the love of personal indulgence. Are these motives fit to be brought into competition with the probable welfare, the virtue, the usefulness, and the happiness of his family and himself? Yet such is the competition, and to such unworthy objects, duty, and reason, and affection are sacrificed.

It will be said, a man should provide for his family; and make them, if he can, independent. That he should provide for his family is true; that he should make them independent, at any rate that he should give them an affluent independence, forms no part of his duty, and is frequently a violation of it. As it respects almost all men, he will best approve himself a wise and kind parent, who leaves to his sons so much only as may enable them, by moderate engagements, to enjoy the conveniences and comforts of life; and to his daughters a sufficiency to possess similar comforts, but not a sufficiency to shine amongst the great, or to mingle with the votaries of expensive dissipation. If any father prefers other objects to the welfare and happiness of his children—if wisdom and kindness towards them are with him subordinate considerations, it is not probable that he will listen to reasonings like these. But where is the parent who dares to acknowledge this preference to his own mind?

It were idle to affect to specify any amount of property which a person ought not to exceed. The circumstances of one man may make it reasonable that he should acquire or retain much more than another who has fewer claims. Yet somewhat of a general rule may be suggested. He who is accumulating should consider why he desires more. If it really is, that he believes an addition will increase the welfare and usefulness and virtue of his family, it is probable that further accumulation may be right. If no such belief is sincerely entertained, it is more than probable that it is

wrong. He who already possesses affluence should consider its actual existing effects. If he employs a competent portion of it in increasing the happiness of others, if it does not produce any injurious effect upon his own mind, if it does not diminish or impair the virtues of his children, if they are grateful for their privileges rather than vain of their superiority, if they second his own endeavors to diffuse happiness around them, he may remain as he is. If such effects are not produced, but instead of them others of an opposite tendency, he certainly has too much.-Upon this serious subject let the Christian parent be serious. If, as is proved by the experience of every day, great property usually inflicts great injuries upon those who possess it, what motive can induce a good man to lay it up for his children? What motive will be his justification, if it tempts them from virtue?

When children are similarly situated with respect to their probable wants, there seems no reason for preferring the elder to the younger, or sons to daughters. Since the proper object of a parent in making a division of his property, is the comfort and welfare of his children—if this object is likely to be better secured by an equal than by any other division, an equal division ought to be made. It is a common, though not a very reasonable opinion, that a son needs a larger portion than a daughter. To be sure, if he is to live in greater affluence than she, he does. But why should he? There appears no motive in reason, and certainly there is none in affection, for diminishing one child's comforts to increase another's. A son too has greater opportunities of gain. A woman almost never grows rich except by legacies or marriage; so that, if her father do not provide for her, it is probable that she will not be provided for at all. As to marriage, the opportunity is frequently not offered to a woman; and

a father if he can, should so provide for his daughter as to enable her, in single life, to live in a state of comfort not greatly inferior to her brother's. The remark that the custom of preferring sons is general, and therefore that when a couple marry the inequality is adjusted, applies only to the case of those who do marry. The number of women who do not is great; and a parent cannot foresee his daughter's lot. Besides, since marriage is (and is reasonably) a great object to a woman, and is desirable both for women and for men, there appears a propriety in increasing the probability of marriage by giving to women such property as shall constitute an additional inducement to marriage in the men. I shall hardly be suspected of recommending persons to " marry for money." My meaning is this: A young man possesses five hundred a year, and lives on a corresponding scale. He is attached to a woman who has but one hundred a year. This young man sees that if he marries, he must reduce his scale of living; and the consideration operates (I do not say that it ought to operate) to deter him from marriage. But if the young man possessed three hundred a year and lived accordingly, and if the object of his attachment possessed three hundred a year also, he would not be prevented from marrying her by the fear of being obliged to diminish his system of expenditure. Just complaints are made of those halfconcealed blandishments by which some women who need a settlement" endeavor to procure it by marriage. Those blandishments would become more tempered with propriety, if one great motive was taken away by the possession of a competence of their

own.

Perhaps it is remarkable, that the obligation not to accumulate great property for ourselves or our children, is so little enforced by the writers on morality.

None will dispute that such accumulation is both unwise and unkind. Every one acknowledges too that the general evils of the existing inequality of property are enormously great; yet how few insist upon those means by which, more than by any other private means, these evils may be diminished! If all men declined to retain, or refrained from acquiring, more than is likely to be beneficial to their families and themselves, the pernicious inequality of property would quickly be diminished or destroyed. There is a

motive upon the individual to do this, which some public reformations do not offer. He who contributes almost nothing to diminish the general mischiefs of extreme poverty and extreme wealth, may yet do so much benefit to his own connections as shall greatly overpay him for the sacrifice of vanity or inclination. Perhaps it may be said that there is a claim too of justice. A man who has acquired a reasonable sufficiency, and who nevertheless retains his business to acquire more than a sufficiency, practises a sort of injustice towards another who needs his means of gain. There are always many who cannot enjoy the comforts of life, because others are improperly occupying the means by which those comforts are to be obtained. Is it the part of a Christian to do this?—even abating the consideration that he is injuring himself by withholding comforts from another.

CHAPTER IV.

LITIGATION-ARBITRATION.

Practice of early Christians-Evils of Litigation-Efficiency of

Arbitration.

IN the third Essay,* some enquiry will be attempted, as to whether justice may not often be administered between contending parties, or to public offenders, by some species of arbitration rather than by law;whether a gradual substitution of equity for fixed rules of decision, is not congruous alike with philosophy and morals. The present chapter, however, and that which succeeds it, proceed upon the supposition that the administration of justice continues in its present

state.

The question for an individual, when he has some cause of dispute with another respecting property or rights is, By what means ought I to endeavor to adjust it? Three modes of adjustment may be supposed to be offered: Private arrangement with the other party -Reference to impartial men-and law. Private adjustment is the best mode; arbitration is good; law is good only when it is the sole alternative.

The litigiousness of some of the early Christians at Corinth gave occasion to the energetic expostulation; "Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? If then, ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who * Chap. X.