As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid
principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French
Revolution and the National Assembly, and charges that august,
illuminated and illuminating body of men with the epithet of
usurpers, I shall, sans ceremonie, place another system of principles
in opposition to his.

The English Parliament of 1688 did a certain thing, which, for
themselves and their constituents, they had a right to do, and which
it appeared right should be done. But, in addition to this right,
which they possessed by delegation, they set up another right by
assumption, that of binding and controlling posterity to the end of
time. The case, therefore, divides itself into two parts; the right
which they possessed by delegation, and the right which they set up
by assumption. The first is admitted; but with respect to the second,
I reply: There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist
a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in
any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and
controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever
how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and
therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers
of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power
to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all
cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and
presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and
insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has
any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The
Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more