point out to you the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate reprefentation." I fhall only fay here, in juftice to that old-fashioned conftitution, under which we have long profpered, that our reprefentation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a reprefentation of the people can be defired or devised. I defy the enemies of our conftitution to fhew the contrary. To detail the particulars in which it is found fo well to promote its ends, would demand a treatife on our practical conftitution. I ftate here the doctrine of the revolutionists, only that you and others may fee, what an opinion the fe gentlemen entertain of the conftitution of their country, and why they feem to think that fome great abufe of power, or fome great calamity, as giving a chance for the bleffing of a conftitution according to their ideas, would be much palliated to their feelings; you fee why they are fo much enamoured of your fair and equal reprefentation, which being once obtained, the fame effects might follow. You fee they confider our houfe of commons as only "a femblance," " "form," "a theory," "a fhadow," "a mockery," perhaps "a nuisance."

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Thefe gentlemen value themselves on being fyftematic, and not without reafon. They must therefore look on this grofs and palpable defect of reprefentation, this fundamental grievance (fo they call it) as a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering our whole government abfolutely illegitimate, and not at all better than a downright ufurpation, Another revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and ufurped government, would of course be perfectly juftifia ble, if not abfolutely neceffary. Indeed their principle, if you obferve it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the election of the house of commons; for, if popular reprefentation, or choice, is neceffary to the legitimacy of all

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government, the house of lords is, at one ftroke, baftardized and corrupted in blood. That house is no representative of the people at all, even in " fem¬ blance or in form." The cafe of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain the crown may endeavour to fcreen itfelf against thefe gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made on the revolution. The revolution which is reforted to for a title, on their fyftem, wants a title itself. The revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a bafis not more folid than our prefent formalities, as it was made by an houfe of lords not reprefenting any one but themfelves; and by an houfe of commons exactly such as the prefent, that is, as they term it, by a mere "fhadow and mockery" of reprefentation.

Something they muft deftroy, or they feem to themselves to exift for no purpose. One fet is for deftroying the civil power through the ecclefiaftical; another for demolishing the ecclefiaftick through the civil. They are aware that the worft confequences might happen to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of church and ftate; but they are fa heated with their theories, that they give more than hints, that this ruin, with all the mifchiefs that must lead to it and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of great authority, and certainly of great talents, fpeaking of a fuppofed alliance between church and ftate, fays, " perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil powers before this most unnatural alliance be broken. Calamitous no doubt will that time be. But what convulfion in the political world ought to be a fubject of lamentation, if it "be attended with fo defirable an effect?" You fee with what a steady eye thefe gentlemen are prepared to view the greateft calamities which can befall their country!

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It is no wonder therefore, that with thefe ideas co every thing in their conftitution and government at home, either in church or ftate, as illegitimate and ufurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and paflionate enthufiafm. Whilft they are poffelfed by thefe notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a conftitution, whofe merits are confirmed by the folid teft of long experience, and an increasing public ftrength and national profperity. They defpife experience as the wifdom of unlettered men; and as for the reft, they have wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have" the rights of men." Against thefe there can be no prefcription; against thefe no agreement is binding: thefe admit no temperament, and no compromife: any thing withheld from their full demand is fo much of fraud and injuftice. Againft thefe their rights of men let no government look for fecurity in the length of its continuance, or in the juftice and lenity of its administration. The objections of thefe fpeculatifts, if its forms do not quadrate with their theorics, are as valid against fuch an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny, or the greeneft ufurpation. They are always at iilue with governments, not on a queftion of abufe, but a queftion of competency, and a queftion of title. I have nothing to fay to the clumfy fubtilty of their political metaphyfics. Let them be their amufement in the fchools." Illa fe jattet in aula-Eolus, et claufo ventorum carcere regnet."-But let them not break prifon to burft like a Levanter, to fweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the great deep to over

whelm us.

Far am I from denying in theory; full as far is my heart

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heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. denying their falfe claims of right, I do not mean to injure thofe which are real, and are fuch as their pretended rights would totally deftroy. If civil fociety be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an inftitution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to juftice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their induftry; and to the means of making their induftry fruitful. They have a right to the acquifitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their off-fpring; to inftruction in life, and to confolation in death. Whatever each man can feparately do, without trefpaffing upon others, he has a right to do for himself, and he has a right to do for himfelf; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which fociety, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He that has but five fhillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pound has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint ftock; and as to the fhare of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the ftate, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil fociety; for I have in my contemplation the civil focial man, and no other. It is a thing to be fettled by

convention.

If civil fociety be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the defcriptions of conftitution which are formed under it. Every fort of legiflative,

judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other ftate of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil fociety, rights which do not fo much as fuppofe its exiftence? Rights which are abfolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil fociety, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man fhould be judge in his own caufe. By this each perfon has at once divested himself of the firft fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to affert his own caufe. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inchifively, in a great meafure, abandons the right of felfdefence, the first law of nature, Men cannot enjoy. the rights of an uncivil and of a civil ftate together. That he may obtain juftice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most effential to him. That he may fecure fome liberty, he makes a furrender in truft of the whole of it.

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exift in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearnefs, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abftract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to every thing they want every thing. Government is a contrivance of human wifdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants fhould be provided for by this wifdom. Among thefe wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil fociety, of a fufficient reftraint upon their paffions. Society requires not only that the paffions of individuals fhould be fubjected, but that even in the mafs and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men fhould frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their paffions brought into fubjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercife of its

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