re it for this
only, that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction
between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No
one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what
I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be entitled
to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now, it is
different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not
negative rights;--for every pretended negative would be in effect a
positive;--as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself whether he would,
or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully
attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or
more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less
than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable
mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is
not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse.
All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as _a_ to A,
is a mean to A, or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor,
as _b_ to A, is a mean to B, or property.

Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:--

"Chimney-pieces!" &c.

The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,--that
is, if the same in all the prior editions,--irremediable but by bold
conjecture. "_Till_ my tackle," should be, I think, "_While_," &c.

Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a
sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the
least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value
their chastity as a material thing,--not as an act or state of being; and
this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are
represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational
humourists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo who
has had a basin of cow-broth thrown over him;--for this, though a debasing
superstition, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we
cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It
is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chastity as a virtue, but
only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing by
handling an ox's eye. In _The Queen of Corinth_, indeed, they talk
differently; but it is all talk, and