is once known, we are provided with an answer to every importunity.

There is a difference, no doubt, between convivial intemperance, and that folitary fottishness which waits neither for company nor invitation. But the one, I am afraid, commonly ends in the other and this laft is the baseft degradation, to which the faculties and dignity of human nature can be reduced.

CHAP.

T

be

HERE is no fubject in morality, in which the confideration of general confequences is more neceffary than in this of fuicide. Particular and extreme cafes of fuicide. may feigned, and may happen, of which it would be difficult to affign the particular harm, from that confideration alone to demonstrate the guilt; and thefe cafes have chiefly occafioned confufion and doubtfulnefs in the queftion: albeit this is no more than what is fometimes true of the most acknowledged vices. I could propofe many poffible cafes even of murder, which, if they were detached from the general rule, and governed by their own particular confequences alone, it would be no eafy undertaking to prove criminal.

The true queftion in the argument is no other than this-may every man who pleases to destroy his life, innocently do fo? Limit, and diftin

guifh

guish the subject as you can, it will come at laft to this question.

For, fhall we say that we are then at liberty to commit fuicide, when we find our continuance in life become useless to mankind? Any one, who pleafes, may make himself useless; and melancholy minds are prone to think themfelves ufelefs, when they really are not fo. Suppofe a law were promulged, allowing each private person to deftroy every man he met, whose longer continuance in the world he judged to be ufelefs; who would not condemn the latitude of fuch a rule? Who does not perceive that it amounts to a permiffion to commit murder at pleasure ? A fimilar rule, regulating the rights over our own lives, would be capable of the fame extenfion. Befide which, no one is useless for the purpose of this plea, but he who has loft every capacity and opportunity of being useful, together with the poffibility of recovering any degree of either; which is a ftate of fuch complete deftitution and defpair, as cannot, I believe, be predicated of any man living.

Or rather, fhall we fay that to depart voluntarily out of life, is lawful for thofe alone who leave none to lament their death? If this confideration is to be taken into the account at

all,

all, the fubject of debate will be, not whether there are any to forrow for us, but whether their forrow for our death will exceed that which we fhould fuffer by continuing to live. Now this is a comparison of things fo indeterminate in their nature, capable of fo different a judgment, and concerning which the judgment will differ fo much, according to the ftate of the spirits, or the preflure of any present anxiety, that it would vary little, in hypochondriacal conftitutions, from an unqualified licence to commit fuicide, whenever the diftreffes men felt, or fancied, rose high enough to overcome the pain and dread of death. Men are never tempted to deftroy themselves, but when under the oppreffion of fome grievous uneafiness the reftrictions of the rule, therefore, ought to apply to these cafes. But what effect can we look for from a rule, which propofes to weigh our own pain against that of another; the misery that is felt, against that which is only conceived; and in fo corrupt a balance as the party's own diftempered imagination?

In like manner, whatever other rule you affign, it will ultimately bring us to an indifcriminate toleration of fuicide, in all cafes in which there is danger of its being committed.

It remains, therefore, to enquire what would be the effect of fuch a toleration-evidently, the lofs of many lives to the community, of which fome might be useful or important; the affliction of many families, and the confternation of all; for mankind muft live in continual alarm for the fate of their friends and deareft relations, when the restraints of religion and morality are withdrawn; when every difguft, which is powerful enough to tempt men to fuicide, shall be deemed fufficient to justify it; and when the follies and vices, as well as the inevitable calamities, of human life, so often make existence a burthen.

A fecond confideration, and perfectly distinct from the former, is this-By continuing in the world, and in the exercise of those virtues which remain within our power, we retain the opportunity of meliorating our condition in a future ftate. This argument, it is true, does not in ftrictness prove fuicide to be a crime; but if it fupply a motive to diffuade us from committing it, it amounts to much the fame thing. Now there is no condition in human life which is not capable of fome virtue, active or paffive. Even piety and refignation under the fufferings to which we are called, testify a trust and acquiefcence in the divine counfels, more acceptable, perhaps,