st and unreasonable
desire, but because this worthy has already engaged his injustice to
another. These and many more points I am for from spreading to their
full extent. You are sensible that I do not put forth half my strength;
and you cannot be at a loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient
freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject
properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and
observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or
destructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come
homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain, to
what would be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit to the
condition, and though I have a notorious advantage before me, I waive
the pursuit. For else, my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might
be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own nation. I could show,
that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions,
and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have
all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very
frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their
own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for
names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last
importance. And I could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity
of doing all this mischief, nay, that they themselves had their origin
and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely
taught to look upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our
history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a prince, who, by fraud
or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We
scarcely ever had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to set
limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we
have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more
grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down,
sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and
unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds,
wars, and conspiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so
often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confiscations,
banishments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of
such of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly,
indeed, thing