PART FIFTH.

A REVIEW OF THE CHIEF PROFESSIONS AND EM-PLOYMENTS OF LIFE, SO FAR AS REGARDS THEMORAL DUTIES WHICH THEY INVOLVE; THEIRMORAL PRINCIPLES, PRACTICES, INFLUENCES,AND TENDENCIES.

The multifarious professions and employments of men all re-quire corresponding qualifications of body and mind. Like thevarious relations of life, each has its appropriate sphere of dutyand usefulness ; each has its measure of responsibility ; each in-duces peculiar habits, ways of thinking, partialities, and evenprejudices ; each has its well-known customs and practices ; eachhas its peculiar trials and temptations, as well as encourage-ments ; each is accompanied by peculiar tendencies and influencesof a moral kind ; and all these, combined, give to men of everywalk of life a peculiar cast of character. More than this, theyfasten on almost every man certain peculiarities of person, andeven of countenance.*

To the various professions and employments, a well ascer-tained rank in general estimation is attached, which, somewhatmodified either by the internal state of society, or by controllingexternal circumstances, has been much the same at all times, andin all countries where civilization has made any considerable ad-vancement. Cicero has touched this topic, though not with hisusual fulness and exactness of knowledge. Still I shall availmyself of his observations so far as they are just, and, so far asthey suit my object, I shall incorporate them with my own.fThe employments of all those classes of hired persons arehumble, and have nothing liberal in them, whose labor (opera),

Alison on Taste, p. 375.

t De Officiis. Lib. I. c. 42 . 22 .