Our political architects have taken a survey of the
fabric of the British Constitution. It is singular that they report
nothing against the Crown, nothing against the Lords; but in the
House of Commons everything is unsound; it is ruinous in every part.
It is infested by the dry rot, and ready to tumble about our ears
without their immediate help. You know by the faults they find what
are their ideas of the alteration. As all government stands upon
opinion, they know that the way utterly to destroy it is to remove
that opinion, to take away all reverence, all confidence from it;
and then, at the first blast of public discontent and popular
tumult, it tumbles to the ground.
In considering this question, they who oppose it, oppose it on
different grounds; one is in the nature of a previous question--that
some alterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for
making them. The other is, that no essential alterations are at all
wanting, and that neither now, nor at any time, is it prudent or
safe to be meddling with the fundamental principles and ancient
tried usages of our Constitution--that our representation is as
nearly perfect as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and of
human creatures will suffer it to be; and that it is a subject of
prudent and honest use and thankful enjoyment, and not of captious
criticism and rash experiment.
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