: churches; and that afterwards they spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I never heard that any public measure, or political system, much less that the merits of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the subject of a formal proceeding at their feftivals; until, to my inexpressible surprize, I found them in a fort of public capacity, by a congratulatory address, giving an authoritative fanction to the proceedings of the National Afsembly in France. In the antient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least as they were declared, 1 see nothing to which I, or any fober man, could possibly take exception. I think it very probable, that for fome purpose, new members may have entered among them; and that some truly christian politicians, who love to dispense benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may have made them the inftruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may have reason to fufpect concerning private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a certainty, but what is public. For one, I should be forry to be thought, directly or indirectly, concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along with the rest of the world, in my individual and private capacity, in speculating on what has been done, or is doing, on the public stage; in any place antient or modern; in the republic of Rome, or the republic of Paris: but having no B 3 general general apoftolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state, and being bound up in a confiderable degree, by its public will, I should think it, at least improper and irregular, for me to open a formal public correspondence with the actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority of the government un der which I live. : unac I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correfpondence, under any thing like an equivocal description, which to many, quainted with our usages, might make the address, in which I joined, appear as the act of persons in fome fort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom, and authorized to speak the fenfe of some part of it. On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised under them, and not from mere formality, the house of Commons would reject the most sneaking petition for the most trifling object, under that mode of signature to which you have thrown open the foldingdoors of your prefence chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly, with as much ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as if you had been visited by the whole representative majefty of the whole English nation. If what this society has thought proper to fend forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the the lefs convincing on account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote and refolution. It stands folely on authority; and in this cafe it is the mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how many they are; who they are; and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined, and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem, adopted for the fake of giving, under an high-founding name, an importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the complexion of a fraud. I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that fociety, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a fimple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and folitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances B4 stances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its diftinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for the then had a government) without enquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract, may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prifon, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the gallies, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. When I fee the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to fufpend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we fee something deeper than than the agitation of a troubled and frothy furface. I must be tolerably fure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion, with the folidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and focial manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilft it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to fee what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may be foon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate insulated private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Confiderate people before they declare themselves will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new perfons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience, and in situations where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may poffibly not be the real movers. |