Great stress, indeed, is laid on the authority of our ancient Laws, both in this and the other Works of our patriotic Author; and whatever his System may be, it is impossible not to feel, that the Author himself possesses the heart of a genuine Englishman. But still his System can neither be changed nor modified by these appeals: for among the primary maxims, which form the groundwork of it, we are informed not only that Law in the abstract is the perfection of Reason; but that the Law of What? The God and the Law of the Land are all one! Statutes against Witches? Or those bloody Statutes against Papists, the abolition of which gave rise to the infamous Riots in 1780 ? Or (in the Author's own opinion) the Statutes of Disfranchisement and for making Parliaments septennial?-Nay! but (Principle 28)" an unjust Law is no Law:" and (P. 22.) against the Law of Reason neither prescription, statute, nor custom, may prevail, and if any such be brought against it, they be not prescriptions, statute, nor customs, but things void: and (P. 29.) What the Parliament doth shall be holden for nought, whensoever it shall enact that which is contrary to a natural Right!" We dare not suspect a grave Writer of such egregious trifling, as to mean no more by these assertions, than that what is wrong is not right;

Men to judge for themselves, he alludes to that elevation in the Kingdom of Heaven which is promised to every man who shall be virtuous, or in the language of that time, a Saint. Do ye not know, says he, that the Saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that ye shall judge the Angels? How much more things that pertain to this Life? If after such authorities, such manifestations of truth as these, any Christian_through those prejudices, which are the effects of long habits of injustice and oppression, and teach us to despise the poor, shall still think it right to exclude that part of the commonalty, consisting of Tradesmen, Artificers, and Labourers,' or any of them from voting in elections of members to serve in parliament, I must sincerely lament such a persuasion as a misfortune both to himself and his Country. And if any man, (not having given himself the trouble to consider whether or not the Scripture be an authority, but who, nevertheless, is a friend to the rights of mankind) upon grounds of mere prudence, policy, or expediency, shall think it advisable to go against the whole current of our constitutional and law maxims, by which it is self-evident that every man, as being a MAN, created FREE, born to FREEDOM, and, without it, a THING, a SLAVE, a BEAST; and shall contend for drawing a line of exclusion at freeholders of forty pounds a year, or forty shillings a year, or householders, or potboilers, so that all who are below that line shall not have a vote in the election of a legislative Guardian,-which is taking from a citizen the power even of self-preservation, such a man, I venture to say, is bolder than he who wrestled with the Angel; for he wrestles with frod himself, who established those principles in the eternal laws of nature, never to be violated by any of his Creatures." P. 23-24.

and if more than this be meant, it must be that the Subject is not bound to obey any act of Parliament, which according to his conviction entrenches on a Principle of natural Right; which natural Rights are, as we have seen, not confined to the Man in his individual capacity, but are made to confer universal legislative privileges on every Subject of every State, and of the extent of which every man is competent to judge, who is competent to be the object of Law at all, i. e. every man who has not lost his Reason.

In the statement of his Principles therefore, I have not misrepresented Major Cartwright. Have I then endeavoured to connect public odium with his honoured name, by arraigning his Motives, or the Tendency of his Writings? The tendency of his Writings, in my inmost Conscience I believe to be perfectly harmless, and I dare cite them in confirmation of the opinions which it was the object of my sd. and 4th. Numbers to establish, and as an additional proof, that no good Man communicating what he believes to be the Truth for the sake of Truth, and according to the rules of Conscience, will be found to have acted injuriously to the peace or interests of Society. The venerable State-Moralist (for this is his true character, and in this Title is conveyed the whole Error of his System) is incapable of aiding his arguments by the poignant condiment of personal slander, incapable of appealing to the envy of the Multitude by bitter declamation against the follies and oppressions of the higher Classes! He would shrink with horror from the thought of adding a false and unnatural influence to the cause of Truth and Justice, by details of present Calamity or immediate Suffering, fitted to excite the fury of the Multitude, or by promises of turning the current of the public Revenue into the channels of individual Distress and Poverty, so as to bribe the Populace by selfish hopes! It does not belong to Men of his Character to delude the uninstructed into the belief, that their shortest way of obtaining the good things of this Life, is to commence busy Politicians, instead of remaining industrious Labourers. He knows, and acts on the Knowledge, that it is the

I had written a Note on this most interesting Subject, which insensibly grew under my pen to the length of a full Essay, and will form the next Number of THE FRIEND, under the title of VULGAR ERRORS CONCERNING TAXES and TAXATION.

duty of the enlightened Philanthropist to plead for the poor and ignorant, not to them.

