JOHNSON. 55 



of liberty, but he wished to see it enjoyed under the 

 patronage of the sovereign and of a parliament repre- 

 senting hereditarily and electively the rank and property 

 of the country. He was no stickler for abuses, but he 

 desired that they might be prudently and cautiously 

 reformed by the wiser and the more respectable portion 

 of the community, not lopped off rashly by the violent 

 hands of the multitude. 



Yet he so greatly loved established things, so deeply 

 venerated whatever had the sanction of time, that he 

 both shut his eyes to many defects in his view con- 

 secrated by age, and unreasonably transferred to mere 

 duration the respect which reason itself freely allows to 

 whatever has the testimony of experience in its favour. 

 The established Church, the established Government, the 

 established order of things in general, found in him an 

 unflinching supporter, because a sincere and warm ad- 

 mirer; and giving his confidence entirely, he either was 

 content to suspend his reason in the great majority of 

 instances, or, at least, to use it only for the purpose of 

 attaining the conclusion in favour of existing institutions, 

 and excluding all farther argument touching their foun- 

 dations. The manner in which these feelings rather 

 than principles broke out, even on trifles, was often suffi- 

 ciently ludicrous. When he went to Plymouth, where 

 he found a new town grown up, he always regarded the 

 "Dockers" (so they were called) as upstarts and aliens, 

 siding zealously in the local disputes with the old esta- 

 blished town. He once exclaimed, " I hate a Docker ;" 

 and again, half laughing at his own half-pretended zeal, 

 when there was a question of watering the new town, 

 " No, no !" said he, " I am against the Dockers : I am 



