ftanding, in waiting for the leflons 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 ferve as guides in fubfequent proceedings. Great experiments, and violent enterprifes, fuit only defperate circumstances. In fome countries, perhaps, nothing could be loft, and every thing might be gained, by a fudden fubverfion of the government. Where no principles of good are to be found, and rottennefs has funk into the very marrow of the State, let the carcafe be thrown by as food for the ravenous tribe of revolutionifts; but let not the vultures and the harpies be fuffered to prey upon a body where the life-blood yet flows in the veins, and where balfamic restoratives and alteratives might yet avail. Wherever the influence of Chriftianity 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 fafely left standing as a fecurity for prefent peace and order, while the work of re formation is going forwards. But these furious. advocates for Conventions, Regenerations, and the Rights of Man, are at iffue with all governments on a queftion of competency and title, and wouldinvolve them all in one undistinguishing ruin, for the fake of trying what they triumphantly call their fplendid experiments. I fpeak here, however, only in a view to foreign States; our own Constitution wants no fuch apology. All good men confider it as facred, efpecially in times of heat and temerity; and fo far are they from arraigning its purity, that they confider it as the only pattern according to which we are to proceed in the correction of its abufes. By thus confulting the great example of nature in the conduct of the univerfe, we fhall learn properly to estimate the value of our own Conftitution; we fhall confider it as a part of a mighty whole, and as linked in fellowship with that scheme of analogy which unites in a facred league our na ture, our morals, and our religion, and charac¬ terifes the counfels, as far as our minds can explore them, of the Great Difpofer of all things. We hall learn to despise those forry calculators, that would would perfuade a country whofe Conftitution has raised her to be the envy of all the civilifed world, to hazard that Conftitution in experiments on the groffeft, clumfieft, and staleft theories. We fhall learn, I hope, if English blood yet beats in our bofoms, 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 fummers they have emerged from a state of political flavery, to a fairer freedom than the long-exercised spirit of the English people has obtained; to tell us, while as yet they have no oftenfible establishment, that, upon their bare and unwarranted affertions, we fhould leave all to follow them, and join them in promoting the labefaction of all human government; defpifing for their fakes that precious inheritance of rights and privileges, bought with the lives and fortunes of our forefathers, and abandoning for their fakes our thrones, our fepulchres, and our altars. N° 37. SATURDAY, JANUARY 19. ΤΟ THE ASSOCIATION FOR PRESERVING I LIBERTY AND PROPERTY AGAINST RE- HAVE endeavoured to fhew in my laft Paper, on this fubject, that power, which muft exift fomewhere, can only be reftrained within wholesome bounds, by being rendered a check upon itself: this is man's nature, and the nature of the univerfe, wherein every thing is upheld by this law of action and reaction. This fyftem of mutual controul in a State will not be effected by frittering power of the fame denomination among a multitude of individuals, but by sharing it among different orders of the community at large, and in proportionate maffes. Thus in our own country this fober counterpoife of authority in the State, is our great fecurity against partial encroachments; and abuses can enter but flowly into a fyftem where there is always in fome quarter or other a phalanx of oppofition, Power Power that is diftributed among a number of individuals has invariably a ftrong tendency to coalefce; it is the fociety of intereft which 'makes oppofition firm, and maintains the equilibrium unfhaken. While an individual is driving onwards in the pursuit of his own folitary aggrandisement, his objects are seldom limited or defined; but fuppofe him a member of a corporate body, his efforts are then directed to the interefts of his order: any excentricity from this orbit of exertion is regarded with watchfulness and jealousy, and an account is taken of fuch a man's actions from the firft moment of his aberration. In the fimple representative legislation adopted in France, this natural claffification and reciprocation of power has been defpifed by the green precocity of these upftarts in freedom. All-fufficient in themselves, they difdain thofe intimations which nature affords, and feem to be perfuading themfelves that they have erected a system so metaphyfically enchanting, that nature and man will lay afide their ancient character, and affume another that shall harmonise with its principles. "Et mihi res non me rebus fubjungere conor." H 6 What |