Inheritors and conservators of national freedom, let
us, while others are seeking it in restlessness and trouble, be a
steady and shining light to guide their course; not a wandering
meteor to bewilder and mislead them.
Let it not be thought that this is an unfriendly or disheartening
counsel to those who are either struggling under the pressure of
harsh government, or exulting in the novelty of sudden
emancipation. It is addressed much rather to those who, though
cradled and educated amidst the sober blessings of the British
Constitution, pant for other schemes of liberty than those which
that Constitution sanctions, other than are compatible with a
just equality of civil rights, or with the necessary restraints
of social obligations; of some of whom it may be said, in the
language which Dryden puts into the mouth of one of the most
extravagant of his heroes, that
"They would be free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in the woods the noble savage ran."
Noble and swelling sentiments! but such as cannot be reduced into
practice. Grand ideas! but which must be qualified and adjusted
by a compromise between the aspirings of individuals, and a due
concern for the general tranquility; must be subdued and
chastened by reason and experience before they can be directed to
any useful end! A search after abstract perfection in government
may produce in generous minds an enterprise and enthusiasm to be
recorded by the historian and to be celebrated by the poet; but
such perfection is not an object of reasonable pursuit, because
it is not one of possible attainment; and never yet did a
passionate struggle after an absolutely unattainable object fail
to be productive of misery to an individual, of madness and
confusion to a people.
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