prior rights of the Crown and peerage but this--our Constitution is
a proscriptive Constitution; it is a Constitution whose sole
authority is, that it has existed time out of mind. It is settled
in these two portions against one, legislatively; and in the whole
of the judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of the
executive, the prudential and the financial administration, in one
alone. Nor were your House of Lords and the prerogatives of the
Crown settled on any adjudication in favour of natural rights, for
they could never be so portioned. Your king, your lords, your
judges, your juries, grand and little, all are prescriptive; and
what proves it is the disputes not yet concluded, and never near
becoming so, when any of them first originated. Prescription is the
most solid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to
secure that property, to government. They harmonise with each
other, and give mutual aid to one another. It is accompanied with
another ground of authority in the constitution of the human mind--
presumption. It is a presumption in favour of any settled scheme of
government against any untried project, that a nation has long
existed and flourished under it. It is a better presumption even of
the choice of a nation, far better than any sudden and temporary
arrangement by actual election. Because a nation is not an idea
only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation, but it
is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in
numbers and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one
set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate
election of ages and of generations; it is a Constitution made by
what is ten thousand times better than choice--it is made by the
peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral,
civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves
only in a long space of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates