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 THE 
 
 RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE; 
 
 * CONTAINING 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES 
 
 AND A DEMONSTRATION OF THE PRACTICABILITY OF 
 
 2£m'beT!6ial Suffrage, 
 
 WITHOUT BALLOT, 
 
 Without Oaths, Bribery, Corruption, Vice, Riot, Tumult, 
 Inconvenience, or Expence whatever ; 
 
 BY WHICH PLAN, 
 
 THE SENSE OR OPINION OF THE WHOLE NATION 
 MAY BE OBTAINED ON ANY SUBJECT, 
 
 WITH THE LEAST POSSIBLE TROUBLE, AND WITHOUT ANY EXPENCE. 
 
 With Notes from many eminent Writers. 
 
 " Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice of 
 his representatives. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and 
 his person is his title-deed."— Paine. 
 
 Honfcott : 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY W. BENBOAV, 269, STRAND 
 
 AND SOLD BY BRODIE, SALISB URY : A ND ALL OTHER BOOKSELLERS. 
 1820.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 »©*©= 
 
 TO THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 • Fellow Citizens, 
 
 The apostate Burke observes, that " when the affairs of 
 a nation are distracted, private people are justified in step- 
 ping- a little out of their ordinary sphere. They enjoy a 
 privilege of somewhat more dignity than that of idle lamen- 
 tation over the calamities of their country. They may look 
 into them narrowly, they may reason upon them liberally." 
 And Barlow says, that " under this prospect, every person 
 who but thinks he can throw the least light upon the subject, 
 is called upon for his assistance, and his duty to his fellow- 
 creatures becomes the more imperious as it is increased 
 by the probability of success." It matters not what part 
 of a ship you are in when it is sinking- : every person in 
 the vessel oug-ht to lend a helping- hand to throw all the 
 useless trumpery overboard, and endeavour to save the 
 wreck. It was this train of thinking- which caused me, 
 thoug-h a feeble advocate, to contribute the following- mite 
 in defence of your rights ; in doing of which, I have no 
 other prospect than that of making myself useful to the 
 society in which I live ; every citizen or member of civilized 
 society having a right to propose to his countrymen whatever 
 he conceives tends to secure or increase their happiness. 
 
 The present is the age of political speculation ; new and 
 old systems of government are now at issue; every thing 
 seems hastening towards an extraordinary change, and a 
 change is the one thing needful. 
 
 a 'i 
 
 3021.553
 
 IV 
 
 A reformation is universally acknowledged to be wanted ; 
 but a partial reformation will do no good, nor answer any 
 valuable end. Half-way expedients are always defective ; 
 against half-things " all nature cries aloud." 
 
 A moderately good thing is not so good as it ought 
 to be. A desperate disease requires a desperate remedy ; but 
 unless we search our wounds to the core, it is impossible 
 to apply suitable remedies, or to obtain a radical cure ; and 
 if we suffer in the operation, it is more the effect of the dis- 
 ease than of the remedy. But we cannot expect that those 
 who fatten or wallow in splendour at the expence of the 
 people, desire any change, or think one necessary. But we 
 ought not to mind what they or their dependents say, any 
 more than the judge did the housebreaker, who, upon his 
 trial, told his lordship that he would swear the peace against 
 him, for putting him in fear of his life. 
 
 People see things in different lights when they view them 
 from different positions, or are under particular citcum- 
 stances. Those who have the jaundice see all things yellow. 
 The mites in a cheese like the rotton part, and would not 
 like to see it restored to a sound state ; and the members of 
 rotten boroughs would not like to sec that cursed system 
 destroyed, and an equal representation substituted in its 
 room. If a physician were to prohibit the eating of fruit, 
 tarts, and sweetmeats, and declare them to be unw r holesome, 
 children and others who feed on those articles would con- 
 sider him their enemy ; and if any man proposes to do 
 away with a rotten, pernicious, and corrupt system of elec- 
 tion, and to supply its place by a full, fair, and free repre- 
 sentation, those who live by such corruption will persecute 
 that man to the prison or the grave, for daring to undeceive 
 the people. Hence the danger of public writers. Tyrants 
 and their satellites, in all countries, must necessarily abhor, 
 and unite against, any honest man who has spirit and 
 ability to paint their usurpation in its true colours. The 
 enormous ganjr of i-bb — rs, with K — «r*> and V — ces for
 
 their leaders, who now are plundering different countries, 
 must tremble, on finding- their villainy discovered. They 
 may, indeed, rage and threaten, but in a short time, justice 
 must overtake them. Knowledge and Liberty, the two 
 descending angels of enlightened man, shall scourge these 
 relentless spoilers from the earth. But when a country is 
 delivered up to the rapacity of placemen, pensioners, unfeel- 
 ing, all-grasping lawyers, profligate ministers, or to an 
 unprincipled factious opposition, only striving to be mi- 
 nisters, it becomes necessary that the public should be 
 animated to call aloud for justice; and when they do, pro- 
 clamations and prosecutions will only serve to irritate their 
 minds, and to accelerate redress. 
 
 When the entire mind of Great Britain shall be convinced 
 of tins great truth — that her representation is absurd, falla- 
 cious, unjust, and unconstitutional, then her entire voice will 
 call aloud for reform : and the thunder of her unanimity must 
 extort obedience. The Law, Church, and State, must be 
 reformed ; and the English government would do well to 
 accede to reformation, without forcing the necessity of revo- 
 lution*. I do not wish to stir you up to acts of rebellion, 
 even if I had it in my power, or wished to do any thing that 
 would unhinge or destroy government ; all that I wish is, 
 that we may get rid of all parts of the government which 
 are bad, and keep those which are good, and for such 
 alterations to be made as the spirit of the times require. 
 
 But I hope, in endeavouring to gain our rights, the manly 
 spirit of this nation will be displayed in peaceable and tran- 
 quil exertions: fori think that no important reformation, no 
 change or amelioration, ought to take place, except when 
 there is an unanimous and manly resolution to demand it : 
 and where there is that manly and unanimous resolution, it 
 will require no artillery to enforce it, no bayonets to accom- 
 plish it : for an unanimous consent in any matter of public 
 
 • The Jo'kev Club.
 
 VI 
 
 benefit will certainly procure it. It is true, that we, the 
 people, must demand it ; for if we do not reform the govern- 
 ment, we are sure they will not reform themselves. We 
 have a right to have that sort of government, and governors, 
 which best accords with our disposition and happiness ; and it is 
 our own faults if we do not have it : we make our enemies 
 formidable by fearing them ; we are passionate for liberty, 
 haters of chains, but deluded, drained of our money, and 
 abused beyond patience, beyond expression, by those who 
 swagger in the plunder of their country. They say all is 
 well, because they happen to be well, and that the country 
 is in a prosperous condition, though we are all starving, 
 and starving in consequence of their detestable measures ; 
 and if we meet together to ask for our own, or for bread, 
 we are to be overawed by a band of standing cut-throats, for 
 daring to complain, which is much less than a nation so 
 abused ought to do. We may see for what purpose standing 
 armies are kept, by the Manchester massacre, where men, 
 women, and helpless infants were indiscriminately and inhu- 
 manly murdered. This may properly be called out-heroding 
 Herod ; but the death of a fellow- creature is no more to 
 them than the fall of a leaf from a tree in the pathless desert. 
 The blood of the people ought never to be shed but to save 
 the people ; but here, this great crime has been committed, 
 and the criminals have not been brought to justice, so strongly 
 are they entrenched and fortified by corruption. The rela- 
 tives of the killed or wounded could obtain no redress. In 
 short, how can any person in this country expect such a thing 
 as justice, when it is even denied to our insulted and per- 
 secuted Queen ? It is of dangerous example for a nation to 
 suffer itself to be ill-used with impunity, whether those that 
 use it ill be its neighbours or its natives ; it ought to do 
 itself justice with vigour; to be quick in its resentments, and 
 severe in its judgments. 
 
 Britons, every people ought to scorn to be the property 
 of tyrants. What can be worse than tyranny? It brings
 
 vu 
 
 ignorance and brutality along- with it : it degrades men from 
 their just rank into the class of brutes ; it droops their spirits, 
 suppresses arts, and extinguishes every spark of noble ardor 
 and generosity in the breast of those who are enslaved by it. 
 It makes naturally strong and great minds feeble and little, 
 and triumphs over the ruins of virtue and humanity. This 
 is true of tyranny in every shape. There can be nothing 
 great and good, where its influence reaches ; for which rea- 
 son, it becomes every friend to truth and human-kind to bear 
 a part in opposing this monster, 
 
 " Which to be hated needs but to be seen." 
 
 Nothing can be worse to a people than ruin, come from 
 what hands soever it will ; and as it is the eternal interest of 
 every nation that their government should be just and good, 
 we have a right to examine if our's is so ; and if we find it to 
 be pernicious to the great body of the people, we have a 
 right to amend it or change it for a better. Let all parties, 
 therefore, become one party for liberty ; let the friends to 
 liberty unite, and we have nothing to fear : our's is the best 
 cause in the world. Let us, therefore, renew our Constitu- 
 tion; let us see where it abounds and where it wants, and 
 endeavour to perfect that which our ancestors so nobly 
 begun, and make it, what it is said to be, " the envy and 
 admiration of the world." Let us look back and examine, 
 by what neglect, by what steps of intemperance or 
 folly, we are brought into this present condition, and 
 resolve to avoid them in future. In short, let us in- 
 quire what our rights are, and be resolutely determined to 
 enjoy them. But let us remember, that the two most 
 powerful weapons that reformers can employ to advantage 
 are, reason and inquiry; and we may hope to see revolutions 
 brought about with the same tranquillity as other things 
 which are accomplishable by reason. Of this we have three 
 remarkable instances this year, in the revolutions of Spain. 
 Naples, and Portugal, where the whole system of govern-
 
 VI 11 
 
 ment was completely changed without any confusion or 
 bloodshed. And they had, and every nation at all times has 
 the right, as unquestionably as they have the power when 
 they have the will, to change their government, whenever 
 in their judgment the purposes of its institution can be bet- 
 ter attained. Whatever form of government a nation chooses 
 to have, it has a right to have. The law, says Volney, sig- 
 nifies the general will of the people ; and rebellion consists 
 in forcibly opposing this will, whether by a party or a go- 
 vernment. A whole nation, therefore, cannot be a rebel ; 
 tyrants only are rebels : but tyrants have no right to exist ; 
 and if the servants of the people turn tyrants, we have but 
 one thing to do, that is, get rid of them and their tyranny to- 
 gether. The Hesperides had a garden bearing golden ap- 
 ples, which was guarded by a dragon, which Hercules slew, 
 and bore away the fruit ; and if any man pretends to be the 
 guardian of our golden rights and liberties, and will never 
 suffer us to have them, we shall have no cause to mourn if 
 some Hercules or some Brutus appears to dispatch him. 
 Every thing becomes lawful and even virtuous, that procures 
 the public safety ; the good of the people is the supreme of 
 all laws ; when, therefore, power is greatly abused by gover- 
 nors, and the people are really oppressed by their sovereign, 
 or his agents, it cannot be rebellion for a nation so abused to 
 arise unanimously against their enemies, whatever name they 
 bear. Neither can it be treason, for treason signifies some 
 great mischief done, or intended to be done, to the public, 
 which, of course, the people would not do to themselves ; and 
 they seldom complain of their governors without good rea- 
 son ; for oppression generally comes from those who have 
 the management of public affairs. And it is glorious and 
 warrantable when great and general oppression from rulers 
 is manifest, and humble remonstrances fail of having any ef- 
 fect ; and when the public welfare cannot be otherwise pro- 
 vided for and secured, for the people to redress the griev- 
 ances themselves ; to vindicate their natural and Ic-^al rights ;
 
 IX 
 
 to break the yoke of tyranny, and free themselves and pos- 
 terity from inglorious servitude and ruin. For if force be 
 employed against the people to destroy them, instead of pro- 
 tecting- them under any constitution whatever, the people 
 have not only a perfect right, but it becomes their duty to 
 resist. If it be our duty, for example, to obey our king, be- 
 cause he rules for the public welfare, it follows by a parity 
 of reason, that when he turns tyrant, and makes his subjects 
 his prey to devour and destroy, instead of his charge to de- 
 fend and to cherish, we are bound to throw off our alle- 
 giance to him and resist ; not to resist, would be to encourage 
 him ; for impunity in great crimes is an encouragement to 
 commit greater. To govern people with the terrors of 
 chains, fetters, and the bayonet, tends only to exasperate 
 human nature. Free men will always revolt at the sight of 
 a naked sword. There is an elasticity in the mind of man, 
 which, like the hydrostatic bellows, the more it is pressed, 
 the greater is the reaction or endeavour to overcome that 
 pressure. 
 
 It is rather too late in the day to put the world into the 
 leading strings or go-cart of royalty, and to endeavour to 
 persuade us that kings have an hereditary indefeasible divine 
 right to play the devil. Kings are nothing more than other 
 men. The lion is king of the forest, but not king of the 
 lions, for every lion is a king. The people, strictly speaking, 
 are not subjects of kings, for all ought to be subject to 
 nothing but the laws, of which the king has the sovereign 
 execution ; but the people are the makers of kings and of 
 laws, consequently all sovereignty and power is naturally 
 inherent in, and derived from, the people. The people know 
 for what end they set up their governors, that they pay, 
 maintain, and supply them with money for every purpose ; 
 that governors are only stewards of the people, and are at 
 all times accountable to them for their stewardship ; that all 
 the powers of government are a trust held by the individuals, 
 not for their own good, but for the sood of the people : the
 
 people, therefore, who are the public, are the proper judges 
 whether things go ill or well with the public ; when their 
 prince exalts himself into a tyrant — when from subjects he 
 degrades them into the class of slaves, plunders them, makes 
 them his prey, and inhumanly and unnaturally sports with 
 their lives and properties. In short, every man can tell a 
 good government from a bad one, from the effects of it : 
 and every private subject has a right to watch the steps of 
 those who would betray their country ; for those who would 
 destroy the people or their liberties, ought by the people to 
 be destroyed, and destroyed speedily. This is the doctrine of 
 liberty, and it is as much knavery to deny this doctrine as folly 
 to ridicule it. 
 
 Every legitimate or lawful government must for ever rest 
 on the consent of the great body of the people ; for every 
 people who are governed by laws which are made without 
 their consent, are slaves ; and the majority of the people of 
 Great Britain are in this condition, for the members of Parlia- 
 ment are chosen by the most corrupt means imaginable, and 
 by very few of the people. The infernal boroughmongering 
 system is the cause of all our distresses, all our calamities ; 
 and as every man has a right to a vote or voice in choosing 
 his own legislator or law-maker, this is the right which the 
 reformers want to obtain, and to give every man a vote at 
 elections ; and this universal representation is generally call- 
 ed universal suffrage or universal voting. Trivial as this 
 right may seem to some people, it is of the utmost conse- 
 quence. " Trifles must not be neglected/' Remember, for 
 want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of the shoe the 
 horse was lost, and for want of the horse the man was lost, 
 being overtaken by the enemy ; all for want of a nail : and 
 our rights, liberties, and prosperity have been lost for want of 
 a voice in choosing our representatives. 
 
 This right is the primary right by which all other rights 
 are protected ; and we can never enjoy our civil or religious 
 rights without first securing this principal one.
 
 XI 
 
 " Those," says the Reverend Mr. Hayes, " who seek free- 
 dom in religion, freedom in person, or freedom of the press, 
 cannot fail to discover, that, would they enjoy any of these, 
 they must secure that whole, of which these are parts : — 
 namely, full, fair, and free representative government." 
 
 There is no such thing as freedom of election in this coun- 
 try, for all elections are carried on wholly by bribery ; there 
 is scarcely a little freeholder but what lives under the influ- 
 ence of some imperious lord, and is obliged to vote according 
 to orders. I shall beg leave to make a few remarks upon 
 this subject. It is a mistaken notion that we have the same 
 representation of the people as our ancestors enjoyed. There 
 were formerly inhabitants at Old Sarum to choose their re- 
 presentatives, and two members are still sent to Parliament 
 from thence, though there is not one single inhabitant resi- 
 dent on the spot, or near it ; but several populous towns, as 
 Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, &c. which contain each eighty 
 thousand souls, are not allowed to send any member. The 
 House of Commons is the place where the direct influence of 
 the people ought to prevail ; but here the defences of public 
 liberty have given way, and unless these be repaired speedily 
 and soon, ruin is inevitable. 
 
 Representation of the people exists when the members or 
 deputies are chosen by the people. These representatives 
 ought not to have an interest separate from the people ; and 
 this object may be obtained by equal free elections, fre- 
 quently repeated, that no opportunity may offer of seducing 
 them from their public duty. 
 
 About one fourth of the members of our House of Com- 
 mons are chosen by counties and great cities ; the remainder 
 are either returned by rotten boroughs, or nominated by in- 
 dividuals, and cannot therefore be considered as the repre- 
 sentatives of the people. * This evil is grown to such 
 
 * When the members come to an equality in our House of Commons, 
 \»e may take it for granted that there is no equality amongst the peop'.« 
 at large; but that public epinioii out of doors is decidedly against the
 
 Xll 
 
 strength, that Pitt declared " no honest man could be minis- 
 ter." Of the members for counties, some arc influenced by 
 their old Tory prejudices, and think that while they plunder 
 the people, they support the throne. Those nominated by 
 individuals adhere blindly to that party which their patrons 
 have embraced. 
 
