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hough I am ready to consider any measure for the purpose of alleviating that distress, I can never hold forth that this can be produced by changes in the Constitution, or by changing the persons who administer the public affairs. I am greatly opposed to this, because, if the existence of national distress is to be looked on as a reason for organic changes in the Constitution, or in the individuals who compose the Government, there is an end of all stability in public affairs. In every state of the country, I fear it will not be difficult to make out such a case of poverty and suffering, as may upon such principles support an argument for great and immediate alteration. We have lived lately in a time of great change and of many new measures. It is supposed that these measures have produced disappointment, and that the Catholic Emancipation, for instance, has not ended in the tranquillity which was expected from it, and that the Reform-bill has not improved the condition or situation of the people at large, and that those who have recommended these measures do not enjoy with the country the same popularity that they formerly did. How this may be, I know not. But this I do know, that if there is disappointment, it does not arise from the vicious principles, or the ill-working of the measures themselves but from the wild, unfounded, exaggerated expectations of their effects which were indulged in and anticipated. A man does not know himself, nor is he a safe judge of his own conduct. But I believe myself never to have contributed to the raising of these wild and illusory hopes. What I have not done before, I will not do now, because I feel certain that measures from which great, extended, and permanent benefit is intended, will be very likely to terminate in failure, and consequently in general discontent. (en) |
