Finita potestas denique cuique
    Quanam sit ratione, atque alte terminus haerens?

They who have acted, as in France they have done, upon a scheme wholly different, and who aim at the abstract and unlimited perfection of power in the popular part, can be of no service to us in any of our political arrangements.  They who in their headlong career have overpassed the goal can furnish no example to those who aim to go no further.  The temerity of such speculators is no more an example than the timidity of others.  The one sort scorns the right; the other fears it; both miss it.  But those who by violence go beyond the barrier are without question the most mischievous; because, to go beyond it, they overturn and destroy it.  To say they have spirit is to say nothing in their praise.  The untempered spirit of madness, blindness, immorality, and impiety deserves no commendation.  He that sets his house on fire because his fingers are frost-bitten can never be a fit instructor in the method of providing our habitations with a cheerful and salutary warmth.  We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty.  The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigor, and to qualify it in all its exertions.  The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe.  Our fabric is so constituted, one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it is to destroy it.

What has been said of the Roman Empire is at least as true of the British Constitution:—­“Octingentorum annorum fortuna disciplinaque compages haec coaluit; quae convelli sine convellentium exitio non potest.”  This British Constitution has not been struck out at an heat by a set of presumptuous men, like the Assembly of pettifoggers run mad in Paris.

    “’Tis not the hasty product of a day,
    But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay.”

It is the result of the thoughts of many minds in many ages.  It is no simple, no superficial thing, nor to be estimated by superficial understandings.  An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is, however, sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces and put together, at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels and springs and balances and counteracting and cooeperating powers.  Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand.  Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption.  They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.  The British Constitution may have its advantages pointed out to wise and reflecting minds, but it is of too high an order of excellence