His
answer was, 'Nay, Sir, when I am dead, you may do as you will.'
He talked in his usual style with a rough contempt of popular liberty.
'They make a rout about UNIVERSAL liberty, without considering that
all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is
PRIVATE liberty. Political liberty is good only so far as it produces
private liberty. Now, Sir, there is the liberty of the press, which you
know is a constant topick. Suppose you and I and two hundred more were
restrained from printing our thoughts: what then? What proportion would
that restraint upon us bear to the private happiness of the nation?'
This mode of representing the inconveniences of restraint as light and
insignificant, was a kind of sophistry in which he delighted to indulge
himself, in opposition to the extreme laxity for which it has been
fashionable for too many to argue, when it is evident, upon reflection,
that the very essence of government is restraint; and certain it is,
that as government produces rational happiness, too much restraint is
better than too little.
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