tions of most men are such, that if it were devised, they would not enjoy it? It may be feared that the desires which are seeking for gratification are not themselves pure; and pure pleasures are not congenial to impure minds. The real cause of the objectionable nature of many popular diversions is to be sought in the want of virtue in the people.

Amusement is confessedly a subordinate concern in life. It is neither the principal nor amongst the principal objects of proper solicitude. No reasonable man sacrifices the more important thing to the less, and that a man's religious and moral condition is of incomparably greater importance than his diversion, is sufficiently plain. In estimating the propriety or rather the lawfulness of a given amusement, it may safely be laid down, That none is lawful of which the aggregate consequences are injurious to morals: -nor, if its effects upon the immediate agents are, in general, morally bad ::-nor if it occasions needless pain and misery to men or to animals:-nor, lastly, if it occupies much time or is attended with much expense. Respecting all amusements, the question is not whether, in their simple or theoretical character, they are defensible, but whether they are defensible in their actually existing state.

THE DRAMA. So that if a person, by way of showing the propriety of theatrical exhibitions, should ask whether there was any harm in a man's repeating a composition before others and accompanying it with appropriate gestures-he would ask a very foolish question: because he would ask a question that possesses little or no relevancy to the subject. What are the ordinary effects of the stage upon those who act on it? One and one only answer can be given that whatever happy exceptions there may be, the effect is bad;—that the moral and religious character of actors is lower than that of persons in other professions. "It is an undeniable fact, for the truth of which we may safely appeal to every age and nation, that the situation of the performers, particularly of those of the female sex, is remarkably unfavourable to the maintenance and growth of the religious and moral principle, and of course highly dangerous to their eternal interests."*

Therefore, if I take my seat in the theatre, I have paid three or five shillings as an inducement to a number of persons to subject their principles to extreme danger;—and the defence which I make is, that I am amused by it. Now, we affirm that this defence is invalid; that it is a defence which reason pronounces to be absurd, and morality to be vicious. Yet I have no other to make: it is the sum total of my justification.

But this, which is sufficient to decide the morality of the question, is not the only nor the chief part of the evil. The evil which is suffered by performers may be more intense, but upon spectators and others it is more extended. The night of a play is the harvest time of iniquity, where the profligate and the sensual put in their sickles and reap. It is to no purpose to say that a man may go to a theatre or parade a saloon without taking part in the surrounding licentiousness. All who are there promote the licentiousness, for if none were there, there would be no licentiousness; that is to say, if none purchased tickets there would be neither actors to be depraved, nor dramas to vitiate, nor saloons to degrade, and corrupt, and shock us.-The whole question of the lawfulness of the dramatic amusements, as they are ordinarily conducted, is resolved into a very simple thing:-After the doors on any given nght are closed, have the virtuous or the vicious dispositions of the attenders been in the greater degree

Wilberforce: Practical View, c. 4, s. 5.

promoted? Every one knows that the balance is on the side of vice, and this conclusively decides the question" Is it lawful to attend?"

The same question is to be asked, and the same answer I believe will be returned, respecting various other assemblies for purposes of amusement. They do more harm than good. They please but they injure us; and what makes the case still stronger is, that the pleasure is frequently such as ought not to be enjoyed. A tippler enjoys pleasure in becoming drunk, but he is not to allege the gratification as a set-off against the immorality. And so it is with no small portion of the pleasures of an assembly. Dispositions are gratified which it were wiser to thwart; and, to speak the truth, if the dispositions of the mind were such as they ought to be, many of these modes of diversion would be neither relished nor resorted to. Some persons try to persuade themselves that charity forms a part of their motive in attending such places; as when the profits of the night are given to a benevolent institution. They hope, I suppose, that though it would not be quite right to go if benevolence were not a gainer, yet that the end warrants the means. But if these persons are charitable, let them give their guinea without deducting half for purposes of questionable propriety. Religious amusements, such as Oratorios and the like, form one of those artifices of chicanery by which people cheat, or try to cheat, themselves. The music, say they, is sacred, is devotional; and we go to hear it as we go to church: it excites and animates our religious sensibilities. This, in spite of the solemnity of the association, is really ludicrous. These scenes subserve religion no more than they subserve chemistry. They do not increase its power any more than the power of the steam-engine. As it respects Christianity, it is all imposition and fiction; and it is unfortunate that some of the most solemn topics of our religion are brought into such unworthy and debasing alliance.*

