etails,
without the means of drawing out any sort of theoretical or practical
conclusion. A statesman differs from a professor in an university: the
latter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman,
has a number of circumstances to combine with those general ideas, and
to take into his consideration. Circumstances are infinite, are
infinitely combined, are variable and transient: he who does not take
them into consideration is not erroneous, but stark mad; _dat operam ut
cum ratione insaniat_; he is metaphysically mad. A statesman, never
losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances; and
judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment, he may ruin his
country forever.

I go on this ground,--that government, representing the society, has a
general superintending control over all the actions and over all the
publicly propagated doctrines of men, without which it never could
provide adequately for all the wants of society: but then it is to use
this power with an equitable discretion, the only bond of sovereign
authority. For it is not, perhaps, so much by the assumption of unlawful
powers as by the unwise or unwarrantable use of those which are most
legal, that governments oppose their true end and object: for there is
such a thing as tyranny, as well as usurpation. You can hardly state to
me a case to which legislature is the most confessedly competent, in
which, if the rules of benignity and prudence are not observed, the most
mischievous and oppressive things may not be done. So that, after all,
it is a moral and virtuous discretion, and not any abstract theory of
right, which keeps governments faithful to their ends. Crude,
unconnected truths are in the world of practice what falsehoods are in
theory. A reasonable, prudent, provident, and moderate coercion may be a
means of preventing acts of extreme ferocity and rigor: for by
propagating excessive and extravagant doctrines, such extravagant
disorders take place as require the most perilous and fierce corrections
to oppose them.

It is not morally true that we are bound to establish in every country
that form of religion which in _our_ minds is most agreeable to truth,
and conduces most to the eternal happiness of mankind. In the same
manner, it is not true that we are, against the conviction of our own
judgment, to establish a system of opinions and practices directly
contrary to those ends, only because some majority of the pe