It is now the
House of Brunswick, one of the petty tribes of Germany."
"If government be what Mr. Burke describes it, 'a contrivance of human
wisdom,' I might ask him if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England that
it was become necessary to import it from Holland and from Hanover? But
I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and
even if it was, it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when
properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; _and there could
exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch
Stadtholder or a German Elector_ than there was in America to have done
a similar thing. If a country does not understand its own affairs, how
is a foreigner to understand them, who knows neither its laws, its
manners, nor its language? If there existed a man so transcendently wise
above all others that his wisdom was necessary to instruct a nation,
some reason might be offered for monarchy; but when we cast our eyes
about a country, and observe how every part understands its own
affairs, and when we look around the world, and see, that, of all men in
it, the race of kings are the most insignificant in capacity, our reason
cannot fail to ask us, What are those men kept for?"[20]
* * * * *
These are the notions which, under the idea of Whig principles, several
persons, and among them persons of no mean mark, have associated
themselves to propagate.
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