changes have produced—nor do we reflect that in order to keep a great nation together—to make it act with equality, or with preponderancy, among other nations, the individual exertions must be concentrated, must be directed—and that this requires a ruler vested with supreme power, and interested by some great and endearing motive, such as hereditary possession of this power and influence, to maintain and defend this coalition of men.—All this is overlooked, and we attend only to the subordination which is indispensably necessary. Its grievances are immediately felt, and they are heightened tenfold by a delicacy or sensibility which springs from the great improvements in the accommodations and enjoyments of life, which the gradual usurpation and subsequent subordination have produced, and continue to support. But we are determined to have the elegance and grandeur of a palace without the prince.—We will not give up any of our luxuries and refinements, yet will not support those high ranks and those nice minds which produced them, and which must continue to keep them from degenerating into barbarous simplicity and coarse sensuality. We would keep the philosophers, the poets, the artists, but not the Mæcenases. It is very true that in such a state there would be no Conjuration des Philosophes; for in such a state this vermin of philosophes and scribblers would not have existed. In short, we would have what is impossible.
I have no hesitation in saying, that the British Constitution is the form of government for a great and refined nation, in which the ruling sentiments and propensities of human nature seem most happily blended and balanced. There is no occasion to vaunt it as the ancient rights of Britons, the wisdom of ages, &c. It has attained its present pitch of perfection by degrees, and this not by the efforts of wisdom, but by the struggles of vice and folly, working on a rich fund of good nature, and of manly spirit, that are conspicuous in the British character. I