For this instance of your good fortune I most cordially felicitate you. Far different was my lot. Ignorant of my classmates, and devoid of a friendly counsellor, I was accidentally associated with one, whose brutality of manners and destitution of principle rendered the first year of my collegial life a scene of wretchedness inexpressible. The most injuri ous effects I have often known to result from such companions ill assorted.

But, let the choice be ever so judiciously made, this connection will not ensure attentive study and good behavior, Much depends on your other associates. If these be idle and dissipated, you cannot well avoid the contagion of their example. Though your habits of application be ever so firmly fixed, you will insensibly become negligent. Your hours of study will be haunted by the spectres of past pleasures, or by the more real interruption of inconsiderate idlers. time must be necessarily sacrificed.

Much

It is obvious also to remark, that these negative evils will not be the only bad consequence of such a choice. You will gradually contract the vices of your associates. You will "first endure, then pity, then embrace." You will lose the approbation of your instructors, and the good opinion of your more virtuous fellow-students. You will injure your health. You will impair the happiness of your parents and friends; and, what more intimately concerns you, you will be likely to disqualify yourself for respectability and usefulness in riper years.

Against these evils it is the more necessary to guard, as they are not at first realized. The Syren pleasure does not show you the bitter dregs, which her cup contains, when she allures you to receive the intoxicating draught. She first lulls to sleep your reason; and then she administers her deadly potion.

Another argument for vigilant caution is, that the dissipated are much more watchful, than the regular, to increase the number of their intimates. These cannot find time for large acquaintance. They are also more critical in their choice. Those make it their first concern to enlist all in their pur

Buits, whom they can by any means influence, let their dispositions and views be ever so discordant.

My conclusion from the whole is, be cautious, what friend. ships you form. Before you contract any intimacies, wait to ascertain the characters of your classmates. Inattention. to this direction has given an unhappy bias to many a youthful mind, which had been before preserved pure from the pollution of vice. Accidental connections may be fortunate, When otherwise, as they are always liable to be, they produce mischievous effects, before you see the necessity of guarding against them.

"Obsta

Adhere to the sage maxim of the Roman poet, principiis." Embracing this, you will carefully restrain the precipitancy of youth, you will be preserved from a line of conduct dishonorary to your character, your mind will be pure, your attainments respectable, your prospects flattering, Yours, &c. PHILOS.

EXAMINATION OF MODERN ETHICS.

THE following communication is part of an anonymous let ter, published in London in 1798, entitled "An examination of the leading principle of the new System of morals, as that principle is stated and applied in Mr. Godwin's Enquiry concerning Political Justice.“

The design of the author was to investigate the origin, and weigh the merits of that curious theory of morals, which makes expediency the sole foundation of moral obligation; and refers the agent, for the knowledge of his duty, to his wild and uncertain calculations concerning the ultimate eonsequences of his actions, The origin and progress of this modern System of Ethics are carefully described; its deformities are unveiled; and its ruinous tendency in society pointed out iu a manner, which bespeaks an enlightened and penetrating mind, deeply concerned for the cause of religion, and the general interests of mankind.

After a short introduction to his correspondent, the author thus begins. “As a curious, because an idle observer of what is passing in the world, this system has long attracted my attention; and, unless I am deluded beyond all cure from reason and reflection, it affords subject for very serious meditation. Our condition is no longer to be dissembled. It has long been creeping upon us in silence and obscurity. It seems from various prognostics to have very nearly touched its crisis; and stands without any of that sort of parallel in former times, which will enable us to form a conjecture of its issue. Amidst a steady, radical, confirmed decay, approaching to a total breaking up of that religion, and, together with the religion, of that peculiar cast of manners, which gave its distinguishing character to modern Europe; combined with a dissemination of knowledge through all classes, unexampled in the history of man, quickening the whole mass into a new activity, and inspiring a self confidence and impatient disdain of all control on the sovereignty of reason, arises a System, exactly accommodated to this eventful change; professing an exclusive right to direct the whole of human conduct; at war in its essence with every other corrective; and placing its own efficacy solely in the free and enlightened speculations of each individual on the general welfare.

