fr0RMS OF GOVERNMENT. 333 



but it must be done in conformity with their own principles, 

 and with the preservation of their essential parts. The bulk of 

 a nation can never be sufficiently enlightened, or free from passion 

 and prejudice, to concur in an entirely new system, recommended 

 only by abstract ideas of utility. If they are not attached 

 to 4< forms?' they will be attached to men ; and their fantastical 

 partialities will certainly lead them to excessive and misplaced con- 

 fidence. Nothing, indeed, is a stronger proof of the want of a 

 " constitution/' properly so called, than placing the public trust in 

 times of difficulty upon an INDIVIDUAL, rather than upon a national 

 body. The circumstance constitutes one of the most observable 

 differences between popular and monarchical governments. Those 

 of my countrymen who can, I would have remember that Rome, 

 when Hannibal was at her gates, confided in her Senate, the 

 depository of the combined wisdom of the state, and actuated by an 

 unchangeable spirit, Rome, at a later period, when pressed by the 

 inroads of barbarians, had nothing else to trust to than the character 

 of the Emperor of the day, or that of his favourite. 



It has been a subject of controversy whether " national character" 

 creates forms of government, or whether these forms create national 

 character. That they reciprocally influence each other cannot be 

 doubted ; but on considering the very different kinds of government 

 in which nations similar in origin and bodily temperamenthave settled, 

 it would appear, that, while local circumstances t or accidents have 

 chiefly conduced to form these various governments, the formation 

 of national character has been a subsequent effect. Lycurgus and 

 Solon legislated for two neighbouring tribes of the same nation ; but 

 the operations of their several institutions rendered Athens and 

 Sparta as different from each other, in manners and principles, as if 

 they had been seated in different parts of the globe. It would, I 

 fear, be paying too great a compliment to the primitive character 

 of the people of England, to assert that their extraordinary attach- 

 ment to liberty, and their valour in its defence, were the causes of 

 the establishment of a free government here, while so many nations 

 of the same stock sank into a state of political slavery. But, since its 

 constitution has been fortunately settled on a firm basis of public 

 freedom, it has been manifestly instrumental in producing- a national 

 character different from, and, I may boldly affirm, in several respects 

 superior to, that of every other European country. Its influence is 

 rendered strikingly apparent by a comparison of the English with the 

 German character. Both people have a frankness and honesty of 

 disposition derived from their Gothic ancestry ; but while long- habits 

 of rigorous subordination, enforced by exertions of arbitrary power, 

 and by a gradation of ranks which admits of no intercommunity 

 between the high and low, have rendered the German formal, 

 complimentary, and submissive to authority, the Englishman is dis- 

 tinguished by an air of independence, a disregard to ceremonial 

 forms, and a spirit of resistance to assumed superiority, naturally 

 flowing from a polity in which 



Even the peasant boasts the right to scan, 

 And learns to venerate himself as man. 



M.M. No. 10. 217 



