creatures that inhabit the
earth than man and beast; and in all cases, where only two things offer
themselves, and one must be admitted, a negation proved on any one,
amounts to an affirmative on the other; and therefore, Mr. Burke, by
proving against the Rights of Man, proves in behalf of the beast; and
consequently, proves that government is a beast; and as difficult things
sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild
beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than
to show the origin of the government. They are in the place of a
constitution. O John Bull, what honours thou hast lost by not being a
wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke's system, have been in the Tower
for life.

If Mr. Burke's arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the
fault is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to
the reader for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make
his for giving the cause.

Having thus paid Mr. Burke the compliment of remembering him, I return
to the subject.

From the want of a constitution in England to restrain and regulate the
wild impulse of power, many of the laws are irrational and tyrannical,
and the administration of them vague and problematical.

The attention of the government of England (for I rather choose to
call it by this name than the English government) appears, since its
political connection with Germany, to have been so completely engrossed
and absorbed by foreign affairs, and the means of raising taxes, that it
seems to exist for no other purposes. Domestic concerns are neglected;
and with respect to regular law, there is scarcely such a thing.

Almost every case must now be determined by some precedent, be that
precedent good or bad, or whether it properly applies or not; and
the practice is become so general as to suggest a suspicion, that it
proceeds from a deeper policy than at first sight appears.

Since the revolution of America, and more so since that of France,
this preaching up the doctrines of precedents, drawn from times and
circumstances antecedent to those events, has been the studied practice
of the English government. The generality of those precedents are
founded on principles and opinions, the reverse of what they ought; and
the greater distance of time they are drawn from, the more they are to
be suspected. But by associating those precedents with a superstitious
reverence for ancient