What tee age owes to America. 
335 
of acquiescence, no partial dissents or discontents, but, so far as is 
predicable of human fortunes, irrevocable, indestructible, perpetual. 
Casihus hmc nxtllis.,mdlo delebilis cevo. 
OUR NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM. 
AVe may be quite sure that the high resolve to stake the future 
of a great people upon a system of society and of polity that should 
dispense with the dogmas, the experience, the traditions, the hab¬ 
its, and the sentiments upon which the firm and durable fabric of 
the British constitution had been built up, was not taken without 
a solicitous and competent survey of the history, the condition, the 
temper, and the moral and intellectual traits of the people for whom 
the decisive step was taken. 
Tt may, indeed, be suggested that the main body of the elements, 
and a large share of the arrangements of the new government, were 
expected to be upon the model of the British system, and that the 
substantials of civil and religious liberty and the institutions for 
their maintenance and defense were already the possession of the 
people of England, and the birthright of the colonists. But this 
consideration does not much disparage the responsibility assumed 
in discarding the correlative parts of the British constitution. I 
mean the established church and throne; the permanent power of 
a hereditary peerage; the confinement of popular representation to 
the wealthy and educated classes; and the ideas of all participa¬ 
tion by the people in their own government coming by gracious 
concession from the royal prerogative, and not by inherent right in 
themselves. Inded, the counter consideration, so far as the ques¬ 
tion was to be solved by experience, would be a ready one. The 
foundation, and the walls, and the roof of this firm and noble edi¬ 
fice, it would be said, are all fitly framed together in the substan¬ 
tial institutions you propose»to omit from your plan and model. 
The convenience and safety and freedom, the pride and happiness 
which the inmates of this temple and fortress enjoy, as the rights 
and liberties of Englishmen, are only kept in place and play because 
of the firm structure of these ancient strongholds of religion and 
law, which you now desert and refuse to build anew. 
Our fathers had formed their opinions upon wiser and deeper 
views of man and Providence than these, and they had the courage 
of their opinions. 
