What is forced cannot be
modified: but here you may measure your concessions.
It is a consideration of great moment, that you make the desired
admission without altering the system of your representation in the
smallest degree or in any part. You may leave that deliberation of a
Parliamentary change or reform, if ever you should think fit to engage
in it, uncomplicated and unembarrassed with the other question. Whereas,
if they are mixed and confounded, as some people attempt to mix and
confound them, no one can answer for the effects on the Constitution
itself.
There is another advantage in taking up this business singly and by an
arrangement for the single object. It is that you may proceed by
_degrees_. We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most
powerful law of Nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All
we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change
shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may
be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation.
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