The sense of mankind authorizes us to examine into the
mode of acquiring new power, and to criticize on the use that is
made of it, with less awe and reverence than that which is usually
conceded to a settled and recognized authority.
In obtaining and securing their power the Assembly proceeds upon
principles the most opposite to those which appear to direct them in
the use of it. An observation on this difference will let us into
the true spirit of their conduct. Everything which they have done,
or continue to do. in order to obtain and keep their power is by the
most common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of
ambition have done before them.- Trace them through all their
artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all that
is new. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious
exactness of a pleader. They never depart an iota from the authentic
formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But in all the regulations
relative to the public good, the spirit has been the very reverse of
this. There they commit the whole to the mercy of untried
speculations; they abandon the dearest interests of the public to
those loose theories to which none of them would choose to trust the
slightest of his private concerns. They make this difference,
because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they are
thoroughly in earnest; there they travel in the beaten road.
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