very
warmly. My conduct is before the electors of Leeds. My opinions shall on
all occasions be stated to them with perfect frankness. If they approve
that conduct, if they concur in those opinions, they ought, not for my
sake, but for their own, to choose me as their member. To be so chosen,
I should indeed consider as a high and enviable honour; but I should
think it no honour to be returned to Parliament by persons who, thinking
me destitute of the requisite qualifications, had yet been wrought upon
by cajolery and importunity to poll for me in despite of their better
judgment.

"I wish to add a few words touching a question which has lately been
much canvassed; I mean the question of pledges. In this letter, and in
every letter which I have written to my friends at Leeds, I have plainly
declared my opinions. But I think it, at this conjuncture, my duty to
declare that I will give no pledges. I will not bind myself to make or
to support any particular motion. I will state as shortly as I can some
of the reasons which have induced me to form this determination.
The great beauty of the representative system is, that it unites
the advantages of popular control with the advantages arising from a
division of labour. Just as a physician understands medicine better than
an ordinary man, just as a shoemaker makes shoes better than an ordinary
man, so a person whose life is passed in transacting affairs of State
becomes a better statesman than an ordinary man. In politics, as well
as every other department of life, the public ought to have the means of
checking those who serve it. If a man finds that he derives no benefit
from the prescription of his physician, he calls in another. If his
shoes do not fit him, he changes his shoemaker. But when he has called
in a physician of whom he hears a good report, and whose general
practice he believes to be judicious, it would be absurd in him to tie
down that physician to order particular pills and particular draughts.
While he continues to be the customer of a shoemaker, it would be absurd
in him to sit by and mete every motion of that shoemaker's hand. And in
the same manner, it would, I think, be absurd in him to require
positive pledges, and to exact daily and hourly obedience, from his
representative. My opinion is, that electors ought at first to choose
cautiously; then to confide liberally; and, when the term for which they
have selected their member has expired, to review his