 Major Cartwright, during- this Session of Parliament, of- 
 fered to prove at the bar of the Honourable House, that 
 nearly two hundred of the members were returned or ap- 
 pointed by Peers in the House of Lords. And Mr. Bright, 
 M. P. presented a petition from an individual who signed 
 himself James Mills, a British freeholder. The petition was 
 brought up and read. It complained of the burdens im- 
 posed on the people, and of the enormous expenditure of 
 the late reign, amounting to £"2,300,000,000, being three 
 times the amount of all the expences incurred during the 
 reigns of 31 preceding monarchs, occupying the long period 
 of 700 years ! The petitioner contended that the evils under 
 which the people laboured, arose from the present mode of 
 returning members to the House of Commons, by which the 
 people were excluded from the right of election : and a 
 great majority of the House were returned by the influence 
 of a number of Peers, whose interference at elections was a 
 breach of the privileges and of the standing orders of the 
 House. The petition then proceeded to name the peers pos- 
 sessing borough influence and patronage, and to enume- 
 rate by name the members returned to Parliament by that 
 influence, to the amount of more than 200. The remain- 
 der, for the most part, purchase their seats, lay out their 
 money as an adventure, and in the true spirit of commercial 
 enterprize, expect a profitable return. These men. soldiers, 
 sailors, lawyers, and traders by profession, constitute the ma- 
 jority. In such an assembly, the private interest of indivi- 
 
 government ; since the 100 or 1.30 placemen who have voles, represent 
 nothing bul the will of the minister, who ftcch them from the public 
 purse. — Timet, March '60, lfr>0
 
 XU1 
 
 duals must silence that national interest which ought ever to 
 dictate the resolutions of that House. " The present sys- 
 tem," says Sir F. Burdett, " even in the House of Commons. 
 is acknowledged to be corrupt/' amTwe know that a " cor- 
 rupt tree cannot bring - forth good fruit." And the Queen 
 says, in her Letter to the King, " that the ministers are al- 
 ways sure of a majority in that House." The people have 
 no share in the government, therefore their interest is not 
 consulted ; for all those who make laws and are not under 
 the controul of the people, will make them for their own 
 advantage, and for the advantage of those who make law- 
 makers. The only method, therefore, to remedy our evils, to 
 restore and preserve our liberties, is, to have the concerns of 
 all directed by the consent of all ; to allow every man a vote 
 at elections, whether he be rich or poor, a giant or a dwarf ; 
 and as there is a Bill just passed for numbering the people, 
 the whole country may be easily divided into districts, after 
 which there will be no inconvenience in the business of 
 elections. " The practicability of universal suffrage," says 
 Cobbett to the country gentlemen, " is all that can possibly 
 remain in doubt, for the justice of the thing is clear." And 
 there is nothing so much objected to amongst all classes as 
 its practicability. Even those two champions of our liberties, 
 Sir F. Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse, not long since doubted its 
 practicability ; so did Mr. Cobbett, as may be seen by the fol- 
 lowing extract from his letter to Earl Grosvenor : — 
 
 " It is not the law of the proposition for universal suf- 
 frage which your lordship appears to dispute, it is the prac- 
 ticability of the thing ; and it would be unreasonable as well 
 as rude in me, to treat this objection lightly, seeing that I 
 had such doubts of the practicability of it as to induce me, at 
 a meeting of deputies in London, to make a motion propos- 
 ing to stop at householders.* I stated all the difficulties 
 which, after long reflection, had occurred to my mind. 1 did 
 
 • See Note (s) p. 17,
 
 XIV 
 
 not see how men who had no visible and settled dwelling- in 
 the safety of which they were interested, and which must 
 be well known, could be polled with accuracy at an election, 
 especially in populous places. I did not see how large 
 crowds of men could be prevented from marching from one 
 parish to another, and thereby voting twice or thrice in the 
 same day, and for five or six different members. In short, I 
 was lost in the mist of confusion which this scene presented 
 to my mind, and I therefore proposed to stop at household- 
 ers, really seeing in that other proposition, that " universal 
 impracticability," which your lordship appears to perceive 
 some persons in the meeting agreed with me, but the majo- 
 rity were clearly on the other side ;* though my objections 
 had, as I thought, not been removed. At last a very sensi- 
 ble and modest man got up and gave an answer to my ob- 
 jections in somewhat these words : " Sir, I cannot see 
 all or any of the difficulties which Mr. Cobbett believes to 
 exist in the way of taking an election upon the principle of 
 universal suffrage. I have seen with how much exactness 
 the lists of all the male inhabitants, in every parish, inmates 
 as well as householders, have been made out under the mili- 
 tia laws ; and I see no reason why regulations which have 
 been put in force universally, for calling us forth to bear 
 arms in defence of the country, and the estates and property 
 of the country should not be put in force again ; and, by the 
 very same officers for calling us forth to exercise our right of 
 suffrage at elections." This was enough for me. The thing 
 had never struck me before. 
 
 Now, if such learned men as Grosvenor, Burdett, Hob- 
 house, &c. doubted its practicability, and so great a politician 
 as Mr. Cobbett, after long reflection, was lost in the mist of 
 confusion which this scene presented to his mind ; and the 
 thing had never struck him till the hint was given him by a 
 countryman, though he had written so much on the subject 
 
 ■* See Note (g) p. 30.
 
 XV 
 
 of elections, &c. can it be surprising to hear people every 
 day exclaim against the practicability of universal suffrage? 
 Certainly not : there are thousands in this country who have 
 the same doubts. A plain method, therefore, of demon- 
 strating, or proving its practicability, has long been con- 
 sidered a desideratum. The plainer and stronger it can be 
 proved, the greater is the difficulty for the sons of corruption 
 to bring objections against it ; and as " England expects 
 every man to do his duty," I conceive it to be my duty, 
 as a good citizen, to give any kind of illustration to the 
 subject that was in my power ; for which reason 1 now sub- 
 mit this treatise to your perusal, hoping it will not fail to 
 make proselytes to the cause, or give rise to something 
 better, for all kind of investigation promotes the cause of 
 truth. 
 
 But before I have shewn how every man can have a vote, 
 I have laid down the principles which prove his right to it, 
 and have given definitions, &c, of different governments, by 
 comparing which, the reader will see the superior excellency 
 of the representative system above all others : for which pur- 
 pose I have made liberal extracts from various authors. " I 
 will use, when I can/' says the learned and eloquent Mr. 
 Thelwall, " the works of others to any good purpose." I 
 have done, or endeavoured to do, the same thing ; for 
 throughout this work I have added notes from Volney, Locke, 
 Sidney, Richmond, Fenelon, Raynal, Milton, Paley, Rousseau, 
 Hume, Paine, Burke, Barlow, Thelwall, Godwin, Price, 
 Machiavel, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Gordon, Wakefield, Bec- 
 caria, Cobbett, Wooler, Addison, Watson, and several other 
 illustrious writers, as well as from the scriptures, all of which 
 are in defence of impartial liberty. I hope, therefore, should 
 the reader not be inclined to lend a patient attention to any 
 thing which I have said, some deference will at least be paid 
 to those writers, who, in all ages and in all countries, have 
 borne testimony of the great principles of public good. The 
 notes are principally extracted from the works of philosophers,
 
 XVI 
 
 which seldom fall into the hands of the " lower orders;" and 
 my motive for adducing- them here was, to corroborate what 
 is said in the body of the work, and to render this treatise as 
 useful and acceptable to the poor man as I possibly could, 
 which will, I hope, be a sufficient excuse for their multiplicity. 
 And now, my fellow-citizens, let neither private acquaint- 
 ance, personal alliance, nor party combination, stand between 
 us and our duty to our country. Let all those who have 
 a common interest in the public safety join in common mea- 
 sures to defend the public safety, and resolve to be satisfied 
 with nothing - less than a complete restoration of our rights. 
 
 Remember, oh, my friends ! the laws, the rights, 
 The generous plan of power delivered down, 
 From age to age, by your renown'd forefathers, 
 (So dearly bought, the price of so much blood). 
 
 let it never perish in your hands, 
 
 But piously transmit it to your children. 
 
 Do thou, great Liberty, inspire our souls, 
 
 And make our lives in thy possession happy, 
 
 Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence. — Addison. 
 
 Let every true Briton exclaim with the gallant Sydney, 
 To tyrants hostile shall this arm be shown ; 
 It seeks for peace through Liberty alone. 
 
 Our enemies, our oppressors, our servants, are revelling in 
 the greatest luxury ; they feel not the distress under which 
 so many thousands of us groan, for we, the people, are the 
 patient victims of the most pungent misery. Why do we 
 put up with these indignities ? We make our enemies for- 
 midable, as 1 observed before, because we fear them ; but, 
 for myself, I will say, first, with Shakspeare, 
 
 1 had as lieve not be, as live to be 
 In awe of such a thing as I myself. 
 
 And, lastly, with Wakefield, that " I have an antipathy to 
 arbitrary power, which I will manifest, unseduced by in- 
 terest, and unterrilied by consequences, till the touch of 
 death shall chill the brain that dictates, and stiffen the 
 hand that executes together." 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Dec. 18, 18-iO
 
 RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 >&*©< 
 
 Pupil. Enter into what company soever I will, the con- 
 versation is about Government ; a subject with which I am 
 totally unacquainted. I should, therefore, take it as a par- 
 ticular favour, Sir, if you would have the goodness to explain 
 to me some of its principles ? 
 
 Tutor. The principles of government are seldom taught 
 at schools ; besides, it is a subject that I have never studied : 
 and what can we argue but from what we know ? I will, 
 however, give you the best information that my studies will 
 enable me to afford (a), referring you occasionally to the 
 most celebrated authors who have written on the subject, 
 that have fallen under my notice. 
 
 Government is an appointment of one or more persons, 
 to do certain actions for the good of the society (b) ; it is 
 nothing else but the attendance of the trustees of the peo- 
 ple (c) upon the interest and affairs of the people. 
 
 Pupil. If government be the business of the whole body 
 of the people, they ought to understand it : and as the whole 
 people or society is composed of every individual in it, I 
 should think that every individual, being equally interested 
 with every other citizen, ought to possess his fractional share, 
 and understand its principles? 
 
 Tutor. Certainly, what concerns all ought to be judged 
 of by all. " There is no subject," says Mr. Paine, " more 
 interesting to every man than that of government: his se- 
 curity, be he rich or poor, and in a great measure his pros- 
 
 fa,) Fie who docs his best, docs well, acts nobly ; angels could no 
 more. — Dr. Young. 
 
 (b) Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, 
 property and security of the people, nation, or community, and not for 
 the particular emolument or advantage of any single man, family, or 
 set of men, who are part only of that society. — Pcnsylrania Declara- 
 tion of Iliyhts. 
 
 (c) The King is the Representative of the people ; so are the Lords ; 
 so are the Judges: they are all trustees of the people, as well as the 
 Comnfons ; because no power is i?iven for the sole sake of the holder ; 
 and although government is certainly an institution of divine authority, 
 yet its forms, and the persons who administer it, all originate from the 
 people — Huykc's Thoughts on tin Discontents, p. Gf>, 
 
 1}
 
 perity, is connected therewith: it is, therefore, his interest as 
 well as his duty, to make himself acquainted with its princi- 
 ples, and what the practice ought to be." 
 
 " The nature of government," says Mr. Wooler, " should 
 be well understood, for if men would qualify themselves to 
 judge correctly upon this topic, arbitrary or tyrannicrd go- 
 vernments would be driven from the face of the earth." But 
 people are generally taught not to reason or think at all on 
 them, or to think wrong of them ; that they are to obey the 
 powers that be ; to be contented in the station they are in ; 
 that they have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them ; 
 and that government is a thing far above the comprehension 
 of the people, and is a subject with which they have nothing 
 to do (d). These doctrines are taught by men who have 
 
 (<\) Some have said, it is not the business of private men to meddle 
 with government — a bold, false, and dishonest saying ; and I shall 
 here particularly show the wickedness and stupidity of it. It is fit to 
 come from no mouth but that of a tyrant, or a slave ; and can never be 
 heard by any man of an honest and free soul, without horror and indig- 
 nation. Public truths ought never to be kept secret ; every man ought 
 to know what it concerns all to know. 
 
 Now, nothing upon earth is of a more universal nature than govern- 
 ment ; and every private man upon earth has a concern in it, because in 
 it is concerned, and nearly and immediately concerned, his virtue, his 
 property, and the security of his person ; of such important concern- 
 ment is the nature and administration of government to a people, that to 
 say private men have nothing to do with it, is to say that private men 
 have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery. 
 
 What is the public but the collected body of private men, as every 
 private man is a member of the public? And as the whole ought to be 
 concerned for the preservation of every private individual, it is the duty 
 of every private individual to be concerned for the whole, in which him- 
 self is included. 
 
 Of all the sciences that I know in the world, that of government, con- 
 cerns us most, and is the easiest to be known, and yet is the least under- 
 stood. Most of those who manage it would make the lower world be- 
 lieve that there is, 1 know not what difficulty and mystery in it, far above 
 vulgar understandings ; which proceeding of their's is direct craft and 
 imposture. Honesty and plainness go always together, and the makers 
 and multipliers of mysteries in the political way, are shrewdly to bo 
 suspected of dark designs. 
 
 Every ploughman knows a good government from a bad one. from the 
 effects of it ; lie knows whether the fruits of his labour be his own, and 
 whether lie enjoys them in peace and security ; and if he do not know 
 the principles of government, it is for want of thinking and inquiry, for 
 they lie open to common sense. What is government but a trust com- 
 mitted by all, or the most, to one, or a few, who are to attend upon the 
 atfairs of all ; that every one may, with more security, attend upon his 
 own ? A great and honourable tru.st, but too seldom honourably exe- 
 cuted : those who possess it having it often more at heart to increase their 
 power, than to make it useful, and to be terrible, rather than beneficent. 
 Honesty, diligence, and plain sense, are' the only talents necessary for 
 the executing of this trust ; and the public good is its only end. As to 
 refinements and finesses, they are. often only the false appearances of 
 wisdom and parts, and oftcner tricks to hide guilt and emptiness.
 
 an interest separate from the people, and they therefore en- 
 deavour to blind them in order to oppress them. But there 
 is not such mighty talents requisite to understand govern- 
 ment, as some who pretend to them, without possessing them, 
 would make us believe : honest affections and common qua- 
 lifications are sufficient, and the administration has been al- 
 ways best executed, and the public liberty best preserved 
 near the origin and rise of states, when plain honesty and 
 common sense alone governed the public affairs, when the 
 understandings of men were not perverted by subtleties and 
 distinctions ; great abilities have, for the most part, been 
 employed to mislead the honest but unwary multitude, and 
 to draw them out of the open and plain paths of public vir- 
 tue and public good. It is the eternal interest of every na- 
 tion that their government should be good, but" they who 
 direct it frequently reason a contrary way, and find their own 
 account in plunder and oppression : and while the public 
 voice is pretended to be declared by one or a few, for vile or 
 private ends, the public know nothing of what is done, till 
 they feel the terrible effects of it. Therefore every nation 
 and every generation should endeavour to obtain the best 
 system of government that can be found out (e), or to make 
 
 In truth, our whole worldly happiness and misery (abating for acci- 
 dents and diseases) are owing to the order or mismanagement of govern- 
 ment ; and he who says that private men have no concern with govern- 
 ment, does wisely and modestly tell us, that men have no concern in that 
 which concerns them most : it is saying that people ought not to concern 
 themselves whether they be naked or clothed ; fed or starved ; deceived 
 or instructed ; protected or destroyed. What nonsense and servitude in 
 a free and wise nation ! — Gordon's Cato's l.ellcrs, No. 38. 
 
 (e) The Mathematicians in Europe have been much divided concern- 
 ing that figure of a ship, which is the most commodious for sailing ; and 
 Iluygens, who at last determined this controversy, is justly thought to 
 have obliged the learned, as well as commercial world ; though Colum- 
 bus had sailed to America, and Sir Francis Drake made a tour of the 
 world without any such discovery. As one form of government must hi; 
 allowed more perfect than another, independent of the manners and hu- 
 mours of particular men ; why may wc not inquire which is the most 
 perfect of all, though the common botched and inaccurate governments 
 seem to serve the purposes of society, and though it be not so easy to 
 establish a new government, as to build a vessel upon a new plan ? Th« 
 subject is surely the most worthy of any the wit of man ran possibly de- 
 vise. And who knows, if this controversy were fixed by the universal 
 consent of the learned, but in some future age. an opportunity might be 
 afforded of reducing the theory to practice, either by a dissolution of 
 the old governments, or the combination of men to form a new one, in 
 some distant part of the world i In all cases, it must be advantageous to 
 know what is most perfect of the kind, that we may be able to bring any 
 real constitution or form of government, as near it as possible, by such 
 gentle alteration.-, and innovation-- a- may not stive loo great dUttirbancu 
 to societv. — llumr's Idta of a \)<rfcct Commonwealth. 
 
 n -l
 
 such reformations and improvements in their old system, as 
 the spirit of the times require ; for 
 
 " We live to improve or we live in vain." 
 
 Pupil. Then are there several forms of government ? 
 
 Tutor. Yog ; but under whatever form it is administered, 
 it ought always to be for the good of society ; when they 
 are otherwise administered they cease to be government and 
 become usurpation. 
 
 Pupil. What is the most general form of government ? 
 
 Tutor. " The most general, and the most simple form of 
 government," says Burke, (f) " is Despotism, where all 
 are governed by the will of sne man (g), and scarce any 
 part of the world is exempt from its power." The cruelty 
 and oppression practised under this kind of government, 
 
 ( J ) Vindication of Natural Society, p. 41, 47. 
 
 (()) Volney, speaking of despots and despotism, says, " One indivi- 
 dual more artful or more fortunate than the rest, concentred the whole 
 power in himself, and by a singular phenomenon obtained the mastery 
 over millions of his fellow-creatures against their will, and without their 
 consent; by opposing interests or prejudices, he sowed the seeds of di- 
 vision and hatred. He promised to the poor the spoil of the rich ; to 
 the rich the subjugation of the poor: threatened this man by that, one 
 class by another, and isolating the citizens by distrust, he formed his 
 own strength out of their weakness, and imposed on them the yoke of 
 opinion, the knots of which they tied with their own hands. By means 
 of the army he extorted contributions ; by the contributions he disposed 
 of the army ; by the corresponding play of money and places, he bound 
 all the people with a chain that was not to be 1 broken ; and the states 
 which they composed fell into the slow decay of despotism. 
 
 The despot, considering the country his own, and the people his pro- 
 perty, and meeting with no obstacle to his desires, became a depraved 
 character ; weak and arrogant at the same time, he spurned the people, 
 and would no longer be influenced by their voice. Ignorant, and yet nat- 
 tered, he neglected all instruction, all study, and sunk into total incapa- 
 city. Become himself unqualified for the conduct of affairs, he commit- 
 ted the trust to hirelings, and those hirelings deceived him. To satisfy 
 their own wants, they increased his ; and his enormous luxury devoured 
 every thing. He was no longer content with the frugal table, the mo- 
 dest attire, and the simple habitation of his ancestors ; the earth and sea 
 must be exhausted to satisfy his pride ; lie must have places constructed 
 of marble and porphery, and the furniture ornamented with gold and dia- 
 monds : he consumed at a meal the tribute of a city ; and in a day, the 
 revenue of a province. He became infested with an army of women and 
 courtiers, who imitated his extravagance ; and the treasures of the peo- 
 ple wen; delivered into the hands of parasites : all the wealth of the na- 
 tion was centred in a few individuals, and the multitude condemned to a 
 state of poverty. — Ruins of Empires, ch. 11. 
 
