His merit is that he did in a small and rhetorical way what Montesquieu and Voltaire afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he pressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements of the chief races of mankind.
Morley acknowledges the contributions of earlier thinkers while highlighting their limitations compared to later philosophers.
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All alike concerned themselves with its truth or falsehood, with what they counted to be its abstract fitness or unfitness.
But the Poet Laureate has written his own song on the hearts of his countrymen that can never die.
What I wish to insist upon is, not that that system was good, but that the statesman who undertook to overthrow it, should have had something to put in its place.
I would use my best endeavours to make these States independent in matters of administration.
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