To this spirit in our ancestors we owe the revolutions of 1640 and 1688--as individuals they suffered long and grievously for the sake of conscience, and the rights of man in civil society: but individual suffering became at last so identified with the general feeling of disgust and indignation at the despotism of the government, that its character ceased longer to be that of private suffering, or its remonstrance or resistance the effect of personal consideration: hence a legitimate opposition to authority on that great principle, that the public weal forms the only true measure of political allegiance, was aroused; sanctioning such an appeal to force, as under other circumstances, would have been justly stigmatized as treason and rebellion. And it is worthy of remark, that, principally to these two great events, as regenerating the political constitution of our country, and unfettering the conscience and intellect of man; are owing, under providence, most of those stupendous discoveries in science--and those sublime achievements of philanthropy, which are rapidly changing in our day, the moral aspect of the whole world.
That so much real and permanent good was accomplished by these events, is a decisive proof that the minds of Englishmen were fitted to receive and improve the benefits of them; and, of consequence, that a high degree of criminality attached to the men whose devotion to antiquated principles of civil government,--and superstitious veneration for the high prerogatives of barbarous ages, caused them to close their eyes against the light of truth, by which they were surrounded, and to lift their impious, but puny arms against the spirit inspired by heaven for the moral improvement of its creatures: for whilst there must always exist in the previous habits and attainments of nations, a qualification for the rational enjoyment of liberty, in order to prevent it from becoming a curse rather than a blessing; there ought always to prevail in governments a disposition to concede so much as the people know how properly to use;--if this principle form a constituent in the rule of any government, it signifies not by what name it is called--it is strictly a popular form of government, exercising its powers for the good of the people: if not, it is essentially despotic--employing the resources of the state for its own aggrandizement:--and will certainly be overturned at some moment of peculiar excitation, by the natural efforts made by the people, to render their social condition analogous to that improved moral and intellectual condition, subsisting at the period of such excitation--nor ought it, nor can it be otherwise: nor needs there any thing more than this simple principle to explain all popular revolutions, at least, such as have occurred in modern times. To claim for civil government under any name a right to withstand this principle, is to insult the moral Governor of the universe, and to libel human nature by advocating the divine right of governors to rule in unrighteousness. To enjoy liberty, nations in their individual, as well as collective capacity, must be wise and virtuous. Independence, it is true, requires neither the one nor the other of these high attainments; but _independence_ is only the freedom of the savage state:--_liberty_, the rule of perfect society:--that happy condition, where man is only restrained in the exercise of what is injurious to others, or fatal to himself--where the laws necessitate no evil, and afford occasion for the greatest possible good of which the social institution is susceptible. Independence, mere independence,--founded on abstract considerations of the natural powers and propensities of man, irrespective of the moral effects of established habits and sophisticated institutions, appears to have been the object contemplated by the leaders in the late French revolution. Liberty,--rational liberty!--built on the firm basis of a refined morality, deduced from divine Truth and calculated to purify and exalt human nature, was the good sought for, by most of those men concerned in the subversion of the throne of the Stuarts.