APPLICATION.
There is no maxim which deserves more frequent repetition, and if the heart be capable of amendment by precept and admonition, no virtue should be more strongly enforced and recommended than gratitude. Where sentiments of this kind are wanting, our natures soon become debased, and our minds depraved. Ingratitude has ever been justly branded as the blackest of crimes, and, as it were, comprehending all other vices within it. Nor can we say that this opinion is too severe: for if a man be capable of injuring his benefactor, what will he scruple doing towards another? We may fairly conclude that he who is guilty of ingratitude, will not hesitate at any other crime of an inferior nature. Since there are no human laws to punish this infamous prevailing vice, it would only be doing an act of justice, and supplying the want, to point out criminals of this description to the reprobation of mankind, that men of worth might avoid all intercourse and communication with them. The ingrate should also bear in mind, that he strips himself of the protection which might have been afforded by his friends, and exposes himself to the shafts of his enemies, who will not fail to take advantage of the defenceless state to which his folly and depravity have reduced him.
