ablished by producing
those clauses, which he enforces by saying that they exclude the
right of the nation for ever. And not yet content with making such
declarations, repeated over and over again, he farther says, "that if
the people of England possessed such a right before the Revolution"
(which he acknowledges to have been the case, not only in England, but
throughout Europe, at an early period), "yet that the English Nation
did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce and abdicate
it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever."

As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid
principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French Revolution
and the National Assembly, and charges that august, illuminated and
illuminating body of men with the epithet of usurpers, I shall, sans
ceremonie, place another system of principles in opposition to his.

The English Parliament of 1688 did a certain thing, which, for
themselves and their constituents, they had a right to do, and which
it appeared right should be done. But, in addition to this right, which
they possessed by delegation, they set up another right by assumption,
that of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time. The case,
therefore, divides itself into two parts; the right which they possessed
by delegation, and the right which they set up by assumption. The first
is admitted; but with respect to the second, I reply: There never
did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any
description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed
of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to
the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be
governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts
or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have
neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in
themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to
act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded
it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most
ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to
follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period,
had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to
bind or