d to their wants. They
clear their consciences by maintaining, that what is parted with is not
lost, and foster their hopes with the idea of its reversion. They think
those who _can_ ride ought not to walk; and, therefore, that all
men have the option of such chances of good-fortune. With this laxity of
principle they quarter themselves on the credulity of extortionate
tradesmen, and the good-natured simplicity of friends or associates.
If, perchance, they possess any excellence above their society, they
consider it as a redeeming grace for their importunities, and,
calculating on the vulgarism _ad captandum_, that what is dearest
bought is most prized, they make their friends pay freely for their
admiration. Nor are such admirers willing to break the spell by which
they are bound, since, by their unqualified approval they sanction, and
flatter _the man_ of their party, to their mutual ruin; for, as
Selden observes, "he who will keep a monkey should surely pay for the
glasses he breaks."

Prone as men are to the crooked path, and still more apt as the weak and
ignorant are to indulge them in such a course, perhaps the love of
principle is as strong in men's hearts as it ever will be. Of times gone
by, we must not here speak; because the _amor patriae_ its has long
since shifted to _amor nummi_, and naked honesty has learned the
decency of dress. There have been profligates in all ages; but the
world, though sometimes a severe master, ruins as many by its deceitful
indulgence, as by its ill-timed severity. Good fellows are usually the
worst treated by the world allowing them to go beyond their tether, and
then cutting them off out of harm's way. Nothing but an earlier
discipline can improve us; for so habitual is debt, that the boy who
forestals his pocket-money uses it as a step-ladder to mortgaging his
estate. The sufferers, in such cases, are generally shut up in prisons
or poor-houses, to afflict or console each other as their sensibilities
may direct; and thus the salutary lessons, which their condition might
afford, is lost to the world. Neither are such scenes of real misery
courted by mankind; the nearest semblances which they can bear being in
the sentimentalities of the stage, encumbered as they often are by
overstrained fiction and caricature. On the contrary, a walk through
those receptacles of human woe, and the little histories of their
inmates, will often furnish as many lessons of morality and
world-know