To Captain Fitzgerald.
Bellfield, Oct. 30.
I am very impatient, my dear friend, till you hear from Sir William,
though I have no doubt of his acting as he ought: our cottagers shall
not leave us till their fate is determined; I have not told Miss
Williams the step I have taken.
Emily is more and more pleased with this amiable girl: I wish
extremely to be able to keep her here; as an agreable companion of her
own age and sex, whose ideas are similar, and who, from being in the
same season of life, sees things in the same point of view, is all that
is wanting to Emily's happiness.
'Tis impossible to mention similarity of ideas, without observing
how exactly ours coincide; in all my acquaintance with mankind, I
never yet met a mind so nearly resembling my own; a tie of affection
much stronger than all your merit would be without that similarity.
I agree with you, that mankind are born virtuous, and that it is
education and example which make them otherwise.
The believing other men knaves is not only the way to make them so,
but is also an infallible method of becoming such ourselves.
A false and ill-judged method of instruction, by which we imbibe
prejudices instead of truths, makes us regard the human race as beasts
of prey; not as brothers, united by one common bond, and promoting the
general interest by pursuing our own particular one.
There is nothing of which I am more convinced than that,
"True self-love and social are the same:"
That those passions which make the happiness of individuals tend
directly to the general good of the species.
The beneficent Author of nature has made public and private
happiness the same; man has in vain endeavored to divide them; but in
the endeavor he has almost destroyed both.
'Tis with pain I say, that the business of legislation in most
countries seems to have been to counter-work this wise order of
providence, which has ordained, that we shall make others happy in
being so ourselves.
This is in nothing so glaring as in the point on which not only the
happiness, but the virtue of almost the whole human race is concerned:
I mean marriage; the restraints on which, in almost every country, not
only tend to encourage celibacy, and a destructive libertinism the
consequence of it, to give fresh strength to domestic tyranny, and
subject the generous affections of uncorrupted youth to the guidance of
those in whom every motive to action but avarice is dead; to condemn
the blameless victims of duty to a life of indifference, of disgust,
and possibly of guilt; but, by opposing the very spirit of our
constitution, throwing property into a few hands, and favoring that
excessive inequality, which renders one part of the species wretched,
without adding to the happiness of the other; to destroy at once the
domestic felicity of individuals, contradict the will of the Supreme
Being, as clearly wrote in the book of nature, and sap the very
foundations of the most perfect form of government on earth.
A pretty long-winded period this: Bell would call it true
Ciceronian, and quote
"--Rivers for a period of a mile."
But to proceed. The only equality to which parents in general
attend, is that of fortune; whereas a resemblance in age, in temper, in
personal attractions, in birth, in education, understanding, and
sentiment, are the only foundations of that lively taste, that tender
friendship, without which no union deserves the sacred name of
marriage.
Timid, compliant youth may be forced into the arms of age and
disease; a lord may invite a citizen's daughter he despises to his bed,
to repair a shattered fortune; and she may accept him, allured by the
rays of a coronet: but such conjunctions are only a more shameful
species of prostitution.
Men who marry from interested motives are inexcusable; but the very
modesty of women makes against their happiness in this point, by giving
them a kind of bashful fear of objecting to such persons as their
parents recommend as proper objects of their tenderness.