and with a fair known character, and the farmer who rents to the amount of three or four hundred pounds a year, and with a property on that farm to three or four times that amount, is not admitted to be an elector. Every thing is out of nature, as Mr. Burke says on another occasion, in this strange chaos, and all sorts of follies are blended with all sorts of crimes. William the Conqueror and his descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and bribed one part of it by what they called Charters, to hold the other parts of it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many of those Charters abound in Cornwall. The people were averse to the government established at the conquest, and the towns were garrifoned and bribed to enslave the country. All the old Charters are the badges of this conquest, and it is from this source that the capriciousness of elections arise. The French constitution fays, that the number of representatives for any place shall be in a ratio to the number of taxable inhabitants or electors. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? The county of Yorkshire, which contains near a million of souls, sends two county members; and so does the county of Rutland, which contains not an hundredth part of that number. The town of old Sarum, which contains not three houses, sends two members; and the town of Manchester, which contains upwards of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any. Is there any principle in these things? Is there any thing by which you can trace 1 trace the marks of freedom, or discover those of wisdom? No wonder then Mr. Burke has declined the comparison, and endeavoured to lead his readers from the point by a wild unsystematical display of paradoxial rhapsodies. The French constitution says, that the National Assembly shall be elected every two years. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? Why, that the nation has no right at all in the case: that the government is perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point; and he can quote for his authority, the precedent of a former parliament. The French constitution says, there shall be no game laws; that the farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce of those lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can take. That there shall be no monopolies of any kind—that all trade shall be free, and every man free to follow any occupation by which he can procure an honest livelihood, and in any place, town or city throughout the nation.—What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England, game is made the property of thole at whose expence it is not fed; and with respect to monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every chartered town is ah aristocrat;cal monopoly in itself, and the qualification of electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is this what Mr. Burke means by a constitution? In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the country, is hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An English man man is not free of his own country: every one of those places presents a barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman—that he has no rights. Within these monopolies, are other monopolies. A city, such for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and thirty thousand inhabitants," the right of electing representatives to parliament is monopolised into about thirty-one persons. And within these monopolies are still others. A man even of the same town, whose parents were not in circumstances to give him an occupation, is debarred, in many cases, from the natural right of acquiring one, be his genius or industry what it may. Are these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating itself from slavery, like France ?Certainly they are not; and certain am I, that when the people of England come to reflect upon them, they will, like France, annihilate those badges of ancient oppression, those traces of a conquered nation. Had Mr. Burke possessed talents similar to the author "On the Wealth of Nations," he would have comprehended all the parts which enter into, and, by assemblage, form a constitution. would have reasoned from minutiæ to magnitude. It is not from his prejudices only, but from the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is unfitted for the subject he writes upon. Even his genius is without a constitution. It is a genius at random, But he must fay He and not a genius constituted. fomething—He has therefore mounted in the air like a balloon, to draw the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand upon. Much Much is to be learned from the French constitution. Conquest and tyranny transplanted themfelves with William the Conqueror from Normandy into England, and the country is yet disfigured with the marks. May then the example of all France contribute to regenerate the freedom which a province of it destroyed! The French constitution says, That to preserve the national representation from being corrupt, no member of the National Assembly shall be an officer of the government, a place-man, or a penfioner. What will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper his answer: Loaves and fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and fishes has more mifchief in it than people have yet reflected on. The National Assembly has made the discovery, and it holds out the example to the world. Had governments agreed to quarrel on purpose to fleece their countries by taxes, they could not have succeeded better than they have done. Every thing in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The parliament, imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed to hold the national purse in trust for the nation but in the manner in which an English parliament is constructed, it is like a man being both mortgager and mortgagee; and in the case of misapplication of trust, it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted them, . it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of Errors concludes with the Pantomime of Hush. Neither the ministerial party, nor the opposition, will touch upon this case. The national purse is the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country people call," Ride "and tie—You ride a little way, and then I✷."— They order these things better in France. The French constitution fays, that the right of war and peace is in the nation. Where else fhould it reside, but in those who are to pay the expence? In England, this right is said to reside in a metaphor, shewn at the Tower for sixpence or a fhilling a-piece so are the lions; and it would be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any inanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see the absurdity of worshipping Aaron's molton calf, or Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but why do men continue to practise in themselves, the absurdities they despise in others? It may with reason be said, that in the manner the English nation is represented, it signifies not where this right resides, whether in the crown or in the parliament. War is the common harvest. of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home: the object of it is * It is a practice in fome parts of the country, when two travellers have but one horse, which like the national purfe will not carry double, that the one mounts and rides two or three miles a-head, and then ties the horse to a gate, and walks on. When the second traveller arrives, he takes the horfe, rides on, and paffes his companion a mile or two, and ties again; and so onRide and tie. I an |