MASQUERADES are of a more decided character. If the pleasure which people derive from meeting in disguises consisted merely in the "fun and drollery" of the thing, we might wonder to see so many children of five and six feet high, and leave them perhaps to their childishness:—but the truth is, that to many the zest of the concealment consists in the opportunity which it gives of covert licentiousness; of doing that in secret, of which, openly, they would profess to be ashamed. Some men and some women who affect propriety when the face is shown, are glad of a few hours of concealed libertinism. It is a time in which principles are left to guard the citadel of virtue without the auxiliary of public opinion. And ill do they guard it! It is no equivocal indication of the slender power of a person's principles, when they do not restrain him any longer than his misdeeds will produce exposure. She who is immodest at a masquerade, is modest nowhere. She may affect the language of delicacy and maintain external decorum, but she has no purity of mind.

THE FIELD. If we proceed with the calculation of the benefits and mischiefs of Field Sports, in the merchant-like manner of debtor and creditor, the balance is presently found to be greatly against them. The advantages to him who rides after hounds and shoots pheasants, are--that he is amused, and possibly that his health is improved; some of the disadvantages are--that it is unpropitious to the influence of religion and the dispositions which religion induces; that it expends money and time which a man ought to be able to employ better; and that it inflicts gratuitous misery upon the inferior ani

See also Essay 2, c. 1.

mals. The value of the pleasure cannot easily be computed, and as to health it may pass for nothing; for if a man is so little concerned for his health that he will not take exercise without dogs and guns, he has no reason to expect other men to concern themselves for it in remarking upon his actions. And then for the other side of the calculation. That field sports have any tendency to make a man better, no one will pretend; and no one who looks around him will doubt that their tendency is in the opposite direction. It is not necessary to show that every one who rides after the dogs is a worse man in the evening than he was in the morning: the influence of such things is to be sought in those with whom they are habitual. Is the character of the sportsman, then, distinguished by religious sensibility? By activity of Benevolence? No. By intellectual exertion? No. By purity of manners? Sportsmen are not the persons who diffuse the light of Christianity, or endeavour to rectify the public morals, or to extend the empire of knowledge. Look again at the clerical sportsman. Is he usually as exemplary in the discharge of his functions as those who decline such diversions? His parishioners know that he is not. So, then, the religious and moral tendency of Field Sports is bad. It is not necessary to show how the ill effect is produced. It is sufficient that it actually is produced.

No.

No.

As to the expenditure of time and money, I dare say we shall be told that a man has a right to employ both as he chooses. We have heretofore seen that he has no such right. Obligations apply just as truly to the mode of employing leisure and property, as to the use which a man may make of a pound of arsenic. The obligations are not indeed alike enforced in a court of justice: the misuser of arsenic is carried to prison, the misuser of time and money awaits as sure an enquiry at another tribunal. But no folly is more absurd than that of supposing we have a right to do whatever the law does not punish. Such is the state of mankind, so great is the amount of misery and degradation, and so great are the effects of money and active philanthropy in meliorating this condition of our species, that it is no light thing for a man to employ his time and property upon vain and needless gratifications. It is no light thing to keep a pack of hounds, and to spend days and weeks in riding after them. As to the torture which field sports inflict upon animals, it is wonderful to observe our inconsistencies. He who has, in the day, inflicted upon half a dozen animals almost as much torture as they are capable of sustaining, and who has wounded perhaps half a dozen more, and left them to die of pain or starvation, gives in the evening a grave reproof to his child, whom he sees amusing himself with picking off the wings of flies! The infliction of pain is not that which gives pleasure to the sportsman, (this were ferocious depravity,) but he voluntarily inflicts the pain in order to please himself. Yet this man sighs and moralizes over the cruelty of children! An appropriate device for a sportsman's dress would be a pair of balances, of which one scale was laden with "Virtue and humanity," and the other with "Sport; "the latter should be preponderating and lifting the other into the air. THE TURF is still worse, partly because it is a stronghold of gambling, and therefore an efficient cause of misery and wickedness. It is an amusement of almost unmingled evil. But upon whom is the evil chargeable? Upon the fifty or one hundred persons only who bring horses and make bets? No; every man participates who attends the course. The great attraction of many public spectacles, and of this amongst others, consists more in the company than in the ostensible object of amusement.

