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 these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises 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 these 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 Ætnam 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 chofe to exercife 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

The kind of anniversary fermons, to which a great part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed out of their present course, 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 doses 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 prostituted 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 favos claffis numerofa tyrannos. In the ordinary ftate of things, it produces in a country like ours the worft effects, even on the cause of that liberty which it abuses with the diffolutenefs of an extravagant speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans of my time have, after a fhort space, become the most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they foon left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical resistance to those 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 costs nothing to have it magnificent. But even in cafes where rather levity than fraud was to be fufpected in thefe ranting speculations, the iffue has been much the fame. These profeffors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cafes which call only for a qualified, or, as I may fay, civil and legal refiftance, in fuch cases employ not 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 state 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 parlia→ ment, 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 unfure connexions. For, confidering their fpeculative defigns as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the ftate as of no estimation, 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

of

of change they therefore take up, one day, the moft violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildeft democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to perfon, or to party.

In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the tranfit from one form of government to another-you cannot fee that character of men exactly in the fame fituation in which we see it in this country. With us it is militant; with you it is triumphant; and you know how it can act when its power is commenfurate to its will. I would not be fuppofed to confine those obfervations to any defcription of men, or to comprehend all men of any defcription within them-No! far from it. I am as incapable of that injuftice, as I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles of extremes ; and who under the name of religion teach little elfe than wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these poli tics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breaft, in order to prepare it for the defperate ftrokes which are fometimes ufed in extreme occafions. But as thefe occafions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint; and the moral fentiments fuffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by the depravation. This fort of people are fo taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the underftanding, they have fucceeded in stopping up thofe that lead to the heart. They have per

verted in themfelves, and in thofe that attend to them, all the well-placed fympathies of the human breast.

This famous fermon of the Old Jewry breathes nothing but this fpirit through all the political part. Plots, maffacres, affaffinations, seem to fome people a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap, bloodlefs reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid to their tafte. There must be a great change of fcene; there must be a magnificent stage effect; there must be a grand fpectacle to rouze the imagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of fixty years fecurity, and the ftill unanimating repofe of public profperity. The Preacher found them all in the French revolution. This infpires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthufiafm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious ftate of France, as in a bird-eye landscape. of a promised land, he breaks out into the following rapture:

"What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I have lived to it; I could al"moft fay, Lord, now lettest thou thy fervant de

part in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy falva"tion.-I have lived to see a diffufion of know

ledge, which has undermined fuperftition and "error.-I have lived to fee the rights of men

better understood than ever; and nations pant

ing for liberty which feemed to have loft the "idea of it.-I have lived to fee Thirty Millions

of