thinking, more rational, more just, and more religious. Trade is not a
limited thing; as if the objects of mutual demand and consumption could
not stretch beyond the bounds of our jealousies. God has given the earth
to the children of men, and he has undoubtedly, in giving it to them,
given them what is abundantly sufficient for all their exigencies; not a
scanty, but a most liberal, provision for them all. The author of our
nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated the
same law in his written word, that man shall eat his bread by his
labour; and I am persuaded, that no man, and no combination of men, for
their own ideas of their particular profit, can, without great impiety,
undertake to say, that he SHALL NOT do so; that they have no sort of
right, either to prevent the labour, or to withhold the bread.


THEORIZING POLITICIANS.

There are people who have split and anatomised the doctrine of free
government, as if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical
liberty and necessity; and not a matter of moral prudence and natural
feeling. They have disputed, whether liberty be a positive or a negative
idea; whether it does not consist in being governed by laws, without
considering what are the laws, or who are the makers; whether man has
any rights by nature; and whether all the property he enjoys be not the
alms of his government, and his life itself their favour and indulgence.
Others corrupting religion, as these have perverted philosophy, contend,
that Christians are redeemed into captivity; and the blood of the
Saviour of mankind has been shed to make them the slaves of a few proud
and insolent sinners. These shocking extremes provoking to extremes of
another kind, speculations are let loose as destructive to all
authority, as the former are to all freedom; and every government is