Perfonal felf-fufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all thofe who have never experienced a wifdom greater than their own) would ufurp the tribunal. Of course, no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing ftable in the modes of holding property, or exercifing function, could form a folid ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of his offspring, or in a choice for their future establishment in the world. No principles would be early worked into the habits. As foon as the most able inftructor had completed his laborious course of inftitution, instead of fending forth his pupil, accomplished in a virtuous difcipline, fitted to procure him attention and respect, in his place in fociety, he would find every thing altered; and that he had turned out a poor creature to the contempt and derifion of the world, ignorant of the true grounds of estimation. Who would infure a tender and delicate fenfe of honour to beat almoft with the first pulses of the heart, when no man could know what would be the teft of honour in a nation, continually varying the standard of its coin? No part of life would retain its acquifitions. Barbarifm with regard to science and literature, unskilfulness with regard to arts and manufactures, would infallibly fucceed to the want of a fteady education and fettled principle; and thus the commonwealth itfelf would, in a few generations, crumble away, be disconnected into the duft and powder of individuality, and at length dispersed to all the winds of heaven. ap To avoid therefore the evils of inconftancy and verfatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obftinacy and the blindeft prejudice, we have confecrated the state, that no man should proach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he fhould never dream of beginning its reformation by its fubverfion; that he fhould approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling follicitude. By this wife prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rafhly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life. Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate con-tracts for objects of mere occafional interest may be diffolved at pleasure-but the state ought not to be confidered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or fome other fuch low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary intereft, and to be diffolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things fubfervient only to the grofs animal exiftence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all fcience; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends ends of fuch a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between thofe who are living, but between those who are living, thofe who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a claufe in the great primæval contract of eternal fociety, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the vifible and invifible world, according to a fixed compact fanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all phyfical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not fubject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely fuperior, are bound to fubmit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that univerfal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their fpeculations of at contingent improvement, wholly to feparate and tear afunder the bands of their fubordinate community, and to diffolve it into an unfocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the firft and fupreme neceffity only, a neceffity that is not chofen but. chooses, a neceffity paramount to deliberation, that admits no difcuffion, and demands no evidence, which alone can juftify a refort to anarchy. This neceffity is no exception to the rule; because this neceffity itself is a part too of that moral and physical difpofition of things to which man must be obedient by confent or force; but if that which is only fubmiffion to neceffity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, broken, nature is difobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, caft forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing forrow. Thefe, my dear Sir, are, were, and I think long will be the fentiments of not the leaft learned and reflecting part of this kingdom. They who are included in this description, form their opinions on fuch grounds as fuch perfons ought to form them. The less enquiring receive them from an authority which those whom Providence dooms to live on truft need not be afhamed to rely on. Thefe two forts of men move in the fame direction, tho' in a different place. They both move with the order of the universe. They all know or feel this great antient truth: "Quod illi principi et "præpotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit, nihil eorum quæ quidem fiant in "terris acceptius quam concilia et cætus ho"minum jure fociati quæ civitates appellantur.", They take this tenet of the head and heart, not from the great name which it immediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it is derived; but from that which alone can give true weight and fanction to any learned opinion, the common nature and common relation of men. Perfuaded that all things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the point of reference to which all should be directed, they think themfelves bound, not only as individuals in the fanctuary of the heart, or as congregated in that L perfonal perfonal capacity, to renew the memory of their high origin and caft; but alfo in their corporate character to perform their national homage to the inftitutor, and author and protector of civil fociety; without which civil fociety man could not by any poffibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is capable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed alfo the neceffary means of its perfection He willed therefore the ftate-He willed its connexion with the fource and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of this his will, which is the law of laws and the fovereign of fovereigns, cannot think it reprehenfible, that this our corporate fealty and homage, that this our recognition of a figniory paramount, I had almost faid this oblation of the ftate itself, as a worthy offering on the high altar of univerfal praise, should be performed as all publick folemn acts are performed, in buildings, in mufick, in decoration, in fpeech, in the dignity of perfons, according to the customs of mankind, taught by their nature; that is, with modest splendour, with unaffuming ftate, with mild majesty and fober pomp. For those purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is as usefully employed as it can be, in fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is the publick ornament. It is the publick confolation. It nourishes the publick hope. The pooreft man finds his own importance and dig nity |