passed away, with respect to states and nations, as with respect to individuals. The learned Bossuet has observed, that while the New Testament manifests to us the operation of God's grace, the Old Testament exhibits to us his providential government of the world. We will not dwell on this remark further than to suggest, that even in this view the study of the Old Testament may not be without its uses, even to the modern statesman, as we know that the Jewish law has clearly been held important, by some of our wisest legislators.

On the whole, we need not hesitate to assert, that in the long course of events, nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right. Nothing, that is inequitable, can be finally successful. Nothing, that is contrary to religion, can be ultimately favourable to civil polity. We may, therefore, confidently affirm, that impiety and vice, sooner or later, bring states, as well as individuals, to misery and ruin; that, though vice may sometimes contribute to temporary exaltation; in the same degree, it will, in the end, contribute to promote decay, and accelerate the inevitable period of dissolution.

Let it then be ever kept in view, that the true exaltation is, in fact, that prosperity, which arises from the goodness of the laws, and the firmness and impartiality with which they are executed; which results from moderation in the government, and obedience in the people; from wisdom and foresight in council, from activity and integrity in commerce, from independence of national character, from fortitude in resisting foreign attack, and zeal in promoting domestic harmony; from patience under sufferings, hardiness in danger, zeal in the love of civil, and vigour in the reprobation of savage liberty; from a spirit of fairness and liberality in making treaties, and from fidelity in observing them. Above all, from a multiplication of individual

instances of family comfort and independence, from the general prevalence, throughout the great mass of the people, of habits of industry, sobriety, and good order, from the practice, in short, of the social and domestic virtues; of all those relative duties and kindnesses, which give body and substance to the various charities of life, and the best feelings of

our nature.

If sinful nations appear prosperous for a time, it is often because there has been some proportion of good mixed with the evil; or it is because the Providence of God means to use the temporary success of guilty, nations, for the accomplishment of his general scheme, or the promotion of a particular purpose, of humbling and correcting other, perhaps less guilty, nations; or it is because "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full;" and the punishment of the more corrupt states is delayed, to make their ruin more signal and tremendous, and their downfal a more portentous object, for the instruction of the world. God, without any impeachment of his moral government, may withhold retribution, because it is always in his power; he may be longsuffering, because he is everlasting. He may permit the calamity which we see, in order to extract from it the good which we see not. He is never the author of moral evil; and the natural evil which he does authorize, is both the punishment and the corrective of the moral. Though God never intended this world for such a complete state of retribution, as entirely to hinder either vice or virtue from occasionally receiving the recompenses and the penalties due to the other; yet there is this obvious difference between nations and individuals, that, whereas individuals the most virtuous are often the most visited with temporal misfortunes, the best governed empires are, on the whole, the most secure of prosperity. And if, in the calamities brought on

corrupt states, the innocent always, unavoidably, suffer with the guilty, this furnishes no just charge against the equity of divine Providence, who here reckons tremendously with the state as a state, but will, separately and ultimately, reckon with every individual; and thus finally and fully vindicate his own infinite and much calumniated justice.*

CHAPTER XIX.

Integrity, the true political wisdom.

THE tendency of a religious temper to exalt a prince into a hero, might be sufficiently illustrated by the single instance of Louis the Ninth. It is notorious, that nothing more severely tries the character of princes, as well as of individuals, than remarkable success. It was, however, in this circumstance precisely, that the prince just mentioned evinced how completely his Christian temper had corrected, both the selfishness natural to man, and the arrogance habitual to prosperity.

When, under the unfortunate reign of our Henry the Third, the affairs of England were reduced to a low condition, while those of France were in a highly flourishing state; Louis, in making a treaty with England, generously refused to take an unfair advantage of the misfortunes of this country, or to avail himself to the utmost of his own superiority. His concessions to the depressed enemy were liberal; and he soon after reaped the reward of his moderation, in the confidence which it inspired. Louis was chosen, both by Henry and his nobles, to settle the differences

* See Bishop Butler's Analogy, a work which cannot be too strongly recommended. [Dr. Joseph Butler successively Bishop of Bristol and Durham, died in 1752, at Bath, and was interred in the cathedral of his first diocess.-ED.]

between them. In consequences of the recent instance of his public integrity, the foreign adversary was invited to be the arbiter of domestic disagreements; and they were happily terminated by his decision. Let infidels remark, to the disgrace of their scepticism, that the monarch who was, perhaps, one of the greatest instances of Christian piety and devotion, furnished also an example of the most striking moral rectitude!

Henry the Fourth, when only king of Navarre, discovered no less integrity after his glorious victory at Coutras. Being asked what terms he would require from the king of France, after gaining such a victory, "Just the same," replied he, "that I should ask after losing one.'

It is, however, necessary to observe, that integrity, in order to be successful, must be uniform. Truth, for example, occasionally spoken, may not afford to the speaker any part of the profit which attends the regular observance of truth. The error of corrupt politicians consists much in treating each question, as if it were an insulated case, and then arguing, perhaps not unjustly, that the practice of virtue, in this or that particular instance, will not be productive of good; forgetting, that if, in all instances, they would be virtuous, they would then, most probably, obtain the success and full reward of

virtue.

We know that even in that particular branch of political transactions, the diplomatic, wherein the strongest temptations to dissimulation and chicanery are held forth to little minds, some of the most able and successful negotiators have generously disdained the use of any such mean expedients. The frankness and integrity of Temple and De Wit are not more esteemed by the moralist for their probity, than by the statesman for their true wisdom. What can there be, indeed, so different between the situation of

two public men, who, on the part of their several countries respectively, are negociating on questions of policy or commerce; and that of two private men who are treating on some business of ordinary life, which should render impolitic, in the public concern, that honesty which, in the private, is so universally acknowledged to be the best policy, as to have grown into an adage of universal and unqualified acceptance. Indeed, as the adage may refer to what is truly politic in the long run, and with a view to general consequences, we might rather expect that fraud would be admissible into the transactions of private men, whose short span of life might not be likely to be more than counterbalanced by future loss, rather than in the concerns of states, which, by containing a long-continued existence, a political identity, under all the successive generations of the members of which they are composed, may pay, and pay perhaps severely too, in later times, the price of former acts of fraud and treachery. Again, in public, no less than in private business, will not any one find the benefit of employing an agent who possesses a high character for probity and honour ? Will not larger and more liberal concessions be made to him, who may be safely relied on for paying their equivalent? Once more, how often are public wars, as well as private differences, produced or fermented by mutual distrust! and how surely would a confidence in each other's truth and honesty tend to the restoration of peace and harmony! Even the wily Florentine* allows, that it is advantageous to have a high character for truth and uprightness. And how can this character be in any way so well obtained as by deserving it? It is the disgrace of nations, that in their diplomatic concerns, the maxims of solid wisdom have not been always observed.

* Machiavel.