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says Coleridge in The Friend, 'have I reflected with awe on the great and disproportionate power which an individual of no extraordinary talents or attainments may exert, by merely throwing off all restraints of conscience.' And what, he adds, must not be the power of an individual of consummate wickedness who can organise all the forces of a nation? Robespierre, or Napoleon, would have found conscience a great impediment; Godwin's theory seemed to Wordsworth to make it superfluous. Godwin would suppress conscience, and substitute calculation. No doubt for him the calculation was to include the happiness of all. Only, when you have suppressed all ties and associations, it becomes rather puzzling to say what reason you have for caring for others. If husbands and wives may part when it is agreeable to both, will they not part when it is agreeable to either? If a statesman may break through all laws when they oppose a useful end, will he not most simply define useful as useful to himself? Take leave, in other words, of all prejudices and all respect for social bonds, and are you not on the high road to become such a one as the villain of The Borderers? These are, in fact, the problems which Wordsworth tells us brought him into