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By a natural enough illusion of the imagination
a Senate, with its veneration preaching denomination,
is apt enough to be presented in the character of a deposit
or treasury of undefined and undefinable wisdom
in the shape of a set of recondite maxims – a sacred
deposit, transmitted from hand to hand like a secret
in factitious religion, in magic, or in trade:-
a security against improvident change, and the
evils liable to be produced by it. Illusion, all this.
By no supposed useful instrument of direction and
guidance, can any useful useful effect be produced, any
further than as, by its being committed to writing,
a permanent shape can be given to it. By a
rationale attached to the text of the several articles
in the Code, this instrument of guidance would be
given of course. In such its form, it is, from
first to last, before adoption and after adoption, open to
the scrutiny of the public – subject to dissension
and contestation – to amendment, and, if
there be sufficient reason, to abrogation.
Attached to any political body whatsoever,
any such eulogistic appellation would naturally
be cherished as an instrument of power peculiar
to that body – an instrument in the display of
which it would feel peculiar gratification:
it would be like the flowing robe and yard-long
beard of the magician on the stage, sacred
vestments of the Superior Judges in England and of
the Priest almost every where: in a word,
whatsoever came from such a source would
receive attention and probability of adoption
beyond what on the score of utility would be
due to it.
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Identifier: | JB/044/084/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 44.
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044 |
constitutional code |
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084 |
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001 |
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copy/fair copy sheet |
1 |
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recto |
c10 / f10 |
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13869 |
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