national guards, directing you at their pleasure, and giving that as law to you, which, under your authority, is tranfmitted as law to us. Through you, thefe burghers difpofe of the lives and fortunes of us all. Why fhould not you attend us as much to the defires of the laborious hufbandman with regard to our rent, by which we are affected in the most ferious manner, as you do to the demands of these infolent burghers relative to distinctions and titles of honour, by which neither they nor we are affected at all? But we find you pay more regard to their fancies than to our neceflities. Is it among the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals? Before this meafure of yours, we might have thought we were not perfectly equal. We might have entertained fome old, habitual, unmeaning prepoffeffion in favour of thofe landlords; but we cannot conceive with what other view than that of deftroying all refpect to them, you could have made the law that degrades them. You have forbidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect, and now you fend troops to fabre and to bayonet us into a fubmiffion to fear and force, which you did not fuffer us to yield to the mild authority of opinion.

The ground of fome of thefe arguments is horrid and ridiculous to all rational ears; but to the politicians of metaphyfics who have opened fchools for fophiftry, and made establishments for anarchy, it is folid and conclufive. It is obvious, that on a mere confideration of the right, the leaders in the affembly would not in the leaft have fcrupled to abrogate the rents along with the titles and family enfigns. It would be only to follow up the principle of their reafonings, and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they had newly poffeffed themselves of a great body of landed property by confifcation. They had this commodity at market; and the market would have been wholly deftroyed, if they were to permit the hufbandman to riot in the fpeculations

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with which they fo freely intoxicated themselves. The only fecurity which property enjoys in any one of its defcriptions, is from the interefts of their rapacity with regard to fome other. They have left nothing but their own arbitrary pleafure to determine what property is to be protected and what fubverted. Reflections on the Revolution in France.

RIGHTS (METAPHYSIC.)

THESE metaphyfic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a denfe medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their ftraight line. Indeed in the grofs and complicated mals of human paffions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo fuch a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes abfurd to talk of them as if they continued in the fimplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of fociety are of the greatest poffible complexity; and therefore no fimple difpofition or direction of power can be fuitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the fimplicity of contrivance aimed at and boafted of in any new political conftitutions, I am at no lofs to decide that the artificers are grofsly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The fimple governments are fundamentally defective, to fay no worfe of them. If you were to comtemplate fociety in but one point of view, all thele fimple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would anfwer its fingle end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole fhould be imperfectly and anomaloufly anfwered, than that, while fome parts are provided for with great exactnefs, others might be totally neglected, or, perhaps, materially injured, by the over-care of a favourite member. Ibid.

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RIGHTS (PETITION AND DECLARATION OF.) IN the famous law of the 3d of Charles I. called the Petition of Rights, the parliament fays to the king, "Your fubjects have inherited this freedom," claiming their franchifes not on abftra&t principles "as the rights of men," but as the rights of Englifhmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly learned men, who drew this petition of right, were as well acquainted, at leaft, with all the general theories concerning the rights of men," as any of the difcourfers in our pulpits, or on your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbè Sieyes. But, for reafons worthy of that practical wildom which fuperfeded their theoretic fcience, they preferred this pofitive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that vague fpeculative right, which expofed their fure inheritance to be fcrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild liti gious fpirit.

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The fame policy pervades all the laws which have fince been made for the prefervation of our liberties. In the 1ft of William and Mary, in the famous ftatute, called the Declaration of Right, the two houses utter not a fyllable of" a right to frame a govern"ment for themselves." You will fee, that their whole care was to fecure the religion, laws, and Jiberties, that had been long poffeffed, and had been lately endangered. "Taking into their moft feri

ous confideration the beft means for making fuch an establishment, that their religion, laws, and "liberties, might not be in danger of being again fubverted,' they aufpicate all their proceedings, by ftating as fome of thofe beft means, " in the firft place" to do" as their ancestors in like cafes have 66 ufually done for vindicating their antient rights and liberties, to declare;"-and then they pray the king

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and queen, that it may be declared and enacted, that all and fingular the rights and liberties afferted and declared are the true antient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom." You will obferve, that from Magna Charta to the declaration of right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and affert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be tranfmitted to our pofterity: -Ibid.

REGICIDE PEACE:

i

If the general difpofition of the people be, as I hear it is, for an immediate peace with regicide, without so much as confidering our public and folemni engagements to the parties, or any inquiry into the terms, it is all over with us. It is ftrange, but it may be true, that as the danger from advances to jacobinifm is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is leffened in theirs. It feems they act under the impreffion of other fort of terrors, which frighten them out of their firft apprehenfions: but it is fit they should recollect, that they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of the terms, make a furrender. They are conquered. They do. hot treat; they receive the law. Then the people of England are contented to feek in the kindness of a foreign fyftematic enemy combined with a dangerous faction at home; a fecurity which they cannot find in their own patriotifm and their own courage. They are willing to truft to the fympathy of regicides, the guarantee of the British monarchy. They are content to reft their religion on the piety of atheifts by establishment. They are fatisfied to feek in the clemency of practifed murderers the fecurity of their lives. They are pleafed to confide their property to the fafeguard of those who are robbers by inclination intereft, habit, and fyftem. If this be our deliberate

mind, truly we deferve to lofe, what we cannot long retain, the name of a nation.Regicide Peace.

REGICIDE PEACE.

WITH a regicide peace the King cannot long have a minister to ferve him, nor the minifter a King to ferve. If the great difpofer, in reward of the royal and private virtues of our fovereign, fhould call him from the calamitous fpectacle which will attend a state of amity with regicide, his fucceffor will furely fee them, unless the fame providence greatly anticipates the courfe of nature. Thinking thus, (and not as I conceive on light grounds) I dare not flatter the reigning fovereign, nor any minifter he has, or can have, nor his fucceffor apparent, nor any of those who may be called to ferve him, with what appears to me a falfe ftate of their fituation. We cannot have them and that peace together.

Ibid.

REGICIDE AND REBELS (FRENCH.) (See HISTORY.) Indemnity and Punishment.

thefe princes had fhewn a tyrannic difpofition, it would be much to be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we fcreened the body of murderers from their juftice, we fhould only leave the innocent in future to the mercy of men of 'fierce and fanguinary difpofitions, of which in spite of all our intermeddling in their conftitution, we could not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reafon to fear their feeble lenity than any blame. able rigour, we ought, in my opinion, to leave the matter to themselves.

If, however, I were afked to give an advice merely as fuch-here are my ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And firft, the body and mafs of the people never ought to be treated as criminal. They may become an object of