But there is a time when men will not suffer bad things because their
ancestors have suffered worse. There is a time when the hoary head of
inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection. If
the noble lord in the blue riband pleads "not guilty" to the charges
brought against the present system of public economy, it is not possible
to give a fair verdict by which he will not stand acquitted. But
pleading is not our present business. His plea or his traverse may be
allowed as an answer to a charge, when a charge is made. But if he
puts himself in the way to obstruct reformation, then the faults of
his office instantly become his own. Instead of a public officer in
an abusive department, whose province is an object to be regulated, he
becomes a criminal who is to be punished. I do most seriously put it
to administration, to consider the wisdom of a timely reform. Early
reformations are amicable arrangements with a friend in power;
late reformations are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy: early
reformations are made in cool blood; late reformations are made under
a state of inflammation. In that state of things people behold in
government nothing that is respectable. They see the abuse, and they
will see nothing else: they fall into the temper of a furious populace
provoked at the disorder of a house of ill-fame; they never attempt to
correct or regulate; they go to work by the shortest way--they abate the
nuisance, they pull down the house.