een generally
extended and long established, that it has been upon the whole
beneficial, and should be modified or altered with a very cautious
hand. That this proposition is true, will probably be disputed by none
who have thought much and dispassionately on human affairs; for all
human institutions are formed and supported by men, and unless men had
some reason for supporting them, they would speedily sink to the
ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of
the power, and they make use of it to perpetuate these abuses.
Doubtless, they are always sufficiently inclined to do so; but a
privileged class, or a despot, is always a mere handful against the
great body of the people; and unless their power is supported by the
force of general opinion, founded on experienced utility upon the
whole, it could not maintain its ground a single week. And this
explains a fact observed by an able and ingenious writer of the
present day,[20] that if almost all the great convulsions recorded in
history are attentively considered, it will be found, that after a
brief period of strenuous, and often almost superhuman effort, on the
part of the people, they have terminated in the establishment of a
government and institutions differing scarcely, except in name, from
that which had preceded the struggle. It is hardly necessary to remark
how striking a confirmation the English revolution of 1688, and the
French of 1830, afford of this truth.

And this explains what is the true meaning of, and solid foundation
for, that reverence for antiquity which is so strongly implanted in
human nature, and is never forgotten for any considerable time without
inducing the most dreadful disasters upon society. It means that those
institutions which have descended to us in actual practice from our
ancestors, come sanctioned by the _experience_ of ages; and that they
could not have stood so long a test unless they had been recommended,
in some degree at least, by their utility. It is not that our
ancestors were wiser than we are; they were certainly less informed,
and probably were, on that account, in the general case, less
judicious. But time has swept away their follies, which were doubtless
great enough, as it has done the worthless ephemeral literature with
which they, as we, were overwhelmed; and nothing has stood the test of
ages, and come down to us through a series of generations, of their
ideas or institutions, but what ha