by the whole or a majority of the assembly regarded as being of a beneficial tendency. The fallacy in question consists in calling upon the assembly to reject it notwithstanding, upon the single ground, that by those who, in some former period, exercised the power which the present assembly is thus called on to exercise, a regulation was made, having for its object the precluding for ever, or to the end of a period not yet expired, all succeeding legislators from enacting a law to any such effect as that now proposed.

What will be tolerably clear to every man who will allow himself to think it so, is-that, notwithstanding the profound respect we are most of us so ready to testify towards our fellow creatures as soon as the moment has arrived after which it can be of no use to them, the comforts of those who are out of the way of all the comforts we can bestow, as well as of all the sufferings we can inflict, are not the real objects to which there has been this readiness to sacrifice the comforts of present and future generations, and that therefore there must be some other interest at the bottom.

Exposure.

1. To consider the matter in the first place on the ground of general utility.

At each point of time the sovereign for the time possesses such means as the nature of the case affords for making himself acquainted with the exigencies of his own time.

With relation to the future, the sovereign has no such means of information; it is only by a sort of vague anticipation, a sort of rough and almost random guess drawn by analogy, that the sovereign of this year can pretend to say what will be the exigencies of the country this time ten years.

Here then, to the extent of the pretended immutable law, is the government transferred from those who possess the best possible means of information, to those who, by their very position, are necessarily incapacitated from knowing any thing at all about the

matter.

Instead of being guided by their own judgment, the men of the 19th century shut their own eyes, and give themselves up to be led blindfold by the men of the 18th century.

The men who have the means of knowing the whole body of the facts on which the correctness and expediency of the judgment to be formed, must turn, give up their own judgment to that of a set of men entirely destitute of any of the requisite knowledge of such facts.

Men who have a century more of experience to ground their judgments on, surrender their intellect to men who had a century less experience, and who, unless that deficiency constitutes a claim, have no claim to preference.

If the prior generation were, in respect of intellectual qualification, ever so much superior to the subsequent generation,-if it understood so much better

than the subsequent generation itself the interest of that subsequent generation,-could it have been in an equal degree anxious to promote that interest, and consequently equally attentive to those facts with which, though in order to form a judgment it ought to have been, it is impossible that it should have been acquainted? In a word, will its love for that subsequent generation be quite so great as that same generation's love for itself?

Not even here, after a moment's deliberate reflection, will the assertion be in the affirmative.

And yet it is their prodigious anxiety for the welfare of their posterity that produces the propensity of these sages to tie up the hands of this same posterity for evermore, to act as guardians to its perpetual and incurable weakness, and take its conduct for ever out of its own hands.

If it be right that the conduct of the 19th century should be determined not by its own judgment but by that of the 18th, it will be equally right that the conduct of the 20th century should be determined not by its own judgment but by that of the 19th.

The same principle still pursued, what at length would be the consequence?—that in process of time the practice of legislation would be at an end: the conduct and fate of all men would be determined by those who neither knew nor cared any thing about the matter; and the aggregate body of the living would remain for ever in subjection to an inexorable tyranny, exercised, as it were, by the aggregate body of the dead.

This irrevocable law, whether good or bad at the moment of its enactment, is found at some succeeding period to be productive of mischief-uncompensated mischief to any amount. Now of this mischief, what possibility has the country of being rid?

A despotism, though it were that of a Caligula or a Nero, might be to any degree less mischievous, less intolerable, than any such immutable law. By benevolence (for even a tyrant may have his moments of benevolence), by benevolence, by prudence,-in a word, by caprice,-the living tyrant might be induced to revoke his law, and release the country from its consequences. But the dead tyrant! who shall make him feel? who shall make him hear?

Let it not be forgotten, that it is only to a bad purpose that this and every other instrument of deception will in general be employed.

It is only when the law in question is mischievous, and generally felt and understood to be such, that an argument of this stamp will be employed in the support of it.

Suppose the law a good one, it will be supported, not by absurdity and deception, but by reasons drawn from its own excellence.

But is it possible that the restraint of an irrevocable law should be imposed on so many millions of living beings by a few score, or a few hundreds, whose existence has ceased? Can a system of tyranny be established under which the living are all slaves-and a few among the dead, their tyrants?

The production of any such effect in the way of constraint being physically impossible, if produced in any degree it must be by force of argument-by the force of fallacy, and not by that of legislative power.

The means employed to give effect to this device may be comprised under two heads; the first of them exhibiting a contrivance not less flagitious than the position itself is absurd.

1st, In speaking of a law which is considered as repugnant to any law of the pretended immutable class, the way has been to call it void. But to what

purpose call it void? Only to excite the people to rebellion in the event of the legislator's passing any such void law. In speaking of a law as void, either this is meant or nothing. It is a sophism of the same cast as that expressed by the words rights of man, though played off in another shape, by a different set of hands, and for the benefit of a different class.

Are the people to consider the law void? They are then to consider it as an act of injustice and tyranny under the name of law;-as an act of power exercised by men who have no right to exercise it: they are to deal by it as they would by the command of a robber; they are to deal by those who, having passed it, take upon them to enforce the execution of it, as they would deal, whenever they found themselves strong enough, by the robber himselfa.

a Lord Coke was for holding void every act contrary to Magna Charta. If his doctrine were tenable, every act imposing law-taxes would be void.