03.

The question is upon the method of procuring and adminiftering them. In that deliberation I fhall always advife to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the profeffor of metaphyfics.

The fcience of conftructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a fhort experience that can inftruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverfe alfo happens; and very plaufible fchemes, with very pleafing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclufions. In ftates there are often fome obfcure and almoft latent caufes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its profperity or adverfity may most effentially depend. The fcience of government being therefore fo practical in itself, and intended for fuch practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any perfon 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 anfwered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of fociety, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

Thefe

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 ftraight line. Indeed in the grofs and complicated mafs 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 thefe 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 purpofes. 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 perhaps materially injured, by the over-care of a favourite member.

The pretended rights of thefe theorists are all extremés; and in proportion as they are meta

phyfically

phyfically true, they are morally and politically falfe. The rights of men are in a fort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impoffible to be difcerned. The rights of men in governments are their advantages; and thefe are often in balances between differences of good; in compromifes fometimes between good and evil, and fometimes, between evil and evil. Political reafon is a computing principle; adding, fubtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphyfically or mathematically, true moral denominations.

By thefe theorists the right of the people is almost always fophiftically confounded with their power. The body of the community, whenever it can come to act, can meet with no effectual refiftance; but till power and right are the fame, the whole body of them has no right inconfiftent with virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit; for though a pleasant writer faid, Liceat perire poetis, when one of them, in cold blood, is faid to have leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, Ardentem frigidus Etnam infiluit, I confider fuch a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic licence, than as one of the franchises of Parnaffus; and whether he were poet or divine, or politician that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think that more wife, because more charitable thoughts would urge me rather to fave the man, than to preferve his brazen flippers as the monuments of his folly.

The kind of anniversary fermons, to which a great part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed out of their prefent courfe, in commemorating the fact, will cheat many out of the principles, and deprive them of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate. I confefs to you, Sir, I never liked this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the conftitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of fociety dangerously valetudinary: it is taking periodical dofes of mercury fublimate, and swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of liberty.

This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by a vulgar and proftituted use, the spring of that fpirit which is to be exerted on great occafions. It was in the most patient period of Roman fervitude that themes. of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercife of boys at school-cum perimit faves claffis numerofa tyrannos. In the ordinary ftate of things, it produces in a country like ours the worst effects, even on the caufe of that liberty which it abufes with the diffolutenefs of an extravagant fpeculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans of my time have, after a fhort fpace, become the moft decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they foon left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical refiftance to thofe of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have flighted, as not much better than tories. Hypocrify, of courfe, delights in the

most

moft fublime fpeculations; for, never intending to go beyond fpeculation, it cofts nothing to have it magnificent. But even in cafes where rather levity than fraud was to be fufpected in thefe ranting fpeculations, the iffue has been much the fame. Thefe profeffors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cafes which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal refiftance, in fuch cases employ no refiftance at all. It is with them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of politics not adapted to the ftate of the world in which they live, they often come to think lightly of all public principle; and are ready, on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they find of very trivial value. Some indeed are of more steady and perfevering natures; but these are eager politicians out of parliament, who have little to tempt them to abandon their favourite projects. They have fome change in the church or ftate, or both, conftantly in their view. When that is the cafe, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connexions. For, confidering their speculative defigns as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the ftate as of no eftimation, they are at beft indifferent about it. They fee no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious management of public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to revolution. They fee no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or any political principle, any further than as they may forward or retard their defign

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