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cracy. The great instrument of all these changes, and what infuses a peculiar venom into all of them, is party. It is of no consequence what the principles of any party, or what their pretenfions are; the spirit which actuates all parties is the same; the spirit of ambition, of felf-interest, of oppreffion, and treachery. This spirit entirely re. verses all the principles which a benevolent nature has erected within us; all honesty, all equal juftice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural affections. In a word, my Lord, we have all feen, and if any outward confiderations were worthy the lafting concern of a wife man, we have fome of us felt, such oppression from party government as no other tyranny can parallel. We behold daily the most important rights, rights upon which all the others depend, we behold these rights determined in the last refort, without the least attention even to the appearance or colour of justice; we behold this without emotion, because we have grown up in the conftant view of such practices; and we are not surprised to hear a man requested to be a knave and a traitor, with as much indifference as if the most ordinary favour were asked; and we hear this request refused, not because it is a most unjust and unreasonable defire, but that this worthy has already engaged his injustice to another. These and many more points I am far from spreading to their full

extent.

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extent. You are sensible that I do not put forth half my strength; and you cannot be at a lofs for the reafon. A man is allowed fufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to chuse his subject properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and obferve with as much feverity as you please upon the abfurd tricks, or deftructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the fcene is changed as you come homeward, and atheifm or treafon may be the names given in Britain, to what would be reafon and truth if afferted of China. I submit to the condition, and though I have a notorious advantage before me, I wave the pursuit. For else, my Lord, it is very obvious what a picture might be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own nation. I could shew, that the fame faction has in one reign promoted popular feditions, and in the next been a patron of tyranny; I could fhew, that they have all of them betrayed the publick fafety at all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause, and their own afsociates. I could shew how vehemently they have contended for names, and how filently they have paffed over things of the last importance. And I could demonftrate, that they have had the opportunity of doing all this mischief, nay, that they themselves had their origin and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely taught

to

to look upon as fo great a blessing. Revolve, my Lord, our history from the conquest. We scarce ever had a prince, who by fraud, or violence, had not made fome infringement on the conftitution. We scarce ever had a parliament which knew, when it attempted to fet limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. Our boafted liberty sometimes trodden down, sometimes giddily fet up, and ever precariously fluctuating and unfettled; it has only been kept alive by the blafts of continual feuds, wars and confpiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confifcations, banishments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of fuch of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly indeed things had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring parts of a certain chaotick constitution supported their several pretenfions by the sword. Experience and policy have fince taught other methods.

At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubeta.

But how far corruption, venality, the contempt of honour, the oblivion of all duty to our country,

and

and the most abandoned publick prostitution, are preferable to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will not prefume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.

I have done with the forms of government. During the course of my inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my manner of reasoning and that which is in use amongst the abettors of artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have refulted from them. They have inlisted reason to fight against itself, and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion as we have deviated from the plain rule of - our nature, and turned our reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies and miferies of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we entered it. This has happened in almost every fpecies of artificial society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore judges were fet up, at first with difcretionary powers. But it was soon found a mife

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rable flavery to have our lives and properties precarious, and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of men. We flew to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we perfuaded ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood. But lo! differences arose upon the sense and interpretation of these laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were made to expound the old; and new difficulties arose upon the new laws; as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, gloffes, reports, refponfa prudentum, learned readings: eagle stood againft eagle: authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern, others reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlightened, the old were more venerable. Some adopted the comment, others stuck to the text. The confufion increased, the mist thickened, until it could be discovered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the profeffors, an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind) the contending parties felt themfelves more effectually ruined by the delay than they could have been by the injustice of any decifion. Our inheritances are become a prize for difputation; and difputes and litigations are become an inheritance.

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