Many go to a race-ground who cannot tell when they return what horse has been the victor. Every one therefore who is present must take his share of the mischief and the responsibility.

It is the same with respect to the gross and vulgar diversions of boxing, wrestling, and feats of running and riding. There is the same almost pure and unmingled evil the same popularity resulting from the concourses who attend, and, by consequence, the participation and responsibility in those who do attend. The drunkenness, and the profaneness, and the debauchery, lie in part at the doors of those who are merely lookers-on; and if these lookerson make pretensions to purity of character, their example is so much the more influential and their responsibility tenfold increased. Defences of these gross amusements are ridiculous. One tells us of keeping up the national spirit, which is the same thing as to say, that a human community is benefited by inducing into it the qualities of the bull-dog. Another expatiates upon invigorating the muscular strength of the poor, as if the English poor were under so little necessity to labour, and to strengthen themselves by labour, that artificial means must be devised to increase their toil.

The vicissitudes of folly are endless; the vulgar games of the present day may soon be displaced by others, the same in genus, but differing in species. At the present moment, Wrestling has become the point of interest. A man is conveyed across the kingdom to try whether he can throw down another; and when he has done it, grave narratives of the feat are detailed in half the newspapers of the country! There is a grossness, a vulgarity, a want of mental elevation in these things, which might induce the man of intelligence to reprobate them even if the voice of morality were silent. They are remains of barbarism-evidences that barbarism still maintains itself amongst us-proofs that the higher qualities of our nature are not sufficiently dominant over the lower.

These grossnesses will pass away, as the deadly conflicts of men with beasts are passed already. Our posterity will wonder at the barbarism of us, their fathers, as we wonder at the barbarism of Rome. Let him, then, who loves intellectual elevation advance beyond the present times, and anticipate, in the recreations which he encourages, that period when these divisions shall be regarded as indicating one of the intermediate stages between the ferociousness of mental darkness and the purity of mental light.

These criticisms might be extended to many other species of amusement; and it is humiliating to discover that the conclusion will very frequently be the same-that the evil outbalances the good, and that there are no grounds upon which a good man can justify a participation in them. In thus concluding, it is possible that the reader may imagine that we would exclude enjoyment from the world, and substitute a system of irreproachable austerity. He who thinks this is unacquainted with the nature and sources of our better enjoyments. It is an ordinary mistake to imagine that pleasure is great only when it is vivid or intemperate, as a child fancies it were more delightful to devour a pound of sugar at once, than to eat an ounce daily in his food. It is happily and kindly provided that the greatest sum of enjoyment is that which is quietly and constantly induced. No men understand the nature of pleasure so well, or possess it so much, as those who find it within their own doors. If it were not that Moral Education is so bad, multitudes would seek enjoyment and find it here, who now fancy that they never partake

of pleasure except in scenes of diversion. It is unquestionably true that no community enjoys life more than that which excludes all these amusements from its sources of enjoyment. We use therefore the language, not of speculation, but of experience, when we say, that none of them is, in anv degree, necessary to the happiness of life.

CHAPTER XV.

DUELLING.

Pitt and Tierney-Duelling the offspring of intellectual meanness, fear, and servility" A fighting man "-Hindoo immolations-Wilberforce-Seneca.

