60 JOHNSON. 



bearing in rejecting positions, either contrary to general 

 principle, or inconsistent with plain reason, or in any 

 other way unlikely to be true. 



It is equally certain that his deference to authority 

 was confined to questions of religion and policy. Upon 

 all other subjects he was an independent thinker ; upon 

 those he was ever a stickler for authority or a willing 

 slave, but he was desirous of having some deciding power, 

 some competent jurisdiction, which upon religious points 

 should preclude all doubt, and in obedience to which he 

 might repose undisturbed. He was willing to support 

 the powers that be on temporal points, that he might 

 maintain discipline in society and preclude both the 

 doctrines and the exertions of those who are given to 

 change. No man ever held these opinions or showed 

 these feelings with greater consistency. 



Nevertheless there were occasions on which the mas- 

 culine strength of his understanding broke through the 

 fetters which his fears, or his temporal, or his political 

 habits of thinking had forged for it. Thus he always was 

 an enemy of Negro Slavery, and once at Oxford, in a 

 company of grave doctors, gave as a toast, " The insur- 

 rection of the negroes in the West Indies*, and success to 

 them." In speaking of intolerable abuses, even by the 

 Supreme Legislative power, he held the right of resist- 

 ance ; for in no other sense can such expressions as these 

 be taken. " If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise 

 up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt 



* Of his biographer's many absurdities, it is none of the least 

 that when entering his protest against Johnson's anti-slavery opi- 

 nion, he seriously declares, that the abolishing the slave traffic would 

 be "to shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'' (III., 222.) 



