. For, what would so soon destroy all the
order of society, and deform life with violence and ravage, as a
permission to every one to judge his own cause, and to apportion his own
recompense for imagined injuries?

It is difficult for a man of the strictest justice not to favour himself
too much, in the calmest moments of solitary meditation. Every one
wishes for the distinctions for which thousands are wishing at the same
time, in their own opinion, with better claims. He that, when his reason
operates in its full force, can thus, by the mere prevalence of
self-love, prefer himself to his fellow-beings, is very unlikely to
judge equitably when his passions are agitated by a sense of wrong, and
his attention wholly engrossed by pain, interest, or danger. Whoever
arrogates, to himself the right of vengeance, shews how little he is
qualified to decide his own claims, since he certainly demands what he
would think unfit to be granted to another.

Nothing is more apparent than that, however injured, or however
provoked, some must at last be contented to forgive. For it can never be
hoped, that he who first commits an injury, will contentedly acquiesce
in the penalty required: the same haughtiness of contempt, or vehemence
of desire, that prompt the act of injustice, will more strongly incite
its justification; and resentment can never so exactly balance the
punishment with the fault, but there will remain an overplus of
vengeance which even he who condemns his first action will think himself
entitled to retaliate. What then can ensue but a continual exacerbation
of hatred, an unextinguishable feud, an incessant reciprocation of
mischief, a mutual vigilance to entrap, and eagerness to destroy.

Since then the imaginary right of vengeance must be at last remitted,
because it is impossible to live in perpetual hostility, and equally
impossible that of two enemies, either should first think himself
obliged by justice to submission, it is surely eligible to forgive
early. Every passion is more easily subdued before it has been long
accustomed to possession of the heart; every idea is obliterated with
less difficulty, as it has been more slightly impressed, and less
frequently renewed. He who has often brooded over his wrongs, pleased
himself with schemes of malignity, and glutted his pride with the
fancied supplications of humbled enmity, will not easily open his bosom
to amity and reconciliation, or indulge the gentle sentime