 It appears to me horrible and absurd to the last degree, that a whole 
 
 ficople should blindly subject themselves to the will of one man, even if 
 ic were an angel. This angel may, in a moment, become a monster, 
 thirsting after blood. Despotism is, to me, the most abominable and 
 disgraceful of all bad governments. Man is perpetually crushed, de- 
 based, and degraded by it. — Montesquieu to Vhecalitr de Iiruant, 
 Let. I.
 
 which reduces the people to a mere herd of cattle, made Mr. 
 Locke say, with great justice, that it was worse than anar- 
 chy (A). Here then we have the acknowledgment of a 
 great philosopher, that an irregular state of nature (i) is 
 preferable to such a government : we have the consent of all 
 
 (h) Anarchy signifies the absence of all government, but though it 
 leaves every man to do what he lists, yet otherwise leaves every man a 
 riirht to defend himself ; besides this sort of anarchy, where every one is 
 absolutely free, will quickly settle into order, and, indeed, cannot subsist 
 long. But single monarchy, or where there is a long gradation of ty- 
 rants, where many on one side do what they will against the most on the 
 other side ; where cruelty and lust revel without controul ; where wan- 
 ton and inhuman power has no limits, and heavy and sorrowful oppres- 
 sion, no remedy nor end ; where the innocent and harmless suffer most, 
 and the worst and the vilest thrive best, and where none are secure ; 
 where wickedness supports power, and property is the spoil of armies ; 
 if this be government by divine right, let us rail no longer at anarchy ; 
 for, I say, that absolute monarchy is worse than absolute anarchy, by 
 not being so general ; it is a partial anarchy, with worse effects, and no 
 remedy. 
 
 In all contentions between liberty and power, the latter has almost 
 constantly been the aggressor. Liberty, if ever it produce any evils, 
 does also cure them ; its worst effect, licentiousness, never does, and 
 never can, continue long. Anarchy cannot be of much duration ; and 
 where it is so, it is the child and companion of tyranny ; which is not 
 government, but a dissolution of it, as tyrants are the enemies of man- 
 kind. — (tortious Cato's Letters. 
 
 Anarchy, in E.urope, means confusion, attended with mobs and car- 
 nage, where the innocent perish with the guilty ; but it is very different 
 where a country is used to a representative government, though it should 
 have an interval of no government at all. In the heat of the American 
 Revolution, when the people in some states were for a long time without 
 the least shadow of law or government, they always acted by commit- 
 tees and representation. This they must call anarchy, for they know no 
 other. Let the people have time to become thoroughly and soberly 
 grounded in the doctrines of equality, and there is no danger of oppres- 
 sion either from government or anarchy. — J. Barlow. 
 
 Where anarchy has slain its hundreds, despotism has sacrificed mil- 
 lions upon millions, with this only effect to perpetuate the ignorance, the 
 vices, and the misery of mankind. Anarchy is a short-lived mischief, 
 while despotism is all but immortal ; it is to despotism that anarchy is 
 indebted for its sting. — Godwin's Political Justice, b. v. ch. '20. 
 
 (i) In the infancy of nations, when men still lived in forests, all sub- 
 ject to the same wants, and endowed with the same faculties, they were 
 nearly equal in strength, and this equality was highly advantageous to 
 the formation of society. Each individual finding himself equal and in- 
 dependent of every other, no one was the slave, and no one had the idea 
 of being master of another. Untaught man knew neither servitude nor 
 tyranny. Each man laboured separately and for himself. Supplied with 
 the means of providing sufficiently for his subsistence, he thought not of 
 borrowing from strangers. Owing nothing and exacting nothing, he 
 judged of the rights of others by his own. If he attacked others in their 
 possessions, he was resisted with enersry ; and the very foresight of this 
 resistance maintained a salutary ami immovable equilibrium. Thus, ori- 
 ginal equality without the aid of rommot'on. inainiaiued personal li- 
 berty, secured individual pioptrty, and produced order and. good man- 
 ners. — i'olnai's Iii-.im v 11
 
 6 
 
 sensible and generous men, who carry it yet farther, and 
 avow, that death itself is preferable. 
 
 So that by sure and uncontested principles, the greatest 
 part of the governments on earth must be concluded tyran- 
 nies, impostures, violations of the natural rights of man- 
 kind, and worse than the most disorderly anarchies. 
 
 Pupil. If most governments are tyrannies, what is the 
 next sort ? 
 
 Tutor. That where the supreme power is in the hands 
 of a few great men ; these few will sacriflce the happiness of 
 the many to their pride, by keeping them in shameful and 
 inhuman poverty and slavery ; it is a government of the 
 privileged classes invading the rights of all other classes: 
 corrupting the laws that they may exercise a despotism ap- 
 parently legal. It is, in short, a government by the nobility or 
 aristocracy ; and as it is more difficult to get rid of a multitude 
 of tyrants than one, under such a tyranny, says Voltaire (k) 
 man has no other option than that of being either hammer or 
 anvil. Happy he who gets clear of this alternative. But 
 Europe has no tyrants; and in England the nobles are all 
 honest men, all honourable men. But in some countries, says 
 that beautiful writer, Volney (7), the chiefs, equal in strength, 
 mutually afraid of each other, have formed vile compacts and 
 coalitions, and portioning out power, rank, and honours, have 
 arrogated to themselves privileges and immunities; have 
 erected themselves into separate bodies and distinct classes ; 
 have tyrannized in common over the people, and under the 
 name of aristocracy, the state has been tormented by the 
 passions of the wealthy and great (in). 
 
 Pupil. I have no desire of hearing any more of these ar- 
 bitrary governments, for as the government by one or a few 
 (n) produces poverty and chains, and the people are always 
 the prize, and flattered or neglected, according as their assist- 
 ance is wanted, I should like to know if there is anv form of 
 
 (k) Philosophical Dictionary, Art. Tyranny. 
 
 (l) Of all the hooks that ever were published, Volney's Ruins ought 
 to be read by all those who love nature, truth, and human happiness. — 
 Palmer's Principles of Nature, ch. II, p. 90. 
 
 (ni) Alas ! Tha extravagant rampancy of haughty rulers is but too apt 
 to regard the mass of mankind as beasts of burden, brought into the 
 wen Id with bridles in their mouths and saddles on their backs, ready to 
 be ridden with whip and spurs by the nurslingsof royally, the descendents 
 of nobility, and the sable successors of the order of Melchisedech. — 
 (1. Wakefield. 
 
 (n) Government by one, for the sake of one, is tyranny, so is govern- 
 ment by a few for the sake of themselves; but government executed for 
 the good of all, by the consent of all, is liberty ; and the word govern- 
 ment is profaned, and its meaning abused, when it means any thing else 
 — Gordon.
 
 government that is not tyrannical? Or, in other words, that 
 
 which is best? 
 
 Tutor. The best system of government is that where the 
 supreme power is equally divided amongst all the orders of 
 the inhabitants, or where the will of the people is the law. 
 The prosperity and happiness of the greatest number, nay, of 
 the whole nation, is, then, the object of the government. 
 The government being a friend to every man, every man 
 will be a friend to government (o). But this form of go- 
 vernment (p), in support of which every individual is equally 
 interested (q), has never been fairly established upon a large 
 scale, and, like most discoveries which are both simple and of 
 great utility when properly understood, seems to have been 
 Jong concealed from mankind. 
 
 Being of more importance than any other discovery, 
 ancient or modern, it has met with more opposition from the 
 venal and corrupt. As it is the object of the people to have 
 the greatest quantity of liberty at the least possible expence, 
 the whole genius and talents of the country being brought 
 into action, such alterations would continue to be made till 
 experience had taught them the highest perfection of human 
 wisdom, and the government will naturally be as perfect as 
 the ingenuity of man can make it. It will not oppress the 
 many by granting favours to a few, nor bear harder upon one 
 class than another. 
 
 In this form of government there will be no larger salaries 
 than are necessary (>) ; no useless places nor pensions ; 
 because it is the interest of the people to part with as little 
 of their money as possible: they will reward their servants 
 handsomely ; but to give them more than they deserve would 
 be taking money out of their own pockets, and enabling 
 them to become dangerous citizens ; whereas, no citizen 
 should be invested with so much power as to be feared, and 
 
 (o) It cannot, therefore, be wondered, that this form of government 
 is always cited as the best. Free and happy citizens will obey no leuis- 
 lation but what themselves have formed ; they live in peace, and own 
 nothing above them but equity and the laws. Whereas, if there be, as 
 in Persia, one man, or as in Poland, a body of men. who have an in- 
 terest separate from that of their nation, nothing is Ihen to be seen but 
 oppressors and oppressed ; the inhabitants are divided into two classes 
 only, tyrants and slaves. — Hilrclii's on Man, sec. 4, ch. 1 1. 
 
 (P) Lij'<- of Fletcher of Sulloua. 
 
 ((]) Establish government universally on the individual wishes and 
 collected wisdom of the people, and it will give a spring to the moral 
 faculties of every human creature, because every human creature must 
 find an interest in its welfare. — Joel Harlow. 
 
 (r) When the business of government shall lie conducted like other 
 business, on tile pi incipli > ot ci.iinnon sense, it will In paid !>>! , like 
 other business, in proportion V< * e . :'„■..; p*.i ;'o:ns<.d. —Ibul
 
 8 
 
 if any one becomes so, his power should be abridged (*), 
 for men made strong by power and money will usurp ; and 
 those who have the power to enslave the people will enslave 
 them ; the people should therefore prevent their magistrates 
 or governors from having too much power (*). In this 
 government, every individual, whether he be rich or poor, 
 must have a vote in framing the laws, either by himself or by 
 his representatives. 
 
 Pupil. Wherein does this differ from a democracy ? 
 
 Tutor. In the ancient democracies the whole body of the 
 people in themselves and by themselves performed all that 
 belonged to government, the whole people being convened 
 together to give their sanction to all laws and regulations ; 
 and although the people were divided into distinct classes, 
 still every individual had a voice in making the laws (w) or 
 appointing the legislators. But as democracies are only 
 practicable in a city, or very small territory, such as common- 
 wealths, (v) therefore, in countries of large extent, or where 
 the inhabitants are too numerous to meet together, they 
 agree to appoint certain persons to represent them, and 
 transact their business for them ; whence this is called the 
 representative system of government. 
 
 (<) Shooting and stabbing of kings is a useless business. Brutus 
 stabbed Caesar ; Caesar fell, but the spirit of domination survived. 
 Itavillac and Damiens aimed their daggers at kings ; but their daggers 
 could not assassinate pride in the human heart. If the next tyrant suc- 
 ceeds with equal powers, in vain has the dagger been steeped in blood. 
 Abridge the powers of rulers, and you gain the object which no deadly 
 weapon can reach — Abraham Bisliop. 
 
 (t) We know, by infinite examples and experience, that men pos- 
 sessed of power, rather than part with it, will do any thing, even the 
 worst and the blackest, to keep it ; unlimited power is so wild and 
 monstrous a thing, that it makes monsters of all those who have it ; and 
 however natural it be to desire it, it is as natural to oppose it ; nor 
 ought it to be trusted with any mortal man, be his intentions ever so 
 upright. Checks put upon magistrates make nations free, and the want 
 of those checks makes them slaves. They are free where their ma- 
 gistrates are confined within certain bounds set them by the people ; 
 and they are slaves, where their magistrates choose their own rulers, 
 and follow their lusts and humours, than which a more dreadful curse 
 can befal no people ; nor did ever magistrate do what he pleased, but 
 the people were undone by his pleasure ; and so most nations in the 
 world are undone ; and those nations only who bridle their governors 
 do not wear chains. — Trenehard, Cato's Letters. 
 
 (m) It is true that when Solon revised the constitution of Athens, he 
 divided the people into classes; but although they were classed accord- 
 ing to property, it was not on the same principle that they enjoyed the 
 power of voting, no. nor of legislating ; all the citizens of Athens voted 
 alike in the. national assembly; all had equal voices in the election of 
 senators and magistrates. — The Times, Mai) 21, lS-i(). 
 
 (V) Every free state is in a large sense a commonwealth. — Gordon. 
 
 The highest earthly felicity thai a people ran ask, or God can give, is 
 an equal and well-ordered commonwealth. — Harrington* s Political 
 Aphorisms
 
 Pupil. Is the representative system practicable in a 
 country of any extent whatever ? 
 
 Tutor. The magnitude of the country makes no dif- 
 ference ; it is equally applicable to nations of every extent, 
 and is as practicable in a large as in a small territory (uj). 
 Indeed, in a large country, it is the only just and practicable 
 method. " Some," says Barlow, (.r) " think the repre- 
 sentative system is not convenient for a great state ; others 
 take no notice of the distinction between ' great and small 
 states, in deciding that this is the only government proper 
 to insure the happiness and support the dignity of man ; and 
 probably not many years will pass before a third opinion will 
 be universally adopted, never to be laid aside, viz. that the 
 representative principle is not only proper and safe for the 
 government of any people, but that its propriety and safety 
 are in proportion to the magnitude of the society and the 
 extent of the territory." 
 
 Pupil. Is it confined to any one particular form of go- 
 vernment? (y) 
 
 Before the increase of the Roman power, or rather till its full esta- 
 blishment, almost all the nations which are the scene of ancient history, 
 were divided into petty commonwealths, whereof course a great equality 
 of fortune prevailed, where each had his little house and field to himself, 
 free and independent. What a happy situation of mankind ! How fa- 
 vourable to industry, agriculture, and propagation. Nothing surely can 
 give more liberty than such commonwealths. — Hume's Essays. 
 
 (tv) We shall conclude this subject with observing the falsehood of the 
 common opinion, that no large state could ever be modelled into a com- 
 monwealth, but that such a form of government can only take place in 
 a city or small territory. The contrary seems probable. Though it be 
 more difficult to form a republican government in an extensive country 
 than in a city, there is more facility, when once it is formed, of preserving 
 it steady and uniform, without tumult and faction. In a large govern- 
 ment which is modelled with masterly skill, there is compass and room 
 enough to refine the democracy from the lower people, who may be ad- 
 mitted into the first elections, or first concoction of the commonwealth, 
 to the higher magistrates, who direct all the movements. At the same 
 time, the parts are so distant and remote, that it is very difficult, either 
 by intrigue, prejudice, or passion, to hurry them into any measures 
 against the public interest. It is needless to inquire, whether such 
 a government would be immortal ; it is a sufficient incitement to human 
 endeavours, that such a government would flourish for many years. — 
 Hume's Essays, Discourse 12. 
 
 (x) Advice to the Privileged Orders, p. 6. 
 
 (_?/) Representative, government is not necessarily confined to any one 
 particular form. The equal rights of the people is the root from which 
 the whole springs, and the branches may be arranged as present opinion 
 or future experience shall best direct. TS T ext to matters of principle are 
 matters of opinion ; and as to the organical part, or the manner in which 
 the several parts of government shall be arranged and composed, it is 
 altogether matter of opinion. It is necessary that all the parts be con- 
 formable with the principle of equal rights, and so long as this principle 
 isi-'dirnously .' ' ••>, no vry material error can tak' pl«ce, •
 
 10 
 
 Tutor. No ; it is equally convenient for kingdoms as 
 well as republics; for it matters not to a nation by what 
 name their chief magistrate is called, whether Emperor, 
 King-, or President. 
 
 The principal things that the people ought to mind are, 
 that he be not invested with more power than is absolutely 
 necessary for the happiness of the nation over which he pre- 
 sides ; that he submit to be governed and to govern accord- 
 ing to the laws which the people have made (2) ; and that 
 all subordinate magistrates act according to law, and submit 
 to the same laws as all the rest of the citizens •, for whoever 
 breaks a law ought to be punished according to law, let his 
 station be what it will (a). Even the king or chief ma- 
 gistrate ought not to raise himself above his brethren (6), 
 otherwise than for what tends to the good of his fellow- 
 citizens, every one of which is his equal by nature (c), for 
 
 " Man is man, and who is more ?" 
 The people should also retain a power of calling their 
 magistrates to account if they betray their trust, whether 
 
 will any error continue long, for it will reform itself by the tranquil 
 operation of freedom of opinion and equality of rights ; for in the first 
 place, every man has a right to give an opinion, but no right that his 
 opinion should govern the rest ; and as a man may be sometimes in 
 a majority, and sometimes in a minority, as he expects obedience in the 
 one case, he must yield it in the other ; for in all matters of opinion, the 
 social compact, or the principle by which society is held together, re- 
 quires that the majority of opinions becomes the rule for the whole, 
 and that the minority yield practical obedience thereto. — Thomas Paine, 
 (z) In those countries that pretend to freedom, princes are subject to 
 those laws which their people have chosen ; they are bound to protect 
 their subjects in liberty, property, and religion ; to receive their 
 petitions, and redress their grievances ; so that the prince is, in the 
 opinion of wise men, only the greatest servant of the nation ; not only 
 a servant to the public in general, but, in some sort, to every man in it. 
 — Swift's Sermon on Mutual Subjection. 
 
 (a) The punishment of a nobleman should in no wise differ from that 
 of the lowest member of society; for punishments should be estimated 
 not by the sensibility of the criminal, but by the injury done to society, 
 winch injury is augmented by the high rank of the offender. — Bcccaria 
 on (rimes and Punishments. 
 
 Folly and villainy ought to have no asylum, nor can titles sanctify 
 crimes. A knave in power is as much to be dreaded as a fool with a fire- 
 brand in a magazine of powder. You have scarce a bare chance of not 
 being blown up. A Right Honourable or a Right Reverend rogue is the 
 most dangerous rogue, and consequently the most detestable. — Gordon's 
 Cato's Letters, No. 131. 
 
 (b) Thou shalt not set a stranger king over thee, which is not thy 
 brother; lie shall not multiply to himself horses or wives ; neither shall 
 he greatly multiply to himself silver or gold, that his heart be not lifted 
 up above his brethren. — Deut. eh. 17. i'rov. eh. 31, v. 4, 5; ch. 29, 12. 
 For a character of king^, see 1 Skim. eh. 9. 
 
 (c) There is no more inward value in the greatest i mperor than in the 
 meanest of his subjects. His body is composed of the ;,ame substance, 
 the nunc i > a. i- 1 -- . and with tj,i ..,;,„■ or "i-jcj infinnitic his education
 
 11 
 
 they are Emperors, Kings (d), or inferior magistrates, and 
 remove them from their office, if necessary, and appoint 
 others in their room (e). 
 
 Pupil. Then if every citizen is equal by nature to a king, all 
 the citizens or members of a state must be equal to each other ? 
 
 Tutoh. Certainly; all men are born equal and free, (/) and 
 always continue so in respect to their rights, though their pro- 
 perties are very unequal ; and no human being has a right, 
 though he has the power to hurt his fellow-creature, or constrain 
 (g) or restrain him in his liberty of doing all things that are not 
 hurtful to another. (A) But men cannot live well asunder ; 
 
 is generally worse by flattery, idleness, and luxury, and those evil dis- 
 positions that early power is apt to give. It is therefore against com- 
 mon sense that his private personal interest, or pleasure, should hi; put 
 in the balance with the safety of millions, every one of which is his 
 equal by nature. — Swift. 
 
