HE Author begins this celebrated performance with fome animadverfions on the Constitutional and Revolution Societies of London, and cautions the French Gentleman, to whom the letter is addreffed, from fuppofing that their Refolutions contain the fentiments of the people of Eng land. He then proceeds to examine with extreme feverity, the famous "Dif. courfe on the love of our country" preached by Dr Price, at the diffenting meeting houfe of the Old Jewry, on the Anniversary of the Revolution laft year. He dwells particularly on three pofitions maintained in that difcourfe, namely, that by the Revolution we have acquired a right, 1. To choose our own governors; 2. To cafhier them for misconduct; and, 3. To frame a government for ourselves, Thefe doctrines he controverts with great earnestness; and having, from a retrospective view of the hiftory of our Conftitution, endeavoured to prove that it was amended and confirmed, not altered, at the Revolution, he thus proceeds:

"You will obferve, that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our conftitution to claim and affert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be tranfmitted to our pofterity; as an eftate fpecially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means, our conftitution preferves an unity in fo great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and an houfe of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchifes, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

"This policy appears to me to be the refult of profound reflectio; or rather the happy effect of following na

002

ture, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A fpirit of inno vation is generally the refult of a felfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to pofterity, who never look backward to their anceftors. Befides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inhe ritance furnishes a fure principle of confervation, and a fure principle of tranfmiflion; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquifition free; but it fecures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on thefe maxims, are locked faft as in a fort of family fettlement; grafped as in a. kind of mortmain for ever. By a conftitutional policy, working after the pa tern of nature, we receive, we hold we tranfmit our government and our privileges, in the fame manner in which we enjoy and tranfmit our property and our lives. The inftitutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down, to us and from us, in the fame courfe and order. Our political fyftem is placed in a juft correfpondence and fymmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body compofed of transitory parts; wherein, by the difpofition, of a ftupendous wifdom, moulding toge ther the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable conftancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progreffion. Thus, by preferving the method of nature in the conduct of the ftate, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obfolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by .he fuperitition of antiquarians, but by the fpirit of philofo

phic