t to part with any of the great principles and
laws which they derived from their forefathers. They took special care
to speak with reverence of, and to preserve Magna Charta, the Bill of
Rights, the Habeas Corpus, and not only all the body of the Common Law
of England, but most of the rules of our courts, and all our form of
jurisprudence. Indeed it is the greatest glory of England that she has
thus supplied with sound principles of freedom those immense regions
which will be peopled perhaps by hundreds of millions.

I know of no enemy of reform and of the happiness of the country so
great as that man who would persuade you that we possess nothing good,
and that all must be torn to pieces. There is no principle, no
precedent, no regulations (except as to mere matter of detail),
favourable to freedom, which is not to be found in the Laws of
England or in the example of our ancestors. Therefore I say we may ask
for, and we want nothing new. We have great constitutional laws and
principles to which we are immovably attached. We want great
alteration, but we want nothing new. Alteration, modification, to suit
the times and circumstances; but the great principles ought to be and
must, be the same, or else confusion will follow.

It was the misfortune of the French people that they had no great and
settled principles to refer to in their laws or history. They sallied
forth and inflicted vengeance on their oppressors; but, for want of
settled principles to which to refer they fell into confusion; they
massacred each other; they next flew to a military chief to protect
them even against themselves; and the result has been what we too well
know. Let us therefore congratulate ourselves that we have great
constitutional principles and laws, to which we can refer, and to
which we are attached.

That reform will come I know, if the people do their duty; and all
that we have to guard against is confusion, which cannot come if
reform take place in time. I have before observed to you that when the
friends of corruption in France saw that they could not prevent a
change, they bent their endeavours to produce confusion, in which they
fully succeeded. They employed numbers of unprincipled men to go about
the country proposing all sorts of mad schemes. They produced first a
confusion in men's minds, and next a civil war between provinces,
towns, villages and families. The tyrant Robespierre, who was exceeded
in cruelty only by some of