He surely is a useful monitor, who inculcates to these thoughtless
strangers, that the _majority are wicked_; who informs them, that the
train which wealth and beauty draw after them, is lured only by the
scent of prey; and that, perhaps, among all those who crowd about them
with professions and flatteries, there is not one who does not hope for
some opportunity to devour or betray them, to glut himself by their
destruction, or to share their spoils with a stronger savage.
Virtue presented singly to the imagination or the reason, is so well
recommended by its own graces, and so strongly supported by arguments,
that a good man wonders how any can be bad; and they who are ignorant of
the force of passion and interest, who never observed the arts of
seduction, the contagion of example, the gradual descent from one crime
to another, or the insensible depravation of the principles by loose
conversation, naturally expect to find integrity in every bosom, and
veracity on every tongue.
It is, indeed, impossible not to hear from those who have lived longer,
of wrongs and falsehoods, of violence and circumvention; but such
narratives are commonly regarded by the young, the heady, and the
confident, as nothing more than the murmurs of peevishness, or the
dreams of dotage; and, notwithstanding all the documents of hoary
wisdom, we commonly plunge into the world fearless and credulous,
without any foresight of danger, or apprehension of deceit.
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