e him to draw a
cart or wagon like a beast of draught; if you can, when the humour
seizes you, and at the suggestion of your mere fears, or whim, cause him
to be shut up in a dungeon during your pleasure: if you can, at your
pleasure, do these things to him, is it not to be impudently
hypocritical to affect to call him _a free-man_? But, after all, these
may all be wanting, and yet the man be _a slave_, if he be allowed to
have _no property_; and, as I have shown, no property he can have, not
even in that _labour_, which is not only property, but the _basis_ of
all other property, unless he have a _share in making the laws_ to which
he is compelled to submit.

346. It is said, that he may have this share _virtually_ though not in
form and _name_; for that his _employers_ may have such share, and they
will, as a matter of course, _act for him_. This doctrine, pushed home,
would make the _chief_ of the nation the sole maker of the laws; for, if
the rich can thus _act for_ the poor, why should not the chief act for
the rich? This matter is very completely explained by the practice in
the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There the maxim is, that _every free man_,
with the exception of men stained with crime and men insane, has a right
to have a voice in choosing those who make the laws. The number of
Representatives sent to the Congress is, in each State, proportioned to
the number of _free people_. But, as there are _slaves_ in _some_ of the
States, these States _have a certain portion of additional numbers on
account of those slaves_! Thus the slaves are _represented by their
owners_, and this is real, practical, open and undisguised _virtual
representation_! No doubt that white men may be represented in the same
way; for the colour of the skin is nothing; but let them be called
slaves, then; let it not be pretended that they are _free men_; let not
the word _liberty_ be polluted by being applied to their state; let it
be openly and honestly avowed, as in America, that they _are slaves_;
and then will come the question whether men ought to exist in such a
state, or whether they ought to do every thing in their power to rescue
themselves from it.

347. If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a
feather; if it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative
theory; if it were but an _abstract principle_; on any of these
suppositions, it might be considered as of little importance. But it is
none of these;