nciple, that in
transplanting a tree, little attention need be paid to the character
of the climate and soil from which it is brought, although the
greatest care must be taken that those of the situation to which it is
transplanted are fitted to receive it. It would be no reason for
planting mulberry-trees in Scotland, that they luxuriate in the south
of England. There is sense in the old proverb, 'Ilk land has its ain
lauch.'

In the present case, it is impossible to believe the extension of
these restrictions to Scotland can be for the _evident utility_ of the
country, which has prospered so long and so uniformly under directly
the contrary system.

It is very probable I may be deemed illiberal in all this reasoning;
but if to look for information to practical results, rather than to
theoretical principles, and to argue from the effect of the experience
of a century, rather than the deductions of a modern hypothesis, be
illiberal, I must sit down content with a censure, which will include
wiser men than I. The philosophical tailors of Laputa, who wrought by
mathematical calculation, had, no doubt, a supreme contempt for those
humble fashioners who went to work by measuring the person of their
customer; but Gulliver tells us, that the worst clothes he ever wore,
were constructed upon abstract principles; and truly, I think, we have
seen some laws, and may see more, not much better adapted to existing
circumstances, than the Captain's philosophical uniform to his actual
person.

It is true, that every wise statesman keeps sound and general
political principles in his eye, as the pilot looks upon his compass
to discover his true course. But this true course cannot always be
followed out straight and diametrically; it must be altered from time
to time, nay sometimes apparently abandoned, on account of shoals,
breakers, and headlands, not to mention contrary winds. The same
obstacles occur to the course of the statesman. The point at which he
aims may be important, the principle on which he steers may be just;
yet the obstacles arising from rooted prejudices, from intemperate
passions, from ancient practices, from a different character of
people, from varieties in climate and soil, may cause a direct
movement upon his ultimate object to be attended with distress to
individuals, and loss to the community, which no good man would wish
to occasion, and with dangers which no wise man would voluntarily
choose to encounter.