favourite candidate, by expunging votes which had
always been allowed, and which, therefore, had the authority by which
all votes are given, that of custom uninterrupted. When the commons
determine who shall be constituents, they may, with some propriety, be
said to make law, because those determinations have, hitherto, for the
sake of quiet, been adopted by succeeding parliaments. A vote,
therefore, of the house, when it operates as a law, is to individuals a
law only temporary, but to communities perpetual.

Yet, though all this has been done, and though, at every new parliament,
much of this is expected to be done again, it has never produced, in any
former time, such an alarming crisis. We have found, by experience, that
though a squire has given ale and venison in vain, and a borough has
been compelled to see its dearest interest in the hands of him whom it
did not trust, yet the general state of the nation has continued the
same. The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk has
been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field commonly
reaped it; and he that built a house was master of the door; the
vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, by
any private man, or single community, was local and temporary, it
neither spread far, nor lasted long.

The nation looked on with little care, because there did not seem to be
much danger. The consequence of small irregularities was not felt, and
we had not yet learned to be terrified by very distant enemies.

But quiet and security are now at an end. Our vigilance is quickened,
and our comprehension is enlarged. We not only see events in their
causes, but before their causes; we hear the thunder while the sky is
clear, and see the mine sprung before it is dug. Political wisdom has,
by the force of English genius, been improved, at last, not only to
political intuition, but to political prescience.

But it cannot, I am afraid, be said, that as we are grown wise, we are
made happy. It is said of those who have the wonderful power called
second sight, that they seldom see any thing but evil: political second
sight has the same effect; we hear of nothing but of an alarming crisis,
of violated rights, and expiring liberties. The morning rises upon new
wrongs, and the dreamer passes the night in imaginary shackles.

The sphere of anxiety is now enlarged; he that hitherto cared only for
himself, now cares for the publick