Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/160

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Thoughts on

SECT.XXVI.

Of the chief and essential Remedy.

ALL these may be regarded as temporary and concomitant Supports of Freedom. But the chief and essential Remedy to Licentiousness and Faction, the fundamental Means of the lasting and secure Establishment of civil Liberty, can only "lie in a general and prescribed Improvement of the Laws of Education."

We have seen above, that upright Manners and Principles are the only Basis of true Liberty; that the infant Mind, if left to its own untutored Dictates, inevitably wanders into such Follies and Vices, as tend to the Destruction of itself and others. We have seen, that the early and continued Culture of the Heart can alone produce such upright Manners and Principles, as are necessary to check and subdue the selfish Passions of the Soul; and that Li-