at one is less a violation of nature
than the other. Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the
unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food. This affection plainly
gives the objects of it an additional claim to relief and mercy, over and
above what our fellow-creatures in common have to our goodwill.
Liberality and bounty are exceedingly commendable; and a particular
distinction in such a world as this, where men set themselves to contract
their heart, and close it to all interests but their own. It is by no
means to be opposed to mercy, but always accompanies it: the distinction
between them is only that the former leads our thoughts to a more
promiscuous and undistinguished distribution of favours; to those who are
not, as well as those who are, necessitous; whereas the object of
compassion is misery. But in the comparison, and where there is not a
possibility of both, mercy is to have the preference: the affection of
compassion manifestly leads us to this preference. Thus, to relieve the
indigent and distressed, to single out the unhappy, from whom can be
expected no returns either of present entertainment or future service,
for the objects of our favours; to esteem a man's being friendless as a
recommendation; dejection, and incapacity of struggling through the
world, as a motive for assisting him; in a word, to consider these
circumstances of disadvantage, which are usually thought a sufficient
reason for neglect and overlooking a person, as a motive for helping him
forward: this is the course of benevolence which compassion marks out and
directs us to: this is that humanity which is so peculiarly becoming our
nature and circumstances in this world.

To these considerations, drawn from the nature of man, must be added the
reason of the thing itself we are recommending, which accords to and
shows the same. For since it is so much more in our power to lessen the
misery of our fellow-creatures than to promote their positive happiness;
in cases where there is an inconsistency, we shall be likely to do much
more good by setting ourselves to mitigate the former than by
endeavouring to promote the latter. Let the competition be between the
poor and the rich. It is easy, you will say, to see which will have the
preference. True; but the question is, which ought to have the
preference? What proportion is there between the happiness produced by
doing a favour to the indigent, and that produced by doin