rke now made! To use a sailor's phrase, he has swabbed
the deck, and scarcely left a name legible in the list of Kings; and
he has mowed down and thinned the House of Peers, with a scythe as
formidable as Death and Time.

But Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this retort; and he has
taken care to guard against it, by making government to be not only
a contrivance of human wisdom, but a monopoly of wisdom. He puts the
nation as fools on one side, and places his government of wisdom, all
wise men of Gotham, on the other side; and he then proclaims, and says
that "Men have a Right that their Wants should be provided for by this
wisdom." Having thus made proclamation, he next proceeds to explain to
them what their wants are, and also what their rights are. In this
he has succeeded dextrously, for he makes their wants to be a want of
wisdom; but as this is cold comfort, he then informs them, that they
have a right (not to any of the wisdom) but to be governed by it; and
in order to impress them with a solemn reverence for this
monopoly-government of wisdom, and of its vast capacity for all
purposes, possible or impossible, right or wrong, he proceeds with
astrological mysterious importance, to tell to them its powers in these
words: "The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these
are often in balance between differences of good; and in compromises
sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between
evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle;
adding--subtracting--multiplying--and dividing, morally and not
metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations."

As the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to,
may not understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be
its interpreter. The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That
government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil
good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is
arbitrary power.

But there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, he has
not shown where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has
not shown by what authority it first began to act. In the manner he
introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or
wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers
without authority. In short, it is usurpation.

Whether it be from a sense of shame, or from a consciousness of some
rad