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    My LoRi > . * - * Your open , manly , uncompromising , and repeated declarations of sentiments held in common with the mass of the community , including all liberal minds , have bound you so firmly to the people , that they consider you as one of themselves : their welfare is your happiness ; and they are interested in all that

    you ' may do as a public man . Your language , spoken at Newcastle , is replete with noble earnestness : your fixed purpose of fighting , side by side with the people , or at their head as a leader , the great battle which must leave them the victorious depositaries of power , cannot be misunderstood . Yew are our own : we have bought you with the precious coin of public sincerity , now for the first time about to be made the public currency . As one of the

    people , I address you on some of the minor articles of your political faith , embodied in your spoken words . You say , — - ¦• Let our rallying cry be—Reform ! Liberty !! and the Constitution !!!' It is important that the rallying cries of honest men should be philosophically accurate . The word * constitution' has been much talked about ; but who can define it as an existing institution ? What was it before the passing of the Reform Bill ? What the Tories chose to call it . What has it been since ? What the

    Whigs have chosen to call it . Has there been , at any time , any security , save public opinion , against the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act ? None . Is public opinion a constitution ? No ; because it is not definite ; It is , then , unphilosophic to call any thing a constitution which is indefinite , arid is liable to daily alterations . Nothing can be definite in law which is not written

    down . Who can write down definitely a thing which is left to the irresponsible agency of interested human beings ? A King can do no wrong . A House of Lords is not responsible . Laws may be defined a bond between the rulers and the ruled ; but what lawyer ever considered a bond valid without a penalty attaching to the breach of it ? A King may plunge a whole

    country into confusion , prompted by a mercenary or tyrannical spirit ; yet the English law says ' the King can do no wrong . The KngUsh law also says that ' there can be no wrong without a remedy . ' 19 it wrong to plunge a whole country into confusion ? If it be , where , then , is the remedy ? In the reign of Charles , an indignant people adopted one for the occasion ; but the

    superior humanity of the present age abhors bloodshed alike in the case of the great or little criminal . The depdt of what is called legal responsibility , is inherent in what is commonly understood by . the ' constitution , in its first known and recorded principles . ' . . To find a remedy for this defect , is , indeed , to rtjbfin , i . e . remodel , rebuild the constitution ; to take what may happen

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    885

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    TO LORD DURHAM . : *¦ . ' ¦< '

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1834, page 885, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2640/page/67/