Not in such hands should the administration of justice be entrusted, but to those who know how to reward as well as to punish. It was a fine saying of Nangfu the Emperor, who, being told that his enemies had raised an insurrection in one of the distant provinces, "Come, then, my friends," said he, "follow me, and I promise you that we shall quickly destroy them." He marched forward, and the rebels submitted upon his approach. All now thought that he would take the most signal revenge, but were surprised to see the captives treated with mildness and humanity. "How!" cries his first minister, "is this the manner in which you fulfil your promise? your royal word was given that your enemies should be destroyed, and behold you have pardoned all, and even caressed some!"-"I promised," replied the Emperor, with a generous air, "to destroy my enemies; I have fulfilled my word, for see they are enemies no longer; I have made friends of them."

This, could it always succeed, were the true method of destroying the enemies of a state; well it were, if rewards and mercy alone could regulate the commonwealth : but since punishments are sometimes necessary, let them at least be rendered terrible, by being executed but seldom; and let Justice lift her sword rather to terrify than revenge.1 Adieu.

1 The spirit and tendency of this letter is highly creditable to Goldsmith, and it was greatly in advance of the time. Nearly half a century elapsed before Sir Samuel Romilly was enabled to overcome public prejudice, and to commence the reform of the criminal laws; and some of his most valuable measures were not carried until they had been four or five times rejected by the legislature.-KNIGHT. [This letter may be read with Letter L. on English Liberty.' The latter, by-the-by, was printed as a tract, with the heading 'The English Constitution,' and circulated (about 1792-1800) avowedly in opposition to the writings of "Tom Payne," the author of 'The Age of Reason,' &c.-ED.]

LETTER LXXXI.

To the Same.

THE LADIES' TRAINS RIDICULED.1

I HAVE as yet given you but a short and imperfect description of the ladies of England. Woman, my friend, is a subject not easily understood, even in China; what, therefore, can be expected from my knowledge of the sex in a country where they are universally allowed to be riddles, and I but a stranger?

To confess a truth, I was afraid to begin the description, lest the sex should undergo some new revolution before it was finished, and my picture should thus become old before it could well be said to have ever been new. To-day they are lifted upon stilts; to-morrow they lower their heels, and raise their heads; their clothes at one time are bloated out with whalebone; at present they have laid their hoops aside, and are become as slim as mermaids. All, all is in a state of continual fluctuation, from the mandarine's wife who rattles through the streets in her chariot, to the humble sempstress who clatters over the pavement in iron-shod pattens.

What chiefly distinguishes the sex at present is the train. As a lady's quality or fashion was once determined here by the circumference of her hoop, both are now measured by the length of her tail. Women of moderate fortunes are contented with tails moderately long; but ladies of true taste and distinction set no bounds to their ambition in this particular. I am told the Lady Mayoress, on days of ceremony, carries one longer than a bell-wether of Bantam, whose tail, you know, is trundled along in a wheel-barrow.

Sun of China, what contradictions do we find in this strange world! not only the people of different countries think in opposition to each other, but the inhabitants of a single island are often found inconsistent with them

1 Dated Oct. 6, 1760, in the Public Ledger.-ED.

selves. Would you believe it? this very people, my Fum, who are so fond of seeing their women with long tails, at the same time dock their horses to the very rump1!!!

But you may easily guess, that I am no ways displeased with a fashion which tends to increase a demand for the commodities of the East, and is so very beneficial to the country in which I was born. Nothing can be better calculated to increase the price of silk than the present manner of dressing. A lady's train is not bought but at some expense, and after it has swept the public walks for a very few evenings, is fit to be worn no longer: more silk must be bought in order to repair the breach, and some ladies of peculiar economy are thus found to patch up their tails eight or ten times in a season. This unnecessary consumption may introduce poverty here, but then we shall be the richer for it in China.

