as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their
barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately
deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding
to the gradual changes of circumstances, of favoring progressive
accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses,
entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects
to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which,
had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected
wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary
forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one
generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of
ordering its own affairs. Let us, as our sister States have done, avail
ourselves of our reason and experience, to correct the crude essays of
our first and unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning
councils. And, lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its
revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, nature herself
indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at
any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years.
At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or,
in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent of
the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has,
then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government
it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to
accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received
from its predecessors: and it is for the peace and good of mankind,
that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years,
should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on,
with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of
time, if any thing human can so long endure. It is now forty years since
the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables inform us,
that, within that period, two thirds of the adults then living are now
dead. Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the
right to hold in obedience to their will, and to laws heretofore made
by them, the other two thirds, who, with themselves, compose the present
mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have
no rights. They are no