confined to government commonly so called.  It extended to Parliament, which was losing not a little in its dignity and estimation by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives.  On the other hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly infused into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with regard to the economical object, (for I set aside for a moment the dreadful tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,) that, if their petitions had literally been complied with, the state would have been convulsed, and a gate would have been opened through which all property might be sacked and ravaged.  Nothing could have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false reform but its absurdity, which would soon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into discredit.  This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people, who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings.  But there were then persons in the world who nourished complaint, and would have been thoroughly disappointed, if the people were ever satisfied.  I was not of that humor.  I wished that they should be satisfied.  It was my aim to give to the people the substance of what I knew they desired, and what I thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it had been modified for them into senseless petitions.  I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding,—­that is, a marked distinction between change and reformation.  The former alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them.  Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand.  Reform is not a change in the substance or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of.  So far as that is removed, all is sure.  It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.

All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere.  It cannot at this time be too often repeated, line upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into the currency of a proverb,—­To innovate is not to reform.  The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, unchanged.  The consequences are before us,—­not in remote history, not in future prognostication:  they are about us; they are upon us.  They shake the public security; they menace private enjoyment.