law which was evaded. But an attempt to
turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious
fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws
which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely
contemptible.

The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionary
disqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will be
sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something in this
argument differing from that on which every mode of despotism has been
defended, I shall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. The
people are satisfied to trust themselves with the exercise of their own
privileges, and do not desire this kind intervention of the House of
Commons to free them from the burden. They are certainly in the right.
They ought not to trust the House of Commons with a power over their
franchises; because the constitution, which placed two other co-ordinate
powers to control it, reposed no such confidence in that body. It were a
folly well deserving servitude for its punishment, to be full of
confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to a House
of Commons, arrogating to its sole resolution the most harsh and odious
part of legislative authority, that degree of submission which is due
only to the legislature itself.

When the House of Commons, in an endeavor to obtain new advantages at
the expense of the other orders of the state, for the benefit of the
_commons at large_, have pursued strong measures; if it were not just,
it was at least natural, that the constituents should connive at all
their proceedings; because we were ourselves ultimately to profit. But
when this submission is urged to us, in a contest between the
representatives and ourselves, and where nothing can be put into their
scale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us to be children when
they tell us they are our representatives, our own flesh and blood, and
that all the stripes they give us are for our good. The very desire of
that body to have such a trust contrary to law reposed in them, shows
that they are not worthy of it. They certainly will abuse it; because
all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretionary power leading to the
aggrandizement and profit of their own body have always abused it: and I
see no particular sanctity in our times, that is at all likely, by a
miraculous operation, to overrule the course of natu