MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS ON POLITICS, JURISPRUDENCE, MORALS, &c. In the purity of my conversation, in the regularity of my morals, in the diligent and conscientious discharge of my professional duties, and in a steady attachment to the Established Religion of my Country, I will not yield the palm of superiority to any Clergyman now living, however exalted may be his rank, however distinguished may be his talents, and however applauded may be his orthodoxy. Whether or no the course of my reading, and the habits of my thinking, may have led me to more correct notions, and to a more ardent love of civil and religious freedom, than some men are sup * For all the egotisms which follow, I can offer the candid reader no other plea than that of self-defence; and upon the validity of that plea he may determine as he goes on. In the mean time, I shall say, with old Plutarch, åμéμñws kotiv, äv ἀπολογούμενος τούτο ποιῇς πρὸς Διαβόλην ἢ κατηγορίαν.—See vol. ii. page 540. edit. Xyland. "The liberty," say I with Mr. Burke, the only liberty, "I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot at all exist without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle."-Burke's Appeal, page 35. "To be possessed," as Mr. Burke elsewhere says, "it must be limited; but it is a good to be improved, not an evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, posed to entertain, is a question which I will not discuss in the extent to which I might carry such a discussion without insincerity and without impropriety. But my principles, I am sure, will never endanger the Church; my studies, I hope, are such as do not disgrace it; and my actions, I can say with confidence, have uniformly tended to preserve it from open, and from what I conceived to be unjust, attacks. When my beloved and respected friend Dr. John Jebb, was conducting a petition "for a relief from subscription," I was no stranger to the splendid talents and exemplary virtues which distinguished many of his associates. I was no enemy to that active and impartial spirit of enquiry, which had led other men into opinions far bolder than my own. But I refused to act with Dr. Jebb, because his plan grasped at too much in too short a time, and because I had been informed of a more temperate scheme, which was to have been laid before Archbishop Cornwallis by two ecclesiastical dignitaries, who have since been deservedly raised to the episcopal bench. Upon all reformations, whether civil or ecclesiastical, I look not only to the wishes and to the arguments of individuals, but to the collective wisdom of the legislature. In the earlier part of my life I thought the Test but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it." These two passages occur in pages 57 and 58 of Mr. Burke's "Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents;" and they are very judiciously quoted in page 92 of Sir Brooke Boothby's very candid and sensible Letter to Mr. Burke. Act oppressive; but in the year 1782 I very carefully and very seriously re-examined the subject, and changed my opinion. In 1790 I strenuously opposed the attempt to procure a repeal; and y I cannot help indulging the comfortable hope, that in the progress of intellectual and moral improvement religious animosities will at last subside, and that the restraints for which I have contended, and do now contend, will no longer be thought necessary for the public safety, by the heads of that Church, which I have never deserted, and by the members of that Legislature, which I have never disobeyed. In the mean time, I think it my duty to distinguish between the private and the public characters, between the literary merits and the political singularities, between the substantial virtues and the occasional indecorums of those persons who may not agree with me in my religious creed; and, perhaps, if the same distinctions were now and then made by greater and wiser men than myself, the general tranquillity of the kingdom would not be less permanently secured, and the noblest interests of virtue would be promoted more effectually. From the indignation, therefore, which I felt at the behaviour of one person in respect to Dr. Priestley's letters, let no man infer (for without uncharitableness, and without injustice no man living can infer,) that I am an advocate for latitudinarianism in the Church, or a confederate with republicans in the state. * My political creed lies in a short compass, and I will tell it to the reader in better words than my own; Τοῖς μὲν ἐλευθερία γιγνέσθω μετὰ βασιλικῆς ἀρχῆς, τοῖς δὲ There are in this kingdom men of no mean consideration for ability and rank, men whom I thoroughly know, and sincerely regard, and by whom I am myself neither unknown, nor, I would hope, unregarded. These men, I believe, are not accustomed to charge me with any overweening fondness for sects, or any blind confidence in the leaders of sects. They are aware, that with great constitutional warmth of temper I unite those habits of discrimination which gradually teach men to be impartial in opinion, to be temperate in action, and to accommodate the results of abstract speculations to the real state of man. Sometimes they may give me the praise of a little sagacity for discerning a greater or a less portion of bigotry, in every quarter where I see any excess of zeal upon points of doubtful evidence, and, perhaps, of utility, more doubtful. But they have much oftener seen me assailed with good humoured raillery, for some wayward propensities towards the sternness of Toryism, when I resisted the vicious refinements of theory, and condemned all immoderate ardour for sudden and sweeping innovations, of which I neither perceive the immediate necessity, nor can calculate the distant consequences. They know that I ascribe the ἀρχὴ ὑπεύθυνος βασιλικὴ, δεσποζόντων νόμων τῶν τε ἄλλων που λιτῶν καὶ τῶν βασιλέων αὐτῶν, ἄν τι παράνομον πράττωσιν.— Platon, Epist. viii. p. 355. vol. iii. edit. Serran. Such, if I have read to any purpose, is the spirit of the English constitution, and such too the very letter of the English law. "Rex," says Bracton, " sub Deo et lege. Rex habet superiorem Deum, item legem, per quam factus est rex," &c.-Lib. ii. cap. 16. most intelligible part of man's equality, and the best security for man's rights, to the wise regulations of society;* that I applaud one antient philosopher† for the preference he gives to the geometrical proportion adopted by Lycurgus over the artithmetical which Solon, perhaps by compulsion, employed; and that I concur with another great writer, in commending those political institutions, where both of these proportions are occasionally introduced, and judiciously attempered.-They know that reverencing even the wilder eccentricities || of a passion for * I do not intend to say, that all the rights of men derive their origin from society, but that, in a well-regulated society, their natural rights are recognized, preserved, defined, and invigorated. In such a society, therefore, I would readily allow, with M. Mirabeau, that "obligatory law is only, and can only be, the faithful expression of natural right clothed with the sanction of the public consent."-Mirab. on Lettres de Cachet, vol. i. p. 190. † Ὁ γὰρ Λυκοῦργος τὴν ἀριθμητικὴν ἀναλογίαν, ὡς δημοκρατι κὴν καὶ ὀχλικὴν οὖσαν, ἐξέβαλεν ἐκ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος· ἐπεισήγαγε δὲ τὴν γεωμετρικὴν, ὀλιγαρχίᾳ σώφρονι καὶ βασιλείᾳ νομίμῃ πρέπουσαν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀριθμῷ τὸ ἴσον, ἡ δὲ λόγῳ τὸ κατ' úžíav åñovéμei.—Plut. Sympos. lib. viii. quest. 2. p. 719. vol. ii. edit. Xyland. † Ὁ μὲν οὖν Σόλων ἀποφηνάμενος περὶ πολιτείας, ὡς ἰσότης στάσιν οὐ ποιεῖ, λίαν ἔδοξεν ὀχλικῶς ἀριθμητικὴν καὶ δημοκρατι κὴν ἐπεισάγειν ἀναλογίαν ἀντὶ τῆς καλῆς γεωμητρικῆς.—Plut. de Frat. Amor. p. 484. § Διὸ δεῖ, τὰ μὲν ἀριθμητικῇ ἰσότητι χρῆσθαι, τὰ δὲ τῇ κατ' ăžiav.—Arist. de Repub. lib. v. cap. 4. p. 387. vol. ii. The reader will not confound my meaning with Mr. Burke's strictures (p. 269 of the Reflections) upon the geometrical distribution and arithmetical arrangement of France. "Grand swelling sentiments of liberty, I am sure, I do not |