He saw the inevitability of parties, as also their tendency to persist in terms of men instead of principles.

He was convinced of the necessity of liberty to the progress of the arts and sciences; and no one, save Adam Smith, has more acutely insisted upon the evil effect on commerce of an absolute government.

He emphasized the value of freedom of the press, in which he saw the secret whereby the mixed government of England was maintained.

"It has also been found," he said in a happy phrase, "...

that the people are no such dangerous monsters as they have been represented, and that it is in every respect better to guide them like rational creatures than to lead or drive them like brute beasts." There is, in fact, hardly a page of his work in which some such acuteness may not be found.
Not, indeed, that a curious blindness is absent.