the moral world, either for the better or
worse, have been introduced not by the bare statement of facts, which are
things already known, and which must always operate nearly in the same
manner, but by the development of certain opinions and abstract principles
of reasoning on life and manners, on the origin of society and man's
nature in general, which being obscure and uncertain, vary from time to
time, and produce correspondent changes in the human mind. They are the
wholesome dew and rain, or the mildew and pestilence that silently
destroy. To this principle of generalization all religious creeds, the
institutions of wise lawgivers, and the systems of philosophers, owe their
influence.

It has always been with me a test of the sense and candour of any one
belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great
man. Of all the persons of this description that I have ever known, I
never met with above one or two who would make this concession; whether it
was that party feelings ran too high to admit of any real candour, or
whether it was owing to an essential vulgarity in their habits of
thinking, they all seemed to be of opinion that he was a wild enthusiast,
or a hollow sophist, who was to be answered by bits of facts, by smart
logic, by shrewd questions, and idle songs. They looked upon him as a man
of disordered intellects, because he reasoned in a style to which they had
not been used and which confounded their dim perceptions. If you said that
though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you thought him an
admirable reasoner, and a close observer of human nature, you were
answered with a loud laugh, and some hackneyed quotation. "Alas! Leviathan
was not so tamed!" They did not know whom they had to contend with. The
corner stone, which the builders rejected, became the head-corner, though
to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness; for indeed I
cannot discover that he was much better understood by those of his own
party, if we may judge from the little affinity there is between his mode
of reasoning and theirs.--The simple clue to all his reasonings on
politics is, I think, as follows. He did not agree with some writers, that
that mode of government is necessarily the best which is the cheapest. He
saw in the construction of society other principles at work, and other
capacities of fulfilling the desires, and perfecting the nature of man,
besides those of securing the equal en