MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS ON POLITICS, JURISPRUDENCE, MORALS, AND RELIGION; INTERSPERSED WITH CHARACTERS. The following "Remarks," thus abruptly introduced, and stripped of the circumstances which led to them, are taken from a pamphlet published by Dr. Parr, in a private controversy, soon after the occurrence of the Birmingham riots. The occasion which gave rise to the controversy was entirely of a local and personal nature, and long since forgotten; but the "Remarks" which, in his usual excursive manner, were incidentally thrown in, seemed to the Editors worthy of preservation, MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS ON POLITICS, JURISPRUDENCE, MORALS, &c. In the purity of my conversation, in the regularity of my morals, in the diligent and conscientious discharge of my professional, duties, and in a steady attachment to the Established Religion of my Country, I will not yield the palm of superiority to any Clergyman now living, however exalted may be his rank, however distinguished may be his talents, and however applauded may be his orthodoxy. Whether or no the course of my reading, and the habits of my thinking, may have led me to more correct notions, and to a more ardent love of civil and religious freedom, than some men are sup * For all the egotisms which follow, I can offer the candid reader no other plea than that of self-defence; and upon the validity of that plea he may determine as he goes on. In the mean time, I shall say, with old Plutarch, ¿μéμñтws éorìv, äv ἀπολογούμενος τούτο ποιῇς πρὸς Διαβόλην ἢ κατηγορίαν.—See vol. ii. page 540. edit. Xyland. ↑ "The liberty," say I with Mr. Burke, the only liberty, "I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot at all exist without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle."-Burke's Appeal, page 35. "To be possessed,” as Mr. Burke elsewhere says, "it must be limited; but it is a good to be improved, not an evil to be jessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, posed to entertain, is a question which I will not discuss in the extent to which I might carry such a discussion without insincerity and without impropriety. But my principles, I am sure, will never endanger the Church; my studies, I hope, are such as do not disgrace it; and my actions, I can say with confidence, have uniformly tended to preserve it from open, and from what I conceived to be unjust, attacks. When my beloved and respected friend Dr. John Jebb, was conducting a petition "for a relief from subscription," I was no stranger to the splendid talents and exemplary virtues which distinguished many of his associates. I was no enemy to that active and impartial spirit of enquiry, which had led other men into opinions far bolder than my own. But I refused to act with Dr. Jebb, because his plan grasped at too much in too short a time, and because I had been informed of a more temperate scheme, which was to have been laid before Archbishop Cornwallis by two ecclesiastical dignitaries, who have since been deservedly raised to the episcopal bench. Upon all reformations, whether civil or ecclesiastical, I look not only to the wishes and to the arguments of individuals, but to the collective wisdom of the legislature. In the earlier part of my life I thought the Test but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it." These two passages occur in pages 57 and 58 of Mr. Burke's "Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents;" and they are very judiciously quoted in page 92 of Sir Brooke Boothby's very candid and sensible Letter to Mr. Burke. Act oppressive; but in the year 1782 I very carefully and very seriously re-examined the subject, and changed my opinion. In 1790 I strenuously opposed the attempt to procure a repeal; and y I cannot help indulging the comfortable hope, that in the progress of intellectual and moral improvement religious animosities will at last subside, and that the restraints for which I have contended, and do now contend, will no longer be thought necessary for the public safety, by the heads of that Church, which I have never deserted, and by the members of that Legislature, which I have never disobeyed. In the mean time, I think it my duty to distinguish between the private and the public characters, between the literary merits and the political singularities, between the substantial virtues and the occasional indecorums of those persons who may not agree with me in my religious creed; and, perhaps, if the same distinctions were now and then made by greater and wiser men than myself, the general tranquillity of the kingdom would not be less permanently secured, and the noblest interests of virtue would be promoted more effectually. From the indignation, therefore, which I felt at the behaviour of one person in respect to Dr. Priestley's letters, let no man infer (for without uncharitableness, and without injustice no man living can infer,) that I am an advocate for latitudinarianism in the Church, or a confederate with republicans in the state. * My political creed lies in a short compass, and I will tell it to the reader in better words than my own; Τοῖς μὲν ἐλευθερία γιγνέσθω μετὰ βασιλικῆς· ἀρχῆς, τοῖς δὲ |