The policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection; or
rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without
reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result
of a selfish temper, and confined views. People will not look forward
to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the
people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a
sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission,
without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves
acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages
are obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims, are locked fast as
in a sort of family settlement; grasped as in a kind of mortmain for
ever. By a constitutional policy working after the pattern of nature, we
receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the
same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our
lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of
Providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course
and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and
symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence
decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by
the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, 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
constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall,
renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in
the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new;
in what we retain, we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this
manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not
by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic
analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of
polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution
of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental
laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and
cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected
charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial
institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful
instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our
reason, we have derived several other, and those no small benefits, from
considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting
as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom,
leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful
gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of
habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost
inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers
of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom.
It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and
illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It
has its gallery of portraits; its monumental inscriptions; its records,
evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on
the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men;
on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are
descended. All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted
to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have
pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our
breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and
magazines of our rights and privileges.