The British Review, and London Critical Journal, 1811, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The British Review, and London Critical Journal, 1811, Vol. 2

We are not, however, so visionary as to think that each man ought, substantively, to depend upon himself in his endeavoura for his country's good, and stand alone, like. Pompey' s pillar in the desert. If in many of those things which are of the most ia dividual interest, man still finds society his proper element of action; in a concern so eminently social as the busmess of a com monwealth, it were an absurdity to expect that we should act in independence of each other. Political arrangement, said a great man and statesman, as it is a work for social ends, must be brought about by social means; mind must conspire with mind. We can suppose a-case, too, where corruption, incapacity, and radical error, systematically displayed by an administration, under a misjudging and misguided monarch, may justify systematic op position, and an alnmst indiscriminate party-hostility. The casual instances of virtue and discretion which such an administration may, by starts, exhibit, will be so far from redeeming the whole of its conduct, that they may really contribute to make it more injurious; just as a literary work of general mischievous ten 'deney may more effectually accomplish its rpose by mingling secondary truths with substantial errors. It may be observed, too, in defence of tty under the limitations, and justified by the motives above a luded to, that there is some security against rash projects, and speculative ardour, in the necessity of con ciliating others, and maintaining the harmony of co-operation; fer, as large bodies can seldom agree among themselves except in fundamentals, measures of excess, unless they grow out of the principles admitted by all, are too apt to endanger the solidity and strength of the mass, to be ventured upon by single persons. No union can be compact nor steadily operative to a common purpose, unless the complexional peculiarities, and speculative differences of the individuals composing it, are compressed and kept down to the level of those prmciples in which the suflragea of all units.

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