They defpife experience as the wifdom of unlettered men; and as for the feft, they have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have "the " rights of men." Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding: thefe admit no temperament, and no compromise: any thing withheld from their full demand is fo much of fraud and injuftice. Against thefe their rights of men let no government look for fecurity in the length of its contiuance, or in the justice and lenity of its adminiftration. The objections of thefe fpeculatifts, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against fuch an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny, or the greeneft ufurpation. They are always at iffue with governments, not on a queftion of abufe, but a queftion of competency, and a queftion of title. I have nothing to fay to the clumfy fubtilty of their political metaphyfics. Let them be their amufement in the fehools.-"Illa fe jacket in aula - Æo«lus, et claufo ventorum carcere regnet."—But let them not break prifon to burft like a Levanter, to fweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm

us.

Far am 1 from denying in theory; full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of inen. In denying their falfe claims of right, I do not mean to injure thofe which are real, and are

fuch

fuch as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil fociety be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an inftitution of beneficence; and law itfelf is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquifitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to inftruction in life, and to confolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespasfing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which fociety, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He that has but five fhillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pound has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint ftock; and as to the fhare 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 fociety; for I have in my contemplation the civil focial man, and no other. It is a thing to be fettled by convention.

If civil fociety be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention

muft limit and modify all the defcriptions of confti-. tution which are formed under it. Every fort of legiflative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other ftate of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil fociety, rights which do not fo much as fuppofe its exiftence? Rights which are abfolutely, repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil fociety, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man fhould be judge in his own caufe. By this each perfon has at once divefted himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to affert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclufively, in a great measure, abandons the right of felf-defence, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain juftice he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most effential to him. That he may fecure fome liberty, he makes a furrender in truft of the whole of it.

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exift in total independence of it; and exift 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 thefe wants fhould be provided for by this wildom. Among thefe wants is to be reckoned

the

the want, out of civil fociety, of a fufficient re-
ftraint upon their paffions.
their paffions. Society requires not
only that the paffions of individuals fhould be
fubjected, but that even in the mafs and body
as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of
men should frequently be thwarted, their will
controlled, and their paffions brought into fub-
jection. This can only be done by a power out
of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its func-
tion, fubject to that will and to thofe paffions which
it is its office to bridle and fubdue. In this fenfe
the restraints on men, as well as their liberties,
are to be reckoned among their rights. But as
the liberties and the reftrictions vary with times
and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifica-
tions, they cannot be fettled upon any abstract
rule; and nothing is fo foolish as to difcufs them
upon that principle,

its

The moment you abate any thing from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and fuffer any artificial pofitive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the conftitution of a state, and the due diftribution of powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated fkill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human neceffities, and of the things which facilitate or obftruct the various ends which are to be purfued by the mechanism of civil inftitutions. The ftate is to have recruits to its ftrength, and remedies to its diftempers. What is the ufe of difcuffing a man's abftract right to food or to medicine?

The

The queftion is upon the method of procuring and adminiftering them. In that deliberation I fhall always advife to call in the aid of the farmer and the phyfician, rather than the profeffor of metaphyfics.

The fcience of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental fcience, not to be taught à priori, Nor is it a fhort experience that can inftruct us in that practical fcience; becaufe the real effects of moral caufes are not always immediate; but that which in the first inftance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arife even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plaufible schemes, with very pleafing commencements, have often fhameful and lamentable conclufions. In ftates there are often fome obfcure and almoft latent caufes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its profperity or adverfity may most effentially depend. The fcience of government being therefore fo practical in itself, and intended for fuch practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any perfon can gain in his whole life, however fagacious and obferving he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of fociety, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

These