ands on a nice equipoise, with
steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it
from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of
oversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in a
government so complicated as ours, combined at the same time with
external circumstances still more complicated, is a matter full of
difficulties: in which a considerate man will not be too ready to
decide; a prudent man too ready to undertake; or an honest man too ready
to promise. They do not respect the public nor themselves, who engage
for more than they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they are
able to perform. These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest and
unbiassed; and submitted entirely to the opinion of grave men,
well-affected to the constitution of their country, and of experience in
what may best promote or hurt it.

Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an immense revenue, an
enormous debt, mighty establishments, government itself a great banker
and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of a
decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but _the
interposition of the body of the people itself_, whenever it shall
appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation,
that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law,
and to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition is a most
unpleasant remedy. But, if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some
occasion to be used; to be used then only, when it is evident that
nothing else can hold the constitution to its true principles.

The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and
redress, in the last century; in this the distempers of Parliament. It
is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parliamentary disorders
can be completed; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence
in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a
more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their
representatives. Standards for judging more systematically upon their
conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and
corporations. Frequent and correct lists of the voters in all important
questions ought to be procured.

By such means something may be done. By such means it may appear who
those are, that, by an indiscriminate support of all administrations,
have totally banished