system of philosophy or religion or government, I am convinced that if you destroy the institutions and customs of men, however bad a great part of these may be, you also chill the blood of their attachments, which are requisite for the prosperity and indeed for the safety of nations. At the same time, I am not sorry to find you setting an example here of sobriety and forbearance. These virtues will gradually allure and conciliate many, by the wealth and respectability attendant on them. If, however, all English men were at once such as the society of friends, they would have their throats cut before the next harvest: a consideration which has hindered the greater and better part of Christianity from being yet admitted in any European state.

Penn. My young friend, genius with thee is like the bird of paradise, all wing: should it wish to alight and settle on anything, it finds under it no support.

Peterborough. Penn, I was once a great admirer of Rochefoucauld, and fancied his Maxims were oracles. It happened that, quoting them one day at dinner, my adversary told me I had reversed the sentiment: I found I had. Upon this, I began to reverse, for curiosity's sake, almost every third sentence of my shrewd and smart philosopher; and discovered that, like superfine cloth, they look as comely the wrong side outward as the right, wherever I could give as easy and quick a turn as that of the original. This persuaded me that we receive for the wisest things the gracefullest and the boldest, and that what are called speculative truths are in general not only unimportant, but no truths at all. Industry, cleanliness, equanimity, beneficence, are the intelligible parts of your system: these constitute civilisation, and will not suffer it, I hope, to slide or bulge or decline. It is quite a new and ingenious thought, to try whether Christianity can stand alone and the experiment is well worthy of our attention.

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Penn. Thou speakest with levity and indifference, young man, upon matters of eternal interest. Peterborough. I know nothing, I must repeat it, about these affairs; but I have experienced that some of eternal interest, if there be any such in reasoning, ought to be held as lightly as a rapier, or they may be twisted out of our grasp into the air. Having asked the discreet and pious of several persuasions, whether in their judgment God alone is uncreated, infinite, and eternal, each, however he might differ from the rest on other topics, replied in the affirmative. What an opinion must I form on the perversion of the human mind, afraid as I find it everywhere of admitting that time and space must also be eternal, infinite, and uncreated! Day and night only mark time out, and are in regard to it what clocks and watches are. God himself, although he may be said to extend through all space, can not be said to extend any farther: yet what is through is beyond. Are we not here in want of terms?

Penn. Rather, in want of curbs, to check us on a precipice.

Those doctors you have cited would have acted more judiciously and honestly in owning that they knew nothing about the business, and that it is a question which our Saviour did not come upon earth to agitate or to solve. We have already more knowledge than we are disposed to bring into use: when we have well practised the whole of it, perhaps He who gave us it may give us more. One would imagine that the wisdom of those who govern might be better for a supply now and then from the wisdom of those who reason in retirement. Instead of which, politicians and philosophers are the two classes of men the most opposite in the world, standing with their eyes fixed one upon the other, in suspicion, or indignation, or scorn. The most extravagant are the oftenest quoted: but it is merely to exhibit the futility of innovation or reform. I do not assert that there is a single axiom in Plato, which a minister in any country or any age ought to receive and act on : but many of them, taking up his fame when it suits their purpose, announce him as a high authority, holding in derision those who stand nearer, such as Harrington and Milton, superior to him in gravity and in virtue.

Peterborough. I remember one axiom of the divine man, which every minister in my time has both received and acted on.

Penn. Although I perused his dialogues on polity a little while ago, I can not recollect it. Peterborough. He forbids the use of falsehood to the community at large, but allows it to the rulers: just as the papal priests do with the wine at the sacrament, giving it one to the other, but withholding it from the people. Plato calls it a medicine, and tells us we must concede it to the physician, in order that we may use it as he pleases; but we must let no other man meddle with it. Surely, my friend Penn, you can not deny that persons in authority, with us, cherish this Platonic sentiment with somewhat more than Platonic affection.

Penn. I grieve at the man's vacuity, who imagines that falsehood, of all vices the easiest to take root and the hardest to extirpate, is likely to be long in overrunning the country, when the breath of those who govern us blows it abroad at will, in every direction. Beside, did he not see that, sooner or later, the lie must be exposed? and that not only the bad example would ramify in the closest and most sheltered concerns of life, but that the government itself must be rendered unstabile, when the governors were found cheats and liars.

Peterborough. He would not permit the soldiers to reside in the city.

Penn. In other words, he would not permit them to care a farthing for the townsmen they are to protect: in that case a slight matter would incline them to the invader.