 (d) Since the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people for 
 their good, and not his own, then may the people, as often as they shall 
 judge it for the best, either chuse him or reject him, retain him or de- 
 pose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of free- 
 born men to be governed as seems to them best. — Milton's Prone Works, 
 vol. 2, p. 533. 
 
 (e) All power, being originally inherent in, and consequently derived 
 from the people, therefore all officers of government, whether legislative 
 or executive, are their trustees and servants, and at all times accountable 
 to them ; and that they may be restrained from oppression, the people 
 have a right, at such periods as they may think proper, to reduce their 
 public officers to a private station, and supply the vacancies by certain 
 and regular elections. — Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights. 
 
 (f) There may be a hundred thousand men in an army, who are all 
 equally free ; but they only are naturally most fit to be commanders or 
 leaders who most excel in those virtues required for the right per- 
 formance of those offices; and that, not because it is good for them to 
 be raised above their brethren ; but because it is good for their brethren 
 to be guided by them, as it is ever good to be governed by the wisest 
 and the best. — Sydney. 
 
 God has made of one blood all the nations of men. — Acts ch. 17, v. 26. 
 Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? One God 
 and Father of all 1—Mal. ch. 2, v. 10. Eph. ch. 4, v.O. Prov. ch. 22, v. 2. 
 
 What is the race of mankind but one family, widely scattered upon 
 the face of the earth. All men by nature are brothers. — Fcnelon. 
 
 God has stamped his fiat upon the laws of nature, that all created 
 beings are equal in his sight. — 'Alack Dwarf, No. 1. 
 
 All men having the same origin are of equal antiquity ; nature has 
 made no difference in their formation. Strip the nobles naked, and you are 
 as well as they ; dress them in your rags, and you in their robes, and you 
 will doubtless be the nobles. Poverty and riches only discriminate 
 betwixt you. — Maehiavel's History of Florence, v. 3. 
 
 If we consider a peasant and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a ma- 
 gistrate and a private individual, a rich man and a poor one, there 
 appears a vast disparity; though they differ no more, as a man may say, 
 than in their breeches. — Montaigne's Essays, v. 1, ch. 42. 
 
 (g) All constraint, except what wisdom lays upon evil men, is evil. — 
 Conper. 
 
 (/i) My liberty I understand the power which every man ha> over his 
 own action^, and tin riirht.i to enjoy tlu- fruits of his labour, art. am'
 
 12 
 
 and as they enter into society for the sake of mutual aid and 
 protection, they must have laws by which all must be 
 governed, and therefore all should consent to those laws; 
 for if any men are bound by laws which are made by others 
 without their consent, those men are in the condition of 
 slaves. Now, of all governments, the representative system, 
 in which every man's liberty is least restrained, because every 
 man has an equal part, is certainly the most just, rational, 
 and natural (i), for the people will appoint their own legis- 
 lators or law-makers, and will approve of no laws but what 
 are for their own advantage (&). The Courts of Justice would 
 then be open to every man with but little or no expense ; 
 and the laws would be few in number, clear and simple (/) ; 
 
 industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, 
 by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what 
 himself enjoys. Liberty is the divine source of all human happiness ; 
 where liberty is lost, life grows precarious, always miserable, often 
 intolerable. The glorious privileges of liberty are to think, say, and do 
 what we please, provided that by so doing we hurt not each other. 
 This demonstrates the inestimable blessings of it : can we ever over- 
 rate, or be too jealous of a treasure which includes in it almost all 
 human felicities? Or can we encourage too much those who contend for 
 it, and those who promote it 1 It is the parent of virtue, pleasure, 
 plenty, and security, and it is innocent as well as lovely ; and the effects 
 of impartial liberty are, for every man to pursue the natural, reasonable, 
 and religious dictates of his own mind ; to spend his property his own 
 way; to live in freedom, plenty, and safety. — Gordon. 
 
 Liberty consists only in being subject to no man's will, and as nothing 
 denotes a slave but a dependence upon the will of another, if there be no 
 other law in a kingdom than the will of a prince, there is no such thing 
 as liberty. Property also is an appendage to liberty ; I may do what 
 1 please with my house, land, or estate, if I bring no damage upon 
 others. But I must not set fire to my house, by which my neighbour's 
 house may be burnt ; I may not cut the banks of the sea, or those of 
 a river, lest my neighbour's ground be overflown, because the society 
 into which I am incorporated would by such means receive prejudice. 
 My land is not simply my own, but upon condition that I shall not thereby 
 bring damage upon the public, by which I am protected in the peaceable 
 enjoyment and innocent use of what I possess. The society in which I 
 live cannot subsist without some rule to which all must consent. The 
 equality in which men are born is so perfect, that no man will suffer 
 his natural liberty to be abridged, except others do the like. I cannot 
 reasonably expect to be defended from wrong, unless 1 oblige myself to 
 do none ; or to suffer the punishment prescribed by the law, if 1 perform 
 not my engagement. But I may do what I please in all things relating 
 peculiarly to myself, or in which 1 am to seek my own convenience. — 
 Sidney on Government, p. 397. 
 
 (i) That form of government appears to me the most reasonable 
 which is most conformable to the equality we find in human nature, pro- 
 vided it be consistent with public peace and tranquillity. This is what 
 may properly be called liberty, which exempts one man from subjection 
 to another, as far as the order and economy of government will permit. 
 — Spectator, No. 2*S7. 
 
 (k) Sec note (o). 
 
 (I) Happy the nation where the knowledge of the law is not a science. 
 Would you prevent crimes ? Let liberty be attended with knowledge-
 
 13 
 
 they would not be made for the advantage of those who 
 have property, and against all those who have none, but 
 every one would be equally interested in their support ; and 
 they would be equally binding- on the law-makers as well as 
 others (ni). 
 
 Pupil. Then if I understand you right, the quantity of 
 property which a man possesses makes no difference as to his 
 voting in this system ? 
 
 Tutor. No : it is not the property that is to be repre- 
 sented, but the man, whether he be a giant or a dwarf; for 
 if persons of property were to be represented only, high- 
 waymen' may have a vote, when all virtuous but poor citi- 
 zens would be excluded, and such exclusion is tyranny. 
 
 Pupil. Who was the first man that advocated this sys- 
 tem ? 
 
 Tutor. Buchanan (n) was the first writer of any age 
 or country, who defended the principles of representative 
 government, and maintained (though he was tutor to a king) 
 " that the whole body of th« people, without any exceptions 
 of birth or fortune, had not only a right to vote in chusing 
 their representatives, but to reject their laws, provided they 
 were not agreeable to the public interest." And Volney, 
 speaking of the rights of all mankind, says, (o) the fol- 
 lowing is conceived to be the primordeal basis and physical 
 origin of all justice, all law, and all right : — " Whatever bo 
 the active power, the moving cause that directs the universe, 
 this power (which we call God) having given to all men 
 the same organs, the same sensations, and the same wants, 
 has thereby sufficiently declared that it has also given them 
 the same rights to the use of its benefits ; and that in the 
 order of nature all men are equal (p). 
 
 let the laws be clear and simple ; let the entire force of the nation be 
 united in their defence; let them be intended rather to favour every 
 individual, than any particular classes of men ; let the laws be feared, 
 and the laws only ; the fear of the laws is salutary, but the fear of men 
 is a fruitful and fatal source of crimes. — Beccaria. 
 
 (m) No man in society ought to have any privilege above the rest, 
 without giving the society some equivalent for such his privilege. When- 
 ever therefore the laws are honestly intended and equally executed, so as 
 to comprehend in their operations and penalties the great as well and as 
 much as the small, and hold in awe the magistrates as much as the sub- 
 ject, that government is good, that people are happy. — Gordon. 
 
 (n) Dr. Watson's Life of Fletcher, ch. vii. p. 85. 
 
 Co) Ruins of Empires, ch. xvii. p. 110. 
 
 (p) That nature has made men equal, we know and feel ; and when 
 people come to think otherwise, there is no excess of folly and supersti- 
 tion which they may not be brought to practice. Whoever pretends to 
 be naturally superior to other men, claims from nature what she never 
 gave to any man. He sets up for being more than a man; a character 
 with which nature has nothing to do. He trusts to his blood, which,
 
 14 
 
 Secondly, in as much as this power has given to every man 
 (commonly well organized) the ability of preserving and 
 maintaining his own existence, it clearly follows, that all 
 men are constituted independent of each other, that they are 
 created free, that no man can be subject, and no man sove- 
 reign, but that all men are the unlimited proprietors of their 
 own persons. Equality, therefore, and liberty, are two es- 
 sential attributes of man ; two laws of the divinity, not less 
 essential and immutable than the physical properties of ina- 
 nimate matter. Again, from the principle that every man is 
 the unlimited master of his own person, it follows, that one 
 inseparable condition in every contract and engagement, is 
 the free and voluntary consent of all the persons therein 
 bound. 
 
 Farther, because every individual is equal to every other 
 individual, it follows, that the balance of receipts and pay- 
 ments in political society ought to be rigorously in equili- 
 brium with each other : so that from the idea of equality, im- 
 mediately flows that other idea of equity and justice. 
 
 Finally, equality and liberty constitute the physical and 
 unalterable basis of every union of men in society, and, of 
 consequence, the necessary and generating principle of every 
 law and regular system of government. It is because this 
 basis has been invaded, that the disorders which have been 
 introduced in every nation, has at length excited them to re- 
 sistance, and it is by returning once more to a conformity 
 with this rule, that they can reform abuses, and reconstitute 
 a happy order of society. 
 
 Pupil. Who else has written on this system ? 
 
 Tutor. That great benefactor and advocate for the Rights 
 of Man, Thomas Paine (</) has written a dissertation on the 
 
 speaking naturally, gives him no advantage ; he is debased by a conceit 
 of his greatness, and neglects his mind, which alone, by proper improve- 
 ments, sets one man above another. Nature has thrown her gifts in 
 common amongst us; she constitutes no particular favourites with en- 
 dowments and privileges above the rest ; but for the most part sends all 
 her offspring into the world furnished with the elements of understand- 
 ing, and strength to pro\ide for themselves; and according to the use 
 that they make of their faculties, and of the opportunities tiny find, de- 
 grees of power, and names of distinction, grow amongst them, and their 
 social equality is lost: but it is evident to common sense, that there 
 ought to be no inequality in society, but for the sake of society. It is 
 not blood, or nature, but art, or accident, which makes one man excel 
 others; there is nothing moral in blood, or in title, or in place; actions 
 only are moral : he, therefore, is best, that docs best. Noble blood pre- 
 vents neither folly, nor lunacy, nor crimes, but frequently begets or pro- 
 motes them. A man who does base things is not noble ; a sober vil- 
 lager is a better man than ft debauched bud, and an honest mechanic 
 than ft knavish courtier. — (iurdon'M Cato'n Letters, No. 45. 
 
 (q) I consider Thomas Paine m a luminary of the uge, and one of
 
 15 
 
 first principles of government, wherein he says, " In con- 
 templating- government by election and representation, we 
 amuse not ourselves in inquiring - when and how, or by what 
 right it begun. Its origin is ever in view. Man is himself 
 the origin and the evidence of the right. It appertains to 
 him in right of his existence (r) and his person is his title- 
 deed. 
 
 The true and only true basis of representative government 
 is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and 
 no more, in the choice of his representatives. The rich have 
 no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting, 
 or of electing, and being elected, than the poor have to ex- 
 clude the rich (s) ; and wherever it is attempted, or pro- 
 
 the greatest benefactors of mankind. — Barlow on Revenue and Ex- 
 penditure, p. 6. 
 
 The fame of Murat flourished but for a day, because built upon fac- 
 tion, violence, and injustice; but the glory of Thomas Paine (who has 
 built his reputation upon principles and integrity, and unfeigned zeal for 
 human happiness) stands upon a rock that never can be shaken. So long 
 as the tongue of man can articulate the names of those heroes who have 
 benefited mankind, so long, in defiance of persecution, wTll the name of 
 Thomas Paine resound through the world ; for though I may not, nor 
 perhaps any other of his admirers, agree with all that he has said in all 
 Ins works, or the precise manner in winch he has treated his subject, yet 
 whoever observes the tenor of his writings and conduct, must admit this 
 was a man of principle, who laboured for the promotion of the happi- 
 ness of mankind ; who kept himself aloof and independent of all fac- 
 tion : this, therefore, is the man who has built himself a solid and last- 
 ing reputation, because he sought for that reputation alone by promot- 
 ing the happiness and welfare of man. — Theln-aU's Tribune, No. 23. 
 
 We are now to treat of a real great man, a noble of nature ; one, who 
 having naturally considered these evils under which the inhabitants of 
 Europe labour, from tyrannical governments, has most usefully and ho- 
 nourably devoted his pen to support the glorious cause of general li- 
 berty and the rights of man. Of the wonderful effects which this man's 
 reasoning has produced, the late revolutions of America and France are 
 magnificent examples: like a powerful magician, he touches with his 
 wand the hills of error, and they smoke ; the mountains of inhumanity, 
 and they pass away. — The Jockey Club, part iii. p. 193. 
 
 ( r ) The people stand in need of neither charters nor precedents to 
 prove their rights, or professional men to interpret either. They are 
 born with every man in every country, and exist in all countries alike, 
 the despotic as well as the free, though they may not be equally easy to 
 be recovered in all. Kings have, at times, different interests, and great 
 calamities have followed their differences; but the people can have but 
 one interest throughout the world. — Lord Lansduirnc, Par. Register, 
 vol. xx vi. j). 01. 
 
 (s) Some say the poor ought to be excluded because they do not con- 
 tribute to the support of the state. This assertion is as unfounded as 
 the rest. The taxes collected for beer, coals, candles, soap, salt, and 
 other articles of the first necessity, amount to a much larger sum than 
 the land-tax ; besides, the land would produce nothing, were it not ow- 
 ing to the labour of the poor. Were any exclusion to take place, it 
 ought to be the rich, because property takes can- of itself; but a free 
 people would never violate justice ; nor was it ever known that the pooi
 
 1G 
 
 posed on either side, it is a question of force and not of 
 right. Who is he that would exclude another? that other 
 has a right to exclude him. Will the rich exclude them- 
 selves? No. Will the poor exclude themselves? No. By 
 what right then can any be excluded ? The poor will not 
 delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor ; 
 and to assume it is not only to assume arbitrary power, but 
 to assume a right to commit robbery. 
 
 Personal rights, of which the right of voting representa- 
 tives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred 
 kind : it is the primary right, by which other rights are pro- 
 tected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to a 
 state of slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the 
 will of another ; and he that has not a vote in the election of 
 representatives, is in this case. The only ground upon which 
 exclusions from the right of voting is consistent with justice, 
 would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon 
 those who should propose to take that right from others. 
 
 That which is now called Aristocracy, implies an inequa* 
 lity of rights (t). Inequality of rights is created by a com- 
 bination in one part of the community to exclude another 
 part from its rights. Whenever it be made an article of a 
 constitution, or a law, that the right of voting shall apper- 
 tain exclusively, to persons possessing a certain quantity of 
 property, be it little or much, it is a combination of the per- 
 sons possessing that property, to exclude those who do not 
 possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with 
 powers, as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of 
 the rest (u). In any view of the case it is dangerous and 
 impolitic, sometimes ridiculous and always unjust, to make 
 property, the criterion of the right of voting. If the sum, or 
 value of the property upon which the right is to take place, 
 be considerable, it will exclude a majority of the people, and 
 unite them in a common interest against the government, 
 and against those who support it. If, in order to avoid this 
 
 suggested a plan for equalizing the property of the rich. — Life of 
 Fletcher, p. 07. 
 
 (t) Too great an inequality of riches amongst the members of a state, 
 implies, that the greatest part of them are wretched. — Ihlvelius, Dc 
 I'iHsprlt, p. 19. 
 
 In the institution and distribution of society, there are radical errors, 
 which give to men of property a consequence to which mere property 
 can never be entitled ; and which, depressing the great body of the peo- 
 ple, make every accumulation of national wealth an accumulation of na- 
 tional calamity and misfortune. The very words, grandeur, dignity, 
 power, affluence, political consequence, and the like, are nothing more 
 than pompous sophisticated terms to describe the beggary, want, and rag- 
 ged wretchedness of the great body of the people. — Thclnall. 
 
 (u) Set) note (bj.
 
 11 
 
 danger, a small quantity of property be fixed, it exhibit 1m 
 berty in disgrace, by putting- it in competition with accident 
 and insignificance, When a brood-mare shall fortunately pro- 
 duce a foal or a mule, that, by being worth the sum in ques- 
 tion, shall convey to its owner the right of voting, of by its 
 death take it from him — in whom does the origin of such a 
 right exist? Is it in the man, or in the mule ? (a?) When 
 we consider how many ways property may be acquired with* 
 out merit, and lost without a crime, we ought to spurn the 
 idea of making it a criterion of rights. 
 
 In a political view of the case, the strength and perma- 
 nent security of government is in proportion to the number 
 of people interested in supporting it. The true policy} there- 
 fore, is, to interest the whole by an equality of rights (»/), 
 for the danger arises from exclusions. It is possible to ex* 
 elude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible to 
 exclude them from the right of rebelling- against the excliM 
 sion ; and when all other rights are taken away, the right 
 of rebellion is made perfect, 
 
 (r ) Mr. Cobbett, at a meeting held at the Crown and Anchor, said* 
 he thought the Elective Franchise would he sufficiently extended, by be- 
 ing conferred upon every housekeeper. This declaration startled .some 
 of his friends, who. looking at the abstract right, were unable to com- 
 prehend why the possession of a house should be an inherent qualifica* 
 lion for voting, anymore than the possession of a horse, an ass, or Sk 
 monkey. It is but justice jo Mr. Cobbett to state, that on the repre- 
 sentation of the inconsistency of his conclusions, he readily withdrew an 
 opposition, as chimerical as unjust. — Black Dn-arJ'. No. 1. 
 
 (\j) In the United States of America, the science of liberty is uriiver- 
 sally understood, felt, and practised, as much by the simple as the wisPj 
 the weak as the strong. Their inveterate and deep-rooted habit of think- 
 ing is, that all men are equal in their rights, ilia! it is impossible to make 
 them otherwise : and this bein^ their undisturbed belief, they have no 
 conception how any man in his senses can entertain any other. This 
 point once settled, every thing is settled. Many operations which, in 
 Europe, have been considered incredible tales or dangerous experiments, 
 are but the infallible consequence of this great principle. The first of 
 these operations is the business of elections, wlreh. with that people, is 
 carried on with as much gravitj as their daily labour. There is no jea- 
 lousy on the occasion: nothing lucrative in office; they believe that 
 there is nothing more ditficult in the management of the affairs of a na- 
 tion, than the affairs of a'family ; that it only requires more hands. They 
 believe that it is the juggle of keeping up impositions to blind the eyes 
 of the vulgar, that constitutes the intricacy of state. 
 
