The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, Volume 3

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Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846 - English literature - 596 pages

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Page 97 - Trouver une forme d'association qui défende et protège de toute la force commune la personne et les biens de chaque associé, et par laquelle chacun, s'unissant à tous, n'obéisse pourtant qu'à lui-même, et reste aussi libre qu'auparavant!
Page 246 - In Holland, in Switzerland, in the imperial towns of Germany, the press was either legally or practically free. Holland and Switzerland are no more ; and since the commencement of this prosecution, fifty imperial towns have been erased from the list of independent states by one dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve a precarious and trembling existence. I will not say by what compliances they must purchase its continuance. I will not insult the feebleness of states, whose unmerited fall I...
Page 248 - ... publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The Press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free Constitution of our forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen, and I trust I may venture to say that, if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British Empire.
Page 408 - For martial law, which is built upon no settled principles, but is entirely arbitrary in its decisions, is, as Sir Matthew Hale observes (r), in truth and reality no law, but something indulged rather than allowed as a law.
Page 261 - I have only to consider the character of the factions which it must have left behind it. The French revolution began with great and fatal errors. These errors produced atrocious crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was succeeded by bloody anarchy, which very shortly gave birth to military despotism. France, in a few years, described the whole circle of human society. All this was in the order of nature. When every principle of authority and civil discipline, when every principle which enables some...
Page 82 - The massacres of war, and the murders committed by the sword of justice, are disguised by the solemnities which invest them : but the wild justice of the people has a naked and undisguised horror.
Page 136 - The science which teaches the rights of man, the eloquence that kindles the spirit of freedom, had for ages been buried with the other monuments of the wisdom and relics of the genius of antiquity. But the revival of letters first unlocked only to a few the sacred fountain. The necessary labours of criticism and lexicography occupied the earlier scholars, and some time elapsed before the spirit of antiquity was transfused into its admirers. The...
Page 106 - For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on your proceedings.
Page 286 - ... was then charged with the defence of a free press against the oppressor of Europe, as a sacred trust for the benefit of all generations. They felt the sacredness of the deposit, they felt the dignity of the station in which they were placed, and, though deserted by the unEnglish Government of England, they asserted their own ancient character, and drove out the great armies and great captains of the oppressor with defeat and disgrace. Such was the result of the only war hitherto avowedly undertaken...
Page 296 - ... buried, till some historian be found with patience and courage enough to drag them forth into light, for the shame, indeed, but for the instruction, of mankind ; when these crimes were perpetrating, which had the peculiar malignity, from the pretexts with which they were covered, of making the noblest objects of human pursuit seem odious and detestable; which...

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