Peterborough. Not at all: he provides against

bidding thee to read it again and again, and to be modester and wiser. Little as I shall ever be contented with my modesty or my wisdom, I hope to improve and to increase them daily, by a patient and kindly intercourse with my fellow men, and a humble unquestioning obedience to our hea venly father. Peace and quiet are, in this happy climate, the unfailing fruits of concession and forbearance; fruits which I hope may be transplanted and husbanded, with all the attention and solicitude they ought to be, in countries where at present they have been but heard of, and with indistinctness and with incredulity.

Thou thyself art inclined, my friend, to doubt and dispute the verities of Revelation. I shall not argue with thee on the tenets of any particular sect, nor speak in my own person, nor according to my own belief, but generally and loosely, and as an indifferent man might reason, when a scheme was laid before him for the improvement and emolument of his kind. Something of fear, thou wilt acknowledge, is requisite, for the coercion of the ungenerous and unjust: something of hope, something of promise, something of security, for the beneficent and righteous, for the afflicted and oppressed. Thou thinkest thou art doing no wrong in removing the foundations of hope to think it, is a folly; to do it, is a robbery.

Peterborough. In what way a robbery? Come, tell me; for you stopped to expect my question. Penn. Hope is the best of possessions. Peterborough. Of possessions truly!

Penn. Ay, that it is. The provident rear it early in their bosoms; and the improvident, when everything else is squandered, cling at it to the last.

If we find a few stubborn texts of Holy Scripture that would exclude many good men from their rewards, we may reasonably think them the dreams of hot enthusiasts, exhausted by their aspirations and distempered by their zeal. We should more wisely turn to the words of the teacher than to the glosses of the interpreter, and press toward him through the clouds that surround him, in which alone is darkness and dismay for his countenance is irradiated, his speech is simple, in his voice is confidence, and in his mien is peace. Why wouldst thou push men away from him, even if thou wert persuaded that he has nothing for them? They are better by trying to merit it, and happier by continuing to expect it. Neither of us can say to a certainty that it is unattainable on the contrary, the means, we are assured, are not difficult, and the mediator is not repulsive. There may be folly in most religions, and if thou wilt, in all; but the greatest of folly is to hinder men from happiness, to render them turbulent, disorderly, lawless, desperate.

Peterborough. Certainly it is wiser, when you have broken their bones, to tell them that they may pick them up again and case them better hereafter.

Penn. Oppression and injustice are not wanted to make the promises of a man's own heart acceptable to him, and to expand his breast with joy and gladness, at the responses given to them (as he believes they are) from above. These he may have without purchasing, and without going to seek them at another's door.

If commerce itself is generally bad and iniquitous when it falls into the hands of a company, what is religion? At first a craft, and afterward a cheat.

Woe! woe to those who make it one: woe! woe to those who enter into it..

Peterborough. Without a patron in the chancellor, or a friend in the huntsman of the squire.

Penn. Thy light spirits will one day carry thee into the wilderness, and there leave thee sore smitten and without strength. Unworthiness! thou laughest at men's wrongs.

Peterborough. Because men are made now as they were made formerly, and yet bear them. Such being the fact, I think I have esteem enough for them in ranging them with my other instruments, lead and iron.

Penn. Great God! the proud themselves decry and detest the oppressor, while only the powerless pity the oppressed.

Peterborough. Nations are to be commiserated for few other evils than what the elements cast among them; such as famine and pestilence. A quiver of arrows, well directed by half a dozen boys, would remove in a single hour the heaviest that philosophers and patriots have tugged against for ages. Injuries grow up quickly and rankly under impunity. I do not deliver such an opinion because I have acted on it; for I may say to you in confidence, that I often have forgiven injustice done against me, not indeed to bring a Christian spirit on the parade, but for the satisfaction I feel in the consciousness of superiority, and in the intensity of contempt. It was wrong to gratify my humour at the expense of society, as I have frequently; and the only counterbalance is, to serve society at my own peril and loss: and this, as you must acknowledge, hath been my conduct in regard to King James. It is just and necessary to shake a salutary fear into the breasts of insolent stupid despots, when they shake an unsalutary one into thousands, who, without such nuisances, would be brave and free. Whoever lets a prince escape him after suffering an act of arbitrary power, neglects his duty to himself and others; and neglects it from the worst motive, indifference to public security and private honour. Never let me hear that it is no easy matter to accomplish. I have only one reply; and an obvious one is it: that it may be no easy matter to catch or poison a rat at the time of its depredation but let traps and arsenic be always in its way; and finally, you are certain of success. Here indeed you may more justly censure me as cruel: for these poor creatures do us little harm comparatively, and consume what is as much

theirs as ours, and what they are guided by instinct to partake with us. But animals without hearts are not directed by Nature or Providence to consume the hearts of others, and the most generous with the most voracity. These now and then recoil, swell against and overpower them. Penn. Hold hold! less animation and heat, I do beseech thee! Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

Peterborough. We can not do better than imitate him on it, when we find him ready to help us. Penn. By long and patient endurance thou mayst make unrighteous princes ashamed.

