It is but too plain that our Constitution cannot exist
with such a communication. Our humanity, our manners, our morals, our
religion, cannot stand with such a communication. The Constitution is
made by those things, and for those things: without them it cannot
exist; and without them it is no matter whether it exists or not.
It was an ingenious Parliamentary Christmas play, by which, in both
Houses, you anticipated the holidays; it was a relaxation from your
graver employment; it was a pleasant discussion you had, which part of
the family of the Constitution was the elder branch,--whether one part
did not exist prior to the others, and whether it might exist and
flourish, if "the others were cast into the fire."[12] In order to make
this Saturnalian amusement general in the family, you sent it down
stairs, that judges and juries might partake of the entertainment. The
unfortunate antiquary and augur who is the butt of all this sport may
suffer in the roistering horse-play and practical jokes of the servants'
hall. But whatever may become of him, the discussion itself, and the
timing it, put me in mind of what I have read, (where I do not
recollect,) that the subtle nation of the Greeks were busily employed,
in the Church of Santa Sophia, in a dispute of mixed natural philosophy,
metaphysics, and theology, whether the light on Mount Tabor was created
or uncreated, and were ready to massacre the holders of the
unfashionable opinion, at the very moment when the ferocious enemy of
all philosophy and religion, Mahomet the Second, entered through a
breach into the capital of the Christian world.
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