Whilst they are possessed by
these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their
ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a
Constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long
experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the
rest, they have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up, at one
grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters,
and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights of men." Against these
there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding:
these admit no temperament and no compromise: anything withheld from
their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their
rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its
continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The
objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with
their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent
government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest
usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question
of abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title. I have
nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics.
Let them be their amusement in the schools.
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