Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/548

 It yet remains that governours cooperate with their laws by their own examples, and that as, by their height of place, they are always conspicuous, they exhibit to those eyes which are turned upon them "the beauty of holiness."

The present state of the world, however, affords us little hope, that virtue can, by any government, be so strongly impressed, or so widely diffused, as to supersede the necessity of suppressing wickedness. In the most diligent cultivation of the happiest soil, weeds will sometimes appear among fruits and flowers, and all that vigilance and labour can do is to check them as they rise. However virtue may be encouraged or rewarded, it can never appear to all minds the shortest means of present good. There will always be those who would rather grow rich by fraud, than by diligence, and who will provide for vitious pleasures by violence, rather than by labour. Against the attempts and artifices of such men, whence have simplicity and innocence their defence and security? Whence, but from the Lex armata, the vindictive law, that stands forth the champion of the weak, and the protectress of the innocent?

Nor is quiet and security in danger only from corrupt minds; for honest and beneficent men might often, were not the law to interpose, disturb society, and fill the country with violence. Two men, both of them wise, and both of them virtuous, may lay claim to the same possession, with pretensions, to the world specious, in their own thoughts just. Such disputes can be terminated only by force or law. Of force, it is apparent, that the exertion of it is an immediate evil, and that prevalence at last will be no proof of justice. Of law, the means are gentle and inoffensive, and the conclusion not only the confirmation of property, but the establishment of right. For this power of the law virtue itself will leave employment; for though crimes would hardly be committed but by predominance of passion, yet litigation must always subsist while there is difference of opinion. We can hope but