composed of far other wheels
and springs and balances and counteracting and cooeperating powers. Men
little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they
do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse
for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of
acting ill. The British Constitution may have its advantages pointed out
to wise and reflecting minds, but it is of too high an order of
excellence to be adapted to those which are common. It takes in too many
views, it makes too many combinations, to be so much as comprehended by
shallow and superficial understandings. Profound thinkers will know it
in its reason and spirit. The less inquiring will recognize it in their
feelings and their experience. They will thank God they have a standard,
which, in the most essential point of this great concern, will put them
on a par with the most wise and knowing.

If we do not take to our aid the foregone studies of men reputed
intelligent and learned, we shall be always beginners. But men must
learn somewhere; and the new teachers mean no more than what they
effect, as far as they succeed,--that is, to deprive men of the benefit
of the collected wisdom of mankind, and to make them blind disciples of
their own particular presumption. Talk to these deluded creatures (all
the disciples and most of the masters) who are taught to think
themselves so newly fitted up and furnished, and you will find nothing
in their houses but the refuse of _Knaves' Acre_,--nothing but the
rotten stuff, worn out in the service of delusion and sedition in all
ages, and which, being newly furbished up, patched, and varnished,
serves well enough for those who, being unacquainted with the conflict
which has always been maintained between the sense and the nonsense of
mankind, know nothing of the former existence and the ancient
refutation of the same follies. It is near two thousand years since it
has been observed that these devices of ambition, avarice, and
turbulence were antiquated. They are, indeed, the most ancient of all
commonplaces: commonplaces sometimes of good and necessary causes; more
frequently of the worst, but which decide upon neither. _Eadem semper
causa, libido et avaritia, et mutandarum rerum amor. Ceterum libertas et
speciosa nomina pretexuntur; nec quisquam alienum servitium, et
dominationem sibi concupivit, ut non eadem ista vocabula usurparet_.

Rational and experienced men tole