ciples and interests of the framers.

And as these prin

ciples were very different from those of justice and true wisdom, so the written or municipal law was also very different from that unwritten and universal law, whose "seat is in the bosom of God, whose voice is the harmony of the world."

But the dictates of this divine law were never wholly unknown to men; and their excellence is such, that those who hated them most were often ashamed openly to dispute them. Those who suffered under the yoke of a tyranny grounded upon force or superstition, appealed to justice as the most powerful advocate of the weak against the strong: they gave currency to her language, and asserted her principles; and even when success had corrupted them, and made them inclined themselves to forget her, yet the good which they had done continued to exist in spite of them: the truths by which they had profited remained to instruct others also; the wisdom of which they had opened the spring for their own necessities, flowed forth with a perpetual stream to refresh far distant lands. Meanwhile the language of municipal law underwent a very partial improvement. It ceased to press upon that part of the community who had succeeded in releasing themselves from bondage; and sometimes those who had obtained a participation in political power introduced into its enactments some of those just principles to which they had been indebted for their own deliverance. But the selfish fear, that from henceforth they had more to lose than to gain from the general ascendancy of truth and justice, disposed them to limit the application of those principles to their own particular case; and to shrink from substituting them broadly and universally for the language of the older constitution of things.

The repetition of this process in successive generations brings us to a state of things, in which most classes of the community have secured to themselves all the rights which equal justice could require; in which all have gained the

simplest and most necessary of these rights; in which the great principles of the eternal law are most widely known, and upheld by the unanimous voice of the wise and good; but in which the municipal or written law of the land has not yet learnt to avow those principles, but still retains amidst great partial improvements much of the narrow and iniquitous spirit of its earliest origin. It was at first a mere system of exclusion: and so far from being the standard in great questions of national right, every victory gained by public right has necessarily led to the improvement of the law, and could have only been rendered legal by the law's alteration. Nay, as those very alterations from various causes have generally expressed the particular application of principles, rather than the principles themselves, and as their particular application may greatly vary with times and circumstances, so it may sometimes happen, that laws promulgated in one age to further the cause of liberty and justice, may in another have the very opposite tendency, and must be repealed in the letter if we wish to fulfil their spirit.

What I meant, then, by the original error of the political creed of many good men, is the principle that in all questions of political alteration the presumption is against change. Now, on the contrary, the presumption is always in favour of change, because the origin of our existing societies was an unjust and ignorant system; because, where that system has not been altered it must require to be so; and even where it has, as the alteration was often of a temporary and particular nature, a fresh improvement will be generally desirable, if we wish to secure the substantial principle of justice and wisdom.

A similar fallacy is involved in another argument, commonly used by the enemies of improvement, that the constitution must not be tampered with. Now, this is a plea of considerable weight wherever the existing order of things is the result of one comprehensive plan; wherever the claims of the different elements of the social body

have been impartially weighed, and each has received that exact proportion of power and consequence which a sound view of the general good would assign to it. Under such circumstances partial alterations may mar the symmetry of the whole; and a general change is not likely to be needed. But where the existing constitution is the mere result of various partial and independent reforms, each of which redressed one particular grievance, while incongruities in the rest of the body politic were suffered to continue unheeded; it is worse than idle to speak of it as one uniform system, digested by comprehensive wisdom; and to deprecate the repetition of those particular reforms to which all its excellence is owing, and which may by easy gradations bring it at last to a practical perfection, without the necessity of a complete revolution.

These remarks apply to the history of almost all nations; except those which have received an entire constitution at one particular time, founded on comprehensive views of the rights and interests of all orders of men in the country, and providing justly and wisely for the good of each and of all. Where such a constitution has been digested, proposals for any partial subsequent reforms are justly to be regarded with strong suspicion; because where the parts of a system have been expressly framed with a view to each other and to the whole, an alteration in any one of them introduced with a particular object is likely to harmonize ill with the rest, and to produce a general inconvenience greater than the local one which it was designed to remedy.

But it has rarely or never happened that the terms of this hypothesis have been fully complied with. In the constitutions given by the lawgivers of antiquity, or in that actually enjoyed by the United States of America, although these were framed much more on certain general principles than the constitutions of modern Europe, yet there was an order of men which they did not embrace, which formed no part in the civil edifice, and with regard

to which the system of the legislator was imperfect, and required future revision. While all classes of citizens were provided for, there was a class of men which remained unregarded, and whom justice seemed to have abandoned the class of predial or domestic slaves. Among the ancient lawgivers, indeed, the time perhaps was never contemplated when justice should have her perfect work, and all who possessed the same human nature should be regarded as fit elements of civil society. But now that Christianity has so greatly enlarged and purified our notions of moral good, all systems, where slavery exists, are regarded as confessedly imperfect, and the propriety of improvement, confessed by all as a question of principle, is only contested on particular and temporary grounds. I have shewn, that even the cases which I acknowledge as exceptions are not to be considered as altogether such, in order more fully to confirm the general statement, that considering the origin and subsequent history of civil societies, there is a presumption à priori in favour of any alteration whose avowed tendency is to extend or enlarge the enjoyment of civil rights.

And now, I would ask of those who shrink from what they call liberal opinions, as if they were connected with a disregard for Christianity, in what do the opinions which have been here expressed differ from the spirit of the Gospel? Is it unchristian to labour to effect the destruction of injustice; to promote the growth of equal rights; to advance the physical and moral condition of mankind by applying to the constitution of society those notions of perfect goodness and wisdom which the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, has taught us? Or will it be said, that all worldly objects are too insignificant to engage the attention of an heir of immortality? Yet it is only by the pursuit of some worldly object that we can perform our worldly duty, and so train ourselves up for immortality; it is by improving the various faculties that are given to us that we can fit ourselves for our everlasting habitations.

Or can the relief of the ordinary physical wants of individuals be so high and essential a virtue, and yet the remedying those political evils, which affect both the physical and moral condition of millions, be no fit object of our exertions? And since in the present state of society we can scarcely avoid being called upon to act, or to express an opinion, directly or indirectly, upon public matters which may influence the conduct of others, is it well to remain in such ignorance of the principles and facts of political science, that our practice is but a leap in the dark, and our advice and influence can do nothing but mislead?

But it may be said, existing laws and existing governments are invested with the authority of God, and cannot be resisted without sin. It does not, indeed, require the light of Christianity to teach us that no individual can be justified in offering active physical resistance to the government, or in disobeying the laws for any private advantage of his own. Metellus Numidicus understood the duty of passive obedience, when he yielded peaceably to an unjust sentence of banishment, and would not suffer his party to procure its repeal by violence. And certainly our Lord's strong expressions, when enjoining his disciples to resist not evil, must apply even more strongly when the resistance, besides implying a want of meekness in ourselves, would also disturb the general peace of society. So, also, under a system of oppressive taxation, if the existing laws, however unjustly, authorize the exaction, then we are bound to be subject not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake; we should not presume to think that the injustice of the tax warrants us in evading it. But as the first Christians, while they never defended themselves by physical force, yet persevered in the most determined efforts to overthrow the established idolatry and corrupt practices of the Roman empire, and laboured earnestly to introduce a purer system in their room; so should we labour, every man according to his knowledge and influ