you, be given from all our ancient authors. But does this import us any thing?' "TOOKE. Surely, much, if it shall lead us to the clear understanding of the words we use in discourse. For as far as we know not our own meaning,' as far as our purposes are not endowed with words to make them known,' far we gabble like things most brutish.' But the importance rises higher, when we reflect upon the application of words to metaphysics. And when I say metaphysics, you will be pleased to remember that all general reasoning, all politics, law, morality, and divinity, are merely metaphysics." [What is this general reasoning of Mr Tooke's?] "Well," replies his pupil," you have satisfied me that wrong, however written, whether wrang, wrong or wrung, like the Italian torto and the French tort, is merely the past tense or participle of the verb to wring; and has merely that meaning? "TOOKE. True; it means wrung or wrested from the right or ordered line of conduct. Right is no other than rectum, the past participle of the Latin verb regere. dritto, and the French droit, are no other than the past participle directum. In the same manner VOL. I. The Italian our English word just is the past participle of the verb jubere (jussum). "BURDETT. What, then, is law? "TOOKE. It is merely the past participle. laz, of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb legan, ponere; and it means something or anything laid down as a rule of conduct. Thus when a man demands his right, he only asks that which it is ordered he shall have. A right conduct is that which is ordered. A right line is that which is ordered or directed, not a random extension, but the shortest between two points. A right and just action is such a one as is ordered and commanded. The right hand is that which custom, and those who have brought us up, have ordered or directed us to use in preference, when one hand only is employed, and the left hand is that which is lieved or left. "BURDETT. Surely the word right is sometimes used in some other sense. And see, in this newspaper before us, M. Portalis, contending for the concordat, says: The multitude are much more impressed with what they are commanded to obey, than with what is proved to them to be right and just.' This will be complete nonsense, if right and just mean ordered and commanded. "TOOKE. I will not undertake to make sense of the arguments of M. Portalis. The whole of his speech is a piece of wretched mummery, employed to bring back again to France the more wretched mummery of pope and popery. Writers on such subjects are not very anxious about the meaning of their words. Ambiguity and equivocation are their strongholds. Explanation would undo them. 66 " BURDETT. Well, but Mr Locke uses the word in a manner hardly to be reconciled with your account of it. He says:"God has a right to do it, we are his creatures.' TOOKE. It appears to me highly improper to say, that God has a right, as it is also to say that God is just. For nothing is ordered, directed, or commanded concerning God. The expressions are inapplicable to the Deity: though they are common, and those who use them have the best intentions. They are applicable only to men, to whom alone language belongs, and of whose sensations only words are the representations; to men, who are by nature the subjects of orders and commands, and whose chief merit is obedience. BURDETT. Every thing, then, that is ordered and commanded is right and just. 66 TOOKE. Surely; for that is only affirming that what is ordered and commanded is-ordered and commanded. "BURDETT. These sentiments do not appear to have made you very conspicuous for obedience. There are not a few passages, I believe, in your life, where you have opposed what was ordered and commanded. Upon your own principles, was that right? "TOOKE. Perfectly. BURDETT. How now! was it ordered and commanded that you should oppose what was ordered and commanded? Can the same thing be at the same time both right and wrong ? "TOOKE. Travel back to the island of Melinda, and you will find the difficulty most easily solved. A thing may be at the same time both right and wrong, as well as right and left. It may be commanded to be done, and commanded not to be done. The law, i. e. that which is laid down, may be different by different authorities. "I have always been most obedient when most taxed with disobedience. But my right hand is not the right hand of Melinda. The right I revere is not the right adored by sycophants, the jus vagum, the capricious command of princes or ministers. I follow the law of God (which is laid down by him for the rule of my conduct) when I follow the laws of human nature which, without any testimony, we know must proceed from God, and upon these are founded the rights of man, or what is ordered for man." On this passage I will observe that I think it would be difficult for Mr Tooke himself to find a more precious instance of unmeaning jargon in the writings of any school-divine. Mr Tooke first pretends gravely to define the essence of and just from the etymology of those words, by saying that they are something laid down and something ordered; and when pressed by the difficulty that there are many things laid law down and and many things ordered which are neither "law" nor "just," makes answer that their obligation depends on a higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not seem to throw much light. At one time, it quite demonstrable that the essence of seems all law, right, and justice consists in its being ordered or communicated by words: the very idea is absurd, unless we conceive of it as some thing either spoken or written in a book; and yet the very next moment this fastidious reasoner the unwritten, uncommunicated law of gets up God, which he says must conform to the laws of |