What
heart burnings? What delay to affairs? What want of secrecy and despatch?
What defect of police? Men of superior genius sometimes seem to imagine,
that the vulgar have no title to act, or to think. A great prince is
pleased to ridicule the precaution by which judges in a free country are
confined to the strict interpretation of law. [Footnote: Memoirs of
Brandenburg.]
We easily learn to contract our opinions of what men may, in consistence
with public order, be safely permitted to do. The agitations of a republic,
and the license of its members, strike the subjects of monarchy with
aversion and disgust. The freedom with which the European is left to
traverse the streets and the fields, would appear to a Chinese a sure
prelude to confusion and anarchy. "Can men behold their superior and not
tremble? Can they converse without a precise and written ceremonial? What
hopes of peace, if, the streets are not barricaded at an hour? What wild
disorder, if men are permitted in any thing to do what they please?"
If the precautions which men thus take against each other, be necessary to
repress their crimes, and do not arise from a corrupt ambition, or from
cruel jealousy in their rulers, the proceeding itself must be applauded, as
the best remedy of which the vices of men will admit.
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