 Banish the mysticism of inequality and you banish almost all the evils 
 attendant on human nature. The people, being habituated to the elec- 
 tion of all kinds of officers, the magnitude of the office makes no diffi- 
 culty in the case. The President of the United States, who lias morn 
 power while in olfiee than some of the kings of Europe, is chosen with 
 as little commotion as a churchwarden. There is a public service to- 
 be performed, and the people say, who shall do it. The servant feels 
 honoured with the confidence reposed in him. and generally expresses 
 his gratitude by a faithful performance.— liailuir.
 
 18 
 
 An inquiry into the origin of rights will demonstrate to ut, 
 that rights are not gifts, from one man to another; for men 
 do not hold their rights as grants from each other, but each 
 one in right of himself: nor from one class of men to ano- 
 ther, for who is he that could be the first giver ? or by what 
 principle, or on what authority could he possess the right of 
 giving ? A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor 
 a donation of them : it is a manifest of the principle by which 
 they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are. As 
 it is therefore impossible to discover any origin of rights, 
 otherwise than in the origin of man, it consequently fol- 
 lows, that rights appertain to man in right of his existence 
 only, and must therefore be equal to every man. The prin- 
 ciple of an equality of rights, is clear and simple ; every 
 man can understand it ; and it is by understanding his rights, 
 that he learns his duties: for when the rights of men are 
 equal » every man must finally see the necessity of protecting 
 the rights of others, as the most effectual security for his 
 own. He that would make his own liberty secure, must 
 guard even his enemy from oppression ; for if he violates his 
 duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. 1 
 have always believed that the best security for property, be 
 it much or little, is to remove from every part of the commu- 
 nity, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, 
 and every motive to violence ; and this can only be done by 
 an equality of rights. When rights are secure, property is 
 secure, in consequence ; but when property is made a pre- 
 tence for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to 
 hold the property, and provokes indignation and tumults : 
 for it is unnatural to believe that property can be secure un- 
 der the guarantee of a society injured in its rights by the in- 
 fluence of that property (2). All that is required with re- 
 gard to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it 
 
 (z) Woe to that country in which too much veneration is entertained 
 for property; not. that I would have it violated; 1 would have the most 
 insurmountable barriers placed round it — for every man's just posses- 
 sions ought to be regarded as inviolable. I know such barriers are ab- 
 solutely necessary for the protection of the lives of mankind. But no 
 respect for opulence. It is one thing to place a barrier round property; 
 mother to put that property in the scale against the welfare and inde- 
 pendence of the people. If any thing can make property insecure, it is 
 the, wicked folly, the overweaning pride, the tyranny of putting it in the 
 balance against population, against the rights and happiness of the many. 
 If you once impress the terrible notion, that laws are made, not for the ad- 
 vantage of the many who earn, but. of the few who enjoy ttie property, 
 you hold out a temptation so strong as almost to amount to a justification 
 for the violation of that property. If a rich man is wise and virtuous, his- 
 wisdom and his virtue I esteem, not his property. The way to protect 
 property is to make just and equal laws; to make men see that it is to 
 their advantage that property should be protected. — Thelnall.
 
 19 
 
 criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it Is 
 made a criterion for exclusive rights. And as in extensive 
 societies, such as America and France, the rig-hts of the in- 
 dividual, in matters of government, cannot be exercised but 
 by election and representation, it consequently follows that 
 the only system of government consistent with principle, 
 when simple democracy is impracticable, is the representa- 
 tive system. Thus does Thomas Paine (a) advocate the 
 rig-hts of the people, and if a revolution in thinking is 
 generally followed by a revolution in acting, there must be a 
 change speedy and soon: for there has been a very sensible 
 change within these few years (6) among all classes of the 
 people (c). 
 
 Pupil. Who first promoted or caused this? 
 
 Tutor. The'philosophers of all countries ; the press (d), by 
 rendering books common, has diffused a more equal share of 
 knowledge through every class, and is possibly the main- 
 spring of those revolutions which we see take place every 
 day; for since the discovery of the heavenly art of printing- 
 single men have been seen to produce, by the mere effects of 
 their writings, moral revolutions in whole nations. 
 
 (a) The writings of Paine bear the most striking relation to the immedi 
 ate improvement and moral felicity of the intellectual world. He writes upon 
 principle, and he always understands the principle upon which he writes : 
 he reasons without logic, and convinces without argumentation ; he 
 Strangles error by his first grasp, and developes truth with much sim- 
 plicity, but with irresistible force. He is one of the finest and best of 
 writers, and probably the most useful man that ever existed upon the face 
 of the earth. His moral and political writings are equally excellent^ and 
 the beneficial influence of the principles for which he has contended will 
 be felt through all succeeding ages. — Palmer's Principles of 
 Nature, ch. 14. 
 
 (o) There has been a very sudden, and a very sensible change in the 
 opinions of men within these few years, by the progress of learning and 
 of liberty. Most people in this island have divested themselves of all 
 superstitious reverence to names and authority. The Clergy have much 
 lost their credit : their pretensions and doctrines have been ridiculed: 
 and even religion can scarce support itself in the world. The mero 
 name of king commands little respect; and to talk of a king as God's 
 vicegerent upon earth, or to give him any of those magnificent titles, 
 which formerly dazzled mankind, would but excite laughter in every- 
 one. Had men been in the same disposition at the revolution, as they 
 are at present, monarchy would have run a great risk of being entirely 
 lost in this island.- — Hume's Essays, vol. 1, p. 7. 
 
 (c) The people are much more enlightened than formerly, for the 
 principles of civil and religious liberty have now got hold of the people 
 at large, and tyrants may do what they can to destroy these principles, 
 but they will increase do what they will, for the benefit of mankind ; for 
 superstition and bigotry must give way, even in our own country, and the 
 spirit of liberty spread far and wide. — Moore's Almanack. 
 
 (d) The printing press, that tremendous artillery of reason, hag 
 shaken the thrones of tyranny and altars of superstition. All Europe has* 
 felt the concession of opinion, and opinion is power. A new era is about 
 
 e'2
 
 20 
 
 Pupil. Have any of the higher orders of society in tin's 
 country ever shewn a disposition to assist the people in 
 recovering their rights ? 
 
 Tutor. Yes: Sir F. Burdett, who has so ably advocated 
 the cause of the people, said at a meeting lately, that it had 
 been remarked by an author (e) of the most acute and 
 penetrating mind, that while the people were allowed any 
 share in the government, or had the election of those who 
 were to administer it, its measures were always directed to 
 the promotion of the public welfare. 
 
 It had been justly observed, and the fact was worthy of 
 attention, that though the Roman people had the power of 
 appointing to all the executive offices of the stale, yet for a 
 period of 300 years they had never made an appointment 
 which their country had cause to regret (/). It was clear 
 
 to commence, and the hereditary system must soon give way to the re- 
 presentative. — Life of Fletcher, Prcf. 
 
 (e) Sydney's Discourses on (iovernment. e. 2. sec. IS, p. 123. 
 (J) One may generally observe, that the body of the people lias justcr 
 views for the public good, and pursue them with greater uprightness than 
 the nobility and gentry, who have so many private expectations and 
 particular interests, which hang like a false bias upon their judgments, 
 and may possibly dispose them to sacrifice the good of their country to 
 the advancement of their own fortunes: whereas tin: gross of the peo- 
 ple can have no other prospect in changes and revolutions than of public 
 blessings, which are to diffuse themselves over the whole state in 
 general . — Addison . 
 
 It is certain that the people, if left to themselves, do generally, if not 
 always, judge well. They have their fine senses in as great perfection as 
 those have who would treat them as if they had none. They have no 
 bias to be knaves. No ambition prompts them ; they have no occasion 
 for dissimulation or intrigue: they can serve no end by faction: they 
 have no interest but the general interest. — Gordon's Cato's Letters, 
 No. 24. 
 
 In all disputes between the people and their rulers, the presumption is 
 at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps 
 justify me in going further. Where popular discontents have been 
 prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported that there has been 
 generally something found amiss in the constitution or in the govern- 
 ment. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong 
 it is their error and not their crime ; but with the governing party of the 
 state it is far otherwise ; they certainly may act ill by design a* well as 
 by mistake. — liurke. 
 
 » In wisdom, steadiness and judgment, the people have greatly the ad- 
 vantage of princes. Hy some occult and singular quality they frequently 
 foresee the most astonishing events. Fortius reason the voice of the 
 people is compared to the voice of God. And in judging respecting 
 matters that are doubtful, you shall seldom find them mistaken. Let two 
 orators, equally eloquent, discuss a subject before them, ]in> and enn. 
 they will be sure to take the most rational side ; a proof that they are no 
 less of truth than other orders of men. 
 
 In popular tumults, a sober man may interpose, and by fair re- 
 monstrance recall the people to reason, but with an enraged prince, who 
 shall interfere.' or what remedy is there but violence and the sword?
 
 21 
 
 therefore, in reviewing- the history of other countries, that 
 the more a people had to do with appointing- to offices to 
 government, he did mean, the more they were concerned in 
 exercising immediately the functions of the executive, the 
 happier that people must be. Now all that they, the re- 
 formers, were contending- for was, that every man in this 
 country should have that fractional share of influence in the 
 government which consisted in choosing (g-) those who 
 were to have the disposal of the hard earnings of his in- 
 dustry, their lives and liberties ; and yet so degraded were 
 the people of England, that this claim, which he must call a 
 modest and reasonable claim, was treated as an impracticable 
 scheme and an insolent demand!! The present system was 
 even in the House of Commons acknowledged to be cor- 
 rupt, there was no class of the people that was not now 
 nearly driven to despair — the state of the labouring classes 
 was deplorable indeed (h), almost every 99 out of 100 
 were for a great and fundamental reform in parliament (i). 
 
 Pupil. Have any of the nobility ever endeavoured to 
 obtain a reform, or defended the representative system ? 
 
 Tutor. Yes, particularly the late Duke of Richmond, 
 who in a most excellent letter, which he wrote on the sub- 
 ject of reform, says, " The subject of a parliamentary re- 
 form is that which of all others most deserves the attention 
 of the public, as 1 conceive it would include every other ad- 
 vantage which a nation can wish : and 1 have no hesitation 
 in saying, that from every consideration I have been 
 able to give to this great question, which for many years has 
 occupied my mind, and from every day's experience to the 
 present hour, I am now more and more convinced, that the 
 
 la the election of magistrates they arc equally infallible ; nor can 
 they ever be prevailed upon to advance a corrupt and infamous character, 
 than which nothing- is more common with princes. — MachiaveVs Dis- 
 tourscs, b. 1, eh. oS and 59. 
 
 (<l) The people want the right of choosing their representatives ; and 
 if this be re fused them, they do not, if I know any thing of their dispositions, 
 care one straw, whether there be or be not any personal safety for any 
 tody. — Cobbelt's Reyistcr, vol. 3*2, No. 15. 
 
 (h) The common people are the first to complain of mismanagement, 
 and the first to feel the bad effects of it : long wars are carried on at the 
 expence of their blood ; heavy taxes pinch them most ; revenues are mis- 
 managed at their cost : they soonest feel the decay of trade and the 
 nation's poverty. — Dr. DavcnanVs Par!. Works, vol. 2. p. 57. 
 
 The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, 
 and luxury of the rich ; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the 
 best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burthens of 
 the poor. Those who labour most have the finest things, and those who 
 labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments. — Burke, Yind. 
 Sat. S„r. p.<»3. 
 
 (0 Times, of May 21, IS20.
 
 22 
 
 right of voting universally to every man not inca- 
 pacitated by nature for want of reason, or by law for the 
 commission of crimes, together with annual elections, is the 
 only reform that can be effectual and permanent. 1 am 
 further convinced that it is the only reform that is practi- 
 cable (£). 
 
 The great objection, in my opinion, to any narrow or con- 
 tracted plan of reform, is, that it proceeds upon the same bad 
 principle which it pretends to rectify ; it is still partial and un- 
 equal: a vast majority of the community is still left unrepre- 
 sented: and its most essential concerns, life, liberty, and pro- 
 perty, continue in the absolute disposal of those whom they 
 do not choose, and over whom they have no controul. AH 
 plans that are of a paliative nature have been found insuffici- 
 ent to interest and animate the great body of the people, 
 from whose earnestness alone any reform can be expected. 
 A long exclusion from any share in the legislature of this 
 country has rendered the great mass of the people indifferent 
 whether the monopoly (/) that subsists, continues in the 
 hands of a more or less extended company, or whether it be 
 divided into shares of somewhat more or less just propor- 
 tions. The public feels itself unconcerned in those contests, 
 except as to the oppressions it endures, and the exactions it 
 suffers, which it knows must continue so long as the people 
 remain deprived of all controul over their representation. 
 
 The people have been so often deceived, that they will 
 now scarcely trust any set of men, and nothing but self-evi- 
 dent conviction, that a measure tends effectually to the re- 
 covery of their rights, can, or indeed ought to interest them 
 in its favour. It is from the people alone that I expect any 
 good; and I am convinced that the only way to make them 
 feel that they are really concerned in the business, is to con- 
 tend for their full, clear, and indisputable rights of univer- 
 sal representation. 
 
 In this great and liberal plan, a clear and distinct principle 
 
 (A-) There Is no redress for a country situated as wc are, but by re- 
 storing to the people their rights of universal suffrage and annual par- 
 liaments ; rights which nature dictates and which no law can destroj ; 
 rights, which, if we wish for happiness and prosperity, wc must seek tu 
 restore. — Thclrvall. 
 
 (I) Monopolies are equally dangerous in trade, in politics, in reli- 
 gion ; a free trade, a free government, and a free liberty of conscience, 
 are the rights and blessings of all mankind ! — Trencharcl, 
 
 If the parliament be appointed annually by the people, they will find 
 an interest in seeking the real welfare of the people; but if, on the 
 contrary, great lords, monopolists, and money-jobbers, arc the only men 
 who arc to elect the members, they will be the only men whose interest 
 will be consulted. — . Thdnall.
 
 2,i 
 
 at once appears, that cannot lead us wrong, not conveniency 
 but right (jn). 
 
 Let us then but determine to act upon this broad principle 
 of giving to every man his own ( ti), and we shall imme- 
 diately get rid of all the perplexities to which the narrow 
 notions of partiality and exclusion must ever be subject. 
 
 In digesting a plan upon this noble foundation, we shall 
 not find any difficulties that the most common understanding 
 will not easily surmount. It does not require half the in- 
 genuity of a common tax bill; and as a proof of this asser- 
 tion I myself drew the form of a bill for this purpose, which 
 I presented to the House of Lords in 1780, not as a perfect 
 work, but merely to shew how easily the objections to the 
 practicability of the plan might be got over. I shall only 
 mention at present some of its provisions, which I think en- 
 tirely remove the most plausible objections that have been 
 urged against it. 
 
 The present number of members in the House of Com- 
 mons is preserved, so that all apprehensions from too nume- 
 rous an assembly ceases. 
 
 An account of the whole number of males of age in the 
 kingdom is to be taken, and divided by the number of mem- 
 bers to be sent, which will find the quota of electors to choose 
 one member ; from the best account that 1 can now get, it will 
 be about 2,600: these are to be formed into districts or 
 boroughs from the most contiguous parishes ; and by having 
 all the elections throughout the kingdom in one day and the 
 same day, and taken in each parish, all fear of riot and 
 tumult vanishes. 
 
 The great expence of elections, which arises chiefly from 
 the cost of conveying electors to the place of poll, and en- 
 tertaining them there, and on the road, will be no more, when 
 every man will vote in his own parish. Bribery must en- 
 tirely cease (o) ; in a single borough it would be difficult, 
 on so many, as to have any effect, impossible. The number 
 
 (//t) Nothing can be more easy to shew, from reason and experience, 
 that conveniency, and expediency, and domestic tranquillity, may he, 
 and in fact have been as well, nay, better secured under annual parlia- 
 ments, than under parliaments of longer continuance. — Bolingbroke, 
 Diss. Part, p. 132. 
 
 («) Render to Caesar the things that be Cirsar's. — Jesus Christ. 
 
 (o) There would be nobody bribed, because no purse would be suffi- 
 cient for the purpose. There would be none of those scenes of wicked- 
 ness which now disgrace elections. The time of the Members and of 
 the House would not be wasted in the deciding election contests All 
 would be fair, regular, and effectual ; and the laws could not tail to bo 
 held in veneration, when every man should feel that he himself had had 
 a voice in making them. — Cobbed to iirusi'cnor.
 
 24 
 
 to be brought would be infinitely too great for any purse. 
 Besides, annual parliaments, by their frequentcy and by their 
 shortness, would doubly operate in preventing- corruption. 
 The vast expence of petitions to parliament on account of 
 illegal returns, would be reduced almost to nothing. 
 
 The points on which these contests generally turn are the 
 qualifications of electors under the numberless restriction* 
 the present laws have imposed, which require the attendance 
 of witnesses, the production of records, and are subject to in- 
 finite dispute. 
 
 But when no other qualification shall be necessary, except 
 that of being a British subject, and of age, there can be but 
 little left to contend upon as to the right of electors to vole 
 (p). All other questions that could afford ground for a 
 petition would be trifling, and might be decided in one day. 
 Many other objections are obviated by the Bill, but it is 
 needless here to mention them. 
 
 But there is another sort of objection, against which no 
 provision can be made, as it is merely imaginary. 
 
 It is feared by some, that the influence of power and riches 
 will give to the aristocracy so great a lead at elections as to 
 place the whole government in their hands (</). Others 
 again dread, that when paupers and the lower orders of the 
 people shall have an equal vote with the first commoner in the 
 kingdom, we should fall into all the confusion of a democra- 
 tic republic. The contrariety of these two apprehensions 
 might of itself be a sufficient proof that neither extreme will 
 take place. It is true that the poorest man in the kingdom 
 will have an equal vote with the first, lor the choice of the 
 person to whom he trusts his all ; and I think he ought 
 io have that equal degree of security against oppression. 
 It is also true, that men of superior fortunes will have a 
 superior degree of weight and influence : and I think that 
 as education and knowledge generally attend property, 
 
 fp) If any alteration is to take place in the present qualifications for 
 voting', to acknowledge the rights of every man not incapacitated by- 
 Crime, or mental imbecility, is the only practicable mode of proceeding, 
 Our present system acknowledges a principle more extensive than 
 general suffrage. It gives to non-resident freemen the power of voting 
 for places in which they have neither a local habitation nor ;> name.— 
 Woolcr. 
 
 (r/) It has been said, that if the fight of voting were extended to 
 labourers and domestics, it would only increase the power of the masters, 
 who would constantly influence their dependents. This is assertion 
 without proof. At present the masters have the sole power, and how 
 dividing it with their servants would increase that power is surely an 
 absurdity. Besides, if the masters expect an increase of authority, 
 why are they alarmed? Do the servants dread the consequence I— Life 
 if Fletcher, p. 'J.3.
 
