For it is not pleasant when the heart is
opened by compassion and the head active in arranging plans of
usefulness, to have a prim urchin continually twitching back the elbow
to prevent the hand from drawing out an almost empty purse, whispering
at the same time some prudential maxim about the priority of justice.
Destructive, however, as riches and inherited honours are to the
human character, women are more debased and cramped, if possible, by
them, than men, because men may still, in some degree, unfold their
faculties by becoming soldiers and statesmen.
As soldiers, I grant, they can now only gather, for the most part,
vain glorious laurels, whilst they adjust to a hair the European
balance, taking especial care that no bleak northern nook or sound
incline the beam. But the days of true heroism are over, when a
citizen fought for his country like a Fabricius or a Washington, and
then returned to his farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more
placid, but not a less salutary, stream. No, our British heroes are
oftener sent from the gaming table than from the plow; and their
passions have been rather inflamed by hanging with dumb suspense on
the turn of a die, than sublimated by panting after the adventurous
march of virtue in the historic page.
The statesman, it is true, might with more propriety quit the Faro
Bank, or card-table, to guide the helm, for he has still but to
shuffle and trick. The whole system of British politics, if system
it may courteously be called, consisting in multiplying dependents and
contriving taxes which grind the poor to pamper the rich; thus a
war.
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