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Defence of Locke against Lord ^ Eldon . 85
Untitled Article
: > vas first introduced as his physician . cf Happy , past the comhi on lot / ' is the author or the man whose riper years cannot upbraid his greeru ?> Yet these Constitutions Mr . Locke never owned publicly ; and , from the foregoing extracts , it appears that the author of the Cw Treatises of Government , ' written at sixty years of age , expressly to justify the Revolution in 1688 , might as fairly at this day be claimed as an advocate for hereditary , interminable vassalage as for negro-slavery , on the authority of his crude political conceptions at the age of thirty . I venture thus to speak of the " Constitutions / ' from the weilknowft fact , that they never answered their design , and urere abrogated , after twenty years of troublesome experiment . Lord
Eldon is not the first who has injured Mr . Loeke , by overlooking dates . Mr . Adams , yvho ought to have informed himself better , when writiqg his ^ Defence of the American Constitutions ^ - takes for graiited , that the " Treatises of Government' * preceded , instead of following after rnore than thirty years the " Fundamental Constitutions . " On these false premises , he gravely concludes that a person ui ^ y defend the principles of liberty atrdl the rights of mankind with great ability and success ^ and yet , after all / when called upon to produce a plan of legislation , he may astoi / ish the world with a signal absurdity- *'
Thus has a great political sage been made to suffer from the inexperience of his earlier years : yet let any one give the slightest attention to the principles avowed in the " Treatises of Goverrmjent /' arjd then say whether their author could , even by i mp lication , have approved any form of slavery . The first sentence of that \ vprk , had Lord Eldon happened to op ^ n upon it , even If its phraseology had failed to correct his Lordship ' s judgment ^ might at least have induced him to spare the reputation of Locke . " Slavery / ' says this supposed advocate | pf a slave-trade , " is so vile and niiserable an estate of mau » and , so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our jiation ^ that 'tis hardly to be conceived that an Englishnianj much less a gentleman , should plead for it . }
If I have detained you longer than J designed on a subject in one view highly political , you will pardon me ^ on account of its irpportant influence ,- in another view , on the progress of ¦ " ¦ pure-arid undefiled reli g ion . " . How that progress \ &retarded by our guilty commerce Was well described , man y years a go , by . an author in whose life and writings love to God and love to man were happily united . ** We ' bear / ' says I > r . Johnjebb , " the / name of Christian to every region of the globe ; but , at the " kii-iie time , we bear aforlg with it those horrid forms of yfce , by v * |) ich that name is dishonoured and defiled . The inhabitants *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1807, page 85, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2377/page/29/
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