! Thoughts on PUBLIC CREDIT* 313 
for their private ufe, as if they might do it with a good con- 
fcience, under the condition of loflng the objed, if furprized 
in the fad : not confidering it, in the lead, as a violation of 
laws, and that with refped to fmugglers who live by the trade, 
they are no more nor less, than what pickpockets, who rob 
occafionally, are to thieves who plunder houfes. The compa- 
rifon is grofs ; but, upon my word, I can think of none fo well 
adapted : the one is a kind of petty larceny, the other felony. 
If you fhould be ever tempted to trefpafs in this kind of rob- 
bery, and to injure your country by fo bad an example, re - 
member what I now tell you. Adieu. I am yours, Me. 
LETTER XXI. 
To the fame. 
Madam, 
Y O U will eadly perceive that this treatise upon tea is a 
dissertation on public love. — Perhaps I detain you 
from the purfuit of more lively pleafures, and I beg your 
pardon ; but I cannot lay afide my pen without fome reflec- 
tions on our prefent fituation with regard to the public debt, 
to which I beg your ferious attention : the confideration of it is 
more clofely conneded with my fubjed than you are aware of, 
and you are deeply intereded in it. It is this which checks 
the strength and power of this nation, in which we have all 
no trivial interest ! Men of melancholy or discontented 
minds, think our profped is gloomy ; and fo do fome who are 
neither melancholy nor difeontented : but if we exert our na- 
tural drength, the clouds are difpelled, the profped brightens, 
and we look forward with joyful expedations to remoteft po- 
S f derity. 
