e
view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the
nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which
with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political
principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The
circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme
beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as
well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago,
have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government, (for she then
had a government,) without inquiry what the nature of that government
was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation
upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed
amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a
madman who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome
darkness of his cell on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and
liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke
prison upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act
over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and
their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful
Countenance.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at
work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild
gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our
judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the
liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation
of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I
venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have
really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver;
and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I
should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of
France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government,
with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the
collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality
and religion, with solidity and property, with peace and order, with
civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too;
and without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not
likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is,