om the
council in this high and arduous matter, which often bids defiance to the
experience of the wisest. The first claims a personal representation;
the latter rejects it with scorn and fervour. The language of the first
party is plain and intelligible; they who plead an absolute right, cannot
be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all
natural rights must be the rights of individuals: as by nature there is
no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these ideas are
mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as
men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the
principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and
eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of
reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British Constitution
upon any or all of its bases; for they lay it down, that every man ought
to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his
representative; that all other government is usurpation, and is so far
from having a claim to our obedience, that it is not only our right, but
our duty, to resist it. Nine-tenths of the reformers argue thus--that
is, on the natural right. It is impossible not to make some reflection
on the nature of this claim, or avoid a comparison between the extent of
the principle and the present object of the demand. If this claim be
founded, it is clear to what it goes. The House of Commons, in that
light, undoubtedly is no representative of the people as a collection of
individuals. Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion.
When you come to examine into this claim of right, founded on the right
of self-government in each individual, you find the thing demanded
infinitely short of the principle of the demand. What! one-third only of
the legislature, of the government no share at all? What sort of treaty
of partition is this for those who have no inherent right to the whole?
Give them all they ask, and your grant is still a cheat; for how comes
only a third to be their younger children's fortune in this settlement?
How came they neither to have the choice of kings, or lords, or judges,
or generals, or admirals, or bishops, or priests, or ministers, or
justices of peace? Why, what have you to answer in favour of the prior
rights of the Crown and peerage but this--our Constitution is a
proscriptive Constitution