It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not suffer
ourselves to be entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry, the
use both of a fixed rule and an occasional deviation: the sacredness
of an hereditary principle of succession in our government with a
power of change in its application in cases of extreme emergency. Even
in that extremity (if we take the measure of our rights by our
exercise of them at the Revolution), the change is to be confined to
the peccant part only, to the part which produced the necessary
deviation; and even then it is to be effected without a
decomposition of the whole civil and political mass for the purpose of
originating a new civil order out of the first elements of society.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of
its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of
that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously
to preserve. The two principles of conservation and correction
operated strongly at the two critical periods of the Restoration and
Revolution, when England found itself without a king. At both those
periods the nation had lost the bond of union in their ancient
edifice; they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric. On the
contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old
constitution through the parts which were not impaired.
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