No-From Works written and published under the control of austere Principles, and at the impulse of a lofty and generous enthusiasm, from Works rendered attractive only by the fervor of sincerity, and imposing only by the Majesty of Plain Dealing, no danger will be apprehended by a wise Man, no offence received by a good Man. I could almost venture to warrant our Patriot's publications innoxious, from the single circumstance of their perfect freedom from personal themes in this AGE OF PERSONALITY, this age of literary and political Gossiping, when the meanest Insects are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian Superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the tail; when the most vapid Satires have become the objects of a keen public Interest purely from the number of contemporary characters named in the patch-work Notes (which possess, however, the comparative merit of being more poetical than the Text), and because, to increase the stimulus, the Author has sagaciously left his own name for whispers and conjectures!-In an Age, when even. Sermons are published with a double Appendix stuffed with names-in a Generation so transformed from the characteristic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral Sheet of a London Newspaper to the everlasting Scotch Professorial Quarto, almost every Publication exhibits or flatters the epidemic Distemper; that the very "Last years Rebuses" in the Lady's Diary, are answered in a serious Elegy "On my Father's Death," with the name and habitat of the elegiac Edipus subscribed;-and "other ingenious solutions were likewise given" to the said Rebuses not, as heretofore, by Crito, Philander, A B, X Y, &c. but by fifty or sixty plain English Sirnames at full length, with their several places of abode! In an Age, when a bashful Philalethes or Phileleutheros is as rare on the title-pages and among the signatures of our Magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of our shy and notice-shunning Grandfathers! When (more exquisite than all) I see an EPIC POEM (Spirits of Maro and Mæonides, make ready to welcome your new Compeer!) advertised with the special recommendation, that the said EPIC POEM contains more than a hundred names of living Persons! No-if Works as abhorrent, as those of Major Cartwright, from all unworthy

provocatives to the vanity, the envy, and the selfish passions of mankind, could acquire a sufficient influence on the public mind to be mischievous, the plans proposed in his pamphlets would cease to be altogether visionary: though even then they could not ground their claims to actual adoption on self-evident Principles of pure Reason, but on the happy accident of the Virtue and Good Sense of that Public, for whose Suffrages they were presented. (Indeed with Major Cartwright's Plans I have no quarrel; but with the Principles, on which he grounds the obligations to adopt them.)

But I must not sacrifice Truth to my reverence for individual purity of Intention. The tendency of one good Man's Writings is altogether a different thing from the tendency of the System itself, when seasoned and served up for the unreasoning Multitude, as it has been by Men whose names I would not honour by writing them in the same sentence with Major Cartwright's. For this System has two sides, and holds out very different attrac tions to its Admirers that advance towards it from different points of the Compass. It possesses qualities, that can scarcely fail of winning over to its banners a numerous Host of shallow heads and restless tempers, Men who without Learning (or, as one of my Friends has forcibly expressed it, "strong Book-mindedness") live as Almsfolks on the opinions of their Contemporaries, and who, (well pleased to exchange the humility of regret for the зelf-complacent feelings of contempt) reconcile themselves to the sans-culotterie of their ignorance, by scoffing at the useless Fox-brush of Pedantry.* The attachment of this numerous Class is owing neither to the solidity and depth of foundation in this Theory, or to the strict coherence of its arguments; and still less to any genuine reverence for Humanity in the abstract. The physiocratic System promises to deduce all things and every

• "He (Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) knowing that Learning hath no Enemy but Ignorance, did suspect always the want of it in those Men who derided the habit of it in others: like the Fox in the Fable, who being without a Tail, would persuade others to cut of theirs as a burthen. But he liked well the Philosopher's division of Men into three ranks-some who knew good and were willing to teach others; these he said were like Gods among Menothers who though they knew not much yet were willing to learn; these he said were like Men among Beasts-and some who knew not good and yet despised such as should teach them; these he esteemed as Beasts among Men." Lloyd's State Worthies. n. 35.

thing relative to Law and Government, with mathematical exactness and certainty, from a few individual and selfevident Principles. But who so dull, as not to be capable of apprehending a simple self-evident Principle, and of following a short demonstration? By this System (THE SYSTEM as its Admirers were wont to call it, even as they named the Writer who first applied it in systematic detail to the whole constitution and administration of civil Policy, (D Quesnoy, to wit) le Docteur or, THE TEACHER) by this System the observation of Times, Places, relative Bearings, History, national Customs and Character, is rendered superfluous: all, in short which according to the common notion makes the attainment of legislative Prudence a work of difficulty and long-continued effort, even for the acutest and most comprehensive minds. The cautious Balancing of comparative Advantages, the painful calculation of forces and counter-forces, the preparation of Circumstances, the lynx-eyed Watching for Opportunities, are all superseded; and by the magic Oracles of certain axioms and definitions it is revealed, how the World with all its concerns should be mechanized, and then let go on of itself. All the positive Institutions and Regulations, which the Prudence of our Ancestors had provided, are declared to be erroneous or interested Perversions of the natural Relations of Man; and the whole is delivered over to the faculty, which all Men possess equally, i. e. the common sense or universal Reason. "The science of Politics, it is said, is but the application of the common Sense, which every Man possesses, to a subject in which every Man is concerned.' To be a Musician, an Orator, a Painter, a Poet, an Architect, or even to be a good Mechanist, presupposes Genius; to be an excellent Artizan or Mechanic, requires more than an average degree of Talent; but to be a Legislator requires nothing but common Sense. The commonest human intellect therefore suffices for a perfect insight into the whole Science of civil Polity, and qualifies the Possessor to sit in Judgement on the Constitution and Administration of his own Country, and of all other Nations. This must needs be agreeable Tidings to the great mass of Mankind. There is no Subject, which Men in general like better to harangue on, than Politics: none, the deciding on which more flatters the sense of self-importance. For as to what Doctor Johnson calls