CONSERVATIVE PROGRESS OF INHERITED FREEDOM.
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.
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