ESSAY 1. 399 tiresome weakness or inconvenience ? These indeed are often- times wisely concealed by the persons who suffer them, and by the families where they dwell. But these are the miseries which are discovered, in a glaring light, in the hospitals, the infirmaries, and the bedlams, which are provided by thepublic for the poor.: Asid if we 'were"to walk. round a nation, we should findperhaps that in every twenty or thirty households, there were some of licted and miserable creatures, that would be fit company for these public monuments of unhappiness, if their private circuses= stances did not extend to make provision for their support and relief; and in the whole, they would be enough to make half a province in a.nation, rather thán a town or a village,. Let us proceed a little in this enquiry, What toils and hard- ships, what dangers and deaths, what inward anxieties and sor- rows, disappoinutsents and calamities, are diflhsed and scattered through every age and country of mankind ? Do not the rich. feel them as well as the poor, and the prince together with the. peasant ? Are they not all teased with their own restless and tormenting appetites- which are never satisfied,. but are still re-, turningupon them, and their impetuous passions give them no rest ? What keen anguish of mind arises from pride, and envy, and resentment ? What tortures and racking disquietudesdo disappointments in ambition, or love, and wild jealousy, infuse into the bosoms of the rich, while the poor, together with these saine inward vexations and corroding maladies of the mind, sus, lain also endless drudgeries inprocuring their daily and cormuön subsistence ? And bow are many of them half starved in their sorrycottages, or feed and nourished at a miserable rate i Let us survey this sorry creature man through everystage : First, mark what a wretched figure he makes at his entrance into life. This animal, says Pliny, who is to govern the rest of creatures round him, horn he lies bound' hared and foot, all ita tears, and begins his lJe in misery and punishment ; and for this only reason, because he is born. Thus, that Raman author, in his preface to one of his writings. 1f we trace the education of the human race, from the cradle to the state of mature age, and especially among.the poor, which are the bulk of all nations, the wretchedness of mankind will appear still in a mournful light. How are they dragged up in their tender age in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, through a long' train of nonsense, mad- ness, and miseries ? What millions of uneasy sensations loth their infancy and childhood endure by reason of those.painsand pressing, necessities which in their youngest years they can tell only in, cries and groans, and which their parents in extreme lro-' verty annot relieve, or they are so brutish and savage that they will not <lo it.? How wretchedly are these young generations hurried onward through the folly and weakness of childhood,
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