially; whatever they may pretend, in public, to the contrary. The husband certainly wishes his wife at the devil, and the wife certainly cuckolds her husband. Whereas I presume that men and their wives neither love nor hate each other the more, upon account of the form of matrimony which has been said over them. The cohabitation, indeed, which is the consequence of matrimony, makes them either love or hate more, accordingly as they respectively deserve it; but that would be exactly the same between any man and woman who lived together without being married.

These and many other common-place reflections upon nations, or professions, in general (which are at least as often false as true), are the poor refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their own, but endeavour to shine in company by second-hand finery. I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance, by looking extremely grave, when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying, Well, and so ? as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them; as they have no resources in themselves, and have but One set of jokes to live upon. Men of parts are not reduced to these shifts, and have the utmost contempt for them; they find proper

subjects enough for either useful or lively con versations; they can be witty without satire or common-place, and serious without being dull.

IRONICAL CONDOLENCE WITH LADIES OF FASHION, ON THEIR ANNUAL RUSTICATION.

Though the separation of the parliament generally suspends the vigour of political altercations, I doubt it creates domestic ones, not less sharp and acrimonious; and, possibly, the individuals of both houses may find as warm debates at home as any they have met with during the course of the session.

Their motion for adjourning into the country is, I believe, seldom seconded by their wives and daughters; and if at last they carry it, it is more by the exertion of their authority, than by the cogency of their reasoning.

This act of power, so strenuously withstood at first, and so unwillingly submitted to at last, lays but an indifferent foundation of domestic harmony during their retirement; and I am surprised that the throne, which never fails, a the end of the session, to recommend to both houses certain wholesome and general rules for their behaviour and conduct, when scattered in their respective counties, should hitherto have taken no notice of their ladies, nor have made them the least excuse for the disagreeable con sequences which result to them from the recess

Nay, even in the female reigns of queen Elizabeth and queen Anne, I cannot discover that any advice, or application of this nature, has ever been directed to the fair sex; as if their uneasiness and dissatisfaction were matters of no concern to the peace and good order of the kingdom in general.

For my own part, I see this affair in a very different light, and I think I shall do both my country and the ministry good service, if, by any advice and consolation I can offer to my fair countrywomen, in this their dreadful time of trouble and trial, I can alleviate their misfortunes, and mitigate the horrors of their retirement; since it is obvious, that the people in the country, who see things but at a distance, will never believe that matters go right, when they observe a general discontent in every one but the master of the family, whose particular tranquillity they may, possibly, ascribe to particular reasons, and not to the happy state of the public. Besides that, my real concern and regard for the fair sex excites my compassion for them, and I sympathize with them in that scene of grief and despair, which the prospect of their six months' exile presents to them.

I own I have been so sensibly touched, as I have gone along the streets, to see, at the one pair of stairs windows, so many fine eyes, bathed in tears, and dismally fixed upon the fatal wagons loading at their doors, that I re

solved my endeavours should not be wanting, to administer to them whatever amusement or comfort I could think of under their present calamity.

The ancient philosophers have left us most excellent rules for our conduct, under the va rious afflictions to which we are liable. They bid us not be grieved at misfortunes, nor pleased with prosperity; and undeniably prove, that those imaginary ills of old age, sickness, the loss of friends, fortune, &c. would really not be ills, if we were but wise enough not to be affected by them. But I have nowhere found, in their writings, any consolation offered to the fair sex, to support and strengthen them under the rigours of a country life. Whether this barbarous custom of confining the ladies half the year in the country was not practised among the ancients, whether the case was not looked upon as above comfort or below attention, or whether the Goths and Vandals may not have deprived the learned world of those valuable treatises, I cannot tell; but this is certain, that I know no case of greater compassion, and few of greater consequence, than that of a fine woman, hurried, not only by her husband, but with her husband, from all the joys of London to all the horrors of the mansion-seat in the country; where, not to mention many other circumstances of this tyranny, in one particular, I fear it too often resembles the Mezentian cruelty of tying a living body to a dead one.

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