with the consequences of indulging vicious beings with
liberty. It cuts off the hope of improving the morals of
mankind, by excluding the most successful preceptor. And
it excludes the remedy against abuses, by asserting that it
must fail, if the nation is not virtuous. Without losing time
in shewing, that the difficulty of ascertaining the prevalence
of national virtue or vice; and whether it is natural or artificial; and the want of a standard for fixing the quantity
able to maintain good, or requiring bad government, leaves
the position in a state of generality, incapable of being proved
or disproved; I shall upon other grounds advert again to
this doctrine, on account of its special hostility to the
conventional mode of preserving good political principles.
Which is the best defender of human rights, virtue or wisdom? Cannot an individual maintain his rights unless he is virtuous? Behold the virtuous fool and the wise knave. If a philosopher should run through the world exclaiming to every vicious man he met, "Sir, you cannot be free, because you are vicious; the best thing you can do is to become my slave," would he make one proselyte? Would he be thought a maniack or an apostle? Why has the same egregious absurdity, preached by politicians, succeeded? Simply because it was favourable to abuses, frauds, parties of interest, and tyranny in every form. All associations, chartered and unchartered for trade, city government, banking, and speculations of every kind, earnestly preach and sedulously in practice, contemn this doctrine. They rely upon wisdom and republican principles for the security of their own rights, and deny the efficacy of the same security in respect to national rights, because of a defect of virtue in a nation, of which they compose a portion, not more virtuous than the rest. They are perpetually calling partnership and separate interest conventions, in order to make use of their wisdom to defend legal or chartered privileges, to advance private interest, and to annoy the publick; but they will not allow nations to use their wisdom for self defence in the same mode, because they want virtue. If wisdom
