made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am perfuaded, that all thofe which poffibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, autho rity, and example.

Our oldeft reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will fee that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone *, are induftrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove, that the antient charter, the magna charta of King John, was connected with another pofitive charter from Henry I. and that both the one and the other were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the ftill more antient standing law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, thefe authors ap pear to be in the right, perhaps not always: but if the lawyers mistake in fome particulars, it proves my pofition ftill the more strongly; because it demonftrates the powerful prepoffeflion towards 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 ftationary policy of this kingdom in confidering their most facred rights and franchises as an inheritance.

In the famous law of the 3d of Charles 1. called the Petition of Right, the parliament fays to the king, "Your fubjects have inherited this freedom," claiming their franchises not on abstract principles as the rights of men," but as the rights of Englifhmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly learned men, who drew this petition of right, were as well acquainted, at leaft, with all the general theories concerning the " rights of men," as any of the difcourfers in our pulpits, or

* See Blackftone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759..

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on your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbé Seyes. But, for reafons worthy of that practical wifdom which fuperfeded their theoretic fcience, they preferred this pofitive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that vague fpeculative right, which exposed their fure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild litigious fpirit.

The fame policy pervades all the laws which have fince been made for the prefervation of our liberties. In the 1ft of William and Mary, in the famous ftatute, called the Declaration of Right, the two houfes utter not a fyllable of "a right to frame a government for themselves." You will fee, that their whole care was to fecure the religion, laws, and liberties, that had been long poffeffed, and had been lately endangered. "Taking into their most ferious confi

deration the best means for making fuch an efta"blishment, that their religion, laws, and liberties, might not be in danger of being again fubverted," they aufpicate all their proceedings, by stating as fome of thofe beft means," in the first place" to do" as their "anceflors 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 antient "and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of "this kingdom.'

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You will obferve, that from magna charta to the declaration of right, it has been the uniform policy of our conflitution 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

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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 houfe of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchifes, and liberties, from a long line of anceflors.

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 spirit of innovation is generally the refult of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to pofterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Befides, the people of England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnifhes 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 state proceeding on these maxims, are locked faft as in a 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 courfe and order. Our political fyftem is placed in a juft correfpondence and fymmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of exiftence decreed to a permanent body compofed of tranfitory parts; wherein, by the difpo fition of a ftupendous wiidom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middleaged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable conftancy, moves on through the varied tenour of

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perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progreffion. Thus, by preferving the method of nature in the con duct of the ftate, in what we improve, we are never wholly new; in what we retain, we are never wholly obfolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the fuperftition 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 cherifhing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our ftate, our hearths, our fepulchres, and our altars.

Through the fame plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, 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 liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the prefence of canonized forefathers, the fpirit of freedom, leading in itfelf to mifrule and excefs, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal defcent infpires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upftart infolence almoft inevitably adhering to and difgracing those who are the firft acquirers of any diftinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an impofing and majeftic afpect. It has a pedigree and illuftrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its enfigns armorial. It has its gallery 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 individual men; on account of their age; and

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on account of thofe from whom they are defcended. All your fophifters cannot produce any thing better adapted to preferve à rational and manly freedom than the courfe that we have purfued, 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 Frivileges.

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correfpondent dignity. Your privileges, though difcontinued, were not loft to memory. Your conftitution, it is true, whilft you were out of poffeflion, 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 those 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 wished. In your old ftates you poffeffed that variety of parts correfponding with the various descriptions of which your community was happily compofed; you had all that combination, and all that oppofition of interefts, you had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal ftruggle, of difcordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe. Thefe oppofed and conflicting interefts, which you confidered as fo great a blemish in your old and in our present 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 harfh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for VOL. III.

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