'
JOHNSON. 'My countryman, Elwal, Sir, should have been put in the stocks;
a proper pulpit for him; and he'd have had a numerous audience. A man
who preaches in the stocks will always have hearers enough.' BOSWELL.
'But Elwal thought himself in the right.' JOHNSON. 'We are not providing
for mad people; there are places for them in the neighbourhood.'
(meaning moorfields.) MAYO. 'But, Sir, is it not very hard that I should
not be allowed to teach my children what I really believe to be the
truth?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you might contrive to teach your children
extra scandalum; but, Sir, the magistrate, if he knows it, has a right
to restrain you. Suppose you teach your children to be thieves?' MAYO.
'This is making a joke of the subject.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, take it
thus:--that you teach them the community of goods; for which there are
as many plausible arguments as for most erroneous doctrines. You teach
them that all things at first were in common, and that no man had a
right to any thing but as he laid his hands upon it; and that this still
is, or ought to be, the rule amongst mankind.
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