eing burned
in your bed. The hue and cry alarms the county, but it preserves all the
property of the province. All these clamours aim at redress. But a
clamour made merely for the purpose of rendering the people discontented
with their situation, without an endeavour to give them a practical
remedy, is indeed one of the worst acts of sedition.

I have read and heard much upon the conduct of our courts in the business
of libels. I was extremely willing to enter into, and very free to act
as facts should turn out on that inquiry, aiming constantly at remedy as
the end of all clamour, all debate, all writing, and all inquiry; for
which reason I did embrace, and do now with joy, this method of giving
quiet to the courts, jurisdiction to juries, liberty to the press, and
satisfaction to the people. I thank my friends for what they have done;
I hope the public will one day reap the benefit of their pious and
judicious endeavours. They have now sown the seed; I hope they will live
to see the flourishing harvest. Their bill is sown in weakness; it will,
I trust, be reaped in power; and then, however, we shall have reason to
apply to them what my Lord Coke says was an aphorism continually in the
mouth of a great sage of the law, "Blessed be not the complaining tongue,
but blessed be the amending hand."

SPEECH ON A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS

It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into the
foundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to resort to
the theory of your government whenever you propose any alteration in the
frame of it, whether that alteration means the revival of some former
antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the introduction of
some new improvement in the commonwealth. The object of our deliberation
is, to promote the good purposes for which elections have been
instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent
elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling
inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would
sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited to
your disease--your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man
thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of
any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sort
of approach to perfection. There is not, there never was, a principle of
g