to the principal partner, who is often robbed, and for a long time injured, without his knowing it; but the process of dissolution is not, as often in business, by mutual consent, but by an action in the courts of law. And these actions very decidedly prove the mischiefs arising from neglecting the plan I recommend, and from confused notions of property; but most of all from the offending party taking no account of what is due to herself.

Indeed this last piece of neglect so generally runs through all pleasurable concerns, that, if there were no other reason, it might form a very powerful argument in favour of a plan which recommends frequent and accurate statements of profit and loss. It may seem to some very surprising, and to others very good-natured, that persons engaged in the traffick of pleasure, should be so averse to make memorandums of what is due to themselves, and even so averse to recollect, or pay any attention to the subject. I own, however, that the recommendation of such attention is a part of my plan, in which I have been anticipated in the writings of every moral Projector, from the first æra of books and precepts. But, as the effect of such recommendation is not yet very strikingly obvious, I hope it will not be said that I

have over-burthened my plan by including it, nor by adding one other advantage resulting from it, which will form no improper conclusion to this Paper.

What I allude to is, that a regular account of the profit and loss in affairs of pleasure, and especially accurate statements of what is due to themselves, may enable men engaged in this commerce, first, to retire much sooner than is usually done, and, secondly, to retire with much more credit and reputation than are generally attached to such pursuits. It is universally acknowledged that the proper period of retirement, and the nature of retirement, are often strangely misunderstood even by men of business, who do keep regular books, and can demonstratively shew what they have gained and what they have lost; and we may readily suppose that the nature and purposes of retirement will be yet more misunderstood by men who keep no accounts, and who not only are unable to answer the questions of others, but are afraid to ask themselves what has been the gain and loss of their long toil and industry, their perpetual fatigues and sleepless nights.

By keeping such accounts, therefore, as are here recommended, they would infallibly be enabled to retire much sooner; and it is peculiar

to this species of retirement, that so far from being at a loss what to do with their time, they generally allow that they never before knew the proper uses to which time might be put. They would also be enabled to retire with credit and reputation unsullied, or at least so little injured as to be easily repaired; whereas, in the common way of neglecting accounts, and keeping neither Day-books nor Night-books, it may be said of them, as in common language, that they did not leave business until business left them." There is, indeed, no more deplorable object than an aged person carrying on the traffick of pleasure, without profit, and without encouragement, and prating of the items on his list of goods, although he has forgot their use and quality, and retains scarcely an idea of either duties or customs. Perhaps, should my plan not be adopted, the charitable and humane think of erecting an hospital for decayed Men and Women of Pleasure, who have "lost their all, by bad debts and unfortunate speculations, and have no friends left." Such an institution might, among other valuable purposes, prepare some of them for the day that so seldom enters into their thoughts, when all must render an account.

may

THE PROJECTOR. N° 45.

"Hominis est affici dolore, sentire, resistere tamen,

et solatia admittere."

PLINY.

June 1805.

ages

is a

THE calamities of human life have in all been a favourite subject; and to a very large class, the language of complaint is peculiarly acceptable. Even they who have no knowledge of the world except from books, are prepared to deplore sorrows with which they have no acquaintance, and are ready to believe that the life on which they are about to enter, scene of uninterrupted misery, in which they are doomed to act a principal part. And as there is nothing so easily propagated as complaint, nothing so easily imbibed as the sense of higher felicity than we enjoy, and nothing so easily conceivable as the possession of something we want, philosophers and poets have agreed to repeat these signals of distress, to warn the impetuous, or dishearten the timid.

Yet, amidst this general disposition to murmur, it is not difficult for an attentive observer

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to distinguish the theory of lamentation from the practice, the affectation from the feeling. It will not require a long train of proofs to con

vince those who do not trust entirely to the experience of the closet, that there is a much greater portion of contentment than of dissatisfaction in the world; and that many would not know how to complain, if they had not the example set before them; nor be able to discover any cause why they take up the language of misery, if they were not assisted by those who have made grumbling their particular study. Even they who have had the credit of collecting mobs, and the honour of presiding at riots and depredations, have honestly confessed that it required much pains to persuade their followers that they had any thing to complain of; that they succeeded rather by exciting curiosity than by proving grievances, and upon the whole were less indebted to the conviction of argument than to the strength of brandy.

It is a matter of some curiosity to watch the progress of a wholesale dealer in human misery; to behold a Theorist in complaints, sitting calmly by his fire-side in his arm-chair, perusing the history of some distant nation, the constitution and customs of which happen to be different from his own. He questions whether