It is not to much purpose to show that this strange practice is in itself wrong, because no one denies it. Other grounds of defence are taken, although, to be sure, there is a plain absurdity in conceding that a thing is wrong in morals, and then trying to show that it is proper to practise it.

Public notions exempt a clergyman from the "necessity" of fighting duels, and they exempt other men from the "necessity" of demanding satisfaction for a clergyman's insult. Now, we ask the man of honour whether he would rather receive an insult from a military officer or from a clergyman? Which would give him the greater pain, and cause him the more concern and uneasiness? That from the military officer, certainly. But why? Because the officer's affront leads to a duel, and the clergyman's does not. So, then, it is preferable to receive an insult to which the "necessity" of fighting is not attached than one to which it is attached. Why then attach the necessity to any man's affront? You say, that demanding satisfaction is a remedy for the evil of an insult. But we see that the evil, together with the remedy, is worse than the evil alone. Why then institute the remedy at all? It is not indeed to be questioned that some insults may be forborne, because it is known to what consequences they lead. But, on the other hand, for what purpose does one man insult another? To give him pain; now, we have just seen that the pain is so much the greater in consequence of the "necessity" of fighting, and therefore the motives to insult another are increased. A man who wishes to inflict pain upon another, can inflict it more intensely in consequence of the system of duelling.

The truth is, that men fancy the system is useful, because they do not perceive how Public Opinion has been violently turned out of its natural and its usual course. When a military man is guilty of an insult, public disapprobation falls but lightly upon him. It reserves its force to direct against the insulted party if he does not demand satisfaction. But when a clergyman is guilty of an insult, public disapprobation falls upon him with undivided force. The insulted party receives no censure. Now, if you take away the custom of demanding satisfaction, what will be the result? Why, that public opinion will revert to its natural course; it will direct all its penalties to the offending party, and by consequence restrain him from offending. It will act towards all men as it now acts towards the clergy; and if a clergyman were frequently to be guilty of insults, his character would be destroyed. The reader will perhaps more distinctly perceive that the fancied utility of duelling in preventing insults, results from this misdirection of public opinion by this brief argument.

An individual either fears public opinion, or he does not.

If he does not fear it, the custom of duelling cannot prevent him from insulting whomsoever he pleases; because public opinion is the only thing which makes men fight, and he does not regard it.

If he does fear public opinion, then the most effectual way of restraining him from insulting others, is by directiug that opinion against the act of insulting-just as it is now directed in the case of the clergy.*

Thus it is that we find what he knows the perfection of Christian morality would expect that Duelling, as it is immoral, so it is absurd.

It appears to be forgotten that a duel is not more allowable to secure ourselves from censure or neglect than any other violation of the Moral Law. If these motives constitute a justification of a duel, they constitute a justification of robbery or poisoning. To advocate duelling is not to defend one species of offence, but to assert the general right to violate the laws of God. If, as Dr Johnson reasoned, the "notions which prevail" make fighting right, they can make any thing right. Nothing is wanted but to alter the " notions which prevail," and there is not a crime mentioned in the statute-book that will not be lawful and honourable to-morrow.

It is usual with those who do foolish and vicious

things, or who do things from foolish or vicious motives, to invent some fiction by which to veil the evil or folly, and to give it, if possible, a creditable appearance. This has been done in the case of duelling. We hear a great deal about honour, and spirit, and courage, and other qualities equally pleasant, and, as it respects the duellist, equally fictitious. The want of sufficient honour, and spirit, and courage, is precisely the very reason why men fight. Pitt fought with Tierney; upon which Pitt's biographer writes-" A mind like his, cast in no common mould, should have risen superior to a low and unworthy prejudice, the folly of which it must have perceived, and the wickedness of which it must have acknowledged. Could Mr Pitt be led away by that false shame which subjects the decisions of reason to the control of fear, and renders the admonitions of conscience subservient to the powers of ridicule?" Low prejudice, folly, wickedness, false shame, and fear, are the motives which the complacent duellist dignifies with the titles of honour, spirit, courage. This, to be sure, is very politic: he would not be so silly as to call his motives by their right names. Others, of course, join in the chicanery. They reflect that they themselves may one day have "a meeting," and they wish to keep up the credit of a system which they are conscious they have not principle enough to reject.

