ople of England) will tell Mr. Canning frankly what we think of his
magnanimous and ulterior resolution. It is our own; and it has been the
resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age,
ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present
blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the
knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has
produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements--not (as is
pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the
intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and
growing abuses. It was the experience of the enormous and disgusting
abuses and corruptions of the Papal power that produced the Reformation.
It was the experience of the vexations and oppressions of the feudal
system that produced its abolition after centuries of sufferings and
of struggles. It was the experience of the caprice and tyranny of the
Monarch that extorted _Magna Charta_ at Runnymede. It was the experience
of the arbitrary and insolent abuse of the prerogative in the reigns of
the Tudors and the first Stuarts that produced the resistance to it in
the reign of Charles I. and the Grand Rebellion. It was the experience
of the incorrigible attachment of the same Stuarts to Popery and
Slavery, with their many acts of cruelty, treachery, and bigotry, that
produced the Revolution, and set the House of Brunswick on the Throne.
It was the conviction of the incurable nature of the abuse, increasing
with time and patience, and overcoming the obstinate attachment to old
habits and prejudices,--an attachment not to be rooted out by fancy
or theory, but only by repeated, lasting, and incontrovertible
proofs,--that has abated every nuisance that ever was abated, and
introduced every innovation and every example of revolution and reform.
It was the experience of the abuses, licentiousness, and innumerable
oppressions of the old Government in France that produced the French
Revolution. It was the experience of the determination of the British
Ministry to harass, insult, and plunder them, that produced the
Revolution of the United States. Away then with this miserable cant
against fanciful theories, and appeal to acknowledged experience! Men
never act against their prejudices but from the spur of their feelings,
the necessity of their situations--their theories are adapted to their
practical convictions and their v