Peterborough. You may make a dog ashamed by looking him fixedly in the face! You can only make a prince afraid by it: and if you do, and nothing more, he hangs you. We never play the farce before the tragedy.

Penn. I am slow and reluctant to admit what I am afraid must be admitted; that certain plagues, like certain weeds, ought to be cut down rapidly three or four times in the season: this alone kills them. Happy the land whère such cutting down can be avoided!

Peterborough. And where it can not be, your friends will supply neither hatchet nor rope. The better your institutions are, and the purer your religion and morality, the less likelihood is there that your numbers will increase. Want indeed may compell a few to emigrate from England: but what gain you by such colonists as those?

Penn. A pledge; a security. Whoever emigrates from want, presents a token that he would rather work than steal, rather help his neighbour than beg. In England a family may often be a curse; in America it will always be a blessing. In England a child brings with it poverty in most instances; in America wealth.

Peterborough. In England they are swamps and bushes, in America ploughs and oxen; ay, Penn?

Penn. Without them, and in greater proportion than the luxuries of England can afford, our ploughs would rot, our oxen run wild. Wherever I see a child before me in America, I fancy I see a fresh opening in the wilderness, and in this opening a servant of God appointed to comfort and guide me, ready to sit by me when my eyes grow dim, and able to sustain me when my feet are weary. Look forward, and behold the children of that child. Few generations are requisite to throw upon their hinges the heavily-barred portals of the vast continent behind us. Thy horse appeared to scent by instinct the high-road across it; and thy heart, Mordaunt, panted with prescience to pass the barrier, which, the tyrant and his fool would tell thee, Nature hath interposed. Who knows but, a century or two hence, we may look down together on those who are journeying, in this newly-traced road, toward the cities and marts of California, and who are delayed upon it by meeting the Spaniards driven in troops from Mexico.

Peterborough. You began with a dream, you are ending with a vision.

Penn. Everything good hath been ever called so: my answer is, past events shadow out future ones.

Peterborough. We move in the midst of these shadows, but discern not their forms and tendencies.

Penn. Perfectly we do not discern them: nevertheless, from the invariable practice of hereditary potentates to abuse and arrogate power, and from the spirit of agricultural states in their adolescence, and from the vantage-ground whereon that spirit stands when it settles but to soar away, he who is not an idiot must be a prophet.

First the brutes possessed the earth: afterward they and men contended for it, and held it equally : by degrees men acquired the ascendancy: lastly, as the monsters were thinned and scattered, men contrived to raise up artificial ones, covering them with furs and hair, and admiring their truculent looks and flaring colours. These creatures, like the pig-enactor in the fable, did bravelier than those they represented, and allowed no better than a precarious and merely animal existence to their fanciful dressers and complacent fosterers. It was not the tree of folly that

Brought death into the world and all our woe; it was the tree of wisdom. As this apologue is liable to many interpretations, it may admit mine among the rest.

Peterborough. Let me hear it: a fable is sometimes a refreshment.

Penn. Mine is, that neither the ignorance nor the passions of mankind are immediately and of themselves the causes of their corruption and wretchedness, but the uses and ends to which they have been converted by the warier.

Peterborough. I think so too; and, although our creeds are not quite homogeneous, one thing peculiarly pleases me in your religious doctrines. Penn. I rejoice to hear it say which. Peterborough. You pay nothing for them. Penn. To suppose that we want hirelings to teach us our duties, is to suppose that our fathers and mothers have given bad examples and appointed bad executors. Taking a different view of the subject, holiness, you may tell me, hath little weight with most people: I know it: but every man who wishes to leave his children either rich or respectable, will provide that they first acquire from him what shall preserve their riches and promote their respectability; that is, frugal habits and civil demeanour. Quarrels for tithes, and appointed prayers, imperfectly serve the purpose. They supersede those endeavours which would be made for every man's own interest, in every man's own house; not perhaps by psalms and sermons, but by exhortations and examples.

Peterborough. There is something grand and imposing in our hierarchy.

Penn. Troth is there! and more than enough of both yet there was nothing grand or imposing

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