The portentous aspect of this System and the conjuncture, in which it has appeared, are not more remarkable, than the inciden tal circumstances, by which its progress has been favored. Its vital principle, the principle, which gives being and force to all its doctrines in all their extent, has never been regarded, as peculiar to itself, nor examined in the spirit, which such a view of it would naturally have excited. It has crept, on the contrary, unobserved into general favor. It stands avowed and accredited, as a certain truth, by all the leading authorities of the day; and has formed as secure a lodgement in the public mind, as the most sanguine votary of this System could desire. The consequences resulting from this principle, and composing what I shall take the liberty of calling the System itself, have not been brought before the public all at once, and in full body and array. They have stolen successively upon us, in different groups, from different quarters, under various disguises, and in all the diversities of form, from the subtil and specious insinuation, at which the scru

pulous might startle, without distinctly knowing what to con demn, to the bold and unqualified conclusion, at which the most adventrous spirit might be staggered. It has been impossible to bring this Proteus to any sort of reckoning. If it was defeated in one shape, it started up in another. If you grappled with it this moment, in the terrific guise of defiance, it won upon you the next, in all the blandishments of affection, or disarmed your resentment with the lamentations of distress. The most zealous advocates of this System have never been distinctly agreed, on what they were proceeding, or what they would be at. Some have embraced more of the System, some less; some have attacked one obstacle, some another. In one way or other however their industry has been perfectly unwearied; it has been animated by the same spirit, it has tended to the same issue, and has had all the effect at least of correspondence. Their courtship has been of a kind the most difficult to resist. They have taken their stand on motives the most honorable to themselves, and the most seductive to their auditors, the good of human kind, and an anxiety to reform the principles and institutions, on which its happiness depends. They have addressed themselves to the most generous and the most flattering of the passions, to our love of truth, of independence, and liberal enquiry; to our abhorrence of craft, imposition, and servile prejudice. No vehicle of zeal has been neglected. The solemnity of narrative, the subtlety of disquisition, the charms of poetry, and the delusions of romance, have all been pressed into the service; and criticism has been perplexed by the various modes, in which the assault has been conducted, the purity of the motives, on which it has been urged, and the indistinct disclosure of what it was proposed to substitute in the yawning void of what it was so anxiously labored to destroy.

Under these circumstances, I have always considered the appearance of Mr. Godwin's Political Justice, as an event the most desirable, that could have happened. With all its apparent novelty of argument and rashness of conclusion, his work is in truth and substance nothing more, than a complete digest of the New System of Morals, reduced to its first elements, drawn out in its true form, and applied to a subject, of all others the best adapted

to display its genuine character and temper. The leading princi ple, which he professes through his whole Enquiry, is precisely that, which has animated and guided all his predecessors. This principle he has distinctly stated and avowed; and, by pursuing it, not in the perverse spirit of a satirist, but with the honest zeal of a true votary, to its extreme and revolting consequences, he has taught the most inconsiderate to ponder a little, on what ground they were acting, and in what project they were engaged. Former writers in the same cause have been short sighted, or timid, or reserved. Mr. Godwin labors under none of these defects. What he has deliberately adopted, he has dared sagaciously to follow; and what he has dared to follow, he has had the spirit to aVOW. We are indebted to that spirit; it has granted us all we wanted; it has fulfilled the prayer of Ajax; and, if we are doomed to sink under this mischief, we shall at least have the satisfac tion not to perish in the dark.

Let us attend therefore to Mr. Godwin's Scheme of Morals, as he has ventured very luminously to expose it, in the course of his Political Enquiry.

This System opens with a radical position, That we are bound in justice to do all the good we can; and that all moral duty therefore is comprised in Justice. It is just to do all the good we can; it is unjust not to do all the good we can. Being bound in justice to do all the good we possibly can, the only just motive for preferring either our own good to that of others, or, of other persons, the good of any one individual to that of any other, must be a sense of the superior quantity of good, which that individual, whether it be ourselves or another, is capable of producing; be. cause by pursuing this plan only can we produce all the possi ble good in our power. Whatever therefore leads us to prefer either ourselves or others upon a different account, is immoral and unjust. To execute this grand design of producing all the good in our power, by ourselves or through others, we must be perfectly free from restraint too as well, as bias. All promises, oaths, contracts, &c. whatever blindly determines us to act in any defin ite way, should not be allowed therefore, or not regarded. If they do not lead us to deviate from the only right line of conduct, that of producing all the good possible, they are useless; if they do,