and place, is abfolutely required; and the evidence of the EXTERNAL SENSES of those, who were the immediate witneffes, is the first and laft credential.

a

THAT, on friday the 13th day of the laft month, the Univerfity and City of Oxford expreffed their loyalty and affection to a most amiable and illuftrious SOVEREIGN, the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY, and the FRIEND OF ALL MEN, and teftified an univeral and unbounded joy for his recovery from a long and dangerous fickness, and his resumption of the throne of these kingdoms, by a general Illumination, is a Fact of which we who were present were rejoiced to be convinced: and of which conviction the evidence of one of the most familiar of the Senfes was the adequate and fufficient caufe. Here was a full coincidence of all the particulars which are requisite to evince and establish the truth of Facts.

• March 1789.

SECT.

SECT. II.

Of REASONING in regard to Facts.

So fa

far from being the confequences and conclufions of any procefs of Reason, FACTS refult immediately from the Senfes, and convince the mind, without its confidering or attending to their phyfical or other causes, and become themselves as First Principles of Reasoning.

As truths, each of them ftands on its feparate and independent bottom, terminating and concluding in itself: fo that all direct comparisons and judgments between one Fact and another, or between a Fact and any thing else, is irrelevant to their truth, and all Inductive Reasoning of course excluded. For moral and political purposes they are often, indeed, generalized and ranged into claffes; but as truths they want no General Propofitions O

from

from which they are to be deduced as confequences: And, if they admit of no Secondary Principles, all Reasoning by Syllogifm or Superinduction is of courfe totally fuperceded.

BUT though REASON has no proper or direct concern with Facts, under the high privilege of Firft Principles, it is never better or more effentially employed, than when it examines, and enquires about, them. The Method which it purfues may, indeed, be very different from those we have been tracing both in Mathematics and in Phyfics, (for, give it fair play, and Reafon will, fome way or other, adapt itself to every thing;) it is not, however, to be rejected or discarded here. This useful office it performs, by examining whether the External Senfes, the first and final evidence of Facts, are in a found and healthy state; whether they are well and fufficiently informed; and whether they are subject to no impediment from nature, no impofition from art, nor fallacy from accident. In this exercife, it does not prefume to change

or

or to correct the verdict of the Senfes, by any preconceived notion, or factitious determination, of its own. Senfible of the fuperior dignity and exclufive privilege of First Principles, it forbears to compare them with any thing else, and to judge of them by any medium but themselves. All that it prefumes to do, is, by indirect and collateral comparifons, to rectify and afcertain the evidence of Senfe by the evidence of Sense; that is, to judge of it by itself.

Thus, if, on viewing any object with care and circumfpection, what appears to one eye, appears the fame to others which fee it at the fame time and place; or, if what appears to one eye at a certain time and place, has uniformly appeared the fame at all other times and places; we conclude, from thefe comparisons and judgments, which is an indirect mode of REASONING and a species of ANALOGY, that the Senfe is fufficiently perfect and well-informed.

And, what contributes both to facilitate and to enfure the conclufion, is, that Facts are truths in which we are bred and converfant

from infancy; fo that hourly experience of them in ourselves, confirmed by the express, and perhaps more by the tacit, acknowledgement of the fame in others, would immediately detect and expofe any impediment, deception, or fallacy in the Senfes, and thus effectually fecure the judgment from mistake and error.

SECT III.

Of the TRUTH of Facts.

Τ

HOUGH derived from the fame First

Principle of knowledge with Mathematical and Phyfical truth, logically viewed that of FACTS is effentially different both from the demonftrations of the one, and from the deductions of the other; as it differs from them, both in its nature and conftitution, and in the mode of reasoning employed about it.

This fpecies of TRUTH enjoys the pecu