The British Essayists (Volume 36); With Prefaces, Historical and Biographical (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Up this Court lives A. Puff, Shaves for a penny, and thinks it A. Nuff." Such of my readers who are connoisseurs or amateurs in sign-painting, must look to a future paper for the conclusion of this subject. No. 35. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1793. TO THE ASSOCIATION FOB PRESERVING LIBERTY AND PROPERTY AGAINST REPUBLICANS AND LEVELLERS. Let it not discredit my opinions on a political subject, that I confess myself an obscure Northamptonshire clergyman. It is not always the lot of those who act the busiest parts in life, to know the most of human nature; a very wide range of exertion will often absorb reflection, and the mind will sometimes be thrown out of its balance by the conflicting pressure of surrounding objects. Such is the monotony of human passions, and such the uniformity that runs through the human character, that if the sphere in which he moves be but wide enough for him to collect a sort of average, each in his own little platoon, by the force of careful observation, may arrive at a pretty general knowledge of man and his nature. If this remark be just in regard to the contemplation of individual man, it holds more strongly in what respects the survey of civil society; for as, in this case, we can form no competent judgment of the parts, but what is built upon a consideration of thewhole, it is the more necessary to be so far unoccupied with the detail, as to possess our understandings entire, and capable of stretching their views to the wide relations of civil life. Your patriotic and manly proceedings have reached me in my peaceful retreat; and as the design of my periodical undertaking calls from me whatever efforts I can make in the cause of humanity and my country, I am happy to have found a set of men to whom I can with courage address myself, and t...