be--they allow themselves to defame and revile such a one without
any moderation or bounds; though the offence is so very slight, that
they themselves would not do, nor perhaps wish him, an injury in any
other way. And in this case the scandal and revilings are chiefly
owing to talkativeness, and not bridling their tongue, and so come
under our present subject. The least occasion in the world will
make the humour break out in this particular way or in another. It
as like a torrent, which must and will flow; but the least thing
imaginable will first of all give it either this or another
direction, turn it into this or that channel: or like a fire--the
nature of which, when in a heap of combustible matter, is to spread
and lay waste all around; but any one of a thousand little accidents
will occasion it to break out first either in this or another
particular part.

The subject then before us, though it does run up into, and can
scarce be treated as entirely distinct from all others, yet it needs
not be so much mixed or blended with them as it often is. Every
faculty and power may be used as the instrument of premeditated vice
and wickedness, merely as the most proper and effectual means of
executing such designs. But if a man, from deep malice and desire
of revenge, should meditate a falsehood with a settled design to
ruin his neighbour's reputation, and should with great coolness and
deliberation spread it, nobody would choose to say of such a one
that he had no government of his tongue. A man may use the faculty
of speech as an instrument of false witness, who yet has so entire a
command over that faculty as never to speak but from forethought and
cool design. Here the crime is injustice and perjury, and, strictly
speaking, no more belongs to the present subject than perjury and
injustice in any other way. But there is such a thing as a