that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred has to his larger proportion; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint estate; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power, are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence?

• Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to every thing, they want every thing. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that, even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controuled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves; and not, in the ex-, ercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and to subdue. In this sense the

restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.'

In this passage, containing what may be called the POLITICAL CREED OF EDMUND BURKE, we might refer to those who have most minutely studied and completely comprehended his antecedent works, whether there is in it any sentiment or expression INCONSISTENT With his former opinions. To the contemplators of the British constitution it may be referred, to determine whether there be any thing in Burke's articles of political faith contrary to its principles and regulations. To those conversant with the principles of government in general we may apply, to point out what there is in these notions CONTRARY TO A WELL REGULATED

LIBERTY; to a polity adapted to the pro

Assertions,

motion of the general good. that his publication in general, or any series of arguments in it, were inimical either to the civil rights of man, or to the British constitution, are mere empty sounds until established by proof.

Guided by the same experience, which rested government upon expediency instead of abstract rights, he inquires into those principles which tend most powerfully to promote its object; the security and happiness of the community. To controul the workings of passion, he, from his acquaintance with the mind of man, and with the actions of men in domestic, social, evil, and political relations, had formed a conclusion that there was not so powerful a check as religion. Religion, he knew, had, in all ages and countries, in proportion to its being well understood and followed, tended to soften barbarism, restrain wickedness, meliorate the affections, and promote happiness. A principle of so beneficial operation, he considered it to be the indispensable

duty of lawgivers to encourage; and, from the experienced proportion of happiness to the proportion in which it existed in individuals or societies, he inferred, that whereever this principle was wanting the consequence would be misery. From the sources of the French revolution, into which great draughts of infidelity had been studiously infused, he had anticipated the prevalence of irreligion. From contemplating the actual conduct of the revolutionists, he found that what he had expected had come to pass, that impiety had prevailed, almost to atheism. From their want of religion he augured ill of their future virtue and happiness. I do not say that Burke reasoned rightly in this case; but that this was the process of his reasoning. If it can be proved, in contradiction to what Burke and many others have asserted concerning their irreligion, that the French revolutionists were very religious men, then must it be allowed that he was wrong as to fact. If any one will prove, from history and the constitution of human nature, that either