been produced and protected,-the land of our ancestors, of all the great names and great deeds which we have been brought most early to venerate,--is surely as little wonderful as that we should feel, what we all truly feel, a sort of affection for the most trifling object, which we have merely borne about with us for any length of time. Loving the very land of our birth, we love those who inhabit it, who are to us, a part, as it were, of the land itself, and the part which brings it most immediately home to our affection and services. It is a greater recommendation to our good will, indeed, to be a relative, or a friend, or a benefactor; but it is no slight recommendation, even without any of these powerful titles, to be a fellow-countryman-to have breathed the same air, and trod the same soil, and lent vigour to the same political institutions, to which our own aid has actively or passively contributed. While all are fellow-countrymen around us, indeed, we scarcely feel the force of the tie which binds us to each because we are bound equally to all. But, let our relative situation be changed: place us on some shore at a distance-in a society as civilized as that which we have left-with a brighter sky and warmer air-and all the occupations which business can give-or all the amusements, with which elegant frivolity can render days and evenings short to us ;-in the very hurry of pleasure, that scarcely allows us time to think of home, let but a single accent be heard of the native dialect familiar to our ear-and, if we have been long absent from our country, what benefactor or friend is there, or almost, I may say, what relative, however near to us in consanguinity and affection, who is for the moment or the hour, so interesting to our heart, as the stranger of whom we know nothing, but that he comes from the land which we love above every other land, and is to us almost the representative of that land itself.

Affection, though not the direct and exclusive source, is at least, by the bountiful provision of Heaven, the great accompaniment of duty; and when affection so strong is universally felt, there must be duties of no slight obligation.

Our countrymen may be considered by us individually, or as constituting one great community, in which the obligations due by us to all the separate individuals are concerted, so as to form together, an amount of obligation, which those who would think but little of their duties to a single member of the community, cannot, with all their indifference, wholly disregard.

As individuals, their claim to our services is the same in kind, however weaker in degree, as that which a common descent gives to those who are connected with us by remote af

gle particle of dust on a book, or a table, or a chair, as that particle, a whole mountain of misery were before t can assume in an instant all the frowns and thunders the furies,-whose delicate form is too weak to bear th lent opening of a door, but not too weak, after the opened, to shake the very floor with the violence of th wrath, on the unfortunate opener of it.

Indulgence to the lighter imperfections of servant an important part of our moral obligation, in that domestic relationship which we have contracted. T it is a duty which we owe to them, it is, at least source of tranquillity to ourselves. A life of const ing is very far from being a life of happiness. W them miserable, they have had already too good the very fretfulness of the anger that is wreak

It the mere human tendency to evil, that e som of the servant, as it exists in his maste sufficient cause for the duty of indulgence, is not to be attended with hurtful conseque him whose offences are suffered to pass unr who is directly injured,-this tendency to e of another duty, which is, in truth, the mo the duties that attend this domestic relati corrupting the virtue of him, whose ser purchased; and whose moral part, which not be sold to us, we are not to enfeeble, en it. He who, after living under the years, quits our door without the amial he first entered it,-every pure wish of licentiousness formed, while all habits is a little remorse, that is soon bulence of vulgar dissipation,-tho skilled than before, in all the fas! craft, and though he may have ac plunder, not by economy, what wo better station, if it were not soon ⚫ which he gathered at the same t the whole, and, as a mere human of dignity, than when, with all had virtues which it has been o guilt to destroy.

The only remaining set of c or classes of individuals, whic which connect us with our fel

e should love the 1

at social systen

ess

the

political

though it 1s, as far as

re.

is the duty of

-what circum

or evil .ners, vir›r the right lence, is as .lous in logic; subject, which

-were so preof authors whom as philosophers, ofs of the most bekeley, the author of enerous possessor of me Berkeley who enis as much our duty to as to submit to the suther, that to obey such a

.ence.

mankind, has not formed us

and in furnishing our minds nsure our progress in less imoned us, in the most important Power, which may prefer the preotic sway to all that can be offer ause the reformation would abridge ore convenient for the possessor of nit but that of will, I surely need not

ay on Man, Ep. III. 241-249.

finities of blood. We are not merely to abstain from injuring and to wish and endeavour to promote their happiness, when means of promoting it are in our power,--for these duties we owe to all mankind;-but when there is a competition of interests, and no obligations of more important duty are concerned, which should influence our choice, we are to prefer them to others who compete with them, our country being to to us as it were a parent, and they, with us, its common offspring.

