will have
none of that freedom. If, therefore, the standard of moderation be
sought for, I will seek for it. Where? Not in their fancies, nor in my
own: I will seek for it where I know it is to be found,--in the
Constitution I actually enjoy. Here it says to an encroaching
prerogative,--"Your sceptre has its length; you cannot add an hair to
your head, or a gem to your crown, but what an eternal law has given to
it." Here it says to an overweening peerage,--"Your pride finds banks
that it cannot overflow": here to a tumultuous and giddy people,--"There
is a bound to the raging of the sea." Our Constitution is like our
island, which uses and restrains its subject sea; in vain the waves
roar. In that Constitution, I know, and exultingly I feel, both that I
am free, and that I am not free dangerously to myself or to others. I
know that no power on earth, acting as I ought to do, can touch my life,
my liberty, or my property. I have that inward and dignified
consciousness of my own security and independence, which constitutes,
and is the only thing which, does constitute, the proud and comfortable
sentiment of freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and I bless God
for, my safe mediocrity: I know, that, if I possessed all the talents of
the gentlemen on the side of the House I sit, and on the other, I
cannot, by royal favor, or by popular delusion, or by oligarchical
cabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point, so as to
endanger my own fall, or the ruin of my country. I know there is an
order that keeps things fast in their place: it is made to us, and we
are made to it. Why not ask another wife, other children, another body,
another mind?

The great object of most of these reformers is, to prepare the
destruction of the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting the
House of Commons. For they think, (prudently, in my opinion,) that, if
they can persuade the nation that the House of Commons is so constituted
as not to secure the public liberty, not to have a proper connection
with the public interests, so constituted as not either actually or
virtually to be the representative of the people, it will be easy to
prove that a government composed of a monarchy, an oligarchy chosen by
the crown, and such a House of Commons, whatever good can be in such a
system, can by no means be a system of free government.

The Constitution of England is never to have a quietus; it is to be
continually vilified, attacked,