but he must produce also his proofs that such a right existed, and
show how it existed. If it ever existed it must now exist, for
whatever appertains to the nature of man cannot be annihilated by man.
It is the nature of man to die, and he will continue to die as long as
he continues to be born. But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of
political Adam, in whom all posterity are bound for ever. He must,
therefore, prove that his Adam possessed such a power, or such a
right.

  The weaker any cord is, the less will it bear to be stretched, and
the worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to
break it. Had anyone proposed the overthrow of Mr. Burke's
positions, he would have proceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He would
have magnified the authorities, on purpose to have called the right of
them into question; and the instant the question of right was started,
the authorities must have been given up.

  It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive that
although laws made in one generation often continue in force through
succeeding generations, yet they continue to derive their force from
the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force,
not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and
the non-repealing passes for consent.

  But Mr. Burke's clauses have not even this qualification in their
favour. They become null, by attempting to become immortal. The nature
of them precludes consent. They destroy the right which they might
have, by grounding it on a right which they cannot have. Immortal
power is not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of
Parliament. The Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed an act to
have authorised themselves to live for ever, as to make their
authority live for ever. All, therefore, that can be said of those
clauses is that they are a formality of words, of as much import as if
those who used them had addressed a congratulation to themselves,
and in the oriental style of antiquity had said: O Parliament, live
for ever!

  The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the
opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living,
and 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 which nature has engraved on the heart of every
citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly
recognised by all:- For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient
that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills
it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke
labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his
declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise,
and soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on
to a vast field of generous and manly thinking, and do not finish,
like Mr. Burke's periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the
heart.

  As I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I will take the liberty of
adding an anecdote respecting his farewell address to the Congress
of America in 1783, and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw
Mr. Burke's thundering attack on the French Revolution. M. de la
Fayette went to America at the early period of the war, and
continued a volunteer in her service to the end. His conduct through
the whole of that enterprise is one of the most extraordinary that
is to be found in the history of a young man, scarcely twenty years of
age. Situated in a country that was like the lap of sensual
pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how few are there to be
found who would exchange such a scene for the woods and wildernesses
of America, and pass the flowery years of youth in unprofitable danger
and hardship! but such is the fact. When the war ended, and he was
on the point of taking his final departure, he presented himself to
Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate farewell the
Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words: "May this
great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the oppressor,
and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to the
hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count