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any temporary delusion, and the adversary who turns away indignant from insolent novelties, are each of them consulted in this case. We give to them opinions, not the immature product of temporary zeal, but that have stood the test of ages, that were conceived by the best men even in the worst of times, that have been sifted and bolted with the most vigorous examination, and that have risen triumphant over all opposition. The most supercilious devotee will hardly venture to treat such pleadings with neglect; he is compelled even to the "teeth " and forehead," of his errors to give audience to the great masters of human intellect, and must ultimately digest their hard sayings and their untemporising assertions of truth with what appetite he

may.

ERRATA.

Page 13,

line 19. For "which his equal" read" which is "his equal."

42, line 29. For " the evil vanishes" read "half the

" evil vanishes."

47, line 26.

66, line 26.

195

For "blessing" read "blessings."

For "illusion" read" allusion."
Reverse lines 26 and 27.

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THE

MANUAL OF LIBERTY,

OR

TESTIMONIES, &c.

OF EQUITY OR JUSTICE.

IT behoves us in this treatise so to expound the subject of universal law and justice, as to compress the jurisprudence of any particular nation in a very narrow and limited compass. Our principal concern is with that justice, the nature of which is to be deduced from the nature of man, and with those laws by which civil society ought in all cases to be regulated.-Law, in its strict and ge nuine acceptation, is nothing else than the perfection of reason, that inherent sense of right which commands us what to do and what to avoid. Reason, when properly unfolded and matured in the human mind, is what I understand by law.

CICERO.

De Legibus, lib. 1. ch. 17, 18.

LAW thus explained, is the fruit of no human invention, is the decree of no nation or country; but is that eternal something to whose unerring dictates of command or prohibition the whole

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