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THE

GENIUS AND DESIGN

OF THE

DOMESTIC CONSTITUTION,

WITH ITS

UNTRANSFERRABLE OBLIGATIONS

AND

PECULIAR ADVANTAGES.

BY CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON.

Respice, Aspice, Prospice.
Quicquid fieri potuit, potest.

EDINBURGH,

OLIVER & BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT;

LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, & GREEN,

LONDON.

1826.

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PREFACE.

SOME individuals, who have professed to look deeply into the structure of human society, tell us that analogy has much in store for man; because, though it is not infallible, it is that powerful engine or telescope of the mind, by which it is marvellously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth. The great expectations which are entertained, they would found upon the extraordinary discoveries which have been made in physics, under the guidance of analogy: that powerful engine, they say, in the mind of a Newton, having discovered to us the laws of other worlds; and in that of Columbus, having put us in full possession of our own. "Shall some discoveries in physics," it has then been said, "be so important as to produce a complete revolution in society, and others so powerful, that the very inventors of them have not as yet dared to apply them; and shall not discoveries in morals be allowed a still more paramount and universal influence-an influence the greater in proportion as matter is inferior to mind?" Under the influence of these anticipations, says the same individual, "I foresee the period when some new and parent idea in morals, the matrix of a better order of things, shall reconcile us more completely to God, to nature, and to ourselves."

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