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Thoughts on
viduals: Hence Cunning will often evade, and Force will often defy, the coercive Power of the best-formed Laws. Thus public Wisdom must give Way to private Gratification, the Innocent must become a Prey to the Guilty; that is, in other Words, Liberty must be destroyed, and Licentiousness must triumph.
SECT.V.
Virtuous Manners and Principles the only permanent Foundation of civil Liberty.
WHAT, then, are the permanent Foundations, on which perfect Liberty can arise?—I answer, it can only arise on the Power of such a System of Manners and Principles effectually impressed on the human Mind, as may be an inward Curb to every inordinate Desire; or rather, such as may so frame and model the Human Heart, that its ruling Desires
