I will now, by way of relaxation, turn a thought or two to Mr. Burke. I ask his pardon for neglecting him so long.
“America,” says he (in his speech on the Canada Constitution bill), “never dreamed of such absurd doctrine as the Rights of Man .”
Mr. Burke is such a bold presumer, and advances his assertions and his premises with such a deficiency of judgment, that, without troubling ourselves about principles of philosophy or politics, the mere logical conclusions they produce, are ridiculous. For instance,
If governments, as Mr. Burke asserts, are not founded on the Rights of Man , and are founded on any rights at all, they consequently must be founded on the right of something that is not man . What then is that something?
Generally speaking, we know of no other creatures that inhabit the earth than man and beast; and in all cases, where only two things offer themselves, and one must be admitted, a negation proved on anyone, amounts to an affirmative on the other; and therefore, Mr. Burke, by proving against the Rights of Man , proves in behalf of the beast ; and consequently, proves that government is a beast; and as difficult things sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than to show the origin of the government. They are in the place of a constitution. O John Bull, what honours thou hast lost by not being a wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke’s system, have been in the Tower for life.