In commenting on any error of an agent or dependant, beware of making your own vexation, and not the real offence, the measure of your blame. This is a most frequent source of injustice, and one, moreover, which tends to prevent anything like consistent training. * * * * * The poor, the humble, and your dependants, will often be afraid to ask their due from you: be the more mindful of it yourself. * * * * * With what degree of satisfaction do you feel that you could meet those persons in a future state over whom you have any influence now? Your heart’s answer to this question is somewhat of a test of your behaviour towards them. * * * * * How ready we should often be to forgive those who are angry with us, if we could only see how much of their anger arises from vexation with themselves for having begun to be angry at all. * * * * * I am not sorry to introduce a maxim, like the above, which relates, perhaps, rather more to dependants than to those in authority, and which claims a place among precepts on social government, only as it may tend to promote social harmony and peace. I have not attempted, throughout, to give any account of the duties of dependants, which, however, are easily inferred as supplementary to the duties of masters. It is not to be supposed that any relation in life is one-sided, that kindness is to be met by indifference, or that loyalty to those who lead us is not a duty of the highest order. But, fortunately, the proneness of men to regard with favour those put in authority over them is very strong; and I have but little fear of finding any large body of thoughtful and kind masters suffering from permanent indifference, or ingratitude, on the part of their dependants. * * * * *