Your Lordship is
too well acquainted with men, and with affairs, to imagine that any true
judgment can be formed on the value of a great measure of policy from
the perusal of a piece of paper. At present I am much in the dark with
regard to the state of the country which the intended law is to be
applied to. It is not easy for me to determine whether or no it was wise
(for the sake of expunging the black letter of laws which, menacing as
they were in the language, were every day fading into disuse) solemnly
to reaffirm the principles and to reenact the provisions of a code of
statutes by which you are totally excluded from THE PRIVILEGES OF THE
COMMONWEALTH, from the highest to the lowest, from the most material of
the civil professions, from the army, and even from education, where
alone education is to be had.[26]
Whether this scheme of indulgence, grounded at once on contempt and
jealousy, has a tendency gradually to produce something better and more
liberal, I cannot tell, for want of having the actual map of the
country. If this should be the case, it was right in you to accept it,
such as it is.
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