 25 
 
 Uiooe who possess them, and are loved and esteemed, will, 
 us they ought, have a greater influence with the more 
 ignorant (r). But the essential difference will be, that 
 although the people may be led, they cannot be driven ; 
 and tyranny and oppression, though attended with riches, 
 may be resisted, and will no longer be attended with a 
 burgage tenure at command. 
 
 Another subject of apprehension is, that the principle 
 of allowing to every man an equal right to vote, tends 
 to equality in other respects, and to level property. To 
 me it seems to have a direct contrary tendency. Property 
 will have its weight, as it ever must, in all governments ; 
 and I conceive, that in this plan, it will precisely find its just 
 proportion combined with talents and character (s). The 
 equal rights of men to security from oppression, and to 
 the enjoyments of life and liberty, strike me as perfectly 
 compatible with their unequal shares of industry, labour, 
 and genius, which are the origin of the inequalities of 
 fortunes. The protection of property appears to me one 
 of the most essential ends of society, and so far from 
 injuring it by this plan, 1 conceive it to be the only means 
 of preserving it ; for the present system is hastening with 
 great strides to a perfect equality in universal poverty. 
 
 It is said of this plan, that if persons of no property 
 were left out, there would be no objection to extend it 
 to all householders and persons paying taxes. My answer 
 is, that 1 know of no man, who, in his consumption of food 
 and use of raiment, does not pay taxes (/), and that 1 would 
 
 (r) The lower sort of people, and small proprietors, are pood judges 
 enough of one not very distant from them in rank or habitation ; and 
 therefore, in their parochial meetings, ■will probably chuse the best, or 
 nearly the best Itepresentath e. — I lit me. 
 
 (s) •■ Are you afraid," sa\s Cobbed to the country gentlemen, "that. 
 such a reform would till the Common*' or people's House, with low and 
 foolish men? lias a. representative system, from top to toe, produceel 
 this e fleet in America J No : t!i" four persons who have- been Presidents, 
 Messrs. Washington. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, were the four 
 men most distinguished in their country for political talent and wisdom, 
 equal to any men upon earth as to private character, and all of them 
 possessing estates, to w ".'.eh, unaugmented, they retired at the termina- 
 tion of their public date . The two Houses of Congrcs.-i are tilled, with 
 very few exceptions, !■ : n of some fortune, as well as nun of distin- 
 guished talent. Why. i',11. should \ ou suppose, that the people of 
 England, it' free to choose, would iix their choice on men i>( no pro- 
 perty and no talent ?" 
 
 (t) The equity of extending the suffrage to every grown-up man is, 
 I think, equallj clear. Every man pays taxes. Ever} labourer who 
 earns eighteen pounds a year, pays ten of it in taxes. It i-. ver\ certain 
 that every man pays a large proportion of his wages away in la\es; and 
 as 1 have never heard it pretended that the ancient law of tin land did 
 ;i'jt make suffrage yo hand in hand with taxation, it appears to me im-
 
 26 
 
 wish to encourage an enthusiasm for his country in the 
 breast of every subject, by giving- him his just share in 
 the government (u). 
 
 For my part, I agree in opinion with those who are 
 for restoring to all parts of the state their just rights, at the 
 same time, to do it generally, and not partially, is what 
 J must contend for ; although I admit that 1 am 
 not for restoring the negative of the Crown (a:). My reason 
 is, that it appears to me preposterous, that the will of 
 one man (y) should for ever obstruct every regulation 
 
 possible to deny that every man has, agreeably to that principle, a right 
 to vote for members of parliament. — Ibid. 
 
 When taxes are laid in such a manner as to be paid directly to the 
 fiscal officers by the persons on whom the tax falls, they are called 
 direct taxes. These are chiefly comprehended in the taxes paid on lands 
 and houses. When taxes are laid on articles of consumption, they are 
 called indirect taxes, because the consumer does not pay them directly 
 into the hands of the tax-gatherer, for the tax is included in the price ; 
 and in England, there is about seven times as much paid in indirect 
 as in direct taxes. To keep the people ignorant of these things is the 
 great secret in the modern science of finance ; the money each man pays 
 to government being incorporated with every tiling on which he lives, 
 all that he can know of the matter is, that whether he eats, drinks, or 
 sleeps, walks or rides, sees the light or breathes the air — whatever 
 he does, drains from him a tax, and this tax goes to support the luxury 
 of those who tell him they were born to govern. But whether this tax 
 falls heaviest on his bread or his beer, his shoes or his hat, his labours 
 or his pleasures, his virtues or his vices, it is impossible for any man 
 to know. With regard to individuals, the question is not, shall we 
 pay the tax? but, shall we exist? The continuance of life is a conti- 
 nuance of the tax ; and the language of the system is, pay the debt 
 to government, or pay the debt to nature.' — Barlow on Revenue, Sfc. 
 
 The supreme power in a state cannot take from any man, by taxes 
 and impositions, any part of his property, without his own consent, 
 or that of his representatives. — Locke on Government, ch. 11, sec. 138. 
 
 (m) My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people 
 from being one just foundation of government. It is surely the best 
 and most sacred of any. — Hume's Original Contrast. 
 
 (x) As the Constitution which gives the Commons a power to check 
 the King, in withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the King a power 
 to check the Commons, by empowering him to reject their other bills ; it 
 again supposes that the King is wiser than those whom it has already 
 supposed to be wiser than him ; a mere absurdity. How came the King 
 by a power which the people are afraid to trust, and always obliged 
 to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither 
 can any power which needs checking be from Cod; wherefore, though 
 we have been wise enough to shut and lock the door against absolute 
 monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the 
 Crown in possession of the key. — Common Sense, p. 14, 15. 
 
 (y) To live by one man's will is the cause of all men's misery. Now, 
 what could seem to common sense a wilder chimera, than that one man, 
 not created with features and endowments different from other men, 
 should have a lasting right from his blood, or his pride, or his madness, 
 to domineer over all men, and to rule, kill, starve, famish, banish, and 
 imprison as many as he pleased? Such a ruler is but a national execu- 
 tioner, and for a sceptre carries a bloody knife. It is certain, that
 
 27 
 
 which all the rest of the nation may think necessary. I 
 object to it as 1 would to any other prerogative of the 
 Crown (z) or privilege of the Lords, or people, that is not 
 founded upon reason. In a free country, the first prin- 
 ciple is never to trust absolute power in any hands what- 
 ever. I am not for a democratic any more than for an aris- 
 tocratic or monarchic government solely. I wish to see the 
 executive part of government revert to where the Constitu- 
 tion has originally placed it, in the hands of the Crown, to 
 be carried on by its ministers : those ministers under the 
 controul of parliament, and parliament under the controul 
 of the people (a). 
 
 whatever country or place is subdued by a Prince, who governs by his 
 own will, is ruined by his government. But men generally live at the mere 
 mercy of one, one of themselves, whose views suffer him to have no 
 mercy. He is often a madman, often an ideot, often a destroyer ; and 
 the whole art of his government consists in oppressing and terrifying. 
 Such, for the most part, by far the most part, are the governors of the 
 world. They derive their whole greatness, plenty, splendor, and se- 
 curity, from the misery, poverty, peril, and destruction of the governed. 
 Whoever makes just, equal, and impartial laws, does, by so doing, but 
 declare to the people, " be wicked at your peril ;" but he who rules 
 them by terrors and standing armies, does, in effect, tell them in a terrible 
 tone, " Be happy if you dare." Single and absolute monarchy, there- 
 fore, or the ruling all by the will of one, is nonsense ; it is rather a 
 multiplication of monarchs, and in fact the worst sort of oligarchy. 
 But we have a Constitution that abhors absolute power : we have a King 
 that does not desire it ; and we arc a people who will never suffer it. 
 • — (iordon's Cato's Letters, No. 4S. 
 
 (z) We have been formerly stunned by the big word, prerogative, 
 but 1 know of no prerogative in the Crown, which is not at the same 
 time a certain privilege of the people, for their sake granted, and for 
 their sake to be exercised ; and where a prerogative is claimed in opposi- 
 tion to the rights and interests of the people, so far a tyranny is claimed, 
 tyranny being nothing else but the government of one man, or of a few 
 men, over many, against their inclination and interest, and where the 
 prerogative is exercised more to the hurt than the good of the governed, 
 it is no longer prerogative, but violence and usurpation, and, therefore, 
 in England, several prerogatives have from time to time been taken from 
 the Crown, because the Crown had abused them. Some play with the 
 words sovereign and subject, but the highest and first sovereignty is 
 in the laws, of which the Prince has only the sovereign execution ; 
 in other words, it is his office and duty to see the laws obeyed, an em- 
 ployment which implies their superiority and his own subjection. The 
 laws ought to be the measure of his power and actions, as much as of 
 any private man's, and more so, for the higher any man is, the more 
 ties lie ought to be under: he who knows no law but his own lust, 
 seldom obeys any other. Protection and allegiance are reciprocal, 
 and no good Prince will pretend that there is any loyalty due to him 
 further than he himself is loyal to the laws, and observant of his peo- 
 ple, the makers of kings and of laws. These are principles upon which 
 our government stands : upon which every free government must stand; 
 they are truths which every Briton ought to Know, even children and 
 bervants. — Gordon's Cato's Letters, No. 36. 
 
 (a) The first principles of power are in the people, and all the pro- 
 jects of men in power ought to refer to the people, to aim solely at
 
 28 
 
 1 must mention another advantage which ought to re- 
 commend the measure to every friend to the internal peace 
 and quiet of the kingdom, which is, that when the people 
 have obtained a regular, legal, and speedy way of giving 
 effect to their sentiments, there can be no longer any ap- 
 prehensions of their endeavouring to redress themselves by 
 mobs and tumults (b). For when the people are fairly and 
 equally represented in parliament, when they have annual (c) 
 opportunities of changing their deputies, and through them 
 of controuling every abuse of government (rf) in a safe, 
 easy, and legal way, there can be no longer any reason for 
 recurring to those ever-dangerous, though sometimes neces- 
 sary expedients of an armed force (c), which nothing but 
 a bad government can justify. 
 
 their good ; and in countries that are free, it is madness to hope to 
 rule them against their wills ; and how much more easy, as well as 
 glorious, is it, to govern free men than slaves. Tt is true, that free 
 men go sometimes much further in their opposition to unjust power 
 than slaves go or can go, because they have more sense, spirit, virtue, 
 and force; but that they are with more difficulty governed, is abso- 
 lutely false. It is, indeed, more difficult to oppress them, and their 
 rebellion is generally no more than their distinguishing of govern- 
 ment from oppression, which slaves, born to oppression, know not 
 how to make. Indeed, the people in every country deserve the best 
 usage, and in almost all, meet with the worst; their lot is very hard 
 and unequal: they often pay millions, not only in their own wrong, 
 but frequently to strengthen the hands of their oppressors, — Ibid. 
 No. 3(), 7-2, -2i. 
 
 (b) It is the want of liberty, not the enjoyment of it, that has oc- 
 casioned all the factions in society from the beginning of time, and 
 will do so to the end. It is because the people are not habitually 
 free from civil and ecclesiastical tyrants that, they are disposed to 
 exercise tyranny themselves. Habitual freedom produces i> flee Is di- 
 rectly the reverse iii every particular. For a proof of this, look into 
 America, or if that be too much trouble, look into human nature with 
 the eyes of common sense. — Joelliarloir. 
 
 (r) Whether a representation shall sit one, two, or three, or more 
 years, it is the business of the electors to determine; for those who 
 have power to delegate, must possess also the power of delegating 
 it for what period of time they choose, as far as it may affect them- 
 selves. It is a matter of opinion, which ought to be regulated by 
 the principle, that as all delegated power may be abused, the shortest 
 period prescribed by general convenience is the best adapted for ge- 
 neral security. — H'oolcr. 
 
 (d ) If universal suffrage and annual parliaments were secured to 
 the people in such terms as to set. all subterfuge at defiance, whatever 
 corruptions may happen to creep into any department of government, 
 would be removed as fast as the evil made its appearance; because 
 then the interest of the representatives and the interest of the people 
 would be one; and the elections being frequent, and the number of 
 electors great, corruption could not be practised, nor artifices found 
 out. by which those two interests could be put in opposition to each 
 other.— Thrlira/l. 
 
 (r) It is certain, that all parts of Europe which are enslaved, have 
 b.een uuhtYcd by annica ; and it is absolutely iinposbibk', that any
 
 29 
 
 Thus you see this great reformer does not only defend the* 
 principle of universal suifrage, but shows its practicability. 
 
 Puml. I am convinced it is just, that the people ought 
 to have their share in their own government, for the govern- 
 ment belongs to the people, not the people to the govern- 
 ment ; but 1 do not understand what the Duke means con- 
 cerning districts, or how every man can give a vote in 
 choosing members of parliament, without causing tumults 
 and bloodshed ; for I understand, that at some towns, Salis- 
 bury, for instance, where none but freeholders were allowed 
 to vote, yet it caused such riot and disturbance, that soldiers 
 were obliged to be sent for to restore order, and several 
 lives were lost. It seems, therefore, to me, that when there 
 are ten times as many electors, that there will then be more 
 inconvenience, trouble, and wickedness attend elections ; but 
 I wish I may be deceived. 
 
 Tutor. That you doubt its practicability is not to be 
 wondered at, as it is the case of thousands ; some, though 
 they are convinced of its practicability, deny it, because 
 
 nation which keeps them amongst them, can long preserve their liberties ; 
 nor can any nation perfectly love their liberties who are without such 
 guests. I presume that no man will be audacious enough to propose 
 that we should make a standing army a part of our Constitution : and 
 if not, when can we reduce them to a competent number better than 
 at this time of profound peace ? What are we to keep up the army 
 now to do, unless to keep out the small pox? Oh! but there is a 
 better reason than that, namely, a plot is discovered, ami we cannot 
 find out yet all who are concerned in it. If we are to be governed 
 by armies, it is all one to us whether they be Protestant or Popish 
 armies; the distinction is ridiculous, like that between a good and 
 bad tyranny ; a Protestant musket kills as sure as a Popisli one, and 
 an oppressor is an oppressor to whatever church he belongs. Nothing 
 can be worse to the people than ruin, from what hand soever it 
 comes. Military governments are all alike, all violent, bloody, and 
 eternally inconsistent with law and property ; and that government is 
 certainly a military government, where the army is the strongest power 
 in the country. Dare any man say, that his Majesty will find greater 
 security in a few thousand more men already regimented, than in the 
 steady affections of so many hundreds of thousands, who will always 
 be ready to be regimented. The riches of a Prince are the riches of 
 his people, and his security and chief happiness are their affections. 
 They do not consist in pompous guards, splendid courts, heaped-up 
 and extorted wealth, servile and flattering parasites, numerous, ex- 
 pensive, and glittering attendants, profusion and extravagance, but 
 in the steady and faithful duty of a grateful and contented people, 
 who derive and own their happiness to (low 7 from his care and goodness. 
 
 " How wretchedly he rules, 
 
 " That's served by cowards, and advis'd by fools. — Dryden. 
 Flatterers and parasites may betray, and guards revolt from him ; 
 but a whole people can never have an interest separate from the in- 
 terest of a good prince; their persons will ever be at his command 
 to defend themselves and him ; for when the people ure easy ami sa- 
 tisfied, the whole kingdom U his armv. — Trenchant.
 
 30 
 
 they do not want a change ; they say it cannot be done, 
 because they are afraid it will be done (/*). But in this 
 system there would be no necessity of the electors to meet 
 in large bodies (g) ,• for every man will vote in the parish 
 where he resides, and there is no difficulty in the system ; 
 the difficulty is to obtain it ; but " all difficulties," says 
 Wooler (/i), " fade before diligence, wisdom, and per- 
 severance" («). The impracticability and inconvenience of 
 universal suffrage are talked of; but the inconvenience and 
 expence of our present system preponderate beyond all 
 imagination. 
 
 But convenience or inconvenience is not the question, 
 when principle is at stake. We must do our duty at all 
 hazards, and it is both our duty and our interest to proclaim 
 the natural equality of man, and admit him freely to the 
 exercise of those rights which belong to him, by a better 
 title than gives currency to Crowns. Let us hear no more 
 
 (f) We must not, indeed, expect to obtain the good wishes and as* 
 sistance of all men for such a purpose ; those who are interested in 
 the abuses of the present system have no right to offer an opinion. 
 We have no doubt that they are very well satisfied ; we can readily 
 believe that they want no reform; but we do, and are resolved to per- 
 Hevere in our endeavours to obtain it. The system is admirable enough 
 for those who profit by it. Its bad effects are only felt by those who 
 are exposed to its injuries. It has long been understood in England, 
 and sometimes acted upon, that, when those who ought to redress griev- 
 ances refuse to do so, those who suffer them should redress them 
 themselves. We must, therefore, judge for ourselves, and act wisely 
 while we resolve firmly. — Wooler's Black Dwarf, vol. 1, No. 1. 
 
 Can we rationally expect, that the pensionaries of Church and State 
 should view, with a suitable discrimination and a clear disinterested- 
 ness, the imperfections of our establishment, or profess themselves 
 friendly to measures, which may remove that foundation on which 
 they stand ? Certainly, a system, with all its corruptions, must neces- 
 sarily appear to men so situated, more eligible than the dangerous 
 alternative of reformation.' — Gilbert Wakefield, 
 
 (c/) Cardinal de Retz says, that all numerous assemblies, however 
 composed, are mere mob, and swayed in their debates by the least, 
 motive. This we find confirmed by daily experience. When an ab- 
 surdity strikes a member, he conveys it to his neighbour, and so on 
 till the whole be infected. Separate this great body ; and though 
 every member be only of middling sense, it is not probable that any 
 thing but reason can prevail over the whole. Influence and example 
 being removed, good sense will always get the better of bad among 
 a number of people. The only way of making a people wise, is to 
 keep them from uniting into large assemblies. Divide the people into 
 many separate; bodies, and then they may debate with safety, and every 
 inconvenience seems to be prevented. — Hume's Idea of a l J ar. Com. 
 
 (A) Black Dtvarf vol. 1, No. 1. 
 
 (t) The wise and active conquer difficulties, 
 By daring to attempt, them : sloth and folly- 
 Shiver and shrink at the sight of toil and hazard, 
 And make the impossibility they fear. — Hone's Amb, Step,
 
 31 
 
 of the difficulties of obtaining that which we know to be 
 our rights. 
 
 Now, to oblige you, I will give you a demonstrative 
 example of the practicability of universal suffrage without 
 ballot, without riot, tumult, drunkenness, inconvenience, 
 oaths, bribery, corruption, or exponce whatever. 
 
 Pupil. Pray, what do you mean by Ballot? 
 
