By this
unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and
in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole
chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one
generation could link with the other. Men would become little better
than the flies of a summer.
And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the
human intellect, which with all its defects, redundancies, and
errors is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of
original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a
heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer studied. Personal
self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all
those who have never experienced a wisdom greater than their own)
would usurp the tribunal. Of course, no certain laws, establishing
invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men
in a certain course or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in
the modes of holding property or exercising function could form a
solid ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of
his offspring or in a choice for their future establishment in the
world. No principles would be early worked into the habits. As soon as
the most able instructor had completed his laborious course of
institution, instead of sending forth his pupil, accomplished in a
virtuous discipline, fitted to procure him attention and respect in
his place in society, he would find everything altered, and that he
had turned out a poor creature to the contempt and derision of the
world, ignorant of the true grounds of estimation.
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