principles upon which it has hitherto stood;--whether this be de
facto the Constitution of the House of Commons as it has been since
the time that the House of Commons has, without dispute, become a
necessary and an efficient part of the British Constitution? To ask
whether a thing, which has always been the same, stands to its usual
principle, seems to me to be perfectly absurd; 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 these 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