Phænomena, many of them interesting as facts and data for Psychology, and affording some valuable materials for a Theory of Perception and its dependence on the memory and Imagination. "In omnem actum Perceptionis imaginatio influit efficienter." WOLFE. But HE is no more, who would have realized this idea who had already established the foundations and the law of the Theory; and for whom I had so often found a pleasure and a comfort, even during the wretched and restless nights of sickness, in watching and instantly recording these experiences of the world within us, of the "gemina natura, quæ fit et facit, et creat et creatur!" He is gone, my Friend! my munificient Co-patron, and not less the Benefactor of my Intellect!--He, who beyond all other men known to me, added a fine and ever-wakeful Sense of Beauty to the most patient Accuracy in experimental Philosophy and the profounder researches of metaphysical Science; he who united all the play and spring of Fancy with the subtlest Discrimination and an inexorable Judgement; and who controlled an almost painful exquisiteness of Taste by a Warmth of Heart, which in the practical relations of Life made allowances for faults as quick as the moral taste detected them; a Warmth of Heart,which was indeed noble and pre-eminent, for alas! the genial feelings of Health contributed no spark toward it! Of these qualities I may speak, for they belonged to all mankind.-The higher virtues, that were blessings to his Friends, and the still higher that resided in and for his own Soul, are themes for the energies of Solitude, for the awfulness of Prayer!-virtues exercised in the barrenness and desolation of his animal being; while he thirsted with the full stream at his lips, and yet with unwearied goodness poured out to all around him, like the Master of a feast among his kindred in the day of his own gladness! Were it but for the remembrance of him alone and of his lot here below, the disbelief of a future state would sadden the earth around me, and blight the very grass in the Field. PENRITH: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWN, AND SOLD BY No. 9, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1809. Albeit therefore, much of that we are to speak in this present Cause, may seem to a number perhaps tedious, perhaps obscure, dark and intricate, (for many talk of the Truth, which never sounded the depth from whence it springeth: and therefore, when they are led thereunto, they are soon weary, as men drawn from those beaten paths wherewith they have been inured;) yet this may not so far prevail, as to cut off that which the matter itself requireth, howsoever the nice humour of some be therewith pleased or no. They unto whom we shall seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure. And if any complain of obscurity, they must consider, that in these matters it cometh no otherwise to pass, than in sundry the works both of Art, and also of Nature, where that which hath greatest force in the very things we see, is, notwithstanding, itself oftentimes not seen. The stateliness of Houses, the goodliness of Trees, when we behold them, delighteth the eye: but that Foundation which beareth up the one, that Root which ministereth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosom of the Earth concealed; and if there be occasion at any time to search into it, such labour is then more necessary than pleasant, both to them which undertake it and for the lookers on. In like manner, the use and benefit of good Laws, all that live under them, may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first original causes from whence they have sprung, be unknown, as to the greatest part of men they are. But when they who withdraw their obedience, pretend that the Laws which they should obey are corrupt and vicious: for better examination of their quality, it behoveth the very Foundation and Root, the highest Well-Spring and Fountain of them to be discovered. Which because we are not oftentimes accustomed to do, when we do it, the pains we take are more needful a great deal than acceptable, and the Matters which we handle, seem by reason of newness, (till the mind grow better acquainted with them) dark, intricate, and unfamiliar. For as much help whereof, as may be in this case, I have endeavoured throughout the Body of this whole Discourse, that every former part might give strength to all that follow, and every latter bring some light to all before: so that if the judgements of men do but hold themselves in suspense, as touching these first more general Meditations, till in order they have perused the rest that ensue; what may seem dark at the first, will afterwards be found more plain, even as the latter particular decisions will appear, I doubt not, more strong when the other have been read before,-HoOKER'S ECCLESIAST. POLITY. ESSAY VI. ON THE GROUNDS OF GOVERNMENT AS LAID EXCLU→ SIVELY IN THE PURE REASON; OR A STATEMENT AND CRITIQUE OF THE THIRD SYSTEM OF POLITI CAL PHILOSOPHY, VIZ. THE THEORY OF ROUSSEAU AND THE FRENCH ECONOMISTS. My last was an Interlude. I now return to the theme announced in the preceding Essay, to my promise of developing from its' embryo Principles the Tree of French Liberty, of which the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Constitution of 1791 were the Leaves, and the succeeding and present State of France the Fruits. Let me not be blamed, if for a brief while I have connected this System, though only in the Imagination, though only as a possible case, with a name so deservedly reverenced as that of Luther. It is some excuse, that to interweave with the Reader's Recollections a certain Life and dramatic interest, during