SPEECH

ON A

MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS BY THE RIGHT HON.  C.J.  FOX,

MAY 11, 1793,

FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN

A BILL TO REPEAL AND ALTER CERTAIN ACTS RESPECTING RELIGIOUS OPINIONS,

UPON THE OCCASION OF

A PETITION OF THE UNITARIAN SOCIETY

I never govern myself, no rational man ever did govern himself, by abstractions and universals.  I do not put abstract ideas wholly out of any question; because I well know that under that name I should dismiss principles, and that without the guide and light of sound, well-understood principles, all reasonings in politics, as in everything else, would be only a confused jumble of particular facts and details, without the means of drawing out any sort of theoretical or practical conclusion.  A statesman differs from a professor in an university:  the latter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman, has a number of circumstances to combine with those general ideas, and to take into his consideration.  Circumstances are infinite, are infinitely combined, are variable and transient:  he who does not take them into consideration is not erroneous, but stark mad; dat operam ut cum ratione insaniat; he is metaphysically mad.  A statesman, never losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances; and judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment, he may ruin his country forever.

I go on this ground,—­that government, representing the society, has a general superintending control over all the actions and over all the publicly propagated doctrines of men, without which it never could provide adequately for all the wants of society:  but then it is to use this power with an equitable discretion, the only bond of sovereign authority.  For it is not, perhaps, so much by the assumption of unlawful powers as by the unwise or unwarrantable use of those which are most legal, that governments oppose their true end and object:  for there is such a thing as tyranny, as well as usurpation.  You can hardly state to me a case to which legislature is the most confessedly competent, in which, if the rules of benignity and prudence are not observed, the most mischievous and oppressive things may not be done.  So that, after all, it is a moral and virtuous discretion, and not any abstract theory of right, which keeps governments faithful to their ends.  Crude, unconnected truths are in the world of practice what falsehoods are in theory.  A reasonable, prudent, provident, and moderate coercion may be a means of preventing acts of extreme ferocity and rigor:  for by propagating excessive and extravagant doctrines, such extravagant disorders take place as require the most perilous and fierce corrections to oppose them.