for how do you know the principles, but from the construction? and if that remains the same, the principles remain the same.  It is true that to say your Constitution is what it has been is no sufficient defence for those who say it is a bad constitution.  It is an answer to those who say that it is a degenerate constitution.  To those who say it is a bad one, I answer, Look to its effects.  In all moral machinery, the moral results are its test.

On what grounds do we go to restore our Constitution to what it has been at some given period, or to reform and reconstruct it upon principles more conformable to a sound theory of government?  A prescriptive government, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, never was made upon any foregone theory.  It seems to me a preposterous way of reasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories which learned and speculative men have made from that government, and then, supposing it made on those theories which were made from it, to accuse the government as not corresponding with them.  I do not vilify theory and speculation:  no, because that would be to vilify reason itself, Neque decipitur ratio, neque decipit unquam.  No,—­whenever I speak against theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is a false theory is by comparing it with practice.  This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men,—­Does it suit his nature in general?—­does it suit his nature as modified by his habits?

The more frequently this affair is discussed, the stronger the case appears to the sense and the feelings of mankind.  I have no more doubt than I entertain of my existence, that this very thing, which is stated as an horrible thing, is the means of the preservation of our Constitution whilst it lasts,—­of curing it of many of the disorders which, attending every species of institution, would attend the principle of an exact local representation, or a representation on the principle of numbers.  If you reject personal representation, you are pushed upon expedience; and, then what they wish us to do is, to prefer their speculations on that subject to the happy experience of this country, of a growing liberty and a growing prosperity for five hundred years.  Whatever respect I have for their talents, this, for one, I will not do.  Then what is the standard of expedience?  Expedience is that which is good for the community, and good for every individual in it.  Now this expedience is the desideratum, to be sought either without the experience of means or with that experience.  If without, as in case of the fabrication of a new commonwealth, I will hear the learned arguing what promises to be expedient; but if we are to judge of a commonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is, What has been found expedient or inexpedient?  And I will not take their promise rather than the performance of the Constitution.