after them, is lured only by the
scent of prey; and that, perhaps, among all those who crowd about them
with professions and flatteries, there is not one who does not hope for
some opportunity to devour or betray them, to glut himself by their
destruction, or to share their spoils with a stronger savage.

Virtue presented singly to the imagination or the reason, is so well
recommended by its own graces, and so strongly supported by arguments,
that a good man wonders how any can be bad; and they who are ignorant of
the force of passion and interest, who never observed the arts of
seduction, the contagion of example, the gradual descent from one crime
to another, or the insensible depravation of the principles by loose
conversation, naturally expect to find integrity in every bosom, and
veracity on every tongue.

It is, indeed, impossible not to hear from those who have lived longer,
of wrongs and falsehoods, of violence and circumvention; but such
narratives are commonly regarded by the young, the heady, and the
confident, as nothing more than the murmurs of peevishness, or the
dreams of dotage; and, notwithstanding all the documents of hoary
wisdom, we commonly plunge into the world fearless and credulous,
without any foresight of danger, or apprehension of deceit.

I have remarked, in a former paper, that credulity is the common failing
of unexperienced virtue; and that he who is spontaneously suspicious,
may be justly charged with radical corruption; for, if he has not known
the prevalence of dishonesty by information, nor had time to observe it
with his own eyes, whence can he take his measures of judgment but from
himself?

They who best deserve to escape the snares of artifice, are most likely
to be entangled. He that endeavours to live for the good of others, must
always be exposed to the arts of them who live only for themselves,
unless he is taught by timely precepts the caution required in common
transactions, and shewn at a distance the pitfalls of treachery.

To youth, therefore, it should be carefully inculcated, that, to enter
the road of life without caution or reserve, in expectation of general
fidelity and justice, is to launch on the wide ocean without the
instruments of steerage, and to hope that every wind will be prosperous,
and that every coast will afford a harbour.

To enumerate the various motives to deceit and injury, would be to count
all the desires that prevail among the sons of men; s