sible for an Englishman, discoursing on the elements of social happiness and prosperity, to avoid a continual reference to the land where his affections are centred, from whose system of society he has derived his own happiness, the sources of which he desires to transmit uncontaminated to posterity. And in the second place it appeared to me that, throughout the wide circle of political history, I could find no other country where the foundations are so fairly laid fairly laid upon an enlightened view of moral and political expediency; and where society has advanced so far with so little necessary retrenchment of the comfort and happiness of the people. Such a constitution of things, therefore, presents points of illustration and comparison on the advanced stages of society which would elsewhere be sought in vain. I am well persuaded that none of my countrymen will think the time mispent which is employed in tracing such a system up to its original elements,-in investigating the principles upon which it may be preserved in vigour, and transmitted, perhaps with some improvements, to remote ages.

The Reader is entreated to recollect, that this Treatise proceeds little further than to the elements of civil society in the several stages of its progress; or to the principles which enable the community to subsist in comfort and happiness as it advances in wealth and population. Such an exposition is a necessary preliminary to all discussions on the higher arrangements of polity; for the people must be at ease in their circumstances before they can

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become the instruments of forwarding the views of the statesman for the wealth and glory of their country, as a member of the commonwealth of nations.

I wish to add in conclusion, that I should be sorry if any expressions used in enforcing the arguments connected with morals and religion should be thought to undervalue the labours of the metaphysical school of philosophy. As matter for intellectual exercise and improvement, as exciting and fos tering a spirit of inquiry and reflection upon the operations of the human mind, the lucubrations of that school must be admitted to be of great importance. But the ambition of its professors takes a higher flight, and aims at establishing practical rules of political and moral conduct upon general and incontrovertible principles; and here I must be permitted to think that they outstep the bounds of the legitimate influence of their science, and, by leading their pupils to rely upon a vague and defieient standard of opinion, are peculiarly in danger of misleading their minds upon many important subjects of moral and political practice.

The fact seems to be that as scarcely any two philosophers ever exactly agreed in the practical inferences justly deducible from a metaphysical inquiry, the science is in itself insufficient for the establishment of general principles in morals and politics; and, when propounded for such a purpose as a department of education, is liable to contract the youthful mind instead of enlarging it, and to confine it within the trammels of its own particular

school. It educates the politician to bend the circumstances of general society to a conformity with those peculiar views which his own school has been pleased to sanction with the name of general principles, although those principles are in direct oppo-. sition to the tenets of other schools equally worthy. of credit and regard; and the contest is between the ipse dixit of one set of philosophers and the ipse dixit of another, rather than between the natural infirmity and selfishness of mankind, and that enlarged view of moral and religious philanthropy which can be drawn only from one source and sanctioned only by one reference. But it is upon the result of this last-mentioned contest that many important elementary principles in politics depend.

Fully admitting, therefore, the usefulness of metaphysical inquiry as a means of intellectual exertion, and as an instrument for promoting what its

advocates are pleased to term "the progress of

mind," I do not think that a writer can be fairly said to undervalue it, although he may wish to qualify the insinuation of one of its ablest and most

eloquent professors, that the " diffusion of the philosophical spirit," and its "

application to the natural or theoretical history of society, to the history of the languages, the arts, the sciences, the laws, the government, the manners, and the religion of mankind, form the peculiar glory of the latter half of the eighteenth century." *

* See 1st Dissert. prefixed to Suppl. Encycl. Brit. by Dugald Stewart, Esq. F.R.S. &c.-P. 54.

Now the practical efficacy of the two last-mentioned objects (if not of the two which precede them,) upon the welfare of mankind does not upon the whole appear to have been promoted by the philosophical spirit of the latter half of the last century. It may therefore be doubted how far a just view has yet been taken of their "natural or theoretical history." Are we in fact authorized by history, experience, or revelation, exclusively to rest our hopes of moral and religious improvement, or in many cases even of political amelioration, upon the bare cultivation of our intellectual faculties? And is not that system peculiarly liable to abuse in its application which confines those offices to the im provement of the understanding, the full discharge of which must at least be aided by a reformation of the heart, and by the abandonment of the selfish principles of our nature; operations which lie beyond the scope of mere intellectual exertion?

It may be perfectly true that in arts and sciences, on which men reason with minds comparatively unprejudiced, and where the conclusions themselves are the result of strict induction from facts previously demonstrated, every new fact or established argument is a solid addition to our knowledge, and serves as a stepping-stone to further acquisitions. every man at all in the habit of reflecting upon moral evidence, is aware that moral and political truths rest upon principles very different from those by which scientific truths are established. The assent of the mind is with difficulty obtained by

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reasoning alone to conclusions resting upon premises which we cannot investigate to the bottom, and which frequently run counter to the natural and selfish dispositions of mankind. Neither can propositions thus supported furnish ground for the establishment of further truths; for, as it has been well observed, "the first conclusion not being universally true, but true only in a certain proportion, out of a given number of cases, we are in danger of building our second process of reasoning on one of those cases in which it may fail. In our third process we run two risks of assuming a false ground; and in our fourth process we run three, and so on: whence it is evident that it cannot be completely safe to proceed more than one step; or, to place this matter in a plainer light, the first conclusion is not certainly but only probably true. The second will be probable only on a supposition that the first should in the event prove true; that is, it is only a probability of a probability: and the third conclusion will be probable only on a supposition that both the former should prove true; i. e. it is the probability of a probability of a probability. Thus in the progress, the uncertainty of the conclusion is continually increasing."

Now that this is true of moral reasoning, (except in so far as it depends upon revelation,) does not, I think, admit of doubt. It appears equally true of all inquiries determinable by mere moral evidence. Hence the impossibility, on any authority less than that of revelation, of establishing general principles