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“ ……. Those unalterable relations which Providence has ordained that everything should bear to every other. These relations, which are truth itself, the foundation of virtue, and consequently, the only measures of happiness, should be likewise the only measures by which we should direct our reasoning. To these we should conform in good earnest, and not think to force nature, and the whole order of her system, by a compliance with our pride and folly, to conform to our artificial regulations. It is by a conformity to this method we owe the discovery of the few truths we know, and the little liberty and rational happiness we enjoy.”
Burke.Mr. Madison remarked to me, that the United States had been “useful in proving things before held impossible.” Of such proofs, he adduced several. Others, which he did not mention, have since occurred to me; and, among them, the pursuit of the à priori method in forming a constitution:–the à priori method, as it is styled by its enemies, though its advocates, with more reason, call it the inductive method. Till the formation of the government of the United States, it had been generally supposed, and it is so still by the majority of the old world, that a sound theory of government can be constructed only out of the experience of man in governments; the experience mankind has had of despotisms, oligarchies, and the mixtures of these with small portions of democracy.
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- Society in America , pp. 1 - 9Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1837