he far greater number of them than a full
certainty of their shallowness, levity, pride, petulance, presumption,
and ignorance. Where the old authors whom he has read, and the old men
whom he has conversed with, have left him in the dark, he is in the dark
still. If others, however, have obtained any of this extraordinary
light, they will use it to guide them in their researches and their
conduct. I have only to wish that the nation may be as happy and as
prosperous under the influence of the new light as it has been in the
sober shade of the old obscurity. As to the rest, it will be difficult
for the author of the Reflections to conform to the principles of the
avowed leaders of the party, until they appear otherwise than
negatively. All we can gather from them is this,--that their principles
are diametrically opposite to his. This is all that we know from
authority. Their negative declaration obliges me to have recourse to
the books which contain positive doctrines. They are, indeed, to those
Mr. Burke holds diametrically opposite; and if it be true (as the
oracles of the party have said, I hope hastily) that their opinions
differ so widely, it should seem they are the most likely to form the
creed of the modern Whigs.

* * * * *

I have stated what were the avowed sentiments of the old Whigs, not in
the way of argument, but narratively. It is but fair to set before the
reader, in the same simple manner, the sentiments of the modern, to
which they spare neither pains nor expense to make proselytes. I choose
them from the books upon which most of that industry and expenditure in
circulation have been employed; I choose them, not from those who speak
with a politic obscurity, not from those who only controvert the
opinions of the old Whigs, without advancing any of their own, but from
those who speak plainly and affirmatively. The Whig reader may make his
choice between the two doctrines.

The doctrine, then, propagated by these societies, which gentlemen think
they ought to be very tender in discouraging, as nearly as possible in
their own words, is as follows: That in Great Britain we are not only
without a good Constitution, but that we have "no Constitution";--that,
"though it is much talked about, no such thing as a Constitution exists
or ever did exist, and consequently that _the people have a Constitution
yet to form_;--that since William the Conqueror the country has never
yet _