Locke. The mind, though free, has a governor within itself, which may and ought to limit the exercise of its freedom. That governor is reason.

Bay. Yes:-But reason, like other governors, has a policy more dependant upon uncertain caprice, than upon any fixed laws. And if that reason, which rules my mind or yours, has happened to set up a favourite notion, it not only submits impli citly to it, but desires that the same respect should be paid to it by all the rest of mankind. Now I hold that any man may lawfully oppose this desire in another; and that if he is wise, he will use his utmost endeavours to check it in himself.

Locke. Is there not also a weakness of a contrary nature to this you are now ridiculing? do we not often take a pleasure in showing our own power, and gratifying our own pride, by degrading the notions set up by other men, and generally respected?

Bay. I believe we do; and by this means it often happens, that, if one man builds and consecrates a temple to folly, another pulls it down.

Locke. Do you think it beneficial to human society, to have all temples pulled down?

Bay. I cannot say that I do.

Locke. Yet I find not in your writings any mark of distinction, to show us which you mean to save.

Bay. A true philosopher, like an impartial historian, must be of no sect.

Locke. Is there no medium between the blind zeal of a sectary, and total indifference to all religion?

Bay. With regard to morality, I was not indifferent.

Locke. How could you then be indifferent with regard to the sanctions religion gives to morality? how could you publish what tends so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of those sanctions? was not this sacrificing the great interests of virtue to the little motives of vanity?

Bay. A man may act indiscreetly, but he cannot do wrong by declaring that, which, on a full discussion of the question, he sincerely thinks to be true.

Locke. An enthusiast, who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion, and the heat of a disturbed imagination to plead in alleviation of his fault. But your cool head, and sound judgment can have no such excuse. I know very well there are passages in all your works, and those not a few, where you talk like a rigid moralist. I have also heard that your character was irreproachably good. But when, in the most

laboured parts of your writings, you sap the surest foundations of all moral duties; what avails it that in others, or in the conduct of your life, you appeared to respect them? How many, who have stronger passions than you had, and are desirous to get rid of the curb that restrains them, will lay hold of your scepticism, to set themselves loose from all obligations of virtue! What a misfortune it is to have made such a use of such talents! It would have been better for you and for mankind, if you had been one of the dullest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese convent. The riches of the mind, like those of fortune, may be employed so perversely, as to become a nuisance and pest, instead of an ornament and support, to society.

Bay. You are very severe upon me. But do you count it no merit, no service to mankind, to deliver them from the frauds and fetters of priestcraft, from the deliriums of fanaticism, and from the terrors and follies of superstition? Consider how much mischief these have done to the world! Even in the last age, what massacres, what civil wars, what convulsions of government, what confusion in society, did they produce! Nay, in that we both lived in, though much more enlightened than the former, did I not see them occasion a violent persecution in my own country? and can you blame me for striking at the root of these evils?

Locke. The root of these evils you well know, was false religion but you struck at the true. Heaven and hell are not more different, than the system of faith I defended, and that which produced the horrors of which you speak. Why would you so fallaciously confound them together in some of your writings, that it requires much more judgment, and a more diligent attention, than ordinary readers have, to separate them again, and to make the proper distinctions? This, indeed, is the great art of the most celebrated freethinkers. They recommend themselves to warm and ingenious minds, by lively strokes of wit, and by arguments really strong, against superstition, enthusiasm, and priestcraft. But, at the same time, they insidiously throw the colours of these upon the fair face of true religion; and dress her out in their garb, with a malignant intention to render her odious or despicable, to those who have not penetration enough to discern the impious fraud. Some of them may have thus deceived themselves, as well as others. Yet it is certain, no book that ever was written by the most acute of these gentlemen, is so repugnant to priestcraft, to spiritual ty

ranny, to all absurd superstitions, to all that can tend to disturb or injure society, as that gospel they so much affect to despise. Bay. Mankind are so made, that when they have been over heated, they cannot be brought to a proper temper again, till they have been over cooled. My scepticism might be necessary, to abate the fever and phrenzy of false religion.

Locke. A wise prescription, indeed, to bring on a paralytical state of the mind, (for such a scepticism as yours is a palsy, which deprives the mind of all vigour, and deadens its natural and vital powers) in order to take off a fever, which temperance, and the milk of the evangelical doctrines, would probably

cure!

er.

Bay. I acknowledge that those medicines have a great powBut few doctors apply them untainted with the mixture of some harsher drugs, or some unsafe and ridiculous nostrums of their own.

Locke. What you now say is too true.-God has given us a most excellent physic for the soul in all its diseases; but bad and interested physicians, or ignorant and conceited quacks, administer it so ill to the rest of mankind, that much of the be pefit of it is unhappily lost. LORD LYTTLETON.

CHAPTER VIII.

PUPLIC SPEECHES.

SECTION I.

CICERO AGAINST VERRES.

HE time is come, Fathers, when that which has long been

wished for, towards allaying the envy your order has been subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is effectually put into your power. An opinion has long prevailed not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you and pernicious to the state, that, in prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted.There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanderous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of

all impartial persons; but who, according to his own reckoning and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted; I mean Caius Verres. I demand justice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the scourge and curse of Sicily. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public: but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point-to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case, was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, but justice and adequate punishment.

To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quætorship, the first public employment he held, what does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villainies? Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphylia, what did it produce but the ruin of those countries? in which houses, cities, and temples, were robbed by him.What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples, and public works neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge? Let those who suf fered by his injustice answer. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mischiefs done by him in that unhap py country, during the three years of his iniquitous administra tion, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be suficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them: for it is notorious, that, during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their own original laws; of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman senate, upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth; nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years. And his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes, and unheard of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The

most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters, condemned and banished unheard. The harbours, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, have been opened to pirates aud ravagers. The soldiery and sailors, belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, have been starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish. The ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes have been carried off; and the temples stripped of their images.Having, by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserv ing of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the gaols; so that the exclamation, “I am a citizen of Rome!" which has often, in the most distant regious, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them; but, on the contrary, brought a speedier and a more severe punishment upon them.

I ask, now, Verres, what thou hast to advance against this charge? Wilt thou pretend to deny it? Wilt thou pretend, that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated, is alledged against thee? Had any prince, or any state, committed the same outrages against the privileges of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for demanding satisfac:tion What punishment, ought, then, to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked prætor, who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country, against the cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison at Syracuse, whence he had just made his escape? The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, is brought before the wicked prætor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, "I am a Roman citizen; I have served under Lucius Precius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The blood-thirsty prætor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous punish