There is, I own, much convenience in all this, and some consistency. Persons who live only for this world, should have a proportionable latitude allowed them for the employment of their animal propensities; and the law which provides for the regulation of their conduct, should have a special reference to this consideration. Supposing, therefore, that people of Fashion ought to exist, they must have such a law as that which they possess. So that, taking the Law of Honour in this connexion, I cannot but think it a master-piece of political contrivance. At the same time, I cannot agree with those who have been led to consider this table of Fashionable jurisprudence as deserving a place in the temple of Morality. Into this error a celebrated writer appears to have fallen, in his Treatise of Moral Philosophy. For, having defined morality to be “that science which teaches men their duty, and the reasons of it,” he proceeds to cite the _Law of Honour_ as one of the three rules by which men are governed. That respectable writer has, indeed, admitted that this law is _defective_, because it does not provide for the duties to God and to inferiors; he has also proclaimed that it is _bad_, by stating, that it allows of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, duelling, &c. Still, however, he has rather left us to infer, that it ought wholly to be rejected, than absolutely told us so. By classing it with the law of the land and the Scriptures, he has (undesignedly no doubt) prevented its utter condemnation; and afforded ground for considering it as a moral rule, to which men owe a qualified obedience.