yments become
inheritances.

The Commons always have had so tender a regard to property; that they
never would suffer any law to pass, whereby any particular persons might
be aggrieved without their own consent.

***** ***** ***** *****

AN ESSAY

ON THE

FATES OF CLERGYMEN.

NOTE.

This essay was first printed in Nos. v. and vii. of "The Intelligencer"
(Dublin, 1728). In that periodical it bore the title: "A Description of
what the World calls Discretion;" and had the following lines from Ben
Jonson as a text:

"Described it's thus: Defined would you it have?
Then the World's honest Man's an errant knave."

The text here printed is based on the original issue, and collated with
the "Miscellanies," vol. iii. of 1732, and the "Miscellanies," vol. ii.,
1747.

[T.S.]

AN ESSAY ON THE FATES OF
CLERGYMEN.

There is no talent so useful towards rising in the world, or which puts
men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally
possessed by the dullest sort of people, and is in common speech called
discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which,
people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification,
pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good
treatment, neither giving nor taking offence. Courts are seldom
unprovided of persons under this character, on whom, if they happen to
be of great quality, most employments, even the greatest, naturally
fall, when competitors will not agree; and in such promotions, nobody
rejoices or grieves. The truth of this I could prove by several
instances within my own memory; for I say nothing of present times.

And, indeed, as regularity and forms are of great use in carrying on the
business of the world, so it is very convenient, that persons endued
with this kind of discretion, should have that share which is proper to
their talents, in the conduct of affairs, but by no means meddle in
matters which require genius, learning, strong comprehension, quickness
of conception, magnanimity, generosity, sagacity, or any other superior
gift of human minds. Because this sort of discretion is usually attended
with a strong desire of money, and few scruples about the way of
obtaining it; with servile flattery and submission; with a want of all
public spirit or principle; with a perpetual wrong judgment, when the
owners come into power and high place, how to dispose of fav