tient, creature whatfoever, no not fo much as a kitling, to torment.- -Speech previous to the Election at» Briftol.

PEOPLE (PRIVILEGED.)

MANY are the collateral difadvantages, amongst a privileged people, which muft attend on those who have no privileges.Letter to Sir H. Langrifhe M. P.

POPULAR SPIRIT.

BUT whatever may be reprefented concerning the meanness of the popular fpirit, I, (Burke) for one, do not think fo defperately of the British nation. Our minds are light, but they are not evil. We are dreadfully open to delufion and to dejection, but we. are capable of being animated and undeceived.Regicide Peace.

PUBLIC MAN, HIS DUTY.

WHEN the public man omits to put himself in a fituation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omiffion that fruftrates the purposes of his truft, almost as much as if he had formally deftroyed it. It is furely no very rational account of a man's life, that he has always acted right, but has taken special care to act in fuch a manner that his endeavours could not poffibly be productive of any confequence.- -Thoughts on the Caufe of the prefent Difcontents.

PUBLIC ESTATES.

ALL public eftates which are more fubfervient to the purposes of vexing, overawing, and influencing thofe who hold under them, and to the expence of perception and management, than of benefit to the revenue, ought, upon every principle, both of revenue and of freedom, to be difpofed of.-Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

PUBLIC.

I PERFECTLY agree with you, that times and circumftances, confidered with reference to the public, ought very much to govern our conduct; though I am far from flighting, when applied with difcretion to thofe circumftances, general principles and maxims of policy.-Letter to Sir H. Langrifhe, M. P.

PUBLIC OFFICES.

ALL offices which bring more charge than proportional advantage to the ftate; all offices which may be engrafted on others, uniting and fimplifying their duties, ought, in the firft cafe, to be taken away; and in the fecònd, to be confolidated.

All fuch offices ought to be abolished as obftru&t the profpect of the general fuperintendant of finance; which deftroy his fuperintendancy, which difable him from forefeeing and providing for charges as they may occur; from preventing expence in its origin, checking it in its progrefs, or fecuring its application to its proper purpofes. A minifter under whom expences can be made without his knowledge, can never fay what it is that he can spend, or what it is that he can fave,-Oecon. Reform.

POLITICIANS (VULGAR.)

THE Condition of princes, and fometimes of minifters too, is to be pitied. The creatures of the defk, and the creatures of favour had no relish for the principles of the manifeftoes of the combined powers against France. They promifed no governments, no regiments, no revenues from whence emoluments might arife, by perquifite or by grant. In truth, the tribe of vulgar politicians are the loweft of our fpecies. There is no trade fo vile and mechanical as government in their hands. Virtue is not

their habit. They are out of themselves in any course of conduct recommended only by confcience and glory. A large, liberal, and profpective view of the interefts of States paffes with them for romanee; and the principles that recommended it for the wanderings of a difordered imagination. The calculators compute them out of their fenfes. The jefters and buffoons fhame them out of every thing grand and elevated. Littleness in object and in means, to them appears foundnefs and fobriety. They think there is nothing worth pursuit, but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two foot rule; which they can tell upon ten fingers. -Regicide Peace.

POLITICAL REASON DEFINED.

POLITICAL reafon is a computing principle; adding, fubtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphyfically, true moral denominations. Reflections on the Revolution in France.

POLITICAL ARRANGEMENTS.

In their political arrangements, men have no right to put the well-being of the prefent generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral truft with any certainty in our hands, is the care of our own time. With regard to futurity, we are to treat it like a ward. We are not fo to attempt an improve. ment of his fortune, as to put the capital of his eftate to any hazard.-Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

POLITICS (NEW SYSTEM.) (SEE RELIGION.)

THESE principles of internal, as well as external divifion and coalition, are but just now extinguished. But they who will examine into the true character and genius of fome late events, must be fatisfied that

other fources of faction, combining parties among the inhabitants of different countries into one connexion, are opened, and that from thefe fources are likely to arife effects full as important as those which had formerly arifen from the jarring interefts of the religious fects. The intention of the feveral actors in the change in France, is not a matter of doubt. It is very openly profeffed.

In the modern world, before this time, there has been no inftance of this fpirit of general political faction, feparated from religion, pervading feveral countries, and forming a principle of union between the partizans in each. But the thing is not lefs in human nature. The ancient world has furnished a ftrong and ftriking inftance of fuch a ground for faction, full as powerful, and full as mifchievous as our spirit of religious fyftem had ever been, exciting in all the ftates of Greece (European and Afiatic) the most violent animofities, and the most cruel and bloody perfecutions and profcriptions. These ancient factions in each commonwealth of Greece, connected themselves with thofe of the fame defcription in fome other States; and fecret cabals and public alliances were carried on and made, not upon a conformity of general political interefts, but for the fupport and aggrandizement of the two leading ftates which headed the ariftocratic and democratic factions. For, as in later times, the King of Spain was at the head of a catholic, and the King of Sweden of a proteftant intereft, France, (though catholic, acting fubordinately to the latter,) in the like manner the Lacedemonians were every where at the head of the aristocratic interefts, and the Athenians of the democratic. The two leading powers kept alive a conftant cabal and confpiracy in every ftate, and the political dogmas concerning the conftitution of a republic, were the great inftruments by which thefe leading States chofe to aggrandize themfelves. Their choice was not unwife; because the intereft in opi

nions (merely as opinions, and without any experi mental reference to their effects) when once they take ftrong hold of the mind, become the moft operative of all interefts, and indeed very often fupercede every other.

I might further exemplify the poffibility of a political fentiment running through various ftates and combining factions in them, from the hiftory of the middle ages in the Guelfs and Ghibellines. Thefe were political factions originally in favour of the Emperor and the Pope, with no mixture of religious dogmas; or if any thing religioufly doctrinal they had in them originally, it very foon difappeared; as their firft political objects difappeared alfo, though the fpirit remained. They became no more than names to diftinguifh factions; but they were not the lefs powerful in their operation, when they had no direct point of doctrine, either religious or civil,'to affert. For a long time, however, those factions gave no fmall degree of influence to the foreign chiefs. in every commonwealth in which they existed. I do not mean to purfue further the track of thefe parties I allude to this part of history only, as it furnishes an inftance of that fpecies of faction which broke the locality of public affections, and united defcriptions of citizens more with ftrangers than with their countrymen of different opinions.Memorial on the Affairs of France in 1791.

PROTESTANT RELIGION.

WE know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the bafis of civil fociety, and the fource of all good and of all comfort*. In Eng

Sit igitur hoc ab initio perfuafum civibus, dominos effe omnium erum ac moderatores, deos; eaque, quæ gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac numine; eofdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quifque fit, quid agat, quid in fe admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones intueri: piorum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebus imbutæ mentes haud fane abhor. rebunt ab utili et a vera fententia. Cic. de Legibus, 1, 2.