private, that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its confecrated revenue.-Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, fince heats are fubfided, the Roman fyftem of religion, we prefer the Proteftant; not because we think it has lefs of the Christian religion in it, but becaufe, in our judgement, it has more. We are proteftants, not from indifference but from zeal.

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his conftitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reafon but our inftincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot fpirit drawn out of the alembick of hell, which in France is now fo furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great fource of civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that fome uncouth, pernicious, and degrading fuperftition, might take place of it.

For that reafon, before we take from our establishment the natural human means of estimation, and give it up to contempt, as you have done, and in doing it have incurred the penalties you well deserve to fuffer, we defire that fome other may be prefented to us in the place of it. We shall then form our judgment.

On these ideas, inftead of quarrelling with establishments, as fome do, who have made a philofophy and a religion of their hoftility to fuch inftitutions, we cleave clofely to them. We are refolved to keep an established church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the degree it exifts, and in no greater. I fhall fhew you presently how much of each of these we poffefs.

It has been the misfortune (not as these gentlemen think it, the glory) of this age, that every thing is to be discuffed, as if the conftitution of our country were to be always a fubject rather of altercation than enjoyment. For this reafon, as well as for the fatisfaction of those among you (if any fuch you have among you) who may

4

wish to profit of examples, I venture to trouble you with a few thoughts upon each of these establishments. I do not think they were unwife in ancient Rome, who, when they wished to new-model their laws, fent commiffioners to examine the best constituted republics within their reach.

First, I beg leave to speak of our church establishment, which is the first of our prejudices, not a prejudice de ftitute of reason, but involving in it profound and extenfive wifdom. I fpeak of it first. It is first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on that religious fyftem, of which we are now in poffeffion, we continue to act on the early received, and uniformly continued fenfe of mankind. That fenfe not only, like a wife architect, hath built up the august fabric of the states, but like a provident proprietor, to preferve the structure from prophanation and ruin, as a facred temple, purged from all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injuftice, and tyranny, hath folemnly and for ever confecrated the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. This confecration is made, that all who administer in the government of men, in which they stand in the person of God himself, should have high and worthy notions of their function and destination; that their hope fhould be full of immortality; that they should not look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and tranfient praife of the vulgar, but to a folid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they leave as a rich inheritance to the world.

Such fublime principles ought to be infufed into perfons of exalted fituations; and religious establishments provided, that may continually revive and enforce them. Every fort of moral, every fort of civil, every fort of politic inftitution, aiding the rational and natural ties that connect the human understanding and affections to the divine, are not more than neceffary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man; whole prerogative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of his own making; and who, when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation. But whenever

man

man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever to prefide, in that case, more particularly, he should as nearly as poffible be approximated to his perfection.

The confecration of the state, by a state religious eftablishment, is neceffary also to operate with an wholefome awe upon free citizens; because, in order to fecure their freedom, they must enjoy fome determinate portion of power. To them therefore a religion connected with the state, and with their duty towards it, becomes even more neceffary than in fuch focieties, where the people by the terms of their subjection are confined to private fentiments, and the management of their own family concerns. All perfons poffeffing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awefully impreffed with an idea that they act in truft; and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great master, author and founder of society.

This principle ought even to be more ftrongly impreffed upon the minds of those who compose the collective fovereignty than upon those of fingle princes. Without inftruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever ufes inftruments, in finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is therefore by no means compleat; nor are they fafe in extreme abuse. Such perfons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and felf-opinion, must be fenfible that, whether covered or not by pofitive law, in fome way or other they are accountable even here for the abuse of their truft: If they are not cut off by a rebellion of their people, they may be ftrangled by the very Janiffaries kept for their fecurity against all other rebellion. Thus we have seen the king of France fold by his foldiers for an encrease of pay. But where popular authority is abfolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own inftruments. They are nearer to their objects. Befides, they are lefs under refponfibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the fenfe of fame and eftimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each indi

vidual

vidual in public acts, is fmall indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore the most fhameless thing in the world. As it is the most shamelefs, it is alfo the moft fearlefs. No man apprehends in his person he can be made subject to punishment. Certainly the people at large never ought for as all punishments are for example towards the confervation of the people at large, the people at large can never become the fubject of punishment by any human hand.* It is therefore of infinite importance that they should not be fuffered to imagine that their will, any more than that of kings, is the ftandard of right and wrong. They ought to be perfuaded they are full as little entitled, and far lefs qualified, with fafety to themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatfoever; that therefore they are not, under a falfe fhew of liberty, but, in truth, to exercise an unnatural inverted domination, tyrannically to exact, from thofe who officiate in the ftate, not an entire devotion to their intereft, which is their right, but an abject fubmiffion to their occafional will; extinguishing thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all fense of dignity, all use of judgment, and all confiftency of character, whilft by the very fame procefs they give themselves up a proper, a fuitable, but a moft contemptible prey to the fervile ambition of popular fycophants or courtly flatterers.

When the people have emptied themselves of all the luft of felfish will, which without religion it is utterly impoffible they ever fhould, when they are confcious that they exercise, and exercife perhaps in an higher link of the order of delegation, the power, which to be legitimate must be according to that eternal immutable law, in which will and reafon are the fame, they will be more careful how they place power in base and incapable hands. In their nomination to office, they will not appoint to the exercife of authority, as to a pitiful job, but as to an holy function; not according to their fordid selfish intereft,

N

Quicquid multis peccatur inultum.

intereft, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary will; but they will confer that power (which any man may well tremble to give or to receive). on thofe only, in whom they may difcern that predominant proportion of active virtue and wifdom, taken together and fitted to the charge, fuch, as in the great and inevitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities, is to be found.

When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either in the act or the permiffion, to him. whofe effence is good, they will be better able to extirpaté out of the minds of all magiftrates, civil, ecclefiaftical, or military, any thing that bears the least resemblance to a proud and lawlefs domination.

1

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are confecrated, is left the temporary poffeffors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, fhould act as if they were the entire mafters; that they should not think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by deftroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their fociety; hazarding to leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of an habitation-and teaching thefe fucceffors as little to refpect their contrivances, as they had themselves refpected the inftitutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a fummer.

And first of all the fcience of jurifprudence, the pride of the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reafon of ages, combining the principles of original juftice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer studied. Perfonal felf-suthiciency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all thofe who have never experienced a wifdom greater than