spirit will naturally take the lead, this tendency has been suffered to have its course, and the best instructed have been made the organs of the claims and wishes of the rest. Thus, in this wise constitution, a free passage is opened for the nature of our minds to operate, and the violence and ambition inseparable from man is turned into useful channels. Power so distributed is a check upon itself, and the impulse of indirect forces has produced a new force in the state, which, agreeably to Nature's laws, proceeds in a straight and uniform line.

Let us not be imposed upon, therefore, by those writers who tell us that fortuitous governments must necessarily fall below the works of intellect : to such reasoners we reply, that a government which has been gradually moulded by time and occasion, has not excluded the exercise of the understanding, in waiting for the lessons of experience. It is reason which gives the stamp to those combinations which unforeseen events and emergencies have struck out; and, retracing effects back to their causes, has founded a collection of practical rules to serve as guides in subsequent proceedings. Great experiments, and violent enterprises, suit only desperate circumstances.

In some countries, perhaps, nothing could be lost, and every thing might be gained, by a sudden subversion of the government. Where no principles of good are to be found, and rottenness has sunk into the very marrow of the state, let the carcase be thrown by as food for the ravenous tribe of revolutionists; but let not the vultures and the harpies be suffered to prey upon a body where the life-blood yet flows in the veins, and where balsamic restoratives and alteratives might yet avail. Wherever the influence of Christianity has reached,

it has breathed into governments a benevolence of spirit, and a gentleness of principle, that leaves them open to gradual improvements.

Much may be safely left standing as a security for present peace and order, while the work of reformation is going forwards. But these furious advocates for conventions, regenerations, and the rights of man, are at issue with all governments on a question of competency and title, and would involve them all in one undistinguishing ruin, for the sake of trying what they triumphantly call their splendid experiments. I speak here, however, only in a view to foreign states; our own constitution wants no such apology. All good men consider it as sacred, especially in times of heat and temerity; and so far are they from arraigning its purity, that they consider it as the only pattern according to which we are to proceed in the correction of its abuses.

By thus consulting the great example of nature in the conduct of the universe, we shall learn properly to estimate the value of our own constitution; we shall consider it as a part of a mighty whole, and as linked in fellowship with that scheme of analogy which unites in a sacred league our nature, our morals, and our religion, and characterizes the counsels, as far as our minds can explore them, of the Great Disposer of all things. We shall learn to despise those sorry calculators, that would persuade a country, whose constitution has raised her to be the envy of all the civilized world, to hazard that constitution in experiments on the grossest, clumsiest, and stalest theories. We shall learn, I hope, if English blood yet beats in our bosoms, to treat with a manly and spirited indignation the impudent and flagitious attempts of French incendiaries, who dare to come to our thresholds and our hearths, to tell us, that in four

or five bloody summers they have meerged from a state of political slavery, to a fairer freedom than the long-exercised spirit of the English people has obtained; to tell us, while as yet they have no ostensible establishment, that, upon their bare and unwarranted assertions, we should leave all to follow them, and join them in promoting the labefaction of all human government; despising for their sakes that precious inheritance of rights and privileges, bought with the lives and fortunes of our forefathers, and abandoning for their sakes our thrones, our sepulchres, and our altars.

No. 37. SATURDAY, JANUARY 19.

TO THE ASSOCIATION FOR PRESERVING LIBERTY AND PROPERTY AGAINST REPUBLICANS AND

LEVELLERS.

I HAVE endeavoured to show, in my last paper on this subject, that power, which must exist somewhere, can only be restrained within wholesome bounds, by being rendered a check upon itself: this

is man's nature, and the nature of the universe, wherein every thing is upheld by this law of action and reaction. This system of mutual controul in a state will not be effected by frittering power of the same denomination among a multitude of individuals, but by sharing it among different orders of the community at large, and in proportionate masses. Thus,

in our own country, this sober counterpoise of authority in the state is our great security against partial encroachments; and abuses can enter but slowly into a system where there is always in some quarter or other a phalanx of opposition.

Power that is distributed among a number of individuals has invariably a strong tendency to coalesce; it is the society of interest which makes opposition firm, and maintains the equilibrium unshaken. While an individual is driving onwards in the pursuit of his own solitary aggrandisement, his objects are seldom limited or defined; but suppose him a member of a corporate body, his efforts are then directed to the interests of his order: any eccentricity from this orbit of exertion is regarded with watchfulness and jealousy, and an account is taken of such a man's actions from the first moment of his aberration.

In the simple representative legislation adopted in France, this natural classification and reciprocation of power has been despised by the green precocity of these upstarts in freedom. All-sufficient in themselves, they disdain those intimations which nature affords, and seem to be persuading themselves that they have erected a system so metaphysically enchanting, that nature and man will lay aside their ancient character, and assume another that shall harmonize with its principles. "Et mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor.'"

"

What is the consequence of these proceedings? Turning our eyes towards this people, we behold a desultory, disbanded, enormous crowd of individuals, held together by no other cement than a temporary fanaticism, maintaining an unwieldy army, while they are starving themselves; mistaking the cowardice or the misfortune of the enemy for their own valour, and, in a delirium of national vanity, conducting a

preposterous crusade against civil society itself, without revenue, and without the means of enforcing contributions: glorying in what they call their splendid crimes, committed for the most part in cold blood, against unresisting imbecility; and proceeding at length to bring their king to trial, by an expost-facto law, for the crime of reigning; on which principle the whole nation might with equal justice be tried for the crime of obedience. I say, the crime of reigning; for what more was it, to make such resistance as he could, either secret or open, to proceedings which were threatening him with a prison in exchange for a palace, unless it be an aggravation to call it the crime of self-preservation? As the father of his people, he was bound by an obligation which will bear no comparison with that of an oath extorted from a mind prostrated with grief and apprehension, to put forth what vigour and resource was left him to prevent the ruin of his country. This man, distinguished among the princes of the earth for being the first in his own kingdom to promote a salutary reform of goverment-distinguished for his voluntary sacrifices of power, his early attention to the complaints of his people, and his parental love in inviting them to assemble and lay their grievances before the throne-this man have they pursued with a vengeance unworthy of Christians, disgraceful to civilization, and becoming a people at war with nature and with feeling.

Such is the view which the French nation presents to us at this shameful period of their history, and such is the consequence of a defection from nature and her rights. In the mean time, I am far from condemning the principle of the revolution: I advert only to the conduct of it. They have shaken off a galling yoke, and vindicated humanity from despotic