ssity it happens in a civilised community, that
a vast majority of the species are innocent, and have no inclination to
molest or interrupt each other's avocations.

But, as this condition of human society preserves us in comparative
innocence, and renders the social arrangement in the midst of which we
exist, to a certain degree a soothing and agreeable spectacle, so on the
other hand it is not less true that its immediate tendency is, to clip
the wings of the thinking principle within us, and plunge the members
of the community in which we live into a barren and ungratifying
mediocrity. Hence it should be the aim of those persons, who from
their situation have more or less the means of looking through the
vast assemblage of their countrymen, of penetrating "into the seeds" of
character, and determining "which grain will grow, and which will not,"
to apply themselves to the redeeming such as are worthy of their care
from the oblivious gulph into which the mass of the species is of
necessity plunged. It is therefore an ill saying, when applied in the
most rigorous extent, "Let every man maintain himself, and be his own
provider: why should we help him?"

The help however that we should afford to our fellow-men requires of
us great discernment in its administration. The deceitfulness of
appearances is endless. And nothing can well be at the same time more
lamentable and more ludicrous, than the spectacle of those persons, the
weaver, the thresher, and the mechanic, who by injudicious patronage
are drawn from their proper sphere, only to exhibit upon a larger stage
their imbecility and inanity, to shew those moderate powers, which in
their proper application would have carried their possessors through
life with respect, distorted into absurdity, and used in the attempt to
make us look upon a dwarf, as if he were one of the Titans who in the
commencement of recorded time astonished the earth.

It is also true to a great degree, that those efforts of the human
mind are most healthful and vigorous, in which the possessor of talents
"administers to himself," and contends with the different obstacles that
arise,

--------throwing them aside,
And stemming them with hearts of controversy.

Many illustrious examples however may be found in the annals of
literature, of patronage judiciously and generously applied, where
men have been raised by the kindness of others from the obscurest
situation