could have done, and it must save those expences which go to reward an author.

All modern plays that would keep the audience alive, must be conceived in this manner, and indeed, many a modern play is made up on no other plan. This is the merit that lifts up the heart, like opium, into a rapture of insensibility, and can dismiss the mind from all the fatigue of thinking: this is the eloquence that shines in many a long forgotten scene, which has been reckoned excessive fine upon acting this the lightning that flashes no less in the hyperbolical tyrant, who breakfasts on the wind, than in little Norval, as harmless as the babe unborn. Adieu.

LETTER LXXX.

From the Same.

I HAVE always regarded the spirit of mercy which appears in the Chinese laws with admiration. An order for the execution of a criminal is carried from court by slow journies of six miles a day, but a pardon is sent down with the most rapid dispatch. If five sons of the same father be guilty of the same offence, one of them is forgiven, in order to continue the family, and comfort his aged parents in their decline.

Similar to this, there is a spirit of mercy breathes through the laws of England, which some erroneously endeavour to suppress ! The laws, however, seem unwilling to punish the offender, or to furnish the officers of justice with every means of acting with severity. Those who arrest debtors are denied the use of arms; the nightly watch is permitted to repress the disorders of the drunken citizens only

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with clubs: justice in such a case seems to hide her terrors, and permits some offenders to escape, rather than load any with a punishment disproportionate to the crime.

Thus it is the glory of an Englishman that he is not only governed by laws, but that these laws are also tempered by mercy. A country restrained by severe laws, and those too executed with severity, as in Japan, is under the most terrible species of tyranny: a royal tyrant is generally dreadful to the great, but numerous penal laws grind every rank of people, and chiefly those least able to resist oppression....the poor.

It is very possible, thus, for a people to become slaves to laws of their own enacting, as the Athenians were to those of Draco. "It might first happen," says the historian," that men with peculiar talents "for villany attempted to evade the ordinances al"ready established; their practices, therefore, soon "brought on a new law levelled against them; but "the same degree of cunning, which had taught the "knave to evade the former statutes, taught him to ❝evade the latter also; he flew to new shifts, while "justice pursued with new ordinances; still, how66 ever, he kept his proper distance, and whenever "one crime was judged penal by the state, he left "committing it, in order to practise some unforbidden "species of villany. Thus the criminal, against whom "the threatenings were denounced, always escaped "free, while the simple rogue alone felt the rigour "of justice. In the mean time, penal laws became "numerous, almost every person in the state, un<< knowingly, at different times, offended, and was แ every moment subject to a malicious prosecution." In fact, penal laws, instead of preventing crimes, are generally enacted after the commission; instead of repressing the growth of ingenious villany, only mul

tiply the deceit, by putting it upon new shifts and expedients of practising with impunity.

Such laws, therefore, resemble the guards which are sometimes imposed upon tributary princes, apparently, indeed, to secure them from danger, but in reality to confirm their captivity.

Penal laws, it must be allowed, secure property in a state, but they also diminish personal security in the same proportion. There is no positive law, how equitable soever, that may not be sometimes capable of injustice. When a law, enacted to make theft punishable with death, happens to be equitably executed, it can at best only guard our possessions; but when, by favour or ignorance, justice pronounces a wrong verdict, it then attacks our lives, since, in such a case, the whole community suffers with the innocent victim if, therefore, in order to secure the effects of one man, I should make a law which may take away the life of another, in such a case, to attain a smaller good, I am guilty of a greater evil; to secure society in the possession of a bauble, I render real and valuable possession precarious. And inde the experience of every age may serve to vindicat、 the assertion: no law could be more just than that called "læse majestatis," when Rome was governed by emperors. It was but reasonable that every conspiracy against the administration should be detected and punished; yet what terrible slaughters succeeded in consequence of its enacting; proscriptions, stranglings, poisonings, in almost every family of distinction, yet all done in a legal way; every criminal had his trial, and lost his life by a majority of witnesses.

And such will ever be the case where punishments are numerous, and where a weak, vicious, but, above all, where a mercenary magistrate is concerned in their execution; such a man desires to see penal laws increased, since he too frequently has it in his power to turn them into instruments of extortion;

in such hands the more laws the wider means, not of satisfying justice, but of satiating avarice.

A mercenary magistrate, who is rewarded in proportion, not to 'his integrity, but to the number he convicts, must be a person of the most unblemished character, or he will lean on the side of cruelty; and when once the work of injustice is begun, it is impossible to tell how far it will proceed. It is said of the hyena, that naturally it is no way ravenous, but when once it has tasted human flesh, it becomes the most voracious animal of the forest, and continues to persecute mankind ever after. A corrupt magistrate may be considered as a human hyena; he begins perhaps by a private snap, he goes on to a morsel among friends, he proceeds to a meal in public, from a meal he advances to a surfeit, and at last sucks blood like a vampyre.

Not in such hands should the administration of justice be entrusted, but to those who know how to reward as well as to punish: it was a fine saying of Nangsa, the emperor, who being told that his enemies had raised an insurrection in one of the distant provinces: come then, my friends, said he, follow me, and I promise you that we shall quickly destroy them; he marched forward, and the rebels submitted upon his approach. All now thought that he would take the most signal revenge, but were surprised to see the captives treated with mildness and humanity. How, cries his first minister, is this the manner in which you fulfil your promise? Your royal word was given, that your enemies should be destroyed, and behold, you have pardoned all, and even caressed some! I promised, replied the emperor, with a generous air, to destroy my enemies, I have fulfilled my word, for see they are enemies no longer; I have made friends of them.

This, could it always succeed, were the true method of destroying the enemies of a state; well it

were, if rewards and mercy alone could regulate the commonwealth; but since punishments are sometimes necessary, let them at least be rendered terrible by being executed but seldom, and let justice lift her sword rather to terrify than revenge. Adieu.

LETTER LXXXI.

From the Same.

I HAVE as yet given you but a short and imperfect description of the ladies of England. Women, my friend, is a subject not easily understood, even in China; what, therefore, can be expected from my knowledge of the sex in a country where they are universally allowed to be riddles, and I but a stranger?

To confess the truth, I was afraid to begin the description, lest the sex should undergo some new revolution before it was finished; and my picture should thus become old before it could well be said to have ever been new. To-day they are lifted upon stilts, to-morrow they lower their heels, and raise their heads; their clothes at one time are bloated out with whalebone; at present they have laid their hoops aside, and are become as slim as mermaids. All, all is in a state of continual fluctuation, from the mandarine's wife, who rattles through the streets in her chariot, to the humble sempstress, who clatters over the pavement in iron-shod pattens.

What chiefly distinguishes the sex at present, is the train. As a lady's quality or fashion was once determined here by the circumference of her hoop, both are now measured by the length of her tail. Women of moderate fortunes are contented with tails moderately long; but ladies of true taste and