The very idea of
the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust
and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish,
to derive all we possess as _an inheritance from our forefathers_. Upon
that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate
any scion alien to the nature of the original plant. All the
reformations we have hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of
reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that all those
which possibly may be made hereafter will be carefully formed upon
analogical precedent, authority, and example.
Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir
Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men
who follow him, to Blackstone,[84] are industrious to prove the pedigree
of our liberties. They endeavor to prove that the ancient charter, the
Magna Charta of King John, was connected with another positive charter
from Henry the First, and that both the one and the other were nothing
more than a reaffirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the
kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors
appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but if the lawyers
mistake in some particulars, it proves my position still the more
strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards
antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and
of all the people whom they wish to influence, have been always filled,
and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most
sacred rights and franchises as an _inheritance_.
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