 Tutor. It is a certain method of choosing or electing, by 
 means of cups and balls, and 1 believe is recommended by 
 most reformers, but not by all ; for some learned men have 
 advanced several objections against it. 
 
 Pupil. Before you proceed any further, I should like to 
 hear the objections ? 
 
 Tutor. The Duke of Richmond, in his matchless letter be- 
 fore cited, in answer to a question, if voting by ballot 
 be advisable ? says, " I am clearly of opinion that it is not. 
 The idea of a ballot could have arisen but to avoid the 
 effect of some improper influence; and I conceive it much 
 more noble, directly to check that influence, than directly 
 evade it by concealment and deceit. I am convinced that 
 trivial circumstances in things like this tend greatly to form 
 the national character, and that it is most consistent with 
 that of a British or Irish freeman, that all his actions should 
 be open and avowed ; and that he should not be ashamed of 
 declaring in the face of his country whom he wishes to in- 
 trust with its interests. Upon the same idea that ballots may 
 be a cover for independence, they must also be a cloak for 
 bribery, and a school for lying and deceit." And Abbe de 
 Mably, a French writer of great eminence, in his letters to 
 Mr. John Adams, on the American Constitution, " finds fault 
 of the ballot," says Cobbett "as being a provision against 
 an evil that ought not to exist; and he predicts that it will 
 tend to degrade the people." And that great politician, Mr. 
 Cobbett, says," I have confidence enough in the honesty and 
 «pirit of my countrymen, to believe that without the ballot 
 they would act as became freemen" (/*). 
 
 We have also a specimen of the effect of ballot given us 
 by Sir M. W. Ridley, M. P. for Newcastle, who, at a meet- 
 ing for reform there (I) said, " with reference to votes by 
 ballot he would state a fact, that when the noble Lord 
 Castlereagh, for instance, introduced a green bag, he demand- 
 ed a ballot. What was the result? Out of twenty-one 
 members he always contrived to have seventeen ministerial 
 ones, and only leave the opposition three or four ! ! If a 
 
 (*) Cobbttfs Register, Vol. 31. No. 25. 
 (/) See the Times, January 31, 1W0.
 
 32 
 
 committee were to be elected by open voice, minister* 
 would not have the hardihood to attenfpt so barefaced a cheat." 
 
 Thus you see there is considerable doubt on the propriety 
 of the ballot: " therefore," says Cobbett, "let us have the 
 subject fairly discussed: let a bill be brought in, and let us, 
 when we see its provisions, examine whether they be good 
 or bad. Let free discussion take place, and I will engage 
 that we arrive at the truth!" 
 
 Whatever is best let us hope the admonitions of wise men 
 (m) will recommend it and direct it for the benefit of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Pupil. Common sense and reason would sujrerest to me, 
 that when there are several candidates, one of which must be 
 chosen, and some of the electors vote for one, and some for 
 another, that candidate ought to be elected who lias the 
 most votes; every elector being allowed to vote freely for 
 whom he pleases, without being afraid of offending any 
 candidate, master, or friend (n). 
 
 Tutor. You are perfectly right, and this is what may be 
 called election, by choice ,- and I will now show you how 
 members may be elected without ballot, with as little trouble 
 as possible, and without any expense (o) either to the 
 
 (m) May true knowledge revive those rights of reasonable beings, 
 which to be recovered need only to be felt ! Sages of the earth, philo- 
 sophers of every nation, it is your's alone to make laws, by pointing out 
 these rights to your fellow citizens. .Multitudes of the human race really 
 believe themselves to be the property of a small number of men who 
 oppress them. Take the glorious resolutions to instruct your fellow 
 creatures, and be assured that if truth is longer in diffusing and es- 
 tablishing itself than error, yet its empire is more solid and lasting. 
 Krror passes away, but truth, when once discovered, is immortal. Man- 
 kind, allured by the expectation of happiness, the road to which you 
 will show them, will listen to you with attention. Excite a sense of 
 shame in the breasts of those numerous hireling slaws, who are always 
 ready at the command of their masters to destroy their fellow citizens! 
 Rouse all the powers of human nature to oppose this subversion of 
 social laws. Teach mankind that liberty is the institution of God ; 
 authority thai of man. Expose those mysterious arts which hold 
 the world in chains and darkness ; let the people be sensible how far their 
 credulity has been imposed upon ; let them re-assume with one accord the 
 u«e of their faculties, and \ indicate, the honour of the human race. — • 
 Abbe linynul. Hint. European Settlement, b. I. 
 
 (n) When the public cause is to be serve!, men ought to know neither 
 friendship nor resentment, but with respect to our bitterest enemy or 
 dearest friend, we ought to pursue the same line of conduct; to \otf 
 against both when they appear to be enemies to the liberties and rights of 
 man ; to vote with both when they appear to be promoting those liberties 
 and those rights. — I'helnall. 
 
 (n) The science of the politician consists in fixing the true point of 
 happiness and freedom. Those men w ould deserve the gratitude of ages, 
 who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest 
 sum of individual happiness with the least national cxpence. — Drugonclti 
 on I'irtue and llcivurds.
 
 33 
 
 candidates or electors ; and that in so simple (p) a manner 
 that the plainest understanding- may comprehend it. 
 
 Let a census be taken, that is, let all the males of proper 
 age in the nation be numbered ; and, supposing- the whole 
 number to be 2,000,000, this divided by the whole number of 
 members to be chosen, viz. 658, gives (in round numbers) 
 about 3000 electors to choose one member. In the next 
 place, the whole nation should be divided into districts ; each 
 district or division may be called an electorate. This division 
 of the country into electioneering districts would not 
 be difficult when the number of electors in every town and 
 parish was known : for it ought to be done according to 
 population, so that the number of electors in each electorate 
 may be nearly equal to each other. Regard should also be 
 had as to the situation of towns, villages, &c. Each electo- 
 rate may be called by the same name as the largest or most 
 populous town in it; as Winchester electorate, Andover 
 electorate, &c. 
 
 Pupil. Then by this plan one member of parliament will 
 be chosen by the same or nearly the same number ofelectors 
 as another member, and the representation will be equal • 
 and there will be as many electorates as there are members? 
 
 Tutor. Yes, and it is evident that according to this 
 division, a small county, such as Rutland or Bedford, mav be 
 an electorate of itself, or part of an electorate; and afaro-e 
 or populous county, such as York or Devon, may consist °of 
 several electorates, or an electorate may be partly in one 
 county, and partly in an adjoining county (so as not to split 
 parishes) according to the situation of villages, &c. without 
 the least difficulty or inconvenience accruing to the business 
 of election, or to any other business whatever. 
 
 Pupil. But some large and populous towns, as London 
 Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, &c. would perhaps contain 
 voters enough to form several electorates of themselves • 
 how are they to be formed into electorates ? 
 
 Tutor. As those towns each consist of several parishes, 
 the population of each parish being known, one parish with 
 its adjacent suburbs may form one electorate, and so on for 
 others, dividing the town sectionways into electorates or 
 according as may be found most convenient with respect to 
 the centrality and population of the parishes; and this would 
 be no more difficult than to divide a county into electorates. 
 
 (p) I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle of 
 nature which no art can overthrow ; viz. that the more simple any thin"- 
 is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when dis^ 
 ordered. Security being the true design and end of government, it un- 
 answerably follows, that whatever form thereof appears most likely to 
 ensure it to us, with the least expense, and greatest benefit, is preferable 
 to all others. — Panic's Common Seme.
 
 :M 
 
 Pupil. But the mercantile ami manufacturing districts 
 being- more populous than other parts of the country, would 
 they not send more members to parliament than other parts, 
 and the agriculturists be apprehensive that their interests 
 would be neglected ? 
 
 Tutor. No, for no one class of the community can be op- 
 pressed, but others must feel the oppression : and it will be 
 the interest of the community to see that all classes are 
 eqally protected in their rights. 
 
 All classes must live by mutually assisting each other (<?). 
 The farmer cannot live without the manufacturer, nor the 
 manufacturer without the farmer (r) ; commerce, or the 
 trading between one country and another, is also indispensi- 
 bly necessary for the well being of each other; for the first 
 great maxim of the community of nations is, " let the 
 abundancies of each be exchanged, that the scarcities of 
 each may be supplied." 
 
 Now according to this plan the whole of the people, where- 
 ever they are, whether in towns, or in the country, will be 
 represented ; but according to the present system, members 
 are sent from places that contain but few electors, and some 
 places, Old Sarum, for instance, contains never a house or in- 
 habitant, and yet returns two members to parliament's), 
 
 (q) Fire fell upon a house in which dwelt a blind man and a cripple, 
 neither of whom could escape without the help of the other. The blind 
 man, therefore, took the cripple upon his back to avail himself of the use 
 of his eyes, and, in return, gave to the cripple the use of his legs. Thus, 
 by mutual assistance, they both got out in safety. 
 
 The above Indian fable, as remarkable for its simplicity as for the 
 truth and beauty of its moral, defines, in a few comprehensive sentences, 
 the whole science of social intercourse, and explains, in a way not to be 
 mistaken or avoided, the reciprocities and mutual dependencies between 
 man and man. It serves to show, that there are not any of us who, upon 
 the strength of our own individual talents, or wealth, can stand aloof 
 from our fellow creatures. Some blindness, some lameness, some in- 
 firmity or other, will ask for help. 
 
 (>•) The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has 
 upon man, and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other, 
 create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The 
 landlord, the tanner, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, 
 and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the 
 other, and the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and 
 forms their law ; and as all'parts of a nation trade with each other, what- 
 ever affects any of the parts, must necessarily communicate to the 
 whole. — Rights of Man, p. 17, 73. 
 
 (*) The county of York, which contains nearly a million of souls, 
 sends two county members; so does the county of Rutland, which con- 
 tains not a hundredth part of that number. The Old Town of Sarum, 
 which contains not three houses, sends two members ; and the Town of 
 Manchester, which contains upwards of sixty thousand souls, is not ad- 
 mittedtosend any. Is there any principle in these things? or can we trace 
 the marks of freedom, or discover thoseof wisdom in them? Can any thin;; 
 be more limited, and at the saine time morecapricious, than the qualification
 
 35 
 
 that 19, the proprietorof a few acres of land there sends them: 
 but there are many great towns which contain sixty or eighty 
 thousand souls, that are not allowed to send any member 
 (t). What absurdity to call the House of Commons the 
 representatives of the people ; it is the representatives of the 
 boroughmongers, and a greater curse never afflicted this land 
 than the infernal boroughmongering system ; it is the cause 
 of all our misery; and the people may wait for redress, com- 
 plain, grumble, and petition as long as they please, but they 
 will never be relieved from their distresses till they put their 
 shoulders to the wheel : till they go up in an united and de- 
 termined manner and demand their rights of the most 
 dignified and lofty oppressors. But this is a digression. 
 
 of electors are in England? Limited, because not one man in a hundred (I 
 speak much within compass) is admitted to vote. Capricious, because the 
 lowest character that can be supposed to exist, and who has not so much as 
 the visible means of an honest livelihood, is an elector in some places ; 
 while in other places, the man who pays very large taxes, and has a 
 known fair character ; and the farmer who rents to the amount of three 
 or four hundred pounds a year, with a property on that farm to three or 
 four times that sum, is not admitted to be an elector ! ! 
 
 William the Conqueror, and his descendants, parcelled out the country 
 in this manner ; and bribed some parts of it, by what they called Charters, 
 to hold the other parts of it the better subjected to their will. This is 
 the reason why so many of those Charters abound in Cornwall : the peo- 
 ple were averse from the government established at the conquest, and 
 the towns were garrisoned and bribed to enslave the country. — Rights of 
 Man, p. 32. 
 
 The phrase of the chartered rights of men, is full of affectation. The 
 rights of men, that is, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred 
 things ; but political and commercial monopoly are not the rights of men. 
 Their chartered rights do at least suspend the natural rights of man- 
 kind at large, and are in direct violation of them. — Burke. 
 
 {t) The represented part of the community form so small a part of 
 the people, and the representatives they send are so few in number, that 
 their elective franchise avails them nothing, against the corruptions 
 which obtain in the House of Commons. Westminster sends two mem- 
 bers to say no ; but Sir Mark Wood can send two to say yes; and the 
 single authority of Sir Mark Wood, would render useless the representa- 
 tion of the city of Westminster with her fourteen thousand electors. The 
 borough of Southwark sends two to refuse farther taxation; but the pro- 
 prietor of Old Sarum is a friend to the ministry, and his valets render use- 
 less the representation of Southwark ! ! London sends four members to 
 the House ; but some single boroughmonger can send six or eight ! A 
 single dealer in boroughs, by sending six or eight blockheads, to do no- 
 thing but say yes or no, by signals, can out-balance the representation of 
 London, containing a million and a half of souls, and subject it to the most 
 exorbitant taxation ! ! Of what value, then, is the boasted right to the Li- 
 very of London, and the electors of Westminster and Southwark? A 
 single boroughmonger outweighs them all in the Honourable House, and 
 plunders them of their property by the votes of his minions, to what ex- 
 tent he pleases. Assuredly injustice they are called upon to resist the un- 
 due influence which renders them ciphers, and defrauds the public at large, 
 without respec! to persons. — tVooler's Rritish (iarette, June \'.i. 1819.
 
 3(3 
 
 Pupil. What is to be done next after the electorates are 
 formed? 
 
 Tutor. There should be a returning' officer appointed, 
 that is, an officer to declare finally who is chosen to represent 
 the electorate; this officer may be called the Recorder; and 
 is the only one wanted to do the business of election, except- 
 ing - the civil officers, the constables, who are already appoint- 
 ed in every parish. 
 
 Now when an election is coming- on, if it be thought 
 necessary, let the Recorder receive notice of the same from 
 the Speaker of the people's or Commons House of Parliament, 
 or some high officer of state ; or if the time was fixed by law, 
 as for instance, on the first Monday in June every year, this 
 would supercede the necessity of such notice ; butin eithercase 
 let the Recorder give notice to the churchwardens of every 
 parish in the electorate who the candidates are, and where 
 they live ; and also when and where he must have the re- 
 turns of the votes brought from every parish. Whether the 
 candidates have voluntarily offered their services to the elect- 
 ors, or have been selected by them from among themselves, 
 makes no difference as to this notice being given; which 
 should be given about three weeks before the day of elec- 
 tion, somewhat in the following form : 
 
 NOTICE OF ELECTION. 
 
 I do hereby respectfully inform the public in the electorate 
 of Andover.that W. Pitt, of and C. J. Fox, of 
 
 have offered themselves as candidates for this electorate at 
 the next general election, which will take place according to 
 law on Monday the 2d day of June next. 
 
 And all churchwardens and overseers, upon the receipt 
 hereof, are to make the same publicly known in their re- 
 spective parishes, to cause the votes to be taken in the last 
 week in May, in their parishes, and to sign and certify which 
 candidate has the majority in that parish, what that majority 
 is, and to make the same publicly known on the Sunday pre- 
 ceding the first Monday in June. 
 
 And the head constable of each and every of the parishes 
 in the said electorate are to bring the said list so certified, or 
 cause the same to be brought to me at Liberty Hall, in the 
 parish of Weyhill, on Monday June 2d, 1821, before ten 
 o'clock in the forenoon, or they will be subject to the penal- 
 ties of the law fur such neglect. 
 
 Mayl2, 1821. THOMAS TRUSTY, Recorder. 
 
 This notice should be printed in hand bills, several of 
 which should be delivered to the constable of everv parish.
 
 37 
 
 and he should cause one to be fixed tip at the door of every 
 place of worship, or at noted places: when it has been ex- 
 hibited two Sundays the people will most likely then have 
 inquired into the qualification and character of the candidates, 
 if they be new ones; or how they have performed their par- 
 liamentary duties last year, if they be old members, and 
 will finally make up their minds who they will vote for ; and 
 the votes may be collected in the following- manner: 
 
 Suppose in the electorate of Andover there are two can- 
 didates, Fox and Pitt; and the votes are to be collected in 
 the parish of Thruxton, in the said electorate. The consta- 
 ble should have as many books, of a convenient size, as 
 there are candidates : in this case two, with Fox's name 
 on one, and Pitt's on the other. He should then go to every 
 house in the parish, and take down tlie name and age of every 
 man that dwells therein who is qualified to vote : writing the 
 names of all those who vote for Fox in the book on which his 
 name is endorsed, and those who vote for Pitt in the other 
 book. In this manner let him collect all the votes in the 
 parish. This should be done on the Monday and Tuesday 
 next after the second Sunday's notice was given as above ; 
 for, if some of the voters were out from home at the time the 
 constable went round : or if there existed any doubt as to 
 the qualification of some voter or voters, there would be 
 sufficient time for such voters to come to a parish meeting or 
 committee, which may be held on the Friday following, con- 
 sisting of the resident or officiating Minister, the Church- 
 wardens, Overseers, Constables, and such other of the In- 
 habitants as may be thought proper; to attend to the claims 
 of young applicants; to scrutinize the votes; make such ad- 
 ditions or erasures as may be found necessary; and finally, to 
 sign the books, to certify that all those persons whose names 
 are written therein are qualified voters, and all the voters 
 then qualified, for every voter ought to vote. They should 
 certify also which of the candidates has the majority of votes, 
 and what that majority is. These books should be kept by 
 the churchwardens from year to year, in case they mav be 
 wanted again. The constable should also have one list or 
 catalogue of the votes already prepared (excepting what 
 tew alterations may be found necessary) for the committee to 
 sign and certify at the same time; after which copies of the 
 same should be fixed up at the door of every place of wor- 
 ship, for the inspection of the electors on the following Sun- 
 day (»/). These columns should be headed with the candi- 
 
 (w) In choosing a r«'nrrst , nlati\e by (his plan, then is nothing rvaollv 
 like drawing a man for the militia. oNceptinu that the li>t i- exhibited at
 
 38 
 
 dates' names, Fox over one, Pitt over the other. By this 
 means every man may see which candidate has the majority 
 of votes in that parish; every voter will also have a fair op- 
 portunity of seeing if his name is put under the name of the 
 candidate for whom he had voted ; by which means it will 
 be impossible for the constable or any one else to tamper with 
 the votes, without its being discovered; and consequently 
 every one will see and may be convinced that all is fair and 
 right. 
 
 The Constables' List may be in the following form : — 
 
 PARISH OF THRUXTON. 
 
 No, 
 
 V0TE8 FOR FOX. 
 
 Felix Faithful 
 
 Daniel Diligent.... 
 Thomas Telltruth 
 Vincent Valuable. 
 Peter Pennyless.. 
 Samuel Saveall... 
 Stephen Starver.. 
 
 Aged, 
 
 4S 
 47 
 86 
 49 
 38 
 50 
 76 
 
 No. 
 