Put Christianity out of the question-Would not even the philosophy of paganism have despised that littleness of principle which would not bear a man up in adhering to conduct which he knew to be right that littleness of principle which sacrifices the dictates of the understanding to an unworthy fear?-When a good man, rather than conform to some vicious institution of the papacy, stood firmly against the frowns and persecutions of the world, against obloquy and infamy, we say that his mental principles were great as well as good. If they were, the principles of the duellist are mean as well as vicious. He is afraid to be good and great. He knows the course which dignity and virtue prescribe, but he will not rise above those lower motives which prompt him to deviate from that course. It does not affect these conclusions to concede, that he who

* See West. Rev. No. 7. Art. 2. Gifford's Life, vol. 1, p. 263.

is afraid to refuse a challenge may generally be a man of elevated mind. He may be such; but his refusal is an exception to his general character. It is an instance in which he impeaches his consistency in excellence. If it were consistent, if the whole mind had attained to the rightful stature of a Christian man, he would assuredly contemn in his practice the conduct which he disapproved in his heart. If you would show us a man of courage, bring forward him who will say, I will not fight. Suppose a gentleman who, upon the principles which Gifford says should have actuated Pitt and all great minds, had thus refused to fight, and suppose him saying to his withdrawing friends-"I have acted with perfect deliberation: I knew all the consequences of the course I have pursued: but I was persuaded that I should act most like a man of intellect, as well as like a Christian, by declining the meeting; and therefore I declined it. I feel and deplore the consequences, though I do not deprecate them. I am not fearful, as I have not been fearful; for I appeal to yourselves whether I have not encountered the more appalling alternativewhether it does not require a greater effort to do what I have done, and what I am at this moment doing, than to have met my opponent."-Such a man's magnanimity might not procure for him the companionship of his acquaintance, but it would do much more; it would obtain the suffrages of their judgments and their hearts. Whilst they continued perhaps externally to neglect him, they would internally honour and admire. They would feel that his excellence was of an order to which they could make no pretensions; and they would feel, as they were practising this strange hypocrisy of vice, that they were the proper objects of contempt and pity.

The species of slavery to which a man is sometimes reduced by being, as he calls it, "obliged to fight," is really pitiable. A British officer writes of a petulant and profligate class of men, one of whom is sometimes found in a regiment, and says, "Sensible that an officer must accept a challenge, he does not hesitate to deal them in abundance, and shortly acquires the name of a fighting man; but as every one is not willing to throw away his life when called upon by one who is indifferent to his own, many become condescending, which this man immediately construes into fear; and, presuming upon this, he acts as if he imagined no one dare contradict him but all must yield obedience to his will." Here the servile bondage of which we speak is brought prominently out. Here is the crouching and unmanly fear. Here is the abject submission of sense and reason to the grossest vulgarity of insolence, folly, and guilt. The officer presently gives an account of an instance in which the whole mess were domineered over by one of these fighting men;-and a pitiably ludicrous account it is. The man had in

vited them to dinner at some distance. "On the day appointed, there came on a most violent snow storm, and in the morning we dispatched a servant with an apology." But alas! these poor men could not use their own judgments as to whether they should ride in a "most violent snow storm" or not. The man sent back some rude message that he "expected them." They were afraid of what the fighting man would do next morning; and so the whole mess, against their wills, actually rode "near four miles in a heavy snow storm, and passed a day," says the officer, "that was, without exception, the most unpleasant I ever passed in my life!"* In the instance of these men, the motives to duelling as founded upon Fear,

Lieut. Auburey: Travels in North America.

operated so powerfully that the officers were absolutely enslaved-driven against their wills by Fear, as negroes are by a cart-whip.

