Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

direct me to investigate and discuss the variety and nature of different political establishments, by which communities have carried into execution their inherent rights of modelling their own forms of government. But my intention is not to lay before the public a full and elaborate effay upon government, but to fubmit to the confideration and judgment of my countrymen, fuch principles, grounds, and reasons, as will evince the political neceffity of fubmitting to, and supporting our present constitutional establishment, and of counteracting the wishes, efforts, and attempts of our fecret and open enemies to difcredit, weaken, and fubvert it.

I have before faid, and I again repeat, that our constitution is founded upon the Rights of Man. I have attempted to trace their nature and origin, as well as our right to exercife them; it remains for me to confider, how we are affected by the actual execution or exercise of these rights in our own community, which brings me to the confideration of the constitution and government of Great Britain,

CHAP.

[73]

CHAP. II.

OF THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION AND GO-
VERNMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN.

A

FTER the adoption of the principles, which I have already endeavoured to establish, it would evidently exceed the intent and purport of this publication, to enter into hiftorical refearches, in order to trace the antiquity, and delineate the gradual and progreffive improvements of our conftitution; for it is not to be fuppofed, that the community of this ifland paffed, uno faltu, from their first agreement to enter into fociety, immediately into a conftitution and government of that perfection, which distinguishes the constitution and government, that we now happily enjoy. Could we even clear the dark pages of those remote hiftories from doubt and uncertainty, the information might gratify the curiofity of the mind, but would bring no conviction to the understanding, Principle alone is the true compafs, by which we can steer steadily and fafely through the treacherous perils of this fea of politics,

If

Our conftitu. upon principle.

tion founded

If any of my countrymen have been deluded, by these modern pfeudo-evangelifts, into their practical leffons," to confider the world as new to them, as to the first man, that exifted, and their natural rights in it of the fame kind; † that there is no political Adam, who has a power or right to bind all posterity for ever; that the rights of the living cannot be willed away, and controuled, and contracted for by, the manufcript affumed authority of the dead, there being no authority in the dead over the freedom and rights of the living; and that, therefore, || we are not to refer to musty records and mouldy parchments for the rights of the living; and confequently, that they are in error, who reafon by precedent drawn from antiquity respecting the Rights of Man," I fhall certainly make little impreffion upon them by the quotation of any written, historical, philofophical, or even legislative authority whatever. I must, however, in justice, remind thefe docile disciples of modern liberty of the lenient palliative, which their demagogue has thrown into his inftructions, left they may fwallow the envenomed

[blocks in formation]

*

binding effect

draught too hastily, without the application What gives
of the corrective folvent. "It requires to laws.
but a very small glance of thought to per-
ceive, that although laws made in one gene-
ration often continue in force through fuc-
ceeding generations, yet that they continue to
derive their force from the confent of the liv-
ing. A law not repealed continues in force,
not because it cannot be repealed, but because
it is not repealed, and the non-repealing
paffes for confent." Thefe written au-
thorities, or, in the fashionable phrase, these
affumed ufurpations of the dead over the living,
may be referred to by thofe, who will derive
from them the fatisfaction of example, illuf-
tration, and reason.

In order to humour thefe neophites to modern liberty, I fhall follow and argue upon their own avowed principles and doctrines; and I certainly fo far go with them, that I do not admit, that the truth of any principle can be proved merely from its antiquity, or that every right can be established merely by its length of poffeffion. † "For as time can make nothing lawful or juft, that is not fo of itself (though men are unwilling to change

Payne's Rights of Man, p. 13.

+ Algernoon Sydney's Difcourfes concerning Government, 380..

The truth of
to be proved
quity.

principles not

from its anti

[ocr errors]

that

The first dele

gation of power

election.

that, which has pleased their ancestors, unless. they discover great inconveniences in it) that, which a people does rightly establish for their own good, is of as much force the first day, as continuance can ever give to it; and, therefore, in matters of the greatest importance, wife and good men do not so much enquire, what has been, as what is good, and ought to be; for that, which of itfelf is evil, by continuance is made worse, and upon the first opportunity is juftly to be abolished." Without, therefore, attempting to trace the origin, progrefs, and establishment of our conftitution and government, through the intricate mazes of historical darkness, confusion, and uncertainty, I fhall keep conftantly in view the principles of civil liberty, which I have already laid down, and thereby endeavour to establish, in application to them, the force and energy of our prefent form of conftitution and government.

It is because the fovereignty of civil er politiIn this illand by cal power originates from the people, and conftantly and unalienably refides in the people, that we find, from the earliest credible accounts of our ancestors, that the political community of this ifland firft delegated their power to an individual, by the actual election of the representative body or common council of the

nation:

« ZurückWeiter »