The municipal corporations
of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their
pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement,
wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate
community and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected
chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme
necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a
necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion and
demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This
necessity is no exception to the rule, because this necessity itself
is a part, too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to
which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is
only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice,
the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are
outlawed, cast forth, and exiled from this world of reason, and order,
and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist
world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.
These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be the
sentiments of not the least learned and reflecting part of this
kingdom. They who are included in this description form their opinions
on such grounds as such persons ought to form them. The less inquiring
receive them from an authority which those whom Providence dooms to
live on trust need not be ashamed to rely on.
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