Note DP — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 (continued 2)
Reading edition
"At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."-S.T. Coleridge, The Statesman's Manual, a Lay Sermon (1816), p. 19.—ED.