_Mr. Forester._ Undoubtedly. But the progress of theoretical knowledge has a most fearful counterpoise in the accelerated depravation of practical morality. The frantic love of money, which seems to govern our contemporaries to a degree unprecedented in the history of man, paralyses the energy of independence, darkens the light of reason, and blights the blossoms of love. _Mr. Fax._ The _amor sceleratus habendi_ is not peculiar either to our times or to civilised life. _Money you must have, no matter from whence_, is a sentence, if we may believe Euripides, as old as the heroic age: and _the monk Rubruquis says of the Tartars, that, as parents keep all their daughters till they can sell them, their maids are sometimes very stale before they are married_.[129] _Mr. Forester._ In that respect, then, I must acknowledge the Tartars and we are much on a par. It is a collateral question well worth considering, how far the security of property, which contributes so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the permanence of happiness, is favourable to the growth of individual virtue. _Mr. Fax._ Security of property tranquillises the minds of men, and fits them to shine rather in speculation than in action. In turbulent and insecure states of society, when the fluctuations of power, or the incursions of predatory neighbours, hang like the sword of Damocles over the most flourishing possessions, friends are more dear to each other, mutual services and sacrifices are more useful and more necessary, the energies of heart and hand are continually called forth, and shining examples of the self-oblivious virtues are produced in the same proportion as mental speculation is unknown or disregarded: but our admiration of these virtues must be tempered by the remark, that they arise more from impulsive feeling than from reflective principle; and that where life and fortune hold by such a precarious tenure, the first may be risked, and the second abandoned, with much less effort than would be required for inferior sacrifices in more secure and tranquil times.