not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.
That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may
be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases,
who is to decide, the living or the dead?

As almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book are employed upon
these clauses, it will consequently follow that if the clauses
themselves, so far as they set up an assumed usurped dominion over
posterity for ever, are unauthoritative, and in their nature null and
void; that all his voluminous inferences, and declamation drawn
therefrom, or founded thereon, are null and void also; and on this
ground I rest the matter.

We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke's
book has the appearance of being written as instruction to the French
nation; but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant
metaphor, suited to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness
attempting to illuminate light.

While I am writing this there are accidentally before me some
proposals for a declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette (I
ask his pardon for using his former address, and do it only for
distinction's sake) to the National Assembly, on the 11th of July,
1789, three days before the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but
remark with astonishment how opposite the sources are from which that
gentleman and Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of referring
to musty records and mouldy parchments to prove that the rights of
the living are lost, "renounced and abdicated for ever," by those who
are now no more, as Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette applies to
the living world, and emphatically says: "Call to mind the sentiments