第50章 Letter XII(4)

If liberty be that delicious and wholesome fruit,on which the British nation hath fed for so many ages,and to which we owe our riches,our strength,and all the advantages we boast of,the British constitution is the tree that bears this fruit,and will continue to bear it,as long as we are careful to fence it in,and trench it round,against the beasts of the field,and the insects of the earth.To speak without a figure,our constitution is a system of government suited to the genius of our nation,and even to our situation.The experience of many hundred years hath shown,that by preserving this constitution inviolate,or by drawing it back to the principles on which it was originally founded,whenever it shall be made to swerve from them,we may secure to ourselves,and to our latest posterity,the possession of that liberty which we have long enjoyed.What would we more?What other liberty than this do we seek?And if we seek no other,is not this marked out in such characters as he that runs may read?As our constitution therefore ought to be,what it seldom is,the rule of government,so let us make the conformity,or repugnancy of things to this constitution,the rule by which we accept them as favourable,or reject them as dangerous to liberty.They who talk of liberty in Britain on any other principles than those of the British constitution,talk impertinently at best,and much charity is requisite to believe no worse of them.But they who distinguish between practicable and impracticable liberty,in order to insinuate what they mean,or they mean nothing,that the liberty established by the true scheme of our constitution is of the impracticable kind;and they who endeavour,both in speculation and practice,to elude and pervert the forms,and to ridicule and explode the spirit of this constitution:

these men are enemies,open and avowed enemies to it,and by consequence to British liberty,which cannot be supported on any other bottom.Some men there are,the pests of society I think them,who pretend a great regard to religion in general,but who take every opportunity of declaiming publicly against that system of religion,or at least against that church establishment,which is received in Britain.Just so the men of whom I have been speaking affect a great regard to liberty in general,but they dislike so much the system of liberty established in Britain,that they are incessant in their endeavours to puzzle the plainest thing in the world,and to refine and distinguish away the life and strength of our constitution,in favour of the little,present,momentary turns,which they are retained to serve.What now would be the consequence,if all these endeavours should succeed?I am persuaded that the great philosophers,divines,lawyers,and politicians,who exert them,have not yet prepared and agreed upon the plans of a new religion,and of new constitutions in Church and state.We should find ourselves therefore without any form of religion or civil government.The first set of these missionaries would take off all the restraints of religion from the governed,and the latter set would remove,or render ineffectual,all the limitations and controls,which liberty hath prescribed to those that govern,and disjoint the whole frame of our constitution.Entire dissolution of manners,confusion,anarchy,or perhaps absolute monarchy,would follow;for it is possible,nay probable,that in such a state as this,and amidst such a rout of lawless savages,men would choose this government,absurd as it is,rather than have no government at all.