the happiness or convenience of such as we have no right to expose to
hazard by experiments upon their lives, without their consent. To tell
our own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to
communicate those with which we are entrusted is always treachery, and
treachery for the most part combined with folly.

10. There have, indeed, been some enthusiastic and irrational zealots
for friendship, who have maintained; and perhaps believed that one
friend has a right to all that is in possession of another; and that
therefore it is a violation of kindness to exempt any secret from this
boundless confidence; accordingly a late female minister of state has
been shameless enough to inform the world, that she used, when she
wanted to extract any thing from her sovereign, to remind her of
_Montaigne_'s reasoning, who has determined, that to tell a secret to a
friend is no breach of fidelity, because the number of persons trusted
is not multiplied, a man and his friend being virtually the same.

11. That such fallacy could be imposed upon any human understanding, or
that an author could have been imagined to advance a position so remote
from truth and reason any otherwise than as a declaimer to shew to what
extent he could stretch his imagination, and with what strength he could
press his principle, would scarcely have been credible, had not this
lady kindly shewed us how far weakness may be deluded, or indolence
amused.

12. But since it appears, that even this sophistry has been able, with
the help of a strong desire to repose in quiet upon the understanding of
another, to mislead honest intentions, and an understanding not
contemptible, it may not be superfluous to remark, that those things
which are common among friends are only such as either possesses in his