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But I had no means of affording effectual relief, without making application to my old cross guardian in the country. The particular part of Holborn was not pointed out; and I dreaded being seen in any dirty lane or alley, enquiring for a poor man of my own name, by any of my genteel or dashing friends. Therefore, after much debate in my own mind, pride, and vanity, indolence, and false shame, prevailed over the desire which I really felt to assist the old man (whom I had only seen once in my life, when I was a child. But I confess that he then gave me half-a-crown to buy gingerbread; which circumstance has pained me more than any other recollection. It was like a worm in my bowels, or a barbed arrow in my breast). I therefore permitted the notice I had received to pass away unheeded, and stifled my sense of guilt, by the excuse of inability.

It is evident from the above, that my house was built upon the sand. At the same time I allow, that the mere profession of Christianity might not have enabled me to do my external duty; I only contend, that the spirit of it, which is charity, or divine love, certainly would have compelled me to perform both the external and the internal.

I completed my own education by the study of Pope's Essay on Man, for which I imbibed a zealous and enthusiastic admiration. This

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celebrated system of moral philosophy, and also as it appeared to me of true religion, could not be suspected as dangerous to truth and happiness, because I found it in the libraries of religious, as well as of polished, and every way respectable men. But exclusive of this autho> rity, it was so conformable in many parts to the philosophy of my school friends, the Stoics, and to my own blind heathenish pride, that I considered it as an infallible oracle, which I resolved to consult upon all occasions, and square my conduct by. Already it appeared to me more rational and manly than the Bible. The two following lines from this Essay convinced me that this great poet and (supposed) philosopher was a staunch Deist:

"Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
"But looks through nature up to nature's God."

This appeared to me to be the perfection of right reason and sound philosophy; and therefore I concluded, that the few closing lines, in which he slightly mentions faith, were nothing more than an unwilling tribute paid, from necessity, to the prejudices and superstitions of the vulgar.

During the voyage to India my religious sense, if I had any left, was soon extinguished by the conversation and manners of a ship. In the first place, there was no chaplain, and con

sequently no public worship; and I was too genteel and philosophical to perform it in private neither did I any longer think it a duty to pray night and morning as formerly; for I conceived that as the Deity knew much better than myself, what was necessary for me; so to pray to him for any thing, was a kind of presumption and impiety, as well as absurdity. I began therefore in good earnest to live as if there was no God in the world, or what was very like it; for I concluded that he was much too high to concern himself about such worms as we are; that he had established the general course and order of nature at the creation, and then had left us altogether to ourselves, to act agreeably to our reason and conscience, or to suffer the natural and necessary consequences of a deviation from them. I also drew the following inference from the above premises; that there was nothing that man could do, which could affect God; and therefore, that the whole duty of man was included in the obligations of morality. This duty, however, I resolved strictly to fulfil in every respect during life; and I flattered myself that I should find this an easy task, for I did not yet feel any inclination to violate any of the social laws; on the contrary, I felt myself inclined to love every one around me (in speculation), and therefore concluded that almost every other person had the same mind.

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The voyage of life, therefore, which lay before me in distant deceitful perspective, and overspread with the mists and clouds of my own erroneous opinions upon the objects before me, which my fancy formed into most lively beautiful phantoms of bliss, appeared to me in the light of a party of pleasure, in which I should only find so much pain, as was requisite to make my pleasure more perfect, by the opposition of variety, or momentary contrast.

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I then laughed in the fancied superiority of own wisdom, and enlightened understanding, at the dark and superstitious prejudices, as I esteemed them, of my old guardian, and all those poor praying canting fools, who had kept me so long in the chains of ignorance, and illiberal ungentleman-like bondage. I despised with all my soul all such base. wretches as were deterred from evil by fear of punishment, or hope of reward, either temporal or eternal, and congratulated myself, with swelling pride, upon my love of virtue for virtue's sake; because I almost thought that virtue and myself were one. In short, Pope's philosophy, his Essay on Man, was become my creed, my bible; and I often repeated to myself the following lines with triumphant exultation :

"Who noble ends by noble means attains,
"Or, failing, smiles in exile, or in chains;

"Like great Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
"Like Socrates, that man is great indeed."

Such a man as this, I believed myself to be; and therefore, from the height of my imaginary superiority, I looked down with contempt upon kings. I then little suspected what I soon felt, "he that exalteth himself shall be abased;" but I certainly did, before long, experience a degree of abasement in my own mind and conscience, fully proportionate perhaps to the degree of my former vain self-exaltation.

When we arrived in India, on the 12th September, A. D. 1776, I was, as I have described, a disciple of Pope; and also desired, and had made some awkward attempts, to become a pupil of Chesterfield; not indeed with respect to dissimulation, which I despised, nor to seduction and adultery, which I considered as heinous breaches of the moral code; but only in the study and practice of the graces, which however I soon gave up after a few vain attempts, without understanding. Nevertheless, having, during a short period previous to my embarkation, frequented well-bred company in the middle ranks in England, I was prepared to meet the same manners in India. But I was astonished and disappointed above measure, to find the manners of Indian Society approach nearer to those of my school days, than to any thing else which I had ever experienced. I

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