XI. CHAP. indeed in its limits, but which was much more defensible with his slender garrison than if it had A.D. 1725 been more extended. to 1735. Thus the immortality of the soul was abandoned, because he found his reason insufficient to account for its immortality, and the admission of that fact might have argued a necessity for an express revelation. The immateriality of the soul was denied, to avoid an admission of its immortality; and the moral attributes of God were rejected for the same His system was entirely constructed with a view to its defence: had more been retained, his object could not have been effected. As it at present exists, it is a masterpiece of its kind, and a monument of the misapplied ingenuity of its architect. reason. Nothing can more forcibly exhibit the utter inadequacy of the human mind to form any rational system of religion, than this essay of the most consistent deist who has ever made the attempt. To avoid inconsistency, he has been obliged to surrender every hope which can raise his species above the grade of a mere animal; and while speciously affecting to exalt man's reason, he has in effect degraded it to a mere evanescent material quality, superior only in degree to the instinct of the inferior orders of the creation. Nor is the degradation of man from his rank as an immortal being the only consequence of the rejection of revelation: the destruction of his social happiness is another direct consequent. In the XI. to 1735. destruction of all expectation of a future state, CHAP. Bolingbroke included that of the only bond which can preserve society or render human laws effectual; A.D. 1725 and he established in its place a fanciful incentive to virtue which never had, and never will have, any influence with the majority of mankind. Even this shadowy restraint loses what little efficacy it possessed, when, by his speculations concerning the moral attributes of the Deity, he destroys all the well-marked boundaries of virtue and vice, and by throwing a doubt upon what the incomprehensible perfection of the Deity will approve or censure, renders it uncertain how his rule is to be applied. These were the natural tendencies of Bolingbroke's First Philosophy; and such or similar must be the effects of every system of deism which is consistent in itself. Its principles have now been explained, and its defects exposed; but while we smile at the partiality which could prefer such a cold and hopeless scheme to the realities of revelation, we must admire the cautious ingenuity which, having rejected the one, could so consistently con. struct the other. СНАР. CHAPTER XII. Walpole's Attack upon Bolingbroke in the House of Commons.- WE have now given an account of the literary laXII. bours of Bolingbroke during his ten years' retirement A. D. 1735 at Dawley, and we have pointed out the great ineto 1742. quality which exists between his political and his speculative writings. It has been before stated, that the conduct of Pulteney and his friends disgusted him with the coalition party which he had joined, and that he had determined again to retire into France. This resolution he put in practice about January 1735, retiring with his wife to a retreat called Chantelou, near Fontainebleau, where he intended to pass the remainder of his days. This departure of the great leader of the opposition did not pass without comment. The satellites of the ministry celebrated it as a triumph, and their opponents mourned it as a misfortune. Among the absurd reports which the insolence of party could propagate and its credulity receive, was one that he was driven abroad by an attack made upon him by Sir Robert Walpole in the house of commons. Mr. CHAP. XII. Coxe, glad at any price to obtain such a triumph for his hero, has adopted this version of the story, and has exhibited the degraded peer flying in abandoned A. D. 1735 confusion before the thunder of his rival's eloquence. We are fortunately enabled to judge of the speech which is said to have had this wonderful effect upon the veteran controversialist. It occurred in a debate upon a motion for the repeal of the septennial bill; a motion which was advocated in a speech of great eloquence and unanswerable reasoning by Sir William Windham. Sir William had hypothetically represented Walpole as a minister who governed solely by corruption, and who owed his safety only to his skill in proportioning his bribes to the influence of the members of the legislature. Sir Robert's answer commenced with a similar description of Bolingbroke, and is thus reported by Mr. Coxe: "Sir, I do assure you I did not intend to have troubled you in this debate; but such incidents now generally happen towards the end of our debates, nothing at all relating to the subject, and gentlemen make such suppositions, meaning some person, or perhaps, as they say, no person now in being, and talk so much of wicked ministers, domineering ministers, ministers pluming themselves in defiances; which terms and the like have been of late so much made use of in this house, that if they really mean hobody either in the house or out of it, yet it must be supposed they at least mean to call upon some gentleman in this house to make them a reply; and to 1742. XII. CHAP. therefore I hope I may be allowed to draw a picture in my turn; and I may likewise say, that I do not to 1742. mean to give a description of any particular person A.D. 1735 now in being. When gentlemen talk of ministers abandoned to all sense of virtue or honour, other gentlemen may, I am sure, with equal justice, and I think more justly, speak of anti-ministers and mock patriots, who never had either virtue or honour, but in the whole course of their opposition are actuated only by motives of envy and of resentment against those who have disappointed them in their views, or may not perhaps have complied with all their desires. "But now, sir, let me too suppose,—and the house being cleared, I am sure no person that hears me can come within the description of the person I am to suppose. Let us suppose, in this or in some other unfortunate country, an anti-minister who thinks himself a a person of so great and extensive parts, and of so many eminent qualifications, that he looks upon himself as the only person in the kingdom capable to conduct the public affairs of the nation, and therefore christening every other gentleman who has the honour to be employed in the administration by the name of blunderer. Suppose this fine gentleman lucky enough to have gained over to his party some persons really of fine parts, of ancient families and of great fortunes, and others of desperate views arising from disappointed and malicious hearts; all these gentlemen, with respect to their political be |