ve thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first--
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance!
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!

[_Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit
in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal
philanthropy._]

ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

From the 'Speech on Parliamentary Reform'

Other nations, excited by the example of the liberty which this
country has long possessed, have attempted to copy our Constitution;
and some of them have shot beyond it in the fierceness of their
pursuit. I grudge not to other nations that share of liberty which
they may acquire: in the name of God, let them enjoy it! But let us
warn them that they lose not the object of their desire by the very
eagerness with which they attempt to grasp it. Inheritors and
conservators of rational freedom, let us, while others are seeking it
in restlessness and trouble, be a steady and shining light to guide
their course; not a wandering meteor to bewilder and mislead them.

Let it not be thought that this is an unfriendly or disheartening
counsel to those who are either struggling under the pressure of harsh
government, or exulting in the novelty of sudden emancipation. It is
addressed much rather to those who, though cradled and educated amidst
the sober blessings of the British Constitution, pant for other
schemes of liberty than those which that Constitution sanctions--other
than are compatible with a just equality of civil rights, or with the
necessary restraints of social obligation; of some of whom it may be
said, in the language which Dryden puts into the mouth of one of the
most extravagant of his heroes, that

"They would be free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in the woods the noble savage ran."

Noble and swelling sentiments!--but such as cannot be reduced into
practice. Grand ideas!--but which must be qualified and adjusted by a
compromise between the aspirings of individuals and a due concern for
the general tranquillity;--must be subdued and chastened by reason and
experience, before they can be directed to any useful end! A search
after abstract perfection in government may produce in generous minds
an enterprise and enthusiasm to be recorded by the historian and to be
celebrated by the poet: but such perfection is not an object of
reasonable pursuit, because it is not one