not inwardly praying, or to sit and listen to a discourse of which they believed little and cared nothing, they were setting a foolish example. Persons in their respectable circumstances do not think it necessary to clean shoes, that by their example they may encourage the shoe-black in continuing his occupation: and Christianity does not think so meanly of herself as to fear that the poor and afflicted will be a whit the less pious, though they should see reason to believe that those, who possessed the good things of the present life, were determined to leave all the blessings of the future for their more humble inferiors. If I have spoken with bitterness, let it be recollected that my subject is hypocrisy.

It is likewise fit, that in all our actions we should have considered how far they are likely to be misunderstood, and from superficial resemblances to be confounded with, and so appear to authorize actions of a very different character. But if this caution be intended for a moral rule, the misunderstanding must be such as might be made by persons who are neither very weak nor very wicked. The ap

parent resemblances between the good action we were about to do and the bad one which might possibly be done in mistaken imitation of it, must be obvious: or that which makes them essentially different, must be subtle or recondite. For what is there which a wicked man blinded by his passions may not, and which a madman will not, misunderstand? It is ridiculous to frame rules of morality with a view to those who are fit objects only for the physician or the magistrate.

The question may be thus illustrated. At Florence there is an unfinished bust of Brutus, by Michael Angelo, under which a Cardinal wrote the following distich:

Dum Bruti effigiem sculptor de marmore finxit,

In mentem selceris venit, et abstinuit.

As the Sculptor was forming the effigy of Brutus, in marble, he recollected his act of guilt and refrained. An English Nobleman, indignant at this distich, wrote immediately under it the following:

Brutum effinxisset sculptor, sed mente recursat
Multa viri virtus si stit et obstupuit.

The Sculptor would have framed a Brutus, but the wast and manifold virtue of the man flashed upon his thought: he stopped and remained in

astonished admiration.

Now which is the nobler and more moral sentiment, the Italian Cardinal's, or the English nobleman's? The Cardinal would appeal to the doctrine of general consequences, and pronounce the death of Cæsar a murder, and Brutus an assassin. For (he would say) if one man may be allowed to kill another because he thinks him a tyrant, religious or political phrenzy may stamp the name of tyrant on the best of kings: regicide will be justified under the pretence of tyrannicide, and Brutus be quoted as authority for the Clements and Ravilliacs. From kings it may pass to generals and statesmen, and from these to any man whom an enemy or enthusiast may pronounce unfit to live. Thus we may have a cobler of Messina in every city, and bravos in our streets as common as in those of Naples, with the name Brutus, on their stilettos.

The Englishman would commence his answer by commenting on the words "because he thinks him a tyrant." No! he would reply, not because the patriot thinks him a tyrant; but because he knows him to be so, and knows likewise, that the vilest of his slaves cannot deny the fact, that he has by violence raised himself

above the laws of his country-because he knows that all good and wise men equally with himself abhor the fact! If there be no such state as that of being broad awake, or no means of distinguishing it when it exists; if because men sometimes dream that they are awake, it must follow that no man, when awake, can be sure that he is not dreaming; if because an hypochondriac is positive that his legs are cylinders of glass, all other men are to learn modesty, and cease to be so positive that their legs are legs; what possible advantage can your criterion of GENERAL CONSEQUENCES possess over any other rule of direction? If no man can be sure that what he thinks a robber with a pistol at his breast demanding his purse, may not be a good friend enquiring after his health; or that a tyrant (the son of a cobler perhaps, who at the head of a regiment of perjured traitors, has driven the representatives of his country out of the senate at the point of the bayonet, subverted the constitution which had trusted, enriched, and honoured him, trampled on the laws which before God and Man he had sworn to obey, and finally raised himself above all

law) may not, in spite of his own and his neighbours' knowledge of the contrary be a lawful king, who has received his power, however despotic it may be, from the kings his ancestors, who exercises no other power than what had been submitted to for centuries, and been acknowledged as the law of the country; on what ground can you possibly expect less fallibility, or a result more to be relied upon in the same man's calculation of your GENERAL CONSEQUENCES? Would he, at least, find any difficulty in converting your criterion into an authority for his act? What should prevent a man, whose perceptions and judgements are so strangely distorted, from arguing, that nothing is more devoutly to be wished for, as a general consequence, than that every man, who by violence places himself above the laws of his country, should in all ages and nations be considered by mankind as placed by his own act out of the protection of law, and be treated by them as any other noxious wild beast would be? Do you think it' necessary to try adders by a jury? Do you hesitate to shoot a mad dog, because it is not