le in its dignity and
estimation by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives. On the
other hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly infused
into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with
regard to the economical object, (for I set aside for a moment the
dreadful tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,) that, if
their petitions had literally been complied with, the state would have
been convulsed, and a gate would have been opened through which all
property might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could have saved the
public from the mischiefs of the false reform but its absurdity, which
would soon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into
discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the
people, who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of their
wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the
blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings. But there were
then persons in the world who nourished complaint, and would have been
thoroughly disappointed, if the people were ever satisfied. I was not of
that humor. I wished that they _should_ be satisfied. It was my aim to
give to the people the substance of what I knew they desired, and what I
thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it had been
modified for them into senseless petitions. I knew that there is a
manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak
men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding,--that is, a
marked distinction between change and reformation. The former alters the
substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential
good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them. Change is
novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of
reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle
upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand.
Reform is not a change in the substance or in the primary modification
of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance
complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there;
and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the
very worst, is but where it was.

All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It
cannot at this time be too often repeated, line upon line, precept upon
precept, unti