are in such circumstances cramped and limited in their exertions: but when man becomes a member of society, though in its earliest stage, where a number of heads and a multitude of hands co-operate in one design, he will find many difficulties obviated, many facilities of living with ease and secu rity afforded, and consequently that his sphere of action is considerably improved and extended.

Liberty will receive a still greater increase, when, in the more advanced stages of society, to mutual co-operation is added knowledge, and particularly the knowledge of those sciences and arts, which instruct us in the laws and powers of nature, and how to apply them more advantageously to our profit or pleasure. Thus enlightened by science, and provided with fit machines and instruments, we are free to traverse the ocean, or to dive into its depths: to ascend the atmosphere; to travel, in some sense, with the planets; and to penetrate even the starry regions: or, on this solid globe we inhabit, to construct works, and produce effects, which no combination of brute force

or unlearned skill would ever be able to accomplish, and which, prior to experience, might be thought impossible to human be ings.

After these reflections on external liberty, let it be permitted to consider for a moment the relation betwixt civil government and that liberty which is more internal and intellectual, and the consequent effect upon virtue and happiness. The liberty now in question is of so tender and delicate a nature, and requires such a rare concurrence of favourable circumstances to produce it, that it will scarcely be found to exist at all out of political society; and but seldom, even within this pale, in any eminent degree. When the wants of the body are to be supplied by daily labour, there can be little room for mental excursions; and we should generally look in vain for flights of genius, or the severe investigations of reason, amongst hordes of savages, or in the mass of civil communities, which, from the unavoidable condition of humanity, must be chiefly engaged in corporeal employments. It is only amongst those classes of

a cultivated people which can live comforta bly upon their own fortune, or by the rewards held out to intellectual exertion, that we can probably expect to meet with men of a free and enlarged understanding,

It is therefore in those states whose animating principle is liberty, that we must look for a just exercise of reason, or a spirit of free inquiry. Under despotic governments, the mind lies abject and depressed with the body, without any ardour for rational investigation, which might draw down the vengeance of a power founded in ignorance and injustice; and this general depression of reason goes still further to strengthen the hands of despotism. Thus civil and intellectual slavery generate and increase one another; and the same is true of liberty. Let the government be free, and it will no less elevate and liberalize the public understanding, than it will sink and degrade it, when despotic. On the other hand, let the public mind be dignified and expanded with knowledge, and it will liberalize the government; as it will be sure to invite op

pression and tyranny, when contracted and debased by ignorance.

Hence it may appear, how much the virtue and happiness of society is connected with the exercise of a free and expansive, yet solid understanding; or, in other words, with a just liberty of thinking; a liberty that should carefully be distinguished from the rovings of a wild and vigorous imagination, which delights itself with framing new systems of religion or government, and with a perverse opposition to whatever is already established; and often proves equally mischievous to the public and the individual.

Let him therefore who is ambitious of breaking the shackles of credulity and prejudice, and who means, at the same time, to be of any real service to the world or to himself, learn to prefer plain and practical truth to the most plausible theories; and secondly, before he goes in quest of new opinions, let him carefully examine the old, and remember to propose his speculations with a due regard to the authority of others; since, without this modesty and precaution, he may come to be profane or heretical in

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religion, and seditious in politics; and to need that control from his superiors, which he is unwilling to exercise upon himself.

Indeed to restrain the excesses of a spirit of inquiry, without depriving society in some measure of its use, is, I suppose, beyond the reach of political wisdom. All human advantages must be taken as they exist, entangled with evils which it is impos sible entirely to separate; if we can get rid of the more importunate, it is all we can reasonably expect. Wise and moderate governments will therefore lean to the side of discussion, as generally tending to their own improvement, and the common good of mankind; and will think it sufficient if they can prevent its more material inconveniences.

III. The connection of civil government, or of a social state, with Virtue and Happiness, will yet further appear, if we consider it as a species of moral discipline, first in respect to the Will; and secondly, to the Passions.

Notwithstanding some preceding strictures