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, is 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 Commons of the very same origin, and of no other. We and
our electors have their powers and privileges both made and
circumscribed by prescription, as much to the full as the other parts;
and as such we have always claimed them, and on no other title. The
House of Commons is a legislative body corporate by prescription, not
made upon any given theory, but existing prescriptively,--just like the
rest. This proscription has made it essentially what it is, an aggregate
collection of three parts, knights, citizens, burgesses. The question
is, whether this has been always so, since the House of Commons has
taken its present shape and circumstances, and has been an essential
operative part of the Constitution,--which, I take it, it has been for
at least five hundred years.

This I resolve to myself in the affirmative: and then another question
arises:--Whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations,
and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as
to want the hand of the