There have been marvels on the canvas so beautiful that
one approaches the work of remodelling it with awe.
But not only is the picture imperfect,--a thing of
snatches,--but with years it becomes less and still less
like its original.
The necessity for remodelling it is imperative, and we
shall be cowards if we decline the work. But let us be
specially careful to retain as much as possible of those
lines which we all acknowledge to be so faithfully
representative of our nation. To give to a bare numerical
majority of the people that power which the numerical
majority has in the United States, would not be to
achieve representation. The nation as it now exists would
not be known by such a portrait;--but neither can it
now be known by that which exists. It seems to me that
they who are adverse to change, looking back with an
unmeasured respect on what our old Parliaments have done
for us, ignore the majestic growth of the English people,
and forget the present in their worship of the past. They
think that we must be what we were,--at any rate, what
we were thirty years since. They have not, perhaps, gone
into the houses of artisans, or, if there, they have not
looked into the breasts of the men.
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