forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am perfuaded, that all those which poffibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.

Our oldest 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 Blackftone, 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 ftanding law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but if the lawyers miftake in fome particulars, it proves my position ftill the more strongly; because it demonftrates the powerful prepoffeffion towards antiquity, with which the minds of all our lawyers and legiflators, 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.

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

In

In the famous law of the 3d of Charles I. called the Petition of Right, the parliament fays to the king, "Your fubjects have inherited this "freedom," claiming their franchises not abstract principles "as the rights of men," but as the rights of Englishmen, 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 least, with all the general theories concerning the rights of men," as any of the difcourfers in our pulpits, or on your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbé Seyes. But, for teafons worthy of that practical wisdom 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 serious confideration "the best means for making fuch an establishment,

* I W. and M.

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"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 beft means, " in the first place" 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 posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution 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 felfifh temper and confined views. People will not look forward to pofterity,

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who

who never look backward to their ancestors. Befides, the people of England well know, that the 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 secures what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on thefe 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 existence decreed to a permanent body compofed of transitory parts; wherein, by the difpofition of a ftupendous wifdom, moulding together the great myfterious 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 preferving 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 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 state, our hearths, our fepulchres, 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 instincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived feveral other, and thofe no small benefits, from confidering our liberties 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 defcent 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 distinction. 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 bear.. ings and its enfigns armorial. It has its galE

lery