Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/117

 Their Sentiments of Honour and Conscience are most commonly built on the Doctrines of Christianity.—Their Numbers and their Station conspire to exclude them from a general Claim to the lucrative Offices of the State. Their collective Knowledge is of sufficient Reach to prevent their general Seduction to the Purposes of Licentiousness: Their Dispersion, and rural Life, prevent those continued and unrestrained Communications, which are alike fatal to private and public Virtue.

Let not the Writer be misunderstood. There are Examples of Integrity and Dishonour, of Virtue and Vice, among all Degrees of Men. He only points out the Circumstances which naturally tend, upon the Whole, to form the several Ranks into these distinct Characters.

From this View of the several Ranks, it follows, that although "The People of this Kingdom" must inevitably partake of the various Manners and Principles of the Great and the Populace, with which