The man in black, who is a professed enemy to this manner of ornamenting the tail, assures me, there are numberless inconveniences attending it, and that a lady dressed up to the fashion is' as much a cripple as any in Nankin. But his chief indignation is levelled at those who dress in this manner without a proper fortune to support it. He assures me, that he has known some who would have a tail though they wanted a petticoat; and others, who, without any other pretensions, fancied they became ladies, merely from the addition of three superfluous yards of ragged silk:-"I know a thrifty good woman," continues he, "who thinking herself obliged to carry a train like her betters, never walks from home without the uneasy apprehension of wearing it out too soon: every excursion she makes, gives her new anxiety; and her train is every bit as importunate, and wounds her peace as much as the bladder we sometimes see tied to the tail of a cat."

Nay, he ventures to affirm, that a train may often bring a lady into the most critical circumstances: "for, should a rude fellow," says he, "offer to come up to ravish a kiss, and the lady attempt to avoid it, in retiring she must

1 The Public Ledger version has "very bone."-ED.

necessarily tread upon her train, and thus fall fairly upon her back; by which means, every one knows, her clothes may be spoiled." 1

The ladies here make no scruple to laugh at the smallness of a Chinese slipper, but I fancy our wives at China would have a more real cause of laughter, could they but see the immoderate length of a European train. Head of Confucius! to view a human being crippling herself with a great unwieldy tail for our diversion! Backward she cannot go, forward she must move but slowly; and if ever she attempts to turn round, it must be in a circle not smaller than that described by the wheeling crocodile, when it would face an assailant. And yet to think that all this confers importance and majesty! to think that a lady acquires additional respect from fifteen yards of trailing taffety! I cannot contain-ha! ha ha! this is certainly a remnant of European barbarity: the female Tartar, dressed in sheep skins, is in far more convenient drapery. Their own writers have sometimes inveighed against the absurdity of this fashion, but perhaps it has never been ridiculed so well as upon the Italian theatre, where Pasquariello being engaged to attend on the Countess of Fernambroco, having one of his hands employed in carrying her muff, and the other her lap-dog, he bears her train majestically along, by sticking it in the waistband of his breeches! Adieu.

1 The Public Ledger has the following additional paragraph: "But to be less serious, I have never seen a country where the ladies did not render themselves ridiculous, by a mistaken idea of elegance and beauty; your nose-borers, eyebrow-pluckers, and tooth stainers, give us no very high opinions of humanity, yet how are they more absurd than the trainmakers of Europe, or the feet-swathers of China ? "-ED.

2 The Ledger has "is far more at her ease."-ED.

LETTER LXXXII.

To the Same.

THE SCIENCES USEFUL IN A POPULOUS STATE PREJU

DICIAL IN A BARBAROUS ONE.1

A DISPUTE has for some time divided the philosophers of Europe: it is debated whether arts and sciences are more serviceable or prejudicial to mankind? They who maintain the cause of literature, endeavour to prove their usefulness, from the impossibility of a large number of men subsisting in a small tract of country without them; from the pleasure which attends the acquisition; and from the influence of knowledge in promoting practical morality.

They who maintain the opposite opinion, display the happiness and innocence of those uncultivated nations who live without learning; urge the numerous vices which are to be found only in polished society; enlarge upon the oppression, the cruelty, and the blood which must necessarily be shed, in order to cement civil society; and insist upon the happy equality of conditions in a barbarous state, preferable to the unnatural subordination of a more refined constitution.2

This dispute, which has already given so much employment to speculative indolence, has been managed with much ardour, and (not to suppress our sentiments) with but little sagacity. They who insist that the sciences are useful in refined society, are certainly right, and they who maintain that barbarous nations are more happy without them, are right also; but when one side, for this reason, attempts to prove them as universally useful to the solitary barbarian as to the native of a crowded commonwealth;

The date of this letter in the Public Ledger is Oct. 10, 1760.-ED.

·

2 This is the paradox which J. J. Rousseau has so eloquently maintained in his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes.'-B. [In his Memoirs of Voltaire' (in our vol. iv.) Goldsmith refers to that writer's La Défense du Mondain' as pursuing much the same argument as that of the above letter.-ED.]