the perusal of the abstract reasonings that are to follow, is the only means I possess, of bribing his attention. We have most of us, at some period or other of our Lives, been amused with Dialogues of the Dead. Who is there, that wishing to form a probable opinion on the grounds of Hope and Fear, for an injured People warring against mighty Armies, would not be pleased with a spirited Fiction, which brought before him an old Numantian discoursing on that subject in Elysium, with a newly-arrived Spirit from the Streets of Saragossa or the Walls of Gerona ? But I have a better reason. I wished to give every fair advantage to the Opinions, which I deemed it of importance to confute. It is bad policy to represent a political System as having no charm but for Robbers and Assassins, and no natural origin but in the brains of Fools or Madmen, when Experience has proved, that the great danger of the System consists in the peculiar fascination, it is calculated to exert on noble and imaginative Spirits ; on all those, who in the amiable intoxication of youthful Benevolence, are apt to mistake their own best Virtues and choicest Powers for the average qualities and Attri butes of the human Character. The very Minds, which a good man would most wish to preserve or disentangle from the Snare, are by these angry misrepresentations rather lured into it. Is it wonderful, that a Man should reject the arguments unheard, when his own Heart proves the falsehood of the Assumptions by which they are prefaced? or that he should retaliate on the Aggressors their own evil Thoughts? I am well aware, that the provocation was great, the temptation almost inevitable; yet still I cannot repel the conviction from my mind, that in part to this Error and in part to a certain inconsistency in his fundamental Principles, we are to attribute the small number of Converts made by BURKE during his life time. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean, that this great Man supported different Principles at different æras of his political Life. On the contrary, no Man was ever more like himself! From his first published Speech on the American Colonies to his last posthumous Tracts, we see the same Man, the same Doctrines, the same uniform Wisdom of practical Councils, the same Reasoning and the same Prejudices against all abstract grounds, against all deduction of Practice from Theory. The inconsistency to which I allude, is of a different kind; it is the want of congruity in the Principles appealed to in different parts of the same Work, it is an apparent versa. tility of the Principle with the Occasion. If his Opponents are Theorists, then every thing is to be founded on PRUDENCE, on mere calculations of EXPEDIENCY: and every Man is represented as acting according to the state of his own immediate self interest. Are his Opponents Calculators? Then Calculation itself is represented as a sort of crime. God has given us FEELINGS, and we are to obey them! and the most absurd Prejudices become venerable, to which these FEELINGS have given Consecration. I have not forgotten, that Burke himself defended these half contradictions, on the pretext of balancing the too much on the one side by a too much on the other. But never can I believe, but that the straight line must needs be the nearest; and that where there is the most,. and the most unalloyed Truth, there will be the greatest and most permanent power of persuasion. But the fact was, that Burke in his public Character found himself, as it were, in a Noah's Ark, with a very few Men and a great many Beasts! he felt how much his inmediate Power was lessened by the very circumstance of his measureless Superiority to those about him he acted therefore, under a perpetual System of Compromise-a Compromise of Greatness with Meanness; a Compromise of Comprehension with Narrowness; a Compromise of the Philosopher (who armed with the twofold knowledge of History and the Laws of Spirit, as with a Telescope, looked far around and into the far Distance) with the mere Men of Business, or with yet coarser Intellects, who handled a Truth, which they were required to receive, as they would handle an Ox, which they were desired to purchase. But why need I repeat what has been already said in so happy a manner by Goldsmith, of this great Man : "Who, born for the universe narrow'd his mind, a razor, And if in consequence it was his fate to "cut blocks with I may be permitted to add, that in respect of Truth though not of Genius, the Weapon was injured by the misapplication. THE FRIEND, however, acts and will continue to act under the belief, that the whole Truth is the best antidote to Falsehoods which are dangerous chiefly because they are half-truths: and that an erroneous System is best confuted, not by an abuse of Theory in general, nor by an absurd opposition of Theory to Practice, but by a detection of the Errors in the particular Theory. For the meanest of men has his Theory and to think at all is to theorize. With these convictions I proceed immediately to the System of the Economists and to the Principles on which it is constructed, and from which it must derive all its strength. The System commences with an undeniable Truth, and an important deduction therefrom equally undeniable. All voluntary Actions, say they, having for their Objects Good or Evil, are moral Actions. But all morality is grounded in the Reason. Every Man is, born with the faculty of Reason: and whatever is without it, be the Shape what it may, is not a Man or PERSON, but a THING. Hence the sacred Principle, recognized by all Laws human and divine, the Principle indeed, which is the ground-work of all Law and Justice, that a Person can |