that their religion, laws, and liberties, might "not be in danger of being again fubverted," they aufpicate all their proceedings, by ftating as fome of thofe best means, " in the first place" "in to do" as their ancestors in like cafes have ufually "done for vindicating their antient rights and "liberties, to declare;"-and then they pray the king and queen, "that it may be declared and "enacted, that all and fingular the rights and "liberties afferted and declared are the true an"tient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom."

You will obferve, that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our conftitution to claim and affert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be tranfmitted to our pofterity; as an eftate fpecially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more, general or prior right. By this means our conftitution preferves an unity in fo great a diverfity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and an house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

This policy appears to me to be the refult of profound reflection; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wifdom without reflection, and above it. A fpirit of innovation is generally the refult of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity,

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who never look backward to their ancestors. Bé fides, the people of England well know, that thể idea of inheritance furnishes a fure principle of confervation, and a fure principle of tranfmiffion; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquifition free; but it fecures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a ftate proceeding on thefe maxims, are locked faft as in fort of family fettlement; grafped as in a kind of mortmain for ever. By a conftitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we tranfmit our government and our privileges, in the fame manner in which we enjoy and tranfmit our property and our lives. The inftitutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down, to us and from us, in the fame course and order. Our political system is placed in a juft correfpondence and fymmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body compofed of transitory parts; wherein, by the difpofition of a stupendous wifdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable conftancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progreffion. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the ftate, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are

never

never wholly obfolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the fpirit of philofophic analogy. in this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the conftitution of our country with our dearest domeftic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bofom of our family affections; keeping infeparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our ftate, our hearths, our fe pulchres, and our altars.

Through the fame plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial inftitutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful inftincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived feveral other, and those no small benefits, from confidering our li berties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the prefence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to mifrule and excefs, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent infpires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upftart infolence almost inevitably adhering to and difgracing those who are the first acquirers of any diftinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an impofing and majestic afpect. It has a pedigrée and illuftrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its enfigns armorial. It has its gal

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lery of portraits; its monumental infcriptions; its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil inftitutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere in-. dividual men; on account of their age; and on account of thofe from whom they are defcended. All your fophifters cannot produce any thing better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the courfe that we have pursued, who have chofen our nature rather than our fpeculations, our breafts rather than our inventions, for the great confervatories and magazines of our rights and privileges.

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though difcontinued, were not loft to memory. Your conftitution, it is true, whilft you were out of poffeffion, fuffered waste and dilapidation; but you poffeffed in fome parts the walls, and in all the foundations of a noble and venerable caftle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built on thofe old foundations. Your conftitution was fufpended before, it was perfected; but you had the elements of a conftitution very nearly as good as could be wifhed. In your old states you poffeffed that variety of parts correfponding with the various defcriptions, of which your community was happily compofed ; you had all that combination, and all that oppofition of interests, you had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the poli

tical world, from the reciprocal ftruggle of dif cordant powers, draws out the harmony of the univerfe. Thefe oppofed and conflicting interefts, which you confidered as fo great a blemish in your old and in our prefent conftitution, interpofe a falutary check to all precipitate refolutions; They render deliberation a matter not of choice, but of neceffity; they make all change a fubject of compromife, which naturally begets moderation; they produce temperaments, preventing the fore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations ; and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for ever impracticable. Through that diverfity of members and interefts, general liberty had as many fecurities as there were feparate views in the feveral orders; whilft by preffing down the whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the feparate parts would have been prevented from warping and ftarting from their allotted places.

You had all thefe advantages in your antient ftates; but you chofe to act as if you had never been moulded into civil fociety, and had every thing to begin anew. You began ill, because you, began by defpifing every thing that belonged to you. You fet up your trade without a capital. If the laft generations of your country appeared without much luftre in your eyes, you might have paffed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection to those ancestors, your imaE 2 ginations