Part 30 (1/2)

'You bid me restore the elasticity of your mind Can you look round on the follies and mistakes of men, which you have the power to detect, expose, and in part reform, and be in want of motive? You demand that I should communicate to you the desire of life Can you have a perception of the essential duties that you are fitted to perfor over your orongs, which your distorted fancy has painted as perhaps the most insufferable in the whole circle of existence! How could you be so blind? Look at the in? Ignorance Ignorance is the source of all evil; and there is one species of ignorance to which you and norance of the true norance of their unbounded power of enjoyment

'You have been persuaded that this poas destroyed, by the ridiculous distinctions of rich and poor Oh, mad world! Monstrous absurdity! Incomprehensible blindness! Look at the rich! In what are they happy? In what do they excel the poor? Not in their greater stores of wealth: which is but a source of vice, disease, and death; but in a little superiority of knowledge; a trifling advance toward truth How ence of the desires you have fostered; the tendency of which was vicious; but by retrenching those false wants, that you panted to gratify; and thus by giving leisure to the poor or rather to all rand business of life

'This is the object on which the attention of every wise man should be turned He that by precept or example shall prevail on community to relinquish one superfluous dish, one useless and conteeneral friend of man He who labours for riches, to countenance by his practice their abuse, is labouring to secure ht to be esteeed

Hoealthy were you, had you but known it, at the es of distress

'He that would riot in luxury, let him wait the hour of appetite; and carry his morsel into the harvest field There let him seat himself on a bank, eat, and cast his eyes around Then, while he shall appease the cravings of hunger (not paluttony) let him remember how many thousands shall in like manner be fed, by the plenty he every where beholds How poor and pitiable a creature would he be, were his pleasure destroyed, or narrowed, because the earth on which it was produced was not what he had absurdly been taught to call his own!

'You conified rejected your intercourse How could you thus mistake your true rank? How exalted was it, coance you envied! Were you now visiting Bedlam, would you think yourself miserable because its hty a monarch as each of themselves? But little depth of penetration is necessary, to perceive that the lunatics around us are no less worthy of our laughter and our pity

'If I do notinto the very errors that have misled your noble enius is busying itself how to obtain those riches and distinctions on which you have falsely supposed happiness depends You are in search of a profession, by which your fortune is to bethat I am frequently assaulted by the same kind of folly myself, I yet never recollect it without astonishment!'

While Turl confined the application of his precepts to Wilmot, I listened and assented with scarcely a doubt: but, the ainst me, I turned upon him with all the force to which by my passions and fears I was rouzed

'What,' said I, 'would you persuade ain distinction and respect in society? Would you have me remain in poverty, and thus relinquish the dearest portion of existence?'

Olivia was full in hts, as I spoke

'Of orth would life be, were I so doomed? Rather than accept it on such terms, were there ten thousand Serpentine rivers I would drown in thenificantly first at er, the possible consequences, of the doctrine you are now inculcating, Mr Trevor?'

Too much devoured by passion to attend to his reproof, in the sense he meant it, I retorted in a still louder key 'I can discover no ill consequences in being sincere I repeat, were there millions of seas, I would sooner drown in the your philosophy to extremes, Mr Turl'

'You should rather say, Mr Trevor, you are pushi+ng your want of philosophy to an extreme'

'The self denial you require is not in the nature of on Man is that which he is made by the various occurrences to which he is subjected Those occurrences continually differ; no two men, therefore, were ever alike But how are you to obtain the wealth and dignity you seek? By honest means?'

'Can you suppose erous, are the mistakes of mankind! Your hopes are childish The law, I understand, is your present pursuit

Do you suppose it possible to practise the law, in any form, and be honest?'

'Sir!--Mr Turl?--You a for the oppressed?'

'How little have you considered the subject! How ignorant are you of the practice of the law! Oppressed? Do counsel ever ask who is the oppressed? Do they refuse a brief because the justice of the case is doubtful? Do they not always inquire, not what is justice, but, what is law? Do they not triuain a cause in the very teeth of the law they profess to support and revere? Who is the greatest lawyer? Not he who can hten, but he who canof his hearers!

He who can best brow-beat and confuse witnesses; and ee and jury Yet the mischiefs I have mentioned are but the sprouts and branches of this tree of evil; its root is much deeper: it is in the law itself; and in the system of property, of which law is the support'

'Pshaw! These are the distempered dreams of reform run mad'

'Are they? Consider! Beware of therashly! Beware of your passions, that are alarmed lest they should be disappointed'

'It is you that decide Prove this rooted evil of law'

'Suppose me unable to prove it: are its consequences the less real?