y, of happiness, and of glory as I believe any
modification of human society to be capable of bestowing; and I am not
prepared to sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience,
of centuries of struggles, and of more than one century of liberty,
as perfect as ever blessed any country upon the earth, for visionary
schemes of ideal perfectibility, for doubtful experiments even of
possible improvement.'(4)

Such is Mr. Canning's common-place; and in giving the following answer
to it, I do not think I can be accused of falling into that extravagant
and unmitigated strain of paradoxical reasoning with which I have
already found so much fault.

The passage, then, which the gentleman here throws down as an effectual
bar to all change, to all innovation, to all improvement, contains at
every step a refutation of his favourite creed. He is not 'prepared
to sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience, of
centuries of struggles, and of one century of liberty, for visionary
schemes of ideal perfectibility.' So here are centuries of experience
and centuries of struggles to arrive at one century of liberty; and
yet, according to Mr. Canning's general advice, we are never to make any
experiments or to engage in any struggles either with a view to future
improvement, or to recover benefits which we have lost. Man (they repeat
in our cars, line upon line, precept upon precept) is always to turn his
back upon the future, and his face to the past. He is to believe that
nothing is possible or desirable but what he finds already established
to his hands in time-worn institutions or inveterate abuses. His unde
to be made into a political automaton, a go-cart of superstition and
prejudice, never stirring hand or foot but as he is pulled by the
wires and strings of the state-conjurers, the legitimate managers and
proprietors of the show. His powers of will, of thought, and action
are to be paralysed in him, and he is to be told and to believe that
whatever is, must be. Perhaps Mr. Canning will say that men were to make
experiments and to resolve upon struggles formerly, but that now they
are to surrender their understandings and their rights into his keeping.
But at what period of the world was the system of political wisdom
_stereotyped,_ like Mr. Cobbett's _Gold against Paper,_ so as to admit
of no farther alterations or improvements, or correction of errors
of the press? When did the experience of mankind becom