Advice to Young Men, page 9 by William Cobbett
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duce him to submit to this? His wants, his artificial wants, his habit of indulging in the pleasures of the table; his disregard of the precept 'Vivre de peu.' This was the cause; and, be it observed, that indulgences of this sort, while they tend to make men poor and expose them to commit mean acts, tend also to enfeeble the body, and more especially to cloud and to weaken the mind.
18. When this celebrated author wrote his Dictionary, he had not been debased by luxurious enjoyments; the rich and powerful had not caressed him into a slave; his writings then bore the stamp of truth and independence: but, having been debased by luxury, he who had, while content with plain fare, been the strenuous advocate of the rights of the people, became a strenuous advocate for _taxation without representation_; and, in a work under the title of 'Taxation no Tyranny,' defended, and greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and bloody war which finally severed from England that great country the United states of America, now the most powerful and dangerous rival that this kingdom ever had. The statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was put into St. PAUL'S CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look upon monuments in honour of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for here we see St. PAUL'S CHURCH holding up to the veneration of posterity a man whose own writings, together with the records of the pension list, prove him to have been 'a slave of state.'
19. Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit having been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable, by their imaginary wants. Seldom has there been a man with a fairer prospect of accomplishing great things and of acquiring lasting renown, than CHARLES FOX: he had great talents of the most popular sort; the times were singularly favourable to an exertion of them with success; a large part of the nation admired him and were his partisans; he had, as to the great question between him and his rival (PITT), reason a