OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 205 designed to be tribunals subject to the control of certain just principles. Constitutions, or the fundamental law, the governor wont on to say, were meant to be the expression of those just and general principles which should control human so ciety, and as such should prevail over majorities. Consti tutions were expressly intended to defend the rights of minorities; since without them, each question, or interest, might be settled by the majority, as it arose. It was but a truism to say that the oppression of the majority was the worst sort of oppression ; since the parties injured not only endured the burthen imposed by many, but were cut off from the sympathy of their kind, which can alleviate much suffering, by the inherent character of the tyranny. There was a great deal of good sense, and much truth in what the governor wrote, on this occasion ; but of what avail could it prove with the ignorant and short-sighted, who put more trust in one honeyed phrase of the journal, that flourished about the~ v people and their rights, than in all the arguments that reason, sustained even by revela tion, could offer to show the fallacies and dangers of this new doctrine, ^s a matter of course, the wiles of the demagogue were not without fruits. Although every man in the colony, either in his own person, or in that of his parent or guardian, had directly entered into the covenants of the fundamental law, as that law then existed, they now began to quarrel with its provisions, and to advance doc trines that would subvert everything as established, in order to put something new and untried in its place. Progress was the great desideratum ; and change was the hand-maiden of progress. A sort of puss in the corner game was started, which was to enable those who had no places to run into the seats of those who had. This is a favourite pursuit of man, all over the world, in monarchies as well as in democracies ; for, after all that institutions can effect, there is little change in men by putting on. or in taking off ermine and robes, or in wearing republican simplicity, in office or out of office; but the demagogue is nothing but the courtier, pouring out his homage in the gutters, instead of in an ante-chamber. Nor did the governor run into extremes in his attempts VOL. II. 18