We are shocked and disgusted at the immolation of women amongst the Hindoos, and think that, if such a sacrifice were attempted in England, it would excite feelings of the utmost repulsion and abhorrence. Of the custom of immolation, Duelling is the sister. Their parents are the same, and, like other sisters, their lineaments are similar. Why does a Hindoo mount the funeral pile? To vindicate and maintain her honour. Why does an Englishman go to the heath with his pistols? To vindicate and maintain his honour. What is the nature and character of the Hindoo's honour? Quite factitious. Of the duellist's? Quite factitious. is the motive applied to the Hindoo? To her fears of reproach. To the duellist ? To his fears of reproach. What then is the difference between the two customs? This That one is practised in the midst of pagan darkness, and the other in the midst of Christian light. And yet these very men give their guineas to the Missionary Society, lament the degradation of the Hindoos, and expatiate upon the sacred duty of enlightening them with Christianity! "Physician! heal thyself."

How

One consideration connected with duelling is of unusual interest. "In the judgment of that religion which requires purity of heart, and of that Being to whom thought is action, he cannot be esteemed innocent of this crime, who lives in a settled, habitual, determination to commit it, when circumstances shall call upon him so to do. This is a consideration which places the crime of duelling on a different footing from almost any other; indeed there is perhaps NO other, which mankind habitually and deliberately resolve to practise whenever the temptation shall occur. It shows also that the crime of duelling is far more general in the higher classes than is commonly supposed, and that the whole sum of the guilt which the practice produces, is great beyond what has perhaps been ever conceived."

"It is the intention," says Seneca, "and not the effect which makes the wickedness:" and that Greater than Seneca who laid the axe to the root of our vices, who laid upon the mental disposition that guilt which had been laid upon the act, may be expected to regard this habitual willingness and intention to violate his laws, as an actual and great offence. The felon who plans and resolves to break into a house, is not the less a felon because a watchman happens to prevent him; nor is the offence of him who happens never to be challenged, necessarily at all less than that of him who takes the life of his friend.

CHAPTER XVI.

SUICIDE.

Unmanliness of Suicide-Forl idden in the New TestamentIts folly--Legislation respecting suicide- Verdict of Felo de se.

THERE are few subjects upon which it is more difficult either to write or to legislato with effect, than that of Suicide. It is difficult to a writer, because a man does not resolve upon the act until he has first become steeled to some of the most powerful motives that can be urged upon the human mind; and to the legislator, because he can inflict no penalty upon the offending party.

Wilberforce: Practical View, c. 4. s 3.

ness.

It is to be feared that there is little probability of diminishing the frequency of this miserable offence by urging the considerations which philosophy suggests. The voice of nature is louder and stronger than the voice of philosophy; and as nature speaks to the suicide in vain, what is the hope that philosophy will be regarded?-There appears to be but one efficient means by which the mind can be armed against the temptations to suicide, because there is but one that can support it against every evil of life -practical religion-belief in the providence of God--confidence in his wisdom-hope in his goodThe only anchor that can hold us in safety, is that which is fixed "within the vail." He upon whom religion possesses its proper influence, finds that it enables him to endure, with resigned patience, every calamity of life. When patience thus fulfils its perfect work, suicide, which is the result of impatience, cannot be committed. He who is surrounded, by whatever means, with pain or misery, should remember that the present existence is strictly probationary-a scene upon which we are to be exercised, and tried, and tempted; and in which we are to manifest whether we are willing firmly to endure. The good or evil of the present life is of importance chiefly as it influences our allotment in futurity: sufferings are permitted for our advantage: they are designed to purify and rectify the heart. The universal Father "scourgeth every son whom he receiveth;" and the suffering, the scourging, is of little account in comparison with the prospects of another world. It is not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall follow-that glory of which an exceeding and eternal weight is the reward of a "patient continuance in well doing." To him who thus regards misery, not as an evil but as a good; not as the unrestrained assault of chance or malice, but as the beneficent discipline of a Father; to him who remembers that the time is approaching in which he will be able most feelingly to say, "For all I bless Thee-most for the severe,"-every affliction is accompanied with its proper alleviation: the present hour may distress but it does not overwhelm him; he may be perplexed but is not in despair: he sees the darkness and feels the storm, but he knows that light will again arise, and that the storm will eventually be hushed with an efficacious, Peace be still; so that there shall be a a great calm.

