ther expense to the
revenue than the salary of the judges, it is astonishing how such a mass
of taxes can be employed. Not even the internal defence of the country
is paid out of the revenue. On all occasions, whether real or contrived,
recourse is continually had to new loans and new taxes. No wonder,
then, that a machine of government so advantageous to the advocates of
a court, should be so triumphantly extolled! No wonder, that St. James's
or St. Stephen's should echo with the continual cry of constitution;
no wonder, that the French revolution should be reprobated, and the
res-publica treated with reproach! The red book of England, like the red
book of France, will explain the reason.*[19]

I will now, by way of relaxation, turn a thought or two to Mr. Burke. I
ask his pardon for neglecting him so long.

"America," says he (in his speech on the Canada Constitution bill),
"never dreamed of such absurd doctrine as the Rights of Man."

Mr. Burke is such a bold presumer, and advances his assertions and his
premises with such a deficiency of judgment, that, without troubling
ourselves about principles of philosophy or politics, the mere logical
conclusions they produce, are ridiculous. For instance,

If governments, as Mr. Burke asserts, are not founded on the Rights of
Man, and are founded on any rights at all, they consequently must be
founded on the right of something that is not man. What then is that
something?

Generally speaking, we know of no other creatures that inhabit the
earth than man and beast; and in all cases, where only two things offer
themselves, and one must be admitted, a negation proved on any one,
amounts to an affirmative on the other; and therefore, Mr. Burke, by
proving against the Rights of Man, proves in behalf of the beast; and
consequently, proves that government is a beast; and as difficult things
sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild
beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than
to show the origin of the government. They are in the place of a
constitution. O John Bull, what honours thou hast lost by not being a
wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke's system, have been in the Tower
for life.

If Mr. Burke's arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the
fault is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to
the reader for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make
his for giving the cause