; it is a Constitution whose sole authority is,
that it has existed time out of mind. It is settled in these two
portions against one, legislatively; and in the whole of the judicature,
the whole of the federal capacity, of the executive, the prudential and
the financial administration, in one alone. Nor were your House of Lords
and the prerogatives of the Crown settled on any adjudication in favour
of natural rights, for they could never be so portioned. Your king, your
lords, your judges, your juries, grand and little, all are prescriptive;
and what proves it is the disputes not yet concluded, and never near
becoming so, when any of them first originated. Prescription is the most
solid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to secure that
property, to government. They harmonise with each other, and give mutual
aid to one another. It is accompanied with another ground of authority
in the constitution of the human mind--presumption. It is a presumption
in favour of any settled scheme of government against any untried
project, that a nation has long existed and flourished under it. It is a
better presumption even of the choice of a nation, far better than any
sudden and temporary arrangement by actual election. Because a nation is
not an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation,
but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in
numbers and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one set of
people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of
ages and of generations; it is a Constitution made by what is ten
thousand times better than choice--it is made by the peculiar
circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and
social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long
space of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body.
Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind, unmeaning
prejudices--for man is a most unwise, and a most wise being. The
individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, are foolish, when
they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is
given to it, as a species it almost always acts right.

The reason for the Crown as it is, for the Lords as they are, is my
reason for the Commons as they are, the electors as they are. Now, if
the Crown and the Lords, and the judicatures, are all prescriptive, so is
the House of Co