eptible of perpetual improvement."

The first three propositions may be considered a complete syllogism. If
by adequately communicated, be meant such a conviction as to produce an
adequate effect upon the conduct, the major may be allowed and the
minor denied. The consequent, or the omnipotence of truth, of course
falls to the ground. If by 'adequately communicated' be meant merely
the conviction of the rational faculty, the major must be denied, the
minor will be only true in cases capable of demonstration, and the
consequent equally falls. The fourth proposition Mr Godwin calls the
preceding proposition, with a slight variation in the statement. If so,
it must accompany the preceding proposition in its fall. But it may be
worth while to inquire, with reference to the principal argument of
this essay, into the particular reasons which we have for supposing
that the vices and moral weakness of man can never be wholly overcome
in this world.

Man, according to Mr Godwin, is a creature formed what he is by the
successive impressions which he has received, from the first moment
that the germ from which he sprung was animated. Could he be placed in
a situation, where he was subject to no evil impressions whatever,
though it might be doubted whether in such a situation virtue could
exist, vice would certainly be banished. The great bent of Mr Godwin's
work on Political Justice, if I understand it rightly, is to shew that
the greater part of the vices and weaknesses of men proceed from the
injustice of their political and social institutions, and that if these
were removed and the understandings of men more enlightened, there
would be little or no temptation in the world to evil. As it has been
clearly proved, however, (at least as I think) that this is entirely a
false conception, and that, independent of any political or social
institutions whatever, the greater part of mankind, from the fixed and
unalterable laws of nature, must ever be subject to the evil
temptations arising from want, besides other passions, it follows from
Mr Godwin's definition of man that such impressions, and combinations
of impressions, cannot be afloat in the world without generating a
variety of bad men. According to Mr Godwin's own conception of the
formation of character, it is surely as improbable that under such
circumstances all men will be virtuous as that sixes will come up a
hundred times following upon the dice. The great variety of
com