and shall wind up the labours of my life in serving the cause of truth.

You say that you could easily shew, by comparing my letters for twenty years past, how the whole system of my philosophy changes by the several gradations of life. I doubt it. As far as I am able to recollect, my way of thinking has been uniform enough for more than twenty years. True it is, to my shame, that my way of acting has not been always conformable to my way of thinking. My own passions, and the passions and interests of other men still more, have led me aside. I launched into the deep, before I had loaded ballast enough. If the ship did not sink, the cargo was thrown overboard. The storm itself threw me into port. My own opinion, my own desires, would have kept me there: the opinion, the desires of others, sent me to sea again. I did, and blamed myself for doing, what others, and you among the rest, would have blamed me, if I had not done. I have paid more than I owed to party, and as much, at least, as was due to friendship. If I go off the stage of public life without paying all I owe to my enemies, and to the enemies of my country, I do assure you the bankruptcy is not fraudulent. I conceal none of effects.

my

Does Pope talk to you of the noble work, which, at my instigation, he has begun in such a manner, that he must be convinced, by this time, I judged better of his talents than he did? The first epistle, which considers man, and the habitation of man, relatively to the whole system of universal being: The second, which considers him in his own habitation, in himself, and relatively to his particular system: And the third, which shews how

A universal cause

Works to one end, but works by various laws;"

How man, and beast, and vegetables are linked in a mutual dependency, parts necessary to each other, and necessary to the whole; how human societies were formed; from what spring true religion and true policy are derived; how God has made our greatest interest and our plainest duty indivisibly the same :-these three epistles, I say, are finished. The fourth he is now intent upon. It is a noble subject; he pleads the cause of God, I use Seneca's expression, against that famous charge which atheists in all ages have brought, the supposed unequal dispensations of Providence; a charge which I cannot heartily forgive your divines for admitting.* You

* To prove that the dispensations of Providence in the present state are not unequal, is certainly very desirable; but there is reason to fear, that those who blame divines for admitting an inequality, have not succeeded in the attempt. The philosophers, both ancient and modern, who have endeavoured to justify the ways of God to man, by proving that happiness does not consist in externals, in order to shew that his dispensations are equal, have yet placed happiness in virtue chiefly, as a principle of active benevolence.

'Happier as kinder in each due degree,

And height of bliss but height of charity."

Now there seems to be an inconsistency between these two principles, of which they are not aware.

It may reasonably be asked, what virtue, as a principle of active benevolence, has to bestow? Can it bestow upon others, anything more than externals? If not, it either has not the power of communicating happiness, or happiness is to be communicated in externals. If it has not the power of communicating happiness, it is indeed a mere name; the subject receives nothing; the agent gives nothing. The bliss of charity is founded on a delusion; on the false supposition of a benefit communicated by externals, which externals cannot communicate. If happiness can be communicated by externals, and consequently is dependent upon them, and these externals are unequally distributed, how is the dispensation of Providence, with respect to happiness in the present state, equal?-H.

admit it indeed for an extreme good purpose, and you build on this admission the necessity of a future state of rewards and punishments. But what if you should find, that this future state will not account, in opposition to the atheist, for God's justice in the present state, which you give up? Would it not have been better to defend God's justice in this world, against these daring men, by irrefragable reasons, and to have rested the proof of the other point on revelation? I do not like concessions made against demonstration, repair or supply them how you will. The epistles I have mentioned will compose a first book; the plan of the second is settled. You will not understand by what I have said, that Pope will go so deep into the argument, or carry it so far as I have hinted.*

You inquire so kindly after my wife, that I must tell you something of her. She has fallen upon a remedy, invented by a surgeon abroad, and which has had great success in cases similar to hers. This remedy has visibly attacked the original cause of all her complaints, and has abated, in some degree, by one gentle and uniform effect, all the grievous and various symptoms. I hope, and surely with reason, that she will receive still greater benefit from this method of cure, which she will resume as soon as the great heat is over. If she recovers, I shall not for her sake, abstract myself from the world more than I do at present in this place. But if she should be taken from me, I should most certainly yield to that strong desire, which I have long had, of secluding myself totally from the company and affairs of mankind; of leaving the management, even of my private affairs, to others; and of securing, by these

* That is, will not reconcile the present unequal dispensation to the divine justice.-H.

means, for the rest of my life, an uninterrupted tenor of philosophical quiet.

suppose you have seen some of those volumes of scurrility, which have been thrown into the world against Mr. Pulteney and myself, and the Craftsman, which gave occasion to them. I think, and it is the sense of all my friends, that the person who published the Final Answer,* took a right turn, in a very nice and very provoking circumstance. To answer all the falsities, misrepresentations, and blunders, which a club of such scoundrels, as Arnall, Concanen, and other pensioners of the minister, crowd together, would have been equally tedious and ridiculous, and must have forced several things to be said, neither prudent, nor decent, nor perhaps strictly honourable to be said. To have explained some points, and to have stopped at others, would have given strength to that impertinent suggestion. Guilt alone is silent in the day of inquiry. It was therefore right to open no part of the scene of the late queen's reign, nor submit the passages of her administration, and the conduct of any of her ministers, to the examination of so vile a tribunal. This was still the more right, because, upon such points as relate to subsequent transactions, and as affect me singly, what the Craftsman had said, was justified unanswerably; and what the remarker had advanced, was proved to be infamously false. The effect of this paper has answered the design of it; and, which is not common, all sides agree, that the thing said, ought to have been said. The public writers seem to be getting back, from

* This pamphlet was written by Lord Bolingbroke, in his own vindication, 1731. It is entitled, "A Final Answer to the Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication of his two honourable Patrons; and to all the Libels which have come, or may come, from the same Quarter, against the Person last mentioned in the Craftsman of 22d of May.'

these personal altercations, to national affairs, much against the grain of the minister's faction. What the effect of all this writing will be, I know not; but this I know, that when all the information which can be given, is given; when all the spirit which can be be raised, is raised; it is to no purpose to write any more. Even you men of this world have nothing else to do, but to let the ship drive till she is cast away, or till the storm is over. For my own part, I am neither an owner, an officer, nor a foremast-man. I am but a passenger, said my Lord Carbury.

It is well for you, I am got to the end of my paper; for you might else have a letter as long again from me. If you answer me by the post, remember, while you are writing, that you write by the post. Adieu, my reverend friend.

TO MR. GAY AND THE DUCHESS OF

QUEENSBERRY.

August 28, 1731.

You and the duchess use me very ill, for I profess I cannot distinguish the style or the hand-writing of either. I think her grace writes more like you than herself; and that you write more like her grace than yourself. I would swear the beginning of your letter writ by the duchess, though it is to pass for yours; because there is a cursed lie in it, that she is neither young nor healthy, and besides it perfectly resembles the part she owns. I will likewise swear, that what I must suppose is written by the duchess, is your hand; hand; and thus I am puzzled and perplexed