nique _cuique_
Quanam sit ratione, atque alte terminus haerens?

They who have acted, as in France they have done, upon a scheme wholly
different, and who aim at the abstract and unlimited perfection of power
in the popular part, can be of no service to us in any of our political
arrangements. They who in their headlong career have overpassed the goal
can furnish no example to those who aim to go no further. The temerity
of such speculators is no more an example than the timidity of others.
The one sort scorns the right; the other fears it; both miss it. But
those who by violence go beyond the barrier are without question the
most mischievous; because, to go beyond it, they overturn and destroy
it. To say they have spirit is to say nothing in their praise. The
untempered spirit of madness, blindness, immorality, and impiety
deserves no commendation. He that sets his house on fire because his
fingers are frost-bitten can never be a fit instructor in the method of
providing our habitations with a cheerful and salutary warmth. We want
no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example
of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of
freedom in its full vigor, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The
example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of
freedom is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree
reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted, one part of it bears so
much on the other, the parts are so made for one another, and for
nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it is to destroy
it.

What has been said of the Roman Empire is at least as true of the
British Constitution:--"_Octingentorum annorum fortuna disciplinaque
compages haec coaluit; quae convelli sine convellentium exitio non
potest_." This British Constitution has not been struck out at an heat
by a set of presumptuous men, like the Assembly of pettifoggers run mad
in Paris.

"'Tis not the hasty product of a day,
But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay."

It is the result of the thoughts of many minds in many ages. It is no
simple, no superficial thing, nor to be estimated by superficial
understandings. An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with
his clock, is, however, sufficiently confident to think he can safely
take to pieces and put together, at his pleasure, a moral machine of
another guise, importance, and complexity,