In the former
you will find other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as
ill-suited to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any
appearance of authority. 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 cyon
alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we
have hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of reverence 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,* 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 I, 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 toward 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.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56