spectacle more frequent than this. Let us take the first example that offers.

A letter of resignation is just published, addressed by general Washington to the people of the United States of America, and dated 17 September 1796. In that letter is contained the following sentence. The sentiments I am about to deliver, "will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel." To expose the absurdity of this passage, it is not necessary to refine 66 the term upon personal motive," and to observe that every action of general Washington's life, every peculiarity of his education, every scene in which he was engaged, every sensation he ever experienced, was calculated to produce something more than the possibility of personal motive; since all that, which is peculiar to one man, in contradistinction to his fellow men, is susceptible of being made personal motive.

But, to take the term in its vulgar acceptation, there were certainly very few men in America more liable to personal motive, than general Washington. He had filled, with very little interruption, the first situations in his country for more than twenty years. He takes it for granted

indeed that he is exempted from personal motive, because he conceives that his wish to withdraw himself is sincere. But, in the whole period of his public administration, did he adopt no particular plan of politics; and is he absolutely sure that he shall have no personal gratification in seeing his plans perpetuated? Is he absolutely sure that he looks back with no complacence to the period of his public life; and that he is entirely. free from the wish, that such principles may be pursued in future, as shall be best calculated to reflect lustre upon his measures? No discerning man can read this letter of resignation, without being struck with the extreme difference between general Washington and a man who should have come to the consideration of the subject de novo, or without perceiving how much the writer is fettered in an hundred respects, by the force of inveterate habits. To return from this example to the subject of the Essay.

Let us for a moment put out of the question the consideration of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, as they are continually operating upon us in the formation of our opinions. Separately from these, there are numerous circumstances, calculated to mislead the most ingenuous mind in its search after truth, and to account for our embracing the shadow of reason, when we imagined ourselves possessed of the substance. One man, according

to the habits of his mind, shall regard with satisfaction the slightest and most flimsy arguments, and bestow upon them the name of demonstration. Another man, a mathematician for instance, shall be insensible to the force of those accumulated presumptions, which are all that moral and practical subjects will ever admit. A misfortune, more pitiable than either of these, is when a strict and profound reasoner falls into some unperceived mistake at the commencement, in consequence of which, the further he proceeds in his enquiry, and the more closely he follows his train of deductions, he plunges only the more deeply into error.

SECT. II.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE maxims, which the preceding reasonings are calculated to establish, are, that we shall rarely be in the right in allowing ourselves to suspect the sincerity of others in the cause to which they profess adherence; that nothing can be more various than the habits of different minds, or more diversified than their modes of contemplating the same subject; that nothing can be more deceitful than the notion, so general among superficial thinkers, that every cause but their own is destitute of any plausibility of appearance; and that we can never have a just view of the sincerity of men in opinions we deem to be absurd, till we have learned to put

ourselves in their place, and to become the temporary advocates of the sentiment we reject.

It may be useful to illustrate these propositions by a specific instance.

The controversy at present most vehemently agitated, is that between new and old systems of political government. The advocates of both parties for the most part sec nothing, on the side adverse to their own, but wilful perverseness. They cannot believe that their opponents are sincere and ardent well-wishers to the happiness of mankind. All they discern in one case, is a spirit of monopoly and oppression; and in the other, is a discontented heart, anxious to gratify its cravings by the most rapacious and dishonest means. If cach party could be persuaded to see the principle of controversy in the other in a favourable light, and to regard itself and its opponent as contending by different modes for the same object, the common welfare, it would be attended, in this great crisis of the moral world, with the happiest effects.

We will take it for granted for the present that the innovators have the right side of the argument, and will exhibit certain considerations calculated to evince the sincerity and good intention of their adversaries. The instance adduced therefore will be somewhat better adapted for the conviction of the former than the latter.

It may be laid down as an axiom that the enlightened advocate of new systems of government, proceeds upon the establishment or assumption of the progressive nature of man, whether as an individual, or as the member of a society. Let us see how far the principal champions of both hypotheses, are agreed in this doctrine.

The supporters of the systems of government at present in existence, build upon it to a certain extent, as the main pillar of their edifice. They look through the history of man. They view him at first a miserable savage, destitute of all the advantages and refinements of a civilised state, and scarcely in any respect elevated above the brutes. They view him in the progressive stages of intellectual improvement, and dwell with extacy upon the polished manners, the generous sentiments, the scientific comprehensiveness, the lofty flights and divine elevation, which constitute what may at present be denominated the last stage of that progress. They call to mind with horror the fierce and unrelenting passions of savages and barbarians. They see that it has been only by graduated steps that these passions have been controled, in the degree in which they are now controled; and they justly regard personal security as the grand nourisher of leisure, disinterestedness, science and wisdom.

Thus far both parties ought to be considered as