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It is sometimes a useful & oftenner still an amusing
eng object to trace the errors of a great man to their
source. — Whence How came our Author to fall into this
confusion of ideas? How could he descant so gravely on
the action of inactive matter? On the obligation of
unconscious Being? On acts of superiority exercised &
of inferiority allowed by one & the same Being over
himself? On the free agency of a Being tied down by
absolute necessity?— There was one thing our
Author could do: that is,Gentle reader! He could read.—
read. There is another thing he could not do: this is, extract the spirit of what he
read! It is with this commentator, as with so many other Commentators: his appetite
is better than his Digestion. But the powers of digestion do not always keep pace
with the voracity of the appetite:
[Our author had pored over] Montesquieu.— And he had read. Montesquieu
had written upon Laws in general in a manner almost as unintelligible, tho' not
quite so inconsistent. The errors of Montesquieu were the errors of an original genius struggling under the heap of confusion accumulated by his predecessors. A great part
of this heap he has contributed to remove. The tasks of Montesquieu are daunting to
our Author.
[there] he had found as follows:— "Tous les etesont Esp. des Loix. L.1 C.l
"leurs loix: la Divinite a ses loix: — le monde materiele ses
"loix: les intelligences superieur a l'homme ont leurs
"loix, les betes ont leurs loix: l'homme a ses loix." —
And
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"He must necessarily be subject to the
"will of his Creator:" — "He must inevitably
"take the will of him, on whom he depends,
"as the rule of his conduct:"—" It is necessary
"that he should in all points conform to
"his maker's will." If this representation
be true, what occasion for a system of laws?
To what purpose does the learned professor
take so much pains to prove the a conformity
which does not exist
between the laws of England, and the laws
of God. And, that conformity supposed, why
is he so eloquent in enforcing obedience to
these laws? this is all labor lost, if man is
necessitated to obey the laws of his maker if Creator
man in
3) 7)
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Identifier: | JB/096/004/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 96. |
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004 |
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001 |
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collectanea |
4 |
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recto |
c7 / c8 / c9 / c10 |
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168 |
[[watermarks::gr [quartered royal arms motif]]] |
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[[notes_public::"to be copied" [note not in bentham's hand]]] |
31008 |
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