Beside this general interest in the happiness of all who live with us under the same government, an interest in which you perceive the same beautiful relation of our affections to our means of readiest and most frequent usefulness, which we have traced in all the other species of peculiar regard,—there are patriotic duties which we owe to some of our countrymen only; though, in truth, when we trace even these duties to their source, we find them too, to have their origin in that equal regard for the happiness of all, which we owe to all our fellow citizens. The duties to which I allude, are the offices of external respect, which we pay to those who are invested with high stations,-offices of respect, which the multitude pay, without any very nice analysis of the obligation, and which it is of the highest importance to public order, and to public happiness, that they should be ready thus to yield to the external symbols of authority,--and which a wise and good man pays with the same readiness as the multitude, because he knows at once, how important they are to national tranquillity, and very little it is, which, in the external forms of respect, is paid to the real happiness of the individual.

Such are the civic duties which we owe to individuals. The duties which we owe to our fellow citizens, as constituting one great community, may be considered as reducible to three-first the duty of obedience to the system of laws under which we live, the benefit of which all enjoy, and according to which all regulate their plans and expectations;secondly, the duty of defending that social system, of which we are a part, from violent aggressions, foreign or internal ;and thirdly, the duty of endeavouring, as far as we possess any power that can be beneficially exerted, to increase the means of public prosperity; and, above all, where political evils exist, to ameliorate a system of polity, which though it produces much happiness, may still, by reformations, as far as these are practicable, be capable of producing more.

Our first patriotic duty of this general kind, is the duty of

obedience.

Why is it that we term obedience a duty,-what circum

stances are there, in the nature of a system of government, by which, under certain limitations, it has a claim to our submission, merely because it already exists, and has long existed?

The answer to this question was, for a long time, even in our own land, a very simple one,-that power established, was established by God, and that disobedience to the individual whom he had established to exercise this power, would be a rebellion against right divine.

Who first taught souls enslav'd and realms undone,
The enormous faith of many made for one :

That proud exception to all Nature's laws,

To invert the world and counterwork its Cause!
Force first made conquest, and that conquest law,
Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe,-

Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid,—

And gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made.

The argument, for the right divine of established power, which is in logic, little better than any other argument for the right divine of any thing that exists-whether good or evil merely as existing,-for the prevalent system of manners, virtuous or vicious,-or even, as has been truly said, for the right divine of a wide spread fever, or any other pestilence, is as wretched in its moral consequences, as it is ridiculous in logic; and it is painful to peruse the writings on the subject, which at one period-and that not a very distant one-were so prevalent, and, in some cases, were the works of authors whom we are accustomed to venerate, not merely as philosophers, but as men, who have given undoubted proofs of the most benevolent interest in the human race. Berkeley, the author of the Theory of Vision,-Berkeley, the generous possessor of "every virtue under heaven," is the same Berkeley who endeavours to demonstrate to us, that it is as much our duty to submit to the most ferocious tyrant, as to submit to the supreme benevolence of God,--or rather, that to obey such a tyrant is to obey Supreme Benevolence.

That God, the equal God of all mankind, has not formed us to be the slaves of any individual, and in furnishing our minds. with so many principles, that insure our progress in less important sciences, has not abandoned us, in the most important of all, to the selfishness of a power, which may prefer the present misery of its own despotic sway to all that can be offer ed for its reformation,-because the reformation would abridge an authority which it is more convenient for the possessor of it, to exercise with no limit but that of will, I surely need not

•Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. III. 241–249.