aborigines as to you, and
your lineal ancestors. They doubtless had a constitution; and although
they have not left it in a written formula, to the precise text of which
you may always appeal, yet they have left fragments of their history
and laws, from which it may be inferred with considerable certainty.
Whatever their history and laws show to have been practised with
approbation, we may presume was permitted by their constitution;
whatever was not so practised, was not permitted. And although this
constitution was violated and set at nought by Norman force, yet force
cannot change right. A perpetual claim was kept up by the nation, by
their perpetual demand of a restoration of their Saxon laws; which shows
they were never relinquished by the will of the nation. In the pullings
and haulings for these ancient rights, between the nation, and its kings
of the races of Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, there was sometimes
gain, and sometimes loss, until the final re-conquest of their rights
from the Stuarts. The destitution and expulsion of this race broke the
thread of pretended inheritance extinguished all regal usurpations, and
the nation reentered into all its rights; and although in their bill of
rights they specifically reclaimed some only, yet the omission of the
others was no renunciation of the right to assume their exercise also,
whenever occasion should occur. The new King received no rights or
powers, but those expressly granted to him. It has ever appeared to me,
that the difference between the whig and the tory of England is, that
the whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source, and the tory
from the Norman. And Hume, the great apostle of toryism, says in so many
words, (note AA to chapter 42,) that, in the reign of the Stuarts, 'it
was the people who encroached upon the sovereign, not the sovereign who
attempted, as is pretended, to usurp upon the people.' This supposes the
Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And again, (C. 159,)
'the Commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and
seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience, that the
people are the origin of all just power.' And where else will this
degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow-men, find the
origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be
in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?

Our revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It present