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ftructions. They too are among the unhappy. They feel perfonal pain and domeftic forrow. In thefe they have no privilege, but are fubject to pay their full contingent to the contributions levied on mortality. They want this fovereign balm under their gnawing cares and anxieties, which being lefs converfant about the limited wants of animal life, range without limit, and are diverfified by infinite combi nations in the wild and unbounded regions of imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear; fomething to relieve in the killing languor and over-laboured laffitude of those who have nothing to do; fomething to excite an appetite to exiftence in the palled fatiety which attends on all pleasures which may be bought, where nature is not left to her own procefs, where eyen defire is anticipated, and therefore fruition defeated by meditated fchemes and contrivances of delight; and no interval, no obftacle, is interpofed between the wifh and the accomplishment. flections on the Revolution in France.

RELIGION. (SEE ATHEISM.)

Re

RELIGION.is among the most powerful caufes of enthusiasm. When any thing concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the author of their being. They hate him with all their heart, with "all their mind, with all their foul, and with all their ❝ftrength." He never prefents himself to their thoughts, but to menace and alarm them. They cannot ftrike the Sun out of Heaven, but they are able to raise as mouldering fmoke that obfcures him from their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a delight in vicariously

defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces his image in man.-Regicide Peace.

RUSSIA. (SEE REVOLUTION (FRENCH.) THE Ruffian government is of all others the most liable to be fubverted by military, fedition, by court confpiracies, and fometimes by head-long rebellious people, fuch as the turbinating movement of Pugatchef. It is not quite so probable, that in any of thele changes the fpirit of fyftem may mingle in the manner it has done in France. The Mufcovites are no great fpeculators; but I fhould not much rely on their uninquifitive difpofition, if any of their ordinary motives to fedition fhould arife. The little catechifma of the Rights of Man is foon learned, and the references are in the paffions. Memorial on the Affairs of France in 1791.

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RIGHTS.

Natural and Chartered.

THE rights of men, that is to fay, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed facred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to aff &t them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be fet up against it. If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by exprefs covenants, if they are clearly defined and fecured against chicane, against power, and authority, by written inftruments and pofitive engagements, they are still in a better condition: they partake not only of the fanctity of the object fo fecured, but of that folemn public faith itself, which fecures an object of fuch importance. Indeed this formal recognition, by the fovereign power, of an original right in the fubject, can never be fubverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of Government, and even of fociety itself. The char

ters, which we call by diftinction great, are public inftruments of this nature; I mean the charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things fecured by thefe inftruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights of men.

Thefe charters have made the very name of a char ter dear to the heart of every Englifhman, But, Sir, there may be, and there are charters, not only dif ferent in nature, but formed on principles the very reverfe of thofe of the great charter. Of this kind is the charter of the Ealt-India Company. Magna charta is a charter to reftrain power, and to deftroy monopoly. The Eaft-India charter is a charter to eftablish monopoly, and to create power, Political power and commercial monopoly are not the rights of men; and the rights to them derived from charters, it is fallacious and fophiftical to call the chartered rights of men." Thefe chartered rights, (to speak of fuch charters and of their effects in terms of the greateft poffible moderation) do at leaft fufpend the natural rights of mankind at large; and in their very 'frame and conftitution are liable to fall into a direct violation of them.-Speech on Mr. Fox's Eaft-India Bill.

RIGHTS OF MAN.

THEY (the French) made and recorded a fort of inftitute and digeft of anarchy, called the Rights of Man, in fuch a pedantic abuse of elementary principles, as would have difgraced boys at school; but this declaration of rights was worfe than trifling and pedantic in them; as by their name and authority they fyftematically deftroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration, they fubverted the ftate; and brought on fuch calamities as no country, without a long war, has ever been known to fuffer.Speech on the Army Eftimates.

RIGHTS OF MAN (FRENCH)
Compared to a portentous Comet.

ASTRONOMERS have fuppofed, that if a certain Comet, whofe path interfected the ecliptic, had met the earth in fome (I forget what) fign, it would have whirled us along with it, in its eccentric courfe, into God knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, (which " from its horrid hair fhakes peftilence, and war," and

with fear of change perplexes Monarchs,") had that comet croffed upon us in that internal ftate of England, in 1780, nothing human could have prevented our being irrefiftibly hurried, out of the highway of heaven, into all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miferies of the French revolution.-Letter to a noble Lord.

RICHTS OF MAN (REAL).

FAR am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their falfe claims of right, I do not mean to injure thofe which are real, and are fuch as their pretended rights would totally deftroy. If civil fociety be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an inftitution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule.. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to juftice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their induftry; and to the means of making their induftry fruitful. They have a right to the acquifitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to confolation in death. Whatever each man can feparately do, without trefpaffing upon others, he has a right to do for himfelf; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which fociety, with all

Its combinations of skill and force, can do in his fayour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He that has but five fhil lings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint ftock; and as to the fhare of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the ftate, that I muft deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil fociety; for I have in my contemplation the civil focial man, and no other. It is a thing to be fettled by convention. -Reflections on the Revolution in France.

RIGHTS OF MAN, (THE OBJECT OF.)

THE political dogma, which upon the new French fyftem, is to unite the factions of different nations, turns on this," That the majority told, by the head, "of the taxable people in every country, is the per"petual, natural, unceafing, indefeasible fovereign; "that this majority is perfectly mafter of the form, "as well as the administration of the state, and that "the magiftrates, under whatever names they are "called, are only functionaries to obey the orders, "(general as laws or particular as decrees) which. "that majority may make; that this is the only na"tural government; that all others are tyranny and ❝ ufurpation."

In order to reduce this dogma into practice, the republicans in France, and their affociates in other countries, make it always their bufinefs, and often their public profeffion, to deftroy all traces of antient establishments, and to form a new commonwealth in each country, upon the bafis of the French Rights of Men. On the principle of thefe rights, they mean to institute in every country, and as it were, the germ of the whole, parochial governments, for the

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