cting by contrivances destructive to the best and
most valuable interests of the people. Our political architects have
taken a survey of the fabric of the British Constitution. It is singular
that they report nothing against the Crown, nothing against the Lords;
but in the House of Commons everything is unsound; it is ruinous in every
part. It is infested by the dry rot, and ready to tumble about our ears
without their immediate help. You know by the faults they find what are
their ideas of the alteration. As all government stands upon opinion,
they know that the way utterly to destroy it is to remove that opinion,
to take away all reverence, all confidence from it; and then, at the
first blast of public discontent and popular tumult, it tumbles to the
ground.

In considering this question, they who oppose it, oppose it on different
grounds; one is in the nature of a previous question--that some
alterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for making
them. The other is, that no essential alterations are at all wanting,
and that neither now, nor at any time, is it prudent or safe to be
meddling with the fundamental principles and ancient tried usages of our
Constitution--that our representation is as nearly perfect as the
necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will
suffer it to be; and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and
thankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and rash experiment.

On the other side, there are two parties, who proceed on two grounds--in
my opinion, as they state them, utterly irreconcilable. The one is
juridical, the other political. The one is in the nature of a claim of
right, on the supposed rights of man as man; this party desire the
decision of a suit. The other ground, as far as I can divine what it
directly means, is, that the representation is not so politically framed
as to answer the theory of its institution. As to the claim of right,
the meanest petitioner, the most gross and ignorant, is as good as the
best; in some respects his claim is more favourable on account of his
ignorance; his weakness, his poverty and distress only add to his titles;
he sues _in forma pauperis_: he ought to be a favourite of the Court. But
when the other ground is taken, when the question is political, when a
new Constitution is to be made on a sound theory of government, then the
presumptuous pride of didactic ignorance is to be excluded fr