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point where liberty as well as truth is found, the moral chara£ler 

 of her people was vague and changeful. Agitated long by civil 

 contefts, and deprelTed by the barbarous and deteriorating prin- 

 ciples of the feudal policy, the human mind could not, and in fact 

 did not, until a very late period, emerge from that deep groiTnefs 

 into which by thofe caufes it had been funk. The language of 

 England during thofe times correfponded with her circumftances. 

 Rude and anomalous, at once fuperfluous and deficient, it was 

 equally a ftranger to precifion and to grace : fixed by no ftandard, 

 though it abounded in words, it was yet, becaufe thofe words 

 were vaguely ufed, incapable of expreffing with accuracy any 

 nice complication of thought. While men were unaccufiomed 

 to think with precifion on moral topics, the whole clafs of moral 

 terms muft have been of changeful and indeterminate meaning ; 

 and while thefe topics were not the frequent fuhjeds of living 

 fpeech or written difcourfes, thofe few but important words which 

 are ufed, not to defignate things, but to exhibit the various pofitions 

 of the mind in thinking, to fliew the relation which it means to 

 eftablifh between two propofitions, or the different parts of the 

 fame propolition, muft have been awkwardly and often improperly 

 ufed. Such a ftate of language could have exifted only where 

 tafte was yet unknown, and the powers of the human mind yet 

 uncultivated. 



Two caufes contributed to raife the Englifh language from tliis 

 degra(ied ftate. Firft the Reformation, which by obtruding on 

 the attention moral fubjeds of the moft momentous concern, 

 made it in fome meafure neceffary for men to think with more 



( F 2 ) precifion 



