Prejudice, I stop to mention, is a word generally used in a bad sense, but is not necessarily an opinion that is wrong, but only an opinion, whether right or wrong, one that is held without knowing its reason. Mr. Burke does not stay to give this explanation.

"We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.”

Such are the sentiments to be found in the work of Mr. Burke; not only conceived and written during the spring and summer of 1790, but, as I must again and again repeat, published at the close of 1790, full two years before that stage of the Revolution, at which we are now arrived, the execution of the king. It was followed immediately by another work, "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly;" and again, soon after, by his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs;" a work well worthy to support his Reflections, and full of important wisdom. In each of them may be found matter of the same prophetic nature with what I have quoted from the Reflections. Of this, his greater work (the Reflections), the fault may be, and, indeed is, that Mr. Burke did not sufficiently exhibit the prior offences of the privileged orders, and their want of political virtue and wisdom, the general disrespect into which the old government had justly fallen, by its long defiance of public opinion, and its disregard

of its duties; the fault of Mr. Burke's work may be also, that he makes not sufficient allowance for the difficulties, with which the members of the Constituent Assembly had to struggle, nor states the faults that were committed by the court party; but when all this has been admitted, as I think it must, such paragraphs, as I have selected from the midst of many, many, others of the same kind, show clearly a penetrating and philosophic mind, that saw distinctly what others did not see, the full danger of this invasion of the world by the new opinions; that, whether politically or morally considered, it was impossible that these opinions should lead to practical good; that it was not for the interest of France or of mankind ever to adopt them; and still less in so headlong a manner to cast off their old opinions; that the politicians of the day every where were too sanguine, too daring, too experimental; that neither in morals, nor in governments could men be rendered wiser, or happier, by resolving, on system, to demolish every thing and begin anew; that this was neither the tone nor the manner of those who deserved to be thought the instructors and improvers either of their own country or of mankind. These were the general views and doctrines of Mr. Burke, at a season of somewhat universal enthusiasm, running (and very violently) in a contrary direction among the young and the intelligent more especially wherever they were found; and this is a merit, and a very extraordinary merit, which, amidst all the faults of his mind. (and they grew more striking as the Revolution proceeded), must not be denied him, and this has rendered his book (I speak of his Reflections, though not at all excluding, much the contrary, his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs) so invaluable to the same description of most important persons in a community, the young and the intelligent, if they will but, as they are always bound to do, seize upon the wisdom of a book, and cast away such passages as may appear intemperate and less worthy to be retained.

To them indeed, thus considered, and reference being had to such objections as I have made, and as are sufficiently obvious, it is a work of the most eminent usefulness and weighty admonition, because the principles alluded to and enforced, are as unchangeable as Nature itself, and of an application that can never cease.

THE

LECTURE XXXV.

STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1792.

HE execution of the king is an epoch in the history of the French Revolution; it was the signal of the entire triumph, as I have already mentioned, of the new opinions over the old. From this moment no compromise seemed possible, the contest was to be mortal. This impolitic as well as cruel act was, on the part of the French Convention, a defiance of all Europe. "You have thrown down the gauntlet to kings," said the ferocious Danton; "this gauntlet is the head of a king." In this mortal strife between the new and old opinions, our own country was now to mingle; and this is too important an event in the history of the French Revolution, as well as our own, not to be recommended to your particular consideration. I have already, to a certain degree, prepared you for this subject, for I adverted to the effects produced on the friends of freedom in this country, and on our writers, by the rise and progress of the new opinions in France. I pointed out to you the memorable discussion that took place in the House of Commons, between Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox; and I have very fully called your attention to the celebrated publication of the former statesman, his "Reflections on the Revolution of France;" a work which was read by every man of any intelligence in the kingdom; and, combined with the interesting events that were from that time every day taking place in Paris, made the French Revolution a subject of constant observance and conversation to all persons of reflecting minds. I must now pursue the subject a little further. It is the year 1792 that you must fix your eyes upon. During this year in France, as you are aware, the legislative assembly had become more distrustful of the king, his situation more intolerable; the Girondists, the

Jacobins, had more and more prevailed; the Austrian war had taken place; the 10th of August, the massacres of September, the meeting of the Convention, the manifesto and invasion of the Duke of Brunswick, his retreat, and the successful invasion of the Low Countries by Dumourier; finally, on the meeting of the Convention, a republic had been proclaimed, furious decrees had followed, that seemed to menace Europe; and it was now too plain, that the king would, ere long, be transferred from his prison to the scaffold; these were events that could not but deeply agitate a country like our own; and it is this agitation, the more striking particulars of which you are now to consider.

I must premise a few remarks. The war between the new opinions and the old, was in morals what I have already described to you, when I alluded to the writings of Burke; but in politics it was not a little between the feudal notions of Europe, and what may in a general manner be termed republican notions; between the prerogative of the monarch, the rights of privileged orders, the law of primogeniture— between these and those views of man and of society, which may be termed popular and republican views; such views as might be expected to be found among the members of representative bodies, when issuing immediately from the people, and readily sympathizing with their opinions. Reasoners of these opposite descriptions naturally fixed their eyes, and embarked their feelings in the striking scenes exhibited before them in the French Revolution; receiving different impressions, and drawing different conclusions.

For a certain period our dissensions of this kind were sufficiently general in their nature, and moderate in their expressions; were so in the main, and with some exceptions; but towards the middle and close of 1792, great changes of sentiment had taken place, and the question at issue had become nearly this whether the Revolution, whether the violent party in France at least, ought or ought not to be put down, for the sake of Europe, and the very existence of civilized society. And with regard to this question, it must be observed, that from the proselytizing spirit, the furious decrees, and revolting crimes of the Revolution on the one side, and from the manifesto and the invasion of the Duke of Brunswick on the

other, each party had topics enough to urge, and the contending passions of all public and private men in this country had become at last perfectly ungovernable; all moderation was lost, and all candour; and the parties became quite incapable of listening to each other.

ance.

But to enter a little more into the detail. The French Revolution was at first favourably received in this country; but ours is a mixed government, and those who live under it have always consisted of men distinctly differing in their opinions, and surveying, with very different eyes, the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges of the people; admitting the positive value of both the one and the other, but entertaining very different notions of their relative importIt was therefore impossible that such a work as Mr. Burke's Reflections should not make a very wide and deep impression, at the time that it appeared, on the minds of the community; carrying along with it all those, in the first place, who might be classed under the general denomination of Tories, or the upholders of prerogative; and obliging, in the second place, even a certain portion of the Whigs, or the upholders of privilege, to pause and hesitate and at last to assent to the reasonings of its author; finally, on a principle of alarm, to support the measures of the ministers, who had entirely sympathized with Mr. Burke. Still of this party of the Whigs there were remaining those forming a third division of opinion, who entirely differed both from their political friends, the Alarmists, and from their original political opponents in the Tory party; and who contended, Mr. Fox at their head, that there was an end of freedom, if such sentiments as those that appeared in the Reflections of Mr. Burke were suffered to prevail; that the French Revolution was not fairly treated; that its faults and crimes were to be deplored, not made an argument against all revolutions; that excesses in cases of this kind were unavoidable; and that even the worst excesses only showed what the former government had been, and how dreadful were the evils that were by the Revolution to be removed.

It was in this state of things that appeared the celebrated work of Paine, his answer to Mr. Burke, his Rights of Man. The first part was published early in 1791; Mr. Burke con