my shame, that my way of acting has not been always conformable to my way of thinking. My own passions, and the passions and interests of other men still more, have led me aside. I launched into the deep before I had loaded ballast enough. If the ship did not sink, the cargo was thrown overboard. The storm itself threw me into port. My own opinion, my own desires would have kept me there: the opinion, the desires of others, sent me to sea again. I did, and blamed myself for doing what others, and you, among the rest, would have blamed me, if I had not done. I have paid more than I owed to party, and as much at least as was due to friendship. If I go off the stage of publick life without paying all I owe to my enemies, and to the enemies of my country, I do assure you the bankruptcy is not fraudulent. I conceal none of my effects.
Does Pope talk to you of the noble work, which, at my instigation, he has begun in such a manner, that he must be convinced, by this time, I judged better of his talents than he did? The first epistle, which considers man, and the habitation of man, relatively to the whole system of universal being. The second, which considers him in his own habitation, in himself, and relatively to his particular system. And the third, which shows how —
A universal cause
Works to one end, but works by various laws.
How man, and beast, and vegetable are linked in a mutual dependency, parts necessary to each other, and necessary to the whole; how human societies were formed; from what spring true religion and true policy are derived; how God has made our greatest interest and our plainest duty indivisibly the
