The burden of proof lies heavily on those who tear to pieces the whole
frame and contexture of their country, that they could find no other way
of settling a government fit to obtain its rational ends, except that
which they have pursued by means unfavorable to all the present
happiness of millions of people, and to the utter ruin of several
hundreds of thousands. In their political arrangements, men have no
right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the
question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands
is the care of our own time. With regard to futurity, we are to treat it
like a ward. We are not so to attempt an improvement of his fortune as
to put the capital of his estate to any hazard.
It is not worth our while to discuss, like sophisters, whether in no
case some evil for the sake of some benefit is to be tolerated. Nothing
universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political
subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these
matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of
mathematics.
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