em as usual in his own breast. Since he has been so reserved, I should
have wished he had been as cautious with regard to the project itself.
First, because he observes justly, that his scheme, however it might
improve the platform, can add nothing to the authority of the
legislature; much I fear, it will have a contrary operation; for,
authority depending on opinion at least as much as on duty, an idea
circulated among the people that our constitution is not so perfect as
it ought to be, before you are sure of mending it, is a certain method
of lessening it in the public opinion. Of this irreverent opinion of
Parliament, the author himself complains in one part of his book; and he
endeavors to increase it in the other.

Has he well considered what an immense operation any change in our
constitution is? how many discussions, parties, and passions, it will
necessarily excite; and when you open it to inquiry in one part, where
the inquiry will stop? Experience shows us, that no time can be fit for
such changes but a time of general confusion; when good men, finding
everything already broken up, think it right to take advantage of the
opportunity of such derangement in favor of an useful alteration.
Perhaps a time of the greatest security and tranquillity both at home
and abroad may likewise be fit; but will the author affirm this to be
just such a time? Transferring an idea of military to civil prudence, he
ought to know how dangerous it is to make an alteration of your
disposition in the face of an enemy.

Now comes his American representation. Here too, as usual, he takes no
notice of any difficulty, nor says anything to obviate those objections
that must naturally arise in the minds of his readers. He throws you his
politics as he does his revenue; do you make something of them if you
can. Is not the reader a little astonished at the proposal of an
American representation from that quarter? It is proposed merely as a
project[85] of speculative improvement; not from the necessity in the
case, not to add anything to the authority of Parliament, but that we
may afford a greater attention to the concerns of the Americans, and
give them a better opportunity of stating their grievances, and of
obtaining redress. I am glad to find the author has at length discovered
that we have not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or a
proper redress to their grievances. His great friend would once have
been exceedingly displ