the general cause of intellectual and religious liberty.

That your Lordship's life may be prolonged in health and honor; that it may continue to afford an inftructive proof, how ferene and eafy old age can be made, by the memory of important and well intended labours, by the poffeffion of public and deferved esteem, by the prefence of many grateful relatives; above all, by the refources of religion, by an unfhaken confidence in the defigns of a "faithful Creator," and a fettled truft in the truth and in the promifes of Chriftianity, is the fervent prayer of, my Lord,

PREF A C E.

IN

The

N the treatifes that I have met with upon the fubject of MORALS, I appear to myself to have remarked the following imperfectionseither that the principle was erroneous, or that it was diftinctly explained, or that the rules deduced from it were not fufficiently adapted to real life and to actual fituations. writings of Grotius, and the larger work of Puffendorff are of too FORENSIC a caft, too much mixed up with the civil law, and with the jurifprudence of Germany, to anfwer precifely the defign of a fyftem of ethics-the direction of private confciences in the general conduct of human life. Perhaps, indeed, they are not to be regarded as inftitutes of morality calculated to inftruct an individual in his duty, fo much as a fpecies of law books and law authorities, fuited to the practice of those courts of juftice, whofe decifions are regulated by general principles of natural equity in conjunction with the maxims of the Roman code: of which

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kind, I understand, there are many upon the continent. To which be added concerning both these authors, that they are more occupied in defcribing the rights and ufages of independent communities, than is necessary in a work which profeffes, not to adjust the correfpondence of nations, but to delineate the offices of domestic life, The profufion also of claffical quotations, with which many of their pages abound, seems to me a fault from which it will not be eafy to excuse them. If these extracts be intended as decorations of style, the compofition is overloaded with ornaments of one kind. To any thing more than ornament they can make no claim. To propose them as ferious arguments; gravely to attempt to eftablish or fortify a moral duty by the teftimony of a Greek or Roman poet, is to trifle with the attention of the reader, or rather to take it off from all juft principles of reafoning in morals.

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Of our own writers in this branch of philofophy, I find none that I think perfectly free from the three objections which I have stated. There is likewife a fourth property obfervable in almost all of them, namely, that they divide too much of the law of nature from the cepts of revelation, fome authors induftriously declining the mention of fcripture authorities, as belonging to a different province, and others referving them for a feparate volume: which appears to me much the fame defect, as if a commentator on the laws of England fhould content himself with ftating upon each head the common law of the land, without taking

any

any notice of acts of parliament; or should choose to give his readers the common law in one book, and the ftatute law in another. "When the obligations of morality are taught," fays a pious and celebrated writer, "let the "fanctions of Chriftianity never be forgotten; by which it will be fhewn that they give ftrength and luftre to each other, religion "will appear to be the voice of reason, and morality the will of God."*

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The MANNER alfo, in which modern writers have treated of subjects of morality, is, in my judgment, liable to much exception. It has become of late a fashion to deliver moral inftitutes in ftrings or series of detached propofitions, without fubjoining a continued argument or regular differtation to any of them. This fententious, apothegmatizing ftyle, by crowding propofitions and paragraphs too fast upon the mind, and by carrying the eye of the reader from fubject to fubject in too quick a fucceffion, gains not a fufficient hold upon the attention, to leave either the memory furnished, or the understanding fatisfied. However ufeful a fyllabus of topics, or a series of propofitions may be in the hands of a lecturer, or as a guide to a ftudent, who is fuppofed to confult other books, or to inftitute upon each fubject researches of his own, the method is by no means convenient for ordinary readers; becaufe few readers are fuch THINKERS as to want only a hint to set their thoughts at work upon; or fuch as will paufe or tarry at every

Preface to The Preceptor, by Dr. Johnfon.

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propofition, till they have traced out its dependency, proof, relation, and consequences, before they permit themselves to step on to another. A respectable writer of this clafs * has comprised his doctrine of flavery in the three following propofitions.

"No one is born à flave, because every one " is born with all his original rights."

"No one can become a flave, because no "one from being a person can, in the language "of the Roman Law, become a thing, or "fubject of property."

"The fuppofed property of the master in "the flave, therefore, is matter of ufurpation, "not of right."

It may be poffible to deduce from these few adages fuch a theory of the primitive rights of human nature, as will evince the illegality of flavery; but furely an author requires too much of his reader, when he expects him to make thefe deductions for himfelf; or to fupply, perhaps from fome remote chapter of the fame treatife, the feveral proofs and explanations, which are neceffary to render the meaning and truth of thefe affertions intelligible.

There is a fault, the opposite of this, which fome moralifts who have adopted a different, and, I think, a better plan of compofition, have not always been careful to avoid; namely, the dwelling upon verbal and elementary diftinctions, with a labour and prolixity, proportioned much more to the fubtlety of the queftion, than to its value and importance in the

*Dr. Ferguson, author of "Inftitutes of Moral Philofophy,"

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