n view are, to have
Parliaments as frequent as they can be without distracting them in the
prosecution of public business: on one hand, to secure their dependence
upon the people; on the other, to give them that quiet in their minds
and that ease in their fortunes as to enable them to perform the most
arduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency,
with independency, and with experience, as real public counsellors, not
as the canvassers at a perpetual election. It is wise to compass as many
good ends as possibly you can, and, seeing there are inconveniences on
both sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit to
soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable; because the
disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be
derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite,
to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible
hour,--and may it be a very late one!

This bill, I fear, would precipitate one of two consequences,--I know
not which most likely, or which most dangerous: either that the crown,
by its constant, stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear out
all opposition in elections, or that a violent and furious popular
spirit would arise. I must see, to satisfy me, the remedies; I must see,
from their operation in the cure of the old evil, and in the cure of
those new evils which are inseparable from all remedies, how they
balance each other, and what is the total result. The excellence of
mathematics and metaphysics is, to have but one thing before you; but he
forms the best judgment in all moral disquisitions who has the greatest
number and variety of considerations in one view before him, and can
take them in with the best possible consideration of the middle results
of all.

We of the opposition, who are not friends to the bill, give this pledge
at least of our integrity and sincerity to the people,--that in our
situation of systematic opposition to the present ministers, in which
all our hope of rendering it effectual depends upon popular interest and
favor, we will not flatter them by a surrender of our uninfluenced
judgment and opinion; we give a security, that, if ever we should be in
another situation, no flattery to any other sort of power and influence
would induce us to act against the true interests of the people.

All are agreed that Parliaments should not be perpetual; the only
ques