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To take your own inftance: What if the ideas of liberty chanced to be closely connected with thofe of Old England; fo as, by the magic of this union, to convert her rude heaths and barren moun tains into pleasurable landskips; would you be forward, if you had it in your power, to diffolve this charm, and, by setting those objects in their true and proper light, difenchant the mind, at the fame time, from the idea, or warm love at leaft, of English liberty?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

You know well, I perceive, how to chufe your inftances. The force of this, you suppose, will hardly be loft on him, who profeffes himself an adorer of that liberty. But, under favour, I fee no fuch inconvenience, as you fuggeft, in putting afunder two things which truth and nature had no hand in bringing together, LIBERTY has charms enough

tq

to attach the mind, wherever the place of her abode be; and I have never heard that the loveliness of her form is impaired, or even difgraced, by the homelinefs of her habitation.

MR. LOCKE.

Ir may be fo; and the reafon, as in the cafe of the more felfifh affections, is, That the habitation of our idol, whatever be our worship, is rarely thought homely. But convince us that country is fcarce worth contending for, and, as lovely as its Goddefs Liberty may appear to enamoured eyes, the generality of her votaries will, I doubt, be fomething flack in her defence.

BUT, after all, an illustration must not be questioned at this rate. It is enough, that your Lordship fees I am not for difcarding Principles, under the opprobrious name of Prejudices. The tender minds of youth are to be treated with indulgence.

dulgence. If they put forth too faft, and too luxuriantly, let the ordinary methods of culture be applied to them. A little dreffing and pruning, at fit seasons, may do more good, than transplanting : a fatal experiment, in many cafes; which, in checking the immoderate vigour of its growth, kills the tree, or, at beft, brings on a languishing and dwarfish imbecillity.

IF, indeed, by Prejudices you mean vicious principles, properly fo called; that is, vicious in themselves, as well as in the degree: thefe, it is certain, must be rooted up; and the fooner, the better: but then there is no need of croffing the feas for the benefit of fuch an ope ration.

FOR the proper cure of fuch prejudices, as I take it, is to be made by the application of thofe truths that are common to all climes; not by the partial manners or opinions which arife out

of

of them in this or that more polished iociety.

BUT your Lordship, I obferved, as though you had taken up this charge of Prejudices purely to introduce the fatire on Old England, was content to drop it, as foon as it had ferved your turn. You exchanged it, however, for another of more importance, THE LOW, SORDID, IMMORAL HABITS; which strike into the lives and manners of our youth, and are, as you conceive, epidemical and incurable in this Inland.

AND

It may be true, that too much of the complaint is well-founded. The taste of our provincial gentry may be fomething coarse; and their houses, none of the best schools of civility and politeness: fo that low and even immoral habits may be, and, I doubt, too often are, the fruit of an ordinary domestic education. But then what remedy does your Lordship

prescribe

get

prescribe for the removal of them? Why, you fend them abroad with all their imperfections upon their heads; to rid of their bad habits, as they can, and to pick up better, as they will: or, do you perhaps imagine that the ill qualities, they take out with them, will drop off, of themselves? and that the good ones they stand in need of, like new leaves in the fpring, will immediately put forth and take their places?

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

I DO but imagine, that bad habits are only to be expelled by better; and that therefore the readieft way for our coun trymen to get quit of their ill manners, is, to force them into good company, And, with your leave, I fee nothing very abfurd or unreasonable in this imagination.

MR LOCKE.

CERTAINLY not, in prefcribing good habits as a cure for bad ones. But your

Lordship

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