is not neceffary to fay any thing upon that example. It exifts no longer. Our prefent danger from the example of a people, whofe character knows no medium, is, with regard to government, a danger from anarchy; a danger of being led through an admiration of fuccefsful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the exceffes of an irrational, unprincipled, profcribing, confifcating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and ty rannical democracy. On the fide of religion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from atheifm; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and confolation of mankind; which feems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed." In the following inftance, while he defcribes with an awful energy, the genius of the British conftitution, having argued from the compofition of the National Affembly-their want of experience in matters of government, and their eternal proneness to fpeculation,, that no good could be fought at their hands, he gives perhaps an alarming, but a faithful profpect of us, France. "You will obferve, that from magna charta to the declaration of right, it has been the uniform policy of our conftitution to claim and affert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our pofterity; as an eftate fpecifically belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our conftitution preferves an unity in fo great a diverfity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and an houfe of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchifes, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors. "This policy appears to me to be the refult of profound reflection; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A fpirit of innovation is generally the refult of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to pofterity, who never look back to their ancestors. Befides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a fure principle of confervation, and a fue principle of tranfmiffion; without without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquifition free; but it fecures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a ftate proceeding on these maxims, are locked faft as in a fort of family fettlement; grafped as in a kind of mortmain for ever. By a conftitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we tranfmit our government and our privileges in the fame manner in which we enjoy and tranfmit our property and our lives. The inftitutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the fame courfe and order. Our political fyftem is placed in a juft correfpondence and fymmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body compofed of transitory parts; wherein, by the difpofition of a stupendous wifdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable conftancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progreffion. Thus, by preferving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obfolete. By adhering in this manner, and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the fuperftition of antiquarians, but by the fpirit of philofophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the conftitution of our country with our dearest domeftic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bofom of our family affections; keeping infeparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our ftate, our hearths, our fepulchres, and our altars. "Through the fame plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial inftitutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful inftincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reafon, we have derived feveral other, and those no fmall benefits, from confidering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the prefence of canonized forefathers, the fpirit of freedom, leading in itself to mifrule and excefs, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal defcent infpires us with a fenfe of habitual native dignity, dignity, which prevents that upftart infolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any diftinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illuftrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its enfigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits; its monumental infcriptions; its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil inflitutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men; on account of their age; and on account of thofe from whom they are defcended. All your fophifters cannot produce any thing better adapted to preferve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chofen our nature rather than our fpeculations, our breafts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges. "You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though difcontinued, were not loft to memory. Your conftitution, it is true, whilft you were out of poffeffion, fuffered waste and dilapidation; but you poffeffed in fome parts the walls, and in all the founda tions of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built on thofe old foundations. Your conftitution was fufpended before it was perfected; but you had the elements of a conftitution very nearly as good as could be wifhed. In your old ftates you poffeffed that variety of parts correfponding with the various defcriptions of which your community was happily compofed; you had all that combination, and all that oppofition of interefts, you had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of difcordant powers, draws out the harmony of the univerfe." "Compute your gains: fee what is get by thofe extravagant and prefumptuous fpeculations which have taught your leaders to defpife all their predeceffors, and all their contcmporaries, and even to defpife themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By following those falfe lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most un equivocal equivocal bleffings! France has bought poverty by crime! France has not factificed her virtue to her intereft; but the has abandoned her intereft, that he might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have began the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in feverer manners, and a system of a more auftere and masculine morality. France, when the let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the licence of a ferocious diffolutenefs in manners, and of an infolent irreligion in opinions and practices; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if the were communicating fome privilege, or laying open fome fecluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that ufually were the difeafe of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France." Of the RIGHTS OF MAN. "The moment you abate any thing from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and fuffer any artificial pofitive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government become a confideration of convenience. This it is which makes the conftitution of a flate, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature' and human neceffities, and of the things which facilitate or obftruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanifm of civil inftitutions. The flate is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of difcuffing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and adminiftering them. In that deliberation I fhall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the phyfician, rather than the profeffor of metaphyfics. "The fcience of conftructing a commonwealth, or renovat ing it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental fcience, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a fhort expe rience that can inftruct us in that practical fcience; because the real effects of moral caufes are not always immediate; but that which in the first inftance is prejudicial may be ex cellent cellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arife even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plaufible fchemes, with very pleafing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclufions. In itates there are often fome obfcure and almoft latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its profperity or adversity may most effentially depend. The fcience of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for fuch practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however fagacious and obferving he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or of building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes. "These metaphyfic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a denfe medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the grofs and complicated mass of human paffions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo fuch a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes abfurd to talk of them as if they continued in the fimplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of fociety are of the greateft poffible complexity; and therefore no fimple difpofition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the fimplicity of contrivance aimed at and boafted of in any new political conftitutions, I am at no lofs to decide that the artificers are grofsly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The fimple governments are fundamentally defective, to fay no worfe of them. If you were to contemplate fociety in but one point of view, all these fimple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would anfwer its fingle end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole fhould be imperfectly and anomalously answered, than that, while fome parts are provided for with great exactnefs, others might be totally neglected, or VOL. II. perhaps N n |