The most
considerable of their acts have not been done by great majorities; and
in this sort of near divisions, which carry only the constructive
authority of the whole, strangers will consider reasons as well as
resolutions.
If they had set up this new experimental government as a necessary
substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the
time of prescription which, through long usage, mellows into
legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All
those who have affections which lead them to the conservation of civil
order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate
which has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency
to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which they
justify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in
giving any sort of countenance to the operations of a power which
has derived its birth from no law and no necessity, but which, on
the contrary, has had its origin in those vices and sinister practices
by which the social union is often disturbed and sometimes
destroyed. This Assembly has hardly a year's prescription. We have
their own word for it that they have made a revolution. To make a
revolution is a measure which, prima fronte, requires an apology. To
make a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of our country;
and no common reasons are called for to justify so violent a
proceeding.
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