When things are in
that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate
the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to administer in
extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered
state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own
lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the
irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from
disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the
brave and bold, from the love of honorable danger in a generous cause;
but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last
resource of the thinking and the good.
THE third head of right, asserted by the pulpit of the Old
Jewry, namely, the "right to form a government for ourselves", has, at
least, as little countenance from anything done at the Revolution,
either in precedent or principle, as the two first of their claims.
The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient, indisputable laws and
liberties and that ancient constitution of government which is our
only security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of knowing
the spirit of our constitution and the policy which predominated in
that great period which has secured it to this hour, pray look for
both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of parliament,
and journals of parliament, and not in the sermons of the Old Jewry
and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolution Society.
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