What security against all this?—­All human securities are liable to uncertainty.  But if anything bids fair for the prevention of so great a calamity, it must consist in the use of the ordinary means of just influence in society, whilst those means continue unimpaired.  The public judgment ought to receive a proper direction.  All weighty men may have their share in so good a work.  As yet, notwithstanding the strutting and lying independence of a braggart philosophy, Nature maintains her rights, and great names have great prevalence.  Two such men as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, adding to their authority in a point in which they concur even by their disunion in everything else, might frown these wicked opinions out of the kingdom.  But if the influence of either of them, or the influence of men like them, should, against their serious intentions, be otherwise perverted, they may countenance opinions which (as I have said before, and could wish over and over again to press) they may in vain attempt to control.  In their theory, these doctrines admit no limit, no qualification whatsoever.  No man can say how far he will go, who joins with those who are avowedly going to the utmost extremities.  What security is there for stopping short at all in these wild conceits?  Why, neither more nor less than this,—­that the moral sentiments of some few amongst them do put some check on their savage theories.  But let us take care.  The moral sentiments, so nearly connected with early prejudice as to be almost one and the same thing, will assuredly not live long under a discipline which has for its basis the destruction of all prejudices, and the making the mind proof against all dread of consequences flowing from the pretended truths that are taught by their philosophy.

In this school the moral sentiments must grow weaker and weaker every day.  The more cautious of these teachers, in laying down their maxims, draw as much of the conclusion as suits, not with their premises, but with their policy.  They trust the rest to the sagacity of their pupils.  Others, and these are the most vaunted for their spirit, not only lay down the same premises, but boldly draw the conclusions, to the destruction of our whole Constitution in Church and State.  But are these conclusions truly drawn?  Yes, most certainly.  Their principles are wild and wicked; but let justice be done even to frenzy and villany.  These teachers are perfectly systematic.  No man who assumes their grounds can tolerate the British Constitution in Church or State.  These teachers profess to scorn all mediocrity,—­to engage for perfection,—­to proceed by the simplest and shortest course.  They build their politics, not on convenience, but on truth; and they profess to conduct men to certain happiness by the assertion of their undoubted rights.  With them there is no compromise.  All other governments are usurpations, which justify and even demand resistance.