A great proportion of the misery that wanders, in hideous forms,
around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents;
and still these are the people who are most tenacious of what they
term a natural right, though it be subversive of the birth-right of
man, the right of acting according to the direction of his own reason.
I have already very frequently had occasion to observe, that vicious
or indolent people are always eager to profit by enforcing arbitrary
privileges; and, generally, in the same proportion as they neglect the
discharge of the duties which alone render the privileges
reasonable. This is at the bottom a dictate of common sense, or the
instinct of self-defence, peculiar to ignorant weakness; resembling
that instinct, which makes a fish muddy the water it swims in to elude
its enemy, instead of boldly facing it in the clear stream.
From the clear stream of argument, indeed, the supporters of
prescription, of every denomination, fly; and, taking refuge in the
darkness, which, in the language of sublime poetry, has been
supposed to surround the throne of Omnipotence, they dare to demand
that implicit respect which is only due to His unsearchable ways. But,
let me not be thought presumptuous, the darkness which bides our God
from us, only respects speculative truths- it never obscures moral
ones, they shine clearly, for God is light, and never, by the
constitution of our nature, requires the discharge of a duty, the
reasonableness of which does not beam on us when we open our eyes.
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