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=_John Randolph, 1773-1832._= (Manual, p. 487.)

From a Speech in the Virginia Convention.

=_74._= “CHANGE IS NOT REFORM.”

Sir, I see no wisdom in making this provision for future changes.  You must give Governments time to operate on the People, and give the People time to become gradually assimilated to their institutions.  Almost any thing is better than this state of perpetual uncertainty.  A People may have the best form of Government that the wit of man ever devised, and yet, from its uncertainty alone, may, in effect, live under the worst Government in the world.  Sir, how often must I repeat, that change is not reform? I am willing that this new Constitution shall stand as long as it is possible for it to stand; and that, believe me, is a very short time.  Sir, it is vain to deny it.  They may say what they please about the old Constitution,—­the defect is not there.  It is not in the form of the old edifice,—­neither in the design nor in the elevation; it is in the material, it is in the People of Virginia.  To my knowledge that People are changed from what they have been.  The four hundred men who went out with David were in debt.  The fellow-laborers of Catiline were in debt.  The partizans of Caesar were in debt.  And I defy you to show me a desperately indebted People, anywhere, who can bear a regular, sober Government.  I throw the challenge to all who hear me.  I say that the character of the good old Virginia planter,—­the man who owned from five to twenty slaves, or less, who, lived by hard work, and who paid his debts,—­is passed away.  A new order of things is come.  The period has arrived of living by one’s wits; of living by contracting debts that one cannot pay; and above all, of living by office-hunting.

Sir, what do we see?  Bankrupts,—­branded bankrupts,—­giving great dinners, sending their children to the most expensive schools, giving grand parties, and just as well received as anybody in society!  I say that, in such a state of things, the old Constitution was too good for them,—­they could not bear it.  No, Sir; they could not bear a freehold suffrage, and a property representation.  I have always endeavored to do the People justice; but I will not flatter them,—­I will not pander to their appetite for change.  I will do nothing to provide for change.  I will not agree to any rule of future apportionment, or to any provision for future changes, called amendments to the Constitution.  Those who love change,—­who delight in public confusion, who wish to feed the cauldron, and make it bubble,—­may vote if they please for future changes.  But by what spell, by what formula, are you going to bind the People to all future time?  The days of Lycurgus are gone by, when we could swear the People not to alter the Constitution until he should return.  You may make what entries on parchment you please; give me a Constitution that will last