intosh.

fhould emblazon the one as coeval with Cain, or Mr. Mack ftigmatize the other as upftart with Howard, would be difclaimed even by the most frantic partifan of ariftocracy. This Gothic transfer of genealogy to truth and juftice is peculiar to politics. The exiftence of robbery in one age makes its vindication in the next; and the champions of freedom have abandoned the strong hold of right for precedent, which, when the most favourable, is, as might be expected from the ages which furnish it, feeble, fluctuating, partial, and equivocal. It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Juftice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age. It would be the fame abfurdity to affert, that we have a right to freedom because the Englishmen of Alfred's reign were free, as that three and three are fix, because they were fo in the camp of Genghis Khan. Let us hear no more of this ignoble and ignominious pedigree of freedom. Let us hear no more of her Saxon, Danish, or Norman anceftors. Let the immortal daughter of reason, of juftice, and of God, be no longer confounded with the fpurious abortions that have ufurped her name. But, fays Mr. Burke, we do not contend that right as created by antiquarian research. We are far from contending that poffeffion legitimates tyranny, or that fact ought to be confounded with right. But (to ftrip Mr. Burke's eulogies on English wifdom of their declamatory appendage)

the

intoth.

Mr.Mack the impreffion of antiquity endears and ennobles freedom, and fortifies it by rendering it auguft and venerable in the popular mind. The illufion is ufeful. The expediency of political impofture is the whole force of the argument; a pri ciple odious and fufpected to the friends of freedom, as the grand bulwark of fecular and fpiritual def potifm in the world. To pronounce that men are only to be governed by delufion is to libel the human understanding, and to confecrate the frauds that have elevated defpots and muftis, pontiffs and fultans, on the ruin of degraded and oppreffed humanity. But the doctrine is as falfe as it is odious. Primary political truths are few and fimple. It is eafy to make them understood, and to transfer to government the fame enlightened felf-intereft that prefides in the other concerns of life. It may be made to be refpe&ted, not because it is ancient, or because it is facred-not because it has been esta blished by barons, or applauded by priests—but because it is useful. Men may eafily be inftructed to maintain rights which it is their interest to maintain, and duties which it is their intereft to perform. This is the only principle of authority that does not violate justice and infult humanity. It is alfo the only one which can poffefs ftability. The various fashions of prejudice and factitious sentiment which have been the bafis of governments, are thort-lived things. The illufions of chivalry, and the illufions of fuperftition, which give fplendour or fanctity to government, are in their turn fuc

ceeded

intoth.

ceeded by new modes of opinion and new fyftems Mr.Mackof manners. Reafon alone, and natural fentiment, are the denizens of every nation, and the cotemporaries of every age. A conviction of the utility of government affords the only ftable and honourable fecurity for obedience.

Our ancestors at the revolution, it is true, were far from feeling the full force of thefe fublime truths; nor was the public mind of Europe, in the feventeenth century, fufficiently enlightened and matured for the grand enterprises of legiflation. The science which teaches the rights of man, the eloquence that kindles the fpirit of freedom, had

for

ages been buried with the other monuments of the wisdom and relics of the genius of antiquity. But the revival of letters first unlocked only to a few the facred fountain. The neceffary labours of criticifm and lexicography occupied the earlier scholars, and fome time elapfed before the spirit of antiquity was transfufed into its admirers. The first man of that period who united elegant learning to original and masculine thought was Buchanan, and he too feems to have been the first

*It is not a little remarkable, that Buchanan puts into the mouth of his antagonist, MAITLAND, the fame alarms for the downfall of literature that have been excited in the mind of Mr. Burke by the French revolution. We can fmile at fuch alarms on a retrofpect of the literary hiftory of Europe for the feventeenth of eighteen centuries; and fhould our controverfies reach the enlightened fcholars of a future age, they will probably, with the fame reason, fmile at the alarms of Mr. Burke.

fcholar

Mr.Mack

fcholar who caught from the ancients the noble intosh. flame of republican enthusiasm. This praife is merited by his neglected, though incomparable tract, De Jure Regni, in which the principles of popular politics, and the maxims of a free government, are delivered with a precision, and enforced with an energy, which no former age had equalled, and no fucceeding has furpaffed. But the fubfequent progrefs of the human mind was flow. The profound views of Harrington were derided as the ravings of a vifionary; and who can wonder, that the frantic loyalty which depreffed Paradife Loft, fhould involve in ignominy the eloquent apology of Milton for the people of England against a feeble and venal pedant? Sidney,

66

by ancient learning to the enlightened love of ancient free"dom warmed," taught the principles which he had fealed with his blood; and Locke, whofe praise

"Peffime enim vel naturâ vel legibus comparatum foret "fi arguta fervitus, libertas muta effet; & haberent tyranni "qui pro fe dicerent, non haberent qui tyrannos debellare "poffunt: miferum effet fi hæc ipfa ratio quo utimur Dei "munere non multo plura ad homines confervandos, libe"randos, et quantum natura fert INTER SE EQUANDOS, quam "ad opprimendos et fub UNIUS imperio malè perdendos, argu ❝menta fuppeditaret. CAUSAM itaque PULCHERRIMAM hâc "certè fiduciâ læti aggrediamur; illinc fraudem, fallaciam, "ignorantiam atque barbariem; hinc lucem, veritatem, ratio. "nem, et feculorum omnium ftudia atque doctrinam nobif ❝ cum ftare."

Joannis Miltoni Defenfio Populi Anglicani, apud Opera, tom. ii, p. 238. ed. Lond. 1738.

وز

inroth.

is lefs that of being bold and original, than of be- Mr. Macking temperate, found, lucid, and methodical, deferves the immortal honour of having fyftematifed and rendered popular the doctrines of civil and religious liberty. In Ireland, Molyneux, the friend. of Locke, produced the "Cafe of Ireland," a production of which it is fufficient praife to fay, that it was ordered to be burnt by a defpotic parliament; and in Scotland, Andrew Fletcher, the fcholar of Algernon Sidney, maintained the cause of his deferted country with the force of ancient eloquence, and the dignity of ancient virtue.

Such is a rapid enumeration of those who had before, or near the revolution, contributed to the diffufion of political light. But their number was fmall, their writings were unpopular, their dogmas were profcribed. The habits of reading had only then begun to reach the great body of mankind, whom the arrogance of rank and letters has ignominiously confounded under the denomination of the vulgar. Many caufes too contributed to form a powerful tory intereft in England. The remnant of that Gothic fentiment, the extinction of which Mr. Burke fo pathetically deplores, which engrafted loyalty on a point of honour in military attachment, formed one part, which may be called the toryism of divalry. Doctrines of a divine right in kings, which are now too much forgotten even for fuccessful ridicule, were then fupported and revered.This may be called the toryifm of fuperftition. And a third fpecies arofe from the great transfer of property