Such men, now that they find you justly irritated, would persuade you that, because things have been perverted from their true ends, there is nothing good in our constitution and laws. For what, then, did Hampden die in the field, and Sydney on the scaffold? And has it been discovered at last that England has always been an enslaved country from top to toe? The Americans, who are a very wise people, and who love liberty with all their hearts, and who take care to enjoy it too, took special care not to part with any of the great principles and laws which they derived from their forefathers. They took special care to speak with reverence of, and to preserve Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, and not only all the body of the Common Law of England, but most of the rules of our courts, and all our form of jurisprudence. Indeed it is the greatest glory of England that she has thus supplied with sound principles of freedom those immense regions which will be peopled perhaps by hundreds of millions. I know of no enemy of reform and of the happiness of the country so great as that man who would persuade you that we possess nothing good, and that all must be torn to pieces. There is no principle, no precedent, no regulations (except as to mere matter of detail), favourable to freedom, which is not to be found in the Laws of England or in the example of our ancestors. Therefore I say we may ask for, and we want nothing new. We have great constitutional laws and principles to which we are immovably attached. We want great alteration, but we want nothing new. Alteration, modification, to suit the times and circumstances; but the great principles ought to be and must, be the same, or else confusion will follow. It was the misfortune of the French people that they had no great and settled principles to refer to in their laws or history. They sallied forth and inflicted vengeance on their oppressors; but, for want of settled principles to which to refer they fell into confusion; they massacred each other; they next flew to a military chief to protect them even against themselves; and the result has been what we too well know. Let us therefore congratulate ourselves that we have great constitutional principles and laws, to which we can refer, and to which we are attached.