Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/43

 will lay a sure and lasting Foundation of public Liberty and Happiness.

Nay, if any Difference could arise, with Respect to the true Freedom of the Mind; surely, That Mind ought, in the Eye of Reason, to be adjudged most free, which adopts a System of Thought and Action, founded on the Wisdom of the agreeing Society; rather than That which is suffered to be incurably tainted with the vague and random Conceptions of untutor'd Infancy.—This, at least, is consonant with the old Stoic Principle, that "The wise Man alone is free."

Much hath been said in our Times, indeed, concerning the Force of unassisted human Reason: The Writer would not willingly either flatter or degrade its Powers. But to Him it appears, that they are superficially informed of the Frame and Tenor of the human Mind, who think that mere Reason (as it exists in Man) is more than a Power of