It is true, that to say your
Constitution is what it has been, is no sufficient defence for those
who say it is a bad Constitution. It is an answer to those who say
that it is a degenerate Constitution. To those who say it is a bad
one, I answer, Look to its effects. In all moral machinery the
moral results are its test.
On what grounds do we go to restore our Constitution to what it has
been at some given period, or to reform and reconstruct it upon
principles more conformable to a sound theory of government? A
prescriptive government, such as ours, never was the work of any
legislator, never was made upon any foregone theory. It seems to me
a preposterous way of reasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas,
to take the theories, which learned and speculative men have made
from that government, and then, supposing it made on these theories,
which were made from it, to accuse the government as not
corresponding with them. I do not vilify theory and speculation--
no, because that would be to vilify reason itself. "Neque decipitur
ratio, neque decipit unquam." No; whenever I speak against theory,
I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect
theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory
is by comparing it with practice.
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