We have been told of publick
contracts, of the rights of society with regard to individuals, and the
privileges of individuals with respect to society; we have had one term
opposed to another, only to amuse our attention; and law, reason, and
sophistry have been mingled, till common sense was lost in the
confusion.
But, my lords, it is easy to disentangle all this perplexity of ideas,
and to set truth free from the shackles of sophistry, by observing that
it is, in all civilized nations of the world, one of the first
principles of the constitution, that the publick has a right, always
reserved, of having recourse to extraordinary methods of proceeding,
when the happiness of the community appears not sufficiently secured by
the known laws.
Laws may, by those who have made the study and explanation of them the
employment of their lives, be esteemed as the great standard of right;
they may be habitually reverenced, and considered as sacred in their own
nature, without regard to the end which they are designed to produce.
But others, my lords, whose minds operate without any impediment from
education, will easily discover, that laws are to be regarded only for
their use; that the power which made them only for the publick advantage
ought to alter or annul them, when they are no longer serviceable, or
when they obstruct those effects which they were intended to promote.
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