thrown; a constitution substituted; that constitution again subverted, although it had expressly provided against violent changes; and in its place we behold a shapeless pile of broken powers, top-heavy with an enormous military, and on the point of tumbling into one universal ruin. This army, which has carried away all those who should have cultivated the land, and thus may be said to have eaten up its own bowels, has just in the eyes of all Europe given the lie to the most boasted principle of the French revolution, I mean the abstinence from conquest, in annexing Savoy to the dominions of France. Into the same absurdities and contradictions are individuals betrayed, when they profess a rule of conduct which their natures are incompetent to maintain.

The rights of man are of two denominations, as man has a two-fold nature-he is either a solitary individual, or he is a member of a corporation. As an independent individual, he has a right to all he can acquire; as a member of a corporation, he has a right only to what he can acquire without trespassing upon others. In society, therefore, his rights become relative and confined; and consequently, in questions that relate to man in society, we are not to consider what are man's abstract and solitary rights, but what are those rights which may be allowed him consistently with the common advantage. Our individual rights ought to be considered as so completely subordinate to the interests of the whole, and by consequence so distinct from our individual interest, that our first care, in forming ourselves into a political body, must be to establish a power which no individual can resist. Natural liberty, as has somewhere been said, is the right of common on a waste; but civil liberty is

the safe exclusive enjoyment of a cultivated inclosure. The rights, then, which constitute our civil liberty, are the only rights which are worth maintaining; and these are properly the rights of the people.

The word people supposes society and subordination; and man, as a part of the people, has his civil rights alone to consider, which include as much of his natural rights as are wholesome in his present circumstances. Nor can man, in this situation, be said to be removed out of a state of nature: it is only an improved state of nature to which he is advanced. The weakness of infancy, the vigour of manhood, and the wisdom of age, are all in a course of nature; and the real import of the term is so far from being confined to a state of uncultivated independence, that art and habit do in fact belong to our nature, and are a part of our original constitution. It is this spontaneous faculty of improvement that is the distinguishing property of man, in opposition to the brute: a state, therefore, to which the exercise of this attribute exalts us, cannot be otherwise than a state of nature to man; and, consequently, the rights which belong to this state are natural rights: and our civil rights are the rights of nature and of man, in those circumstances of improvement to which the exercise of his natural faculties has raised him.

Let us no longer then be imposed upon by these savage theories about natural liberty and the rights of man; let us consider our rights as swallowed up in our interests, and let us disclaim all those boasted rights which are incompatible with our real happiness. The right which we ought to contemplate with the greatest satisfaction is the right of restraining, by mutual compact and general consent,

those unsocial rights which are exercised in savage life.

In the mean time, as an Englishman, I venerate civil liberty, and the rights of the people; but I have learned to know that civil liberty implies restraint, and that the people's rights require to be secured by a strong government; which government, to endure, must be accommodated to man's nature, and the mixed circumstances of his condition here. It must be built on no abstracted doctrines of right, but on the more solid ground of expediency. It must suppose and allow for human passions and human vices; it must maintain a controul over these passions, by directing them to a mutual opposition; it must turn them when it can, into favourable channels; it must proceed upon a supposition that industry begets property, property inequality, inequality ambition; it must conciliate, and not oppose, these natural tendencies, and enable itself to withstand the shock of unavoidable evils, by warily providing against them.

Politics are no abstract things; they exist only by their relation to positive facts and occurrences. In the air of speculative possibility they cease to breathe; they contain no metaphysical demonstrations, no truths à priori, no immutable axioms; but are complexional, contingent, and variable, as are all the natural and moral circumstances of man. Nothing is true in politics that is not experimentally good; and every thing is politically false that is practically injurious. And thus we see that the principles of government, for which so many are searching into remote and occult causes, are in fact deposited in every man's bosom.

The sense which our present race of speculative politicians would give to the rights of man, render

them as unwarrantable as the divine rights of kings; and is certainly an error more dangerous in its consequences, as it leads to the worst condition of humanity, a condition of anarchy and confusion. But whatever qualifications others more reasonable may annex to this phrase, it is the last imprudence to hold it forth to the people as expressive of the object for which they are to strive. The vulgar take the broadest meaning of the words, as most suitable to their capacities, and most flattering to their passions. The rights of man, to their conceptions, suppose an equal participation of luxury and power; not understanding that power implies subordination, and luxury owes it existence to the distinction of orders in society; that in levelling the rich, they rob themselves of employment; and that, in raising themselves out of their sphere, they would annihilate that description from which arise the plenty they are so eager to enjoy.

When a people rise, from a sense of grievance, their objects are clear and definite; but when their minds are possessed with a zeal for speculative opinions, they have no reason in their claims, or rule in their actions; but, urged on in the dark with undistinguishing impetuosity, they suppose every thing an enemy that they happen to encounter, and they destroy in a moment what an age is insufficient to repair.

No. 36. SATURDAY, JANUARY 12,

TO THE ASSOCIATION FOR PRESERVING LIBERTY AND PROPERTY AGAINST REPUBLICANS AND

LEVELLERS.

In my paper of last Saturday, it was my design to show that the rights of man, in the sense in which they are now vulgarly meant and understood, are not his natural rights, or suited to his circumstances in civil society. It follows then, that if our constitution be a bad one, at the worst it is better than the plan of these theoretical politicians, since positive facts do undeniably prove, that, such as it is, it has enough of the cementing principle to hold us together in a long political union, and sufficient accommodation to the wants and faculties of man, to favour the growth of every social improvement. Now although this evident truth, upon the principle laid down in my last essay, that in politics things are true or false according to their tendencies to produce good or evil, without any reference to any abstract reasonings, is a clear testimony to the legitimacy and the wisdom of the British constitution; yet, as the causes of these effects lie open to inquiry, it is worth the pains to examine them, to be convinced how far they are built on solid and durable foundations.

Amidst all the variations in the moral circumstances of man, his passions persevere in an uniform and steady current. Their tones, their expressions,