MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER.

To prevent interrupting the argument in the preceding part of this work, or the narrative that follows it, I reserved some observations to be thrown together into a Miscellaneous Chapter; by which variety might not be censured for confufion. Mr. Burke's Book is all Miscellany. His intention was to make an attack on the French Revolution; but instead of proceeding with an orderly arrangement, he has stormed it with a Mob of ideas, tumbling over and destroying one another.

But this confusion and contradiction in Mr. Burke's Book, is easily accounted for. When a man in a long cause attempts to steer his course by any thing else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost. It is beyond the compass of his capacity, to keep all the parts of an argument together, and make them unite in one issue, by any other means than having this guide always in view. Neither memory nor invention will supply the want of it. The former fails him, and the latter betrays him.

Notwithstanding the nonsense, for it deserves no better name,' that Mr. Burke has asserted about hereditary rights, and hereditary succession, and that a Nation has not a right to form a Government for itself; it happened to fall in his way to give some account of what Government is. "Government, says he, is a contrivance of human wisdom."

66

Admitting that Government is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must necessarily follow, that hereditary succession, and hereditary rights, (as they are called), can make no part of it, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary; and on the other hand, that cannot be a wise con trivance, which in its operation may commit the government of a nation to the wisdom of an ideot. The ground which Mr. Burke now takes is fatal to every part of his cause. The argument changes from hereditary rights to hereditary wif dom; and the question is, Who is the wisest man? He must now shew that every one in the line of hereditary succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king.—What a stroke has Mr. Burke now made! To use a sailor's phrases he has swabbed the deck, and scarcely left a name legible in she list of kings; and he has mowed down and thinned the House of Peers, with a scythe as formidable as Death and Time.

But, Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this retort, and he has taken care to guard against it, by making government to be not only a contrivance of human wisdom, but a monopoly of wif dom. He puts the nation as foots on one side, and places his government of wisdom, all wise-men of Gotham, on the other side; and he then proclaims, and says, that "Men have a RIGHT "that their wants should be provided for by this wisdom." Having thus made proclamation, he next proceeds to explain to to them what

their wants are, and also what their rights are In this he has succeeded dextrously, for he makes their wants to be a want of wisdom; but as this is but cold comfort, he then informs them, that they have a right (not to any of the wisdom) but to be governed by it: and in order to impress them with a solemn reverence for this monopolygovernment of wisdom, and of its vast capacity for all purposes, possible or impossible, right or wrong, heproceeds with astrological mysterious importance, to tell to them its powers, in these words—" The Rights of men in government are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good; and in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes be"tween evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle; adding -fubtracting—multiplying and dividing, morally, and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral demonstrations."

66

As the wondering audience whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to, may not understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be its interpreter. The meaning then, good people, of all this is, That government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is arbitrary power.

But there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, He has not shewn where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has not shewn by what authority it first began to

act. In the manner he introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers without authority. In short, it is usurpation.

Whether it be from a sense of shame, or from a consciousness of some radical defect in a government necessary to be kept out of sight, or from both, or from any other cause, I undertake not to determine; but so it is, that a monarchical reasoner never traces government to its source, or from its source. It is one of the shibboleths by which he may be known. A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or in France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their governments, and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors! But what can a monarchi, cal talker say? What has he to exult in? Alas! he has nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a beginning, lest some robber or some Robin Hood fhould rise from the long ob fcurity of time, and say, I am the origin. Hard as Mr. Burke laboured the Regency Bill and he reditary succession two years ago, and much as he dived for precedents, he still had not boldness enough to bring up William of Normandy, and say, There is the head of the list, there is the foun tain of honour, the son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of the English nation.

The opinions of men with respect to government, are changing fast in all countries. The revolutions

revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expence of governments have provoked people to think, by making them feel and when once the veil begins to rend, *it admits not of repair. Ignorance of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, and it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowlege; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in difcovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it. Those who talk of a counter revolution in France, shew how little they understand of man. There does not exist in the compass of language, an arrangement of words to express so much as the means of affecting a counter revolution. The means must be an obliteration of knowlege; and it has never yet been discovered, how to make man unknow his knowlege, or unthink his thoughts.

Mr. Burke is labouring in vain to stop the progress of knowlege; and it comes with the worse grace from him, as there is a certain transaction known in the city, which renders him suspected of being a pensioner in a fictitious name. This may account for some strange doctrine he has advanced in his book, which, though he points it at the Revolution Society, is effectually directed against the whole Nation.

"The