Compared with these motives to avoid the first promptings to suicide, others are likely to be of little effect; and yet they are neither inconsiderable nor few. It is more dignified, more worthy an enlightened and manly understanding, to meet and endure an inevitable evil than to sink beneath it.

The case

of him who feels prompted to suicide, is something like that of the duellist as it was illustrated in the preceding chapter. Each sacrifices his life to his fears. The suicide balances between opposing objects of dread, (for dreadful self-destruction must be supposed to be,) and chooses the alternative which he fears least. If his courage, his firmness, his manliness, were greater, he who chooses the alternative of suicide, like him who chooses the duel, would endure the evil rather than avoid it in a manner which dignity and religion forbid. The lesson too which the self-destroyer teaches to his connexions, of sinking in despair under the evils of life, is one of the most pernicious which a man can bequeath. The power of the example is also great. Every act of suicide tacitly conveys the sanction of one more judgment in its favour: frequency of repetition diminishes the sensation of abhorrence, and makes succeeding sufferers resort to it with less reluctance. "Besides which general reasons, each case will be aggravated by its own proper and particular conse

quences; by the duties that are deserted; by the claims that are defrauded; by the loss, affliction, or disgrace which our death, or the manner of it, causes our family, kindred, or friends; by the occasion we give to many to suspect the sincerity of our moral religious professions, and, together with ours, those of all others; "* and lastly, by the scandal which we bring upon religion itself by declaring, practically, that it is not able to support man under the calamities of life.

Some men say that the New Testament contains no prohibition of suicide. If this were true, it would avail nothing, because there are many things which it does not forbid, but which every one knows to be wicked. But in reality it does forbid it. Every exhortation which it gives to be patient, every encouragement to trust in God, every consideration which it urges as a support under affliction and distress, is a virtual prohibition of suicide;-because, if a man commits suicide, he rejects every such advice and encouragement, and disregards every such motive.

To him who believes either in revealed or natural religion, there is a certain folly in the commission of suicide; for from what does he fly? From his present sufferings; whilst death, for aught that he has reason to expect, or at any rate for aught that he knows, may only be the portal to sufferings more intense. Natural religion, I think, gives no countenance to the supposition that suicide can be approved by the Deity, because it proceeds upon the belief that, in another state of existence, he will compensate good men for the sufferings of the present. At the best, and under either religion, it is a desperate stake. He that commits murder may repent, and we hope, be forgiven; but he that destroys himself, whilst he incurs a load of guilt, cuts off, by the act, the power of repentance.

Not every act of suicide is to be attributed to excess of misery. Some shoot themselves or throw themselves into a river in rage or revenge, in order to inflict pain and remorse upon those who have ill used them. Such, it is to be suspected, is sometimes a motive to self-destruction in disappointed love. The unhappy person leaves behind some message or letter, in the hope of exciting that affection and commiseration by the catastrophe, which he could not excite when alive. Perhaps such persons hope, too, that the world will sigh over their early fate, tell of the fidelity of their loves, and throw a romantic melancholy over their story. This needs not to be a subject of wonder: unnumbered multitudes have embraced death in other forms from kindred motives. We hear continually of those who die for the sake of glory. This is but another phantom, and the less amiable phantom of the two. It is just as reasonable to die in order that the world may admire our true love, as in order that it may admire our bravery. And the lover's hope is the better founded. There are too many aspirants for glory for each to get even his " peppercorn of praise." But the lover may hope for higher honours; a paragraph may record his fate through the existence of a weekly paper; he may be talked of through half a county; and some kindred spirit may inscribe a tributary sonnet in a lady's album.

To legislate efficiently upon the crime of suicide is difficult, if it is not impossible. As the legislator cannot inflict a penalty upon the offender, the act must pass with impunity unless the penalty is made to fall upon the innocent. I say the penalty; for

Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 4, c. 3.