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If the question were, whether upon the single account of their
being superfluous, to look no further, these forms should or
should not be abolished, whose soever voice were for the
affirmation, so should not be mine: Therefore of what I am about to say is paradoxical perhaps in form but in substance just what is ancient in —
matter of political usage, while it is equal to what is new, is
always better.
But when it is considered, that the object which we have
been holding up to view is so important as that there cannot
well be another more so that [the sum of all] possible expedients
together which we can employ for the attainment of it
can never be too much — that among these expedients that
of the exclusion of these forms is one of the most obvious
& least exceptionable — that the origin of them is such, as
that the having been taken up by accident, they have been
retained through habit without reflections: that the antiquity
of them is such, as that there is both a time within
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memory when [as yet] they were not: and another when being
inveterate they have been departed from, that upon their being made
to cease, except the consequences that are wished for of & except
the blotting of so much less paper all things will be precisely
in the same state they were in before. That neither privilege
nor Prerogative are the least concerned in them I am not without
hopes that a busy & enlightened nation & a Legislature —
the flower of that nation, may after due persuasion of the necessity
bind gird up at length their cords loins to this important work &
[resolve to] sacrifice prejudice on at the altar of Utility.
In some future age, looking back from the picture of
precision and simplicity that is before him, to the memorials
of these never ending janglings, may ask himself with
wonder whence could have arisen the matter of so many triumphs:
may put to himself with wonder a question which seems
very different in point of prosperity is supposed to have suggested
to a Roman. [Livy of the Samnites Hist. de la Falicite Publique]
COMPOS. Stat. quâ Stat. Formal peculiarities to be retrenched BR Lerorat
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081 |
compos. stat. qua stat. formal peculiarities to be retrenched perorat. |
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[[watermarks::gr [crown motif] [britannia with shield motif]]] |
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