and of giving activity
to their discoveries, by disclosing them to the people. "Could I,"
exclaims MONTESQUIEU, whose heart was beating with the feelings of a great
author, "could I but afford new reasons to men to love their duties, their
king, their country, their laws, that they might become more sensible of
their happiness under every government they live, and in every station
they occupy, I should deem myself the happiest of men!" Such was the pure
aspiration of the great author who studied to preserve, by ameliorating,
the humane fabric of society. The same largeness of mind characterises all
the eloquent friends of the human race. In an age of religious intolerance
it inspired the President DE THOU to inculcate, from sad experience and a
juster view of human nature, the impolicy as well as the inhumanity of
religious persecutions, in that dedication to Henry IV., which Lord
Mansfield declared he could never read without rapture. "I was not born
for myself alone, but for my country and my friends!" exclaimed the genius
which hallowed the virtuous pages of his immortal history.

Even our liberal yet dispassionate LOCKE restrained the freedom of his
inquiries, and corrected the errors which the highest intellect may fall
into, by marking out that impassable boundary which must probably
for ever limit all human intelligence; for the maxim which LOCKE
constantly inculcates is that "Reason must be the last judge and guide in
everything." A final answer to those who propagate their opinions,
whatever they may be, with a sectarian spirit, to force the understandings
of other men to their own modes of belief, and their own variable
opinions. This alike includes those who yield up nothing to the genius of
their age to correct the imperfections of society, and those who, opposing
all human experience, would annihilate what is most admirable in its
institutions.

The public mind is the creation of the Master-Writers--an axiom as
demonstrable as any in Euclid, and a principle as sure in its operation as
any in mechanics. BACON'S influence over philosophy, and GROTICS'S over
the political state of society, are still felt, and their principles
practised far more than in their own age. These men of genius, in
their solitude, and with their views not always comprehended by their
contemporaries, became themselves the founders of our science and our
legislation. When LOCKE and MONTESQUIEU appeared, the old systems of
government w