THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY. 
279 
lead to advancement, and which in general are such as 
ought to be encouraged. Distinctions of this sort are sub¬ 
jects much more of competition than of enjoyment: and in 
that competition their use consists. It is not, as hath been 
rightly observed, by what the Lord JMayor feels in his 
coach, but by what the apprentice feels who gazes at him, 
that the public is served. 
As we approach the summits of human greatness, the 
comparison of good and evil, with respect to personal com¬ 
fort, becomes still more problematical; even allowing to am¬ 
bition all its pleasures. The poet asks, “What is grandeur, 
what is power?” The philosopher answers, “ Constraint 
and plague: et in maxima quaque fortuna minimum 
licere.” One very common error misleads the opinion of 
mankind upon this head, viz. that universally, authority is 
pleasant, submission painful. In the general course of hu¬ 
man affairs, the very reverse of this is nearer to the truth. 
Command is anxiety, obedience ease. 
Artificial distinctions sometimes promote real equality. 
Whether they be hereditary, or be the homage paid to office, 
or the respect attached by public opinion to particular pro¬ 
fessions, they serve to confront that grand and unavoidable 
distinction which arises from property, and which is most 
overbearing where there is no other. It is of the nature of 
property, not only to be irregularly distributed, but to run 
into large masses. Public laws should be so constructed as 
to favor its diffusion as much as they can. But all that 
can be done by laws consistently with that degree of gov¬ 
ernment of his property which ought to be left to the sub¬ 
ject, will not be sufficient to counteract this tendency. 
There must always therefore be the difference between 
rich and poor; and this difference will be the more grind¬ 
ing, when no pretension is allowed to be set up against it. 
So that the evils, if evils they must be called, which 
spring either from the necessary subordinations of civil 
life, or from the distinctions which have, naturally, though 
not necessarily, grown up in most societies, so long as they 
are unaccompanied by privileges injurious or oppressive to 
the rest of the community, are such as may, even by the 
most depressed ranks, be endured with very little prejudice 
to their comfort. 
The mischiefs of which mankind are the occasion to one 
another, by their private wickednesses and cruelties; by 
tyrannical exercises of power; by rebellions against just 
authority; by wars, by national jealousies and competi- 