 Votes for Pitt, 
 
 Aged 
 
 Benjamin Bully..., 
 
 Samuel Simple 
 
 Mat. Meanwell 
 
 Harry Harmless .. 
 
 64 
 26 
 60 
 21 
 
 We, the undersigned, do hereby certify that the above is a 
 true list of all the votes in the parish of Thruxton, in the 
 Electorate of Andover, and that Fox has a majority of three 
 votes above Pitt. 
 
 May SO, 1821. 
 
 VINCENT VALUABLE, 
 SAMUEL SAVEALL, 
 STEPHEN STARVER, 
 DANIEL DILIGENT, 
 BENJAMIN BULLY, 
 THOMAS TELLTRUTH, 
 
 Rector. 
 Churchwardens. 
 
 Overseers, 
 Constable. 
 
 the church. When a man is to be drawn out of a parish to serve in the 
 militia, the constable goes to every house and sets down all names and 
 their ages indiscriminately together ; and after exposing it at the church, 
 takes it to some court appointed, where numbers corresponding to the 
 names are put into a box, and being well hustled together the constable 
 draws out one number (if one only be wanted), and the man whose name 
 corresponds to that number (in a list of their names already numbered), is 
 the man to serve for that parish ; and for such a purpose a very just 
 method it is, because every man stands the same chance of being drawn 
 But the choosing a representative is very different ; for when there are 
 several candidates, that which has the most voles, ought always to b« 
 chosen, and must be so by this plan.
 
 39 
 
 This is all that is necessary to be dope in each parish ; for 
 what is done in one parish should also be done in every 
 parish in the electorate, and on the same day : also, what is 
 done in one electorate should be done in every electorate 
 throughout the nation, and on the same day ; for, as all the 
 members would be chosen in one day, all apprehensions of 
 tumult and riot vanishes. When the copy of the above list 
 and certificate has been exhibited at each place of worship 
 one Sunday, the next day we will suppose to be the day fix- 
 ed by law when the members are to be chosen : that is, the 
 day when the Recorder said in his notice he must receive the 
 local majorities from all the parishes in the electorate. There- 
 fore, on that day, let the constable of every parish take his 
 list that was actually signed by the committee (of which the 
 above is a copy) to the Recorder, at the place appointed ; 
 this place should be nearly in the centre of the electorate, or 
 of the parishes in it ; for then the constables who reside 
 near the borders of the electorate would have nearly an 
 equal distance to travel, and all would be able to attend the 
 Recorder in sufficient time for the business to be done that 
 day ; and it would be advisable if the place of meeting- was 
 not in or near a populous place, in order to prevent any riot 
 or disturbance : for none need attend the Recorder but the 
 constables, who should each deliver his certified list to the 
 Recorder ; and as fast as he received them he should write 
 down the majority only from each parish in columns, headed 
 with the candidates names, setting- the majorities for Fox 
 under his name, and those for Pitt under his name ; then, 
 by adding the two columns of majorities, he will see who 
 has the majority of votes in the ichole electorate, and conse- 
 quently, who is finally chosen to represent that electorate. 
 These majorities should all be recorded in a book called the 
 Electoral Register, kept for that purpose by the Recorder, 
 who should also keep the list from every parish, year after 
 year. He should likewise send a certificate to the Speaker 
 of the House of Commons, or such other officers of govern- 
 ment as may be thought necessary, and also to each of the 
 candidates. A copy of all these majorities should be taken 
 from the Register, and certified by the Recorder, and printed 
 in hand-bills in the following form : — 
 
 In drawing a militia-man, the constable of this village must always 
 make two, and more frequently three journeys to Rorasey, a distance of 
 20 miles, and must travel in all 80 or 1"20 miles before the business can be 
 finally settled ! ! Hut in choosing a representative to Parliament he would 
 never have to make but one journey. This demonstrates, that it is more 
 trouble to draw a militia-man. than to choose a it pesentative by th* 
 above plan.
 
 40 
 
 ELECTORATE OF ANDOVER. 
 
 Majorities for Fox, 
 from the following Parishes. 
 
 Thruxton 
 Ki nip ton., 
 Amport .. 
 Fy field ... 
 Andover . 
 Gratley... 
 
 Total for Fox 
 Pitt. 
 
 Majority for Fox 
 
 3 
 VI 
 
 7 
 
 s 
 ao 
 
 4 
 
 49 
 40 
 
 Majorities for Pitt, 
 from the following Parishes. 
 
 Q liar lev.... 
 Monxton... 
 Clanville... 
 Chalderton 
 Charlton ... 
 
 Penton 
 
 Abbottsan , 
 Clatford.... 
 Appleshaw 
 
 Total .... 
 
 40 
 
 I do hereby certify, that C. J. Fox, of 
 
 is dulv and 
 
 truly chosen to represent the Electorate of Andover, in the 
 Commons House of Parliament ; he having- a majority of nine 
 votes in the whole Electorate. 
 
 Weyhill, June 2, 1821. Thomas Trusty, Recorder. 
 
 Here the whole of this easy (x) business ends, with re- 
 spect to choosing- the Representatives ; and there is nothing- 
 else to do but to convince all the electors in the electorate 
 that every thing has been done in a just manner. Now, as 
 an electorate would never consist of many parishes, particu- 
 larly in populous districts, if a printer was present, or near, 
 he could set his press as fast as the Recorder received the ma- 
 
 (x) Things of the greatest seeming difficulty appear the easiest to 
 us when found out. There was no wit necessary to set an c^g on end 
 when Columbus had shewn the way. Jugglers do many tilings by slight 
 of hand, which, to a gaping beholder, appear to be witchcraft; and 
 when he knows how they are done, he wonders at himself for wondering 
 at them, — Trenchard. 
 
 But men generally abandon the care of their most important concerns 
 to the uncertainty of those whose interest it is to reject the best and 
 wisest institutions ; and it is not till they have been led into a thousand 
 mistakes in matters the most essential to their lives and liberties, and are. 
 weary of suffering, that they can be reduced to apply a remedy to the 
 evils with which they are oppressed. It is then they begin to conceive 
 and acknowledge the most palpable truths, which, from llirir very sim- 
 plicity, commonly escape vulgar minds, incapable of analizing objects, 
 accustomed to receive impressions without distinction, and to he deter- 
 mined rather by the, opinions of others, than by the result of their owi; 
 examinations. — lirccariu.
 
 41 
 
 jorities from the several parishes, and print the above list 
 with the Recorder's certilicate ; and each constable could 
 take several of the above hand-bills or placards to his parish 
 the same day ; and on the following Sunday fix up one at 
 every place of worship, or other conspicuous places in the 
 parish, for the inspection of the voters ; then, in the parish of 
 Thruocton, every one may see if the Recorder has set down a 
 majority of three for Fox, from the said parish ; if he has, 
 all is right : if he has made any mistake (which is almost 
 impossible), it is instantly detected. The same will be seen 
 by the voters of all the other parishes in the electorate, for 
 the printed list will serve equally well for every parish. 
 
 The expence of printing would be trifling, and could be 
 defrayed by an easy contribution from every parish; for the 
 parish would cheerfully pay a few shillings, as no person 
 would be hindered in his employment or business, and parti- 
 cularly as all riot, disturbance, debauchery, drunkenness, 
 vice, or immoralities would be prevented, and " prevention 
 is better than cure." The constable would be the only per- 
 son wanted to go out of the parish, and he, of course, would 
 collect the votes and take them to the Recorder, as part of 
 his duty, the same as he does in collecting the names for the 
 Militia. The Recorder and constables are, of course, sworn, 
 at their entrance into office, to do their duty — but there is no 
 necessity in the business of election, of any oaths at all (t/) 
 at least in this plan ; for, if they neglect or exceed their 
 
 (y) England, in this respect, seems to be sunk to the lowest possible 
 decree of degeneracy. Oaths among us are required on so many occa- 
 sions, and so carelessly administered, as to have lost almost all their use 
 and efficacy. It has been asserted, that including oaths of office, oaths 
 at elections, custom-house oaths, &c. &c. there are about a million of 
 perjuries committed in this kingdom annually. This is one of the most 
 atrocious of our national iniquities. — Dr. Price' s Importance of the Ame- 
 rican Revolution, p. 81. 
 
 Whoever considers the number of absurd, ridiculous oaths necessary 
 to be taken at present, in most countries, on being admitted into any so- 
 ciety or profession whatever, will be less surprised to find prevarication 
 still prevailing, where perjury has led the way. Oaths seem to be so 
 much debased and prostituted by their frequency, that false witnesses 
 are grown as common as robbers. — RayneVs History of Europe, b. 2. 
 
 Custom-house oaths now-a-days go for nothing ; not that the world 
 grows more wicked, but because nobody lays any stress upon them ; it 
 becomes very little ditlerent from saying, in the way of civility, I am, 
 sir, your friend, or obedient servant. — Kaimcs' 1 Loose Hints on Educa- 
 tion, App. p. 362. 
 
 Ye have heard that it hath been said of old time, thou shalt not for- 
 swear thyself, but shall perforin unto the Lord thine oaths. But I say 
 unto you swear not at all, but let your communication be yea. yea ; nay, 
 nay ; for whatsoever is more than these, cometh of evil. — Matthew, ch. 5. 
 
 Above all things, my brethren, swear not ; neither by Heaven, neither 
 by thu earth, neither by any other oath, k-t \c fall into temptation. — 
 Jama. eh. v. b. 12.
 
 42 
 
 duly, they must be found out ; they cannot err without ex- 
 posing their errors, and this is the way to prevent them, and 
 to keep men honest. As to the people, it would be ridicu- 
 lous to make them swear to do justice to themselves, for 
 when they see their interest, they will certainly pursue it; 
 and if the inducements to virtue be stronger than the induce- 
 ments to vice, there would be no vicious men. Therefore, 
 there should be some stigma put on the person who offered 
 or accepted a bribe, or heavy penalty or imprisonment ; or 
 let them be declared guilty of treason for so doing, or let the 
 corrupter or corrupted be marked in the face. If, however, 
 it should be thought necessary for every elector to swear that 
 he has not received, or expects to receive, any bribe (2), let 
 the constable be empowered to administer an oath to each 
 elector when he collects the votes, just the same as an ex- 
 ciseman administers an oath to every petty shopkeeper who 
 sells exciseable commodities ; that method would be the most 
 simple, least expensive and troublesome. But, the great body 
 of the people could never be bribed or corrupted (a) ; it is 
 hard to delude or corrupt so many ; men do not in matters 
 of the highest importance, yield to slight temptations. No 
 man serves the devil for nothing ; small wages will not con- 
 Oaths ought to be abolished ; they are the remains of tyranny on one 
 part, and slavery on the other ; and the name of the Creator ought not 
 to be introduced to witness the degradation of his creation. But what- 
 ever apology may be made for oaths at the first establishment of a go- 
 vernment, they ought not to be permitted afterwards. If a government re- 
 quires the support of an oath, it is a sign that it is not worth supporting, 
 and ought not to be supported. Make government what it ought to be, 
 and it will support itself. — Paine's Rights of Man, p. 67. See also the 
 HI (irk Dwarf, p. 764; and ^Treatise on the necessity of abolishing Oaths, 
 by Mr. Jeremy Bentham. 
 
 \z) Thou shalt take no gift, for a gift blindeth the eyes of the wise, 
 and preventeth the words of the righteous. — Deut. ch. xvi. v. 19. Exod. 
 ch. xxiii. v. 8. 
 
 Presents and gifts blind the eyes of the wise, and stop up his mouth that 
 he cannot reprove. — Eccles. ch. 20. v. 29. 
 
 (a) There is scarcely such a thing under the sun as a corrupt people, 
 where the government is incorrupt ; it is that and that only, which makes 
 them so. A whole nation cannot be bribed, and if its representatives 
 are, it is not the fault, but the misfortune of the nation, and it is without 
 the people's consent ; but some sort of statesmen in foreign courts, blame 
 the poor people for the misery which they bring upon them, and say 
 that they are extremely corrupt, and so keep them starving and enslaved 
 by way of protection. They corrupt them by all manner of ways and 
 inventions, and then reproach them for being so. Where bribery is 
 practised 'tis a thousand to one but mischief is intended, and the more 
 bribery the more mischief. When, therefore, the people, or their trus- 
 tees, are bribed, they would do well to consider, that it is not, it cannot 
 be for their own sakes. If you would persuade a man to be a rogue, it 
 is natural that money should be your first argument, and, therefore, who- 
 ever offers me a bribe, does tacitly acknowledge that he thinks me a 
 ki>a\e. — Gordon.
 
 43 
 
 tent those who expose themselves to perpetual infamy, and 
 the hatred of a nation tor betraying their country ; and when 
 the candidates found that bribery would not answer their 
 ends, they would not throw away their money in so useless 
 a manner, as under a good government there would be no 
 future remuneration from the minister (6). 
 
 The candidates should not be allowed to go round or 
 send any agent to solicit for votes ; for the electors ought 
 to be left to their free choice, and should judge of their can- 
 didates (c) by their public character, and not by the quan- 
 
 (b) If every man had a vote to choose his representative, the minis- 
 ter could not bribe all the voters, if he had the mines of Mexico and 
 Peru at his command ; besides, men who stand forward with any degree 
 of respectability, are not to be bought with trifles. Our business is not 
 to trouble our heads whether men are corrupt or not, but to consider how 
 we are so to frame our system that even the vices of mankind shall have 
 no longer the power to hurt us. This must be done with universal suf- 
 frage, for even annual parliaments would be of no relief while the pre- 
 sent system is continued : for halfway expedients will be always defec- 
 tive ; therefore, the people should think what their rights are, and deter 
 minately persevere, with tranquil and benevolent firmness, to the attain- 
 ment of full and complete justice. — Thelwall. 
 
 (c) Therefore, electors, should your choice fall upon unworthy men, 
 deficient in abilities, and in other respects unfit for the important seat 
 they are to fill, the fault is your's. He that is trusted with the affairs 
 of the nation ought to be every thing that is great and good ; he should 
 have an honest heart, sound judgment, a noble spirit, and dare be honest 
 in the worst of times. Let me, therefore, advise the constituents to con- 
 sider well the abilities of those who represent them, not to be led away 
 with, or biassed in their opinions by, pomp, show, bribery, or fine 
 words. It is mean, and below the noble spirit of man, to be led by the 
 nose like a bear. Scorn to take a bribe ; be not like Esau, who sold his 
 birthright for a mess of pottage. Let all the wcrld see, that you, as 
 free Englishmen, are endued with more generous and open souls, than 
 to sell your freedom, and debase your understanding, even for a dinner 
 or a treat. What man of generosity would lay under an obligation to 
 a gentleman for a paltry treat? He that takes a bribe is a villain to his 
 country : let it be considered by everyone, that he who buys a man will 
 sell him ; nay, he has a right so to do, for what a man buys is his own, 
 both by law and equity. If yon give him your vote and interest, 
 you then lay him under an obligation ; he would then serve you by 
 a fellow-feeling ; it would be the greatest of sins, that of ingratitude, to 
 deceive you ; he would make your interest his own, and give his voice 
 to enact every useful law for your interest; but a man who has spent 
 a great fortune to gain a seat, will take long strides to retrieve it. — 
 Varlow's Future Displayed, ch. I, p. 14. 
 
 Such as you, electors, shew yourselves, such will be your represen- 
 tatives ; such as is the tree, such will be the fruit. Choose honest men, 
 free and independent men, and they will act honestly for the public 
 interest, which is your interest ; act honestly and boldly for liberty, or 
 forget the glorious and charming sound. Throw your eyes about your 
 several counties, and choose your patrons, your protectors, your neigh- 
 bours, and your friends : men whose interest is blended with your own : 
 men who have no hands dipped in the public spoils, but have suffered by 
 them as much as you yourselves have suffered: men who have not 
 jobbed for stock, nor for wages, nor for you. Make not so foolish
 
 44 
 
 tity of beer that they may give ; there showld he no dinners, 
 treats, or entertainments whatever, given by the candidates ; 
 all that the people would require of them would be, that 
 they should enact such laws, and do such actions, and such 
 only, as were necessary and useful to the whole commu- 
 nity (rf). If a few should be bribed into an interest oppo- 
 site to that of the public, still it is certain that a whole coun- 
 try can never find an equivalent for itself, and consequently 
 a whole country can never be bribed. By the present system 
 votes are bought (e) and sold (f) as common as cattle 
 
 a bargain, as for a little loose money to give up desperately all you 
 have, your liberties, your estates, your families ; but throw your choice 
 upon such who will neither buy nor sell you. As you love your liber- 
 ties, exercise your virtues ; shew yourselves to be men, and you will be 
 treated like men ; scorn bribes ; abhor the man who offers them, and 
 expose him. No man will bribe you with your own interest, or give you 
 money, that he may have leave to serve you by his own labour, and at 
 his farther expence, but will think himself at liberty to make reprisals ; 
 he will find no difficulty in himself to sell those who have before sold 
 themselves and their country, nor can you have any right or pretence to 
 reprove one that does so. It is high time for all parties to consider 
 what is best for the whole ; to lay aside and forget the old names, and 
 become one party for liberty, before that name is forgotten too. Shew 
 yourselves once, and once for all, Britons and freemen, and not foreign 
 and saleable slaves ; shew that you know how to honour the King, and 
 yet to keep your liberties ; that you obey him out of choice, and not out 
 of servile fear ; that you can make your duty to him consistent with 
 a vigorous resolution to punish all who betray him and you. — Gordon. 
 
 (d) As long as a number of individuals united consider themselves 
 as one body, they can have but one will, which relates to their common 
 preservation and welfare. All the resources of the state .are, then, simple 
 and vigorous ; its political maxims clear and obvious ; it includes no 
 intricate and opposite interest ; the public weal is demonstratively evi- 
 dent to all, and requires only the gift of common sense to understand it. 
 Peace, concord, and equality, are enemies to political subtleties. — 
 Men, honest and simple, are, from their very simplicity, not easily 
 deceived; they are not to be imposed on by sophistry; they are too 
 artless to be duped. A state thus simply governed, has need of but few 
 laws. In proportion as it becomes necessary to promulgate new ones, 
 that necessity is evident to every one, and neither eloquence nor intrigue 
 is requisite to make that pass into a law, which every one knows to 
 be necessary. That which deceives our reasoners on this subject is, that 
 seeing none but such states as were badly constituted at their beginning, 
 they are struck with the impossibility of maintaining in them such 
 a police. — Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, liv. 4, ch. 1. 
 
 (e) The people who formerly paid those who undertook to support 
 their rights, now sell them their votes. The most opulent, or the most 
 lavish, is sure to be chosen. It is true, that having ruined themselves to 
 get into parliament, they endeavour to make the court buy them dear. 
 The members set their complaisance at such a high price in the reign 
 of William the Third, that lie told them one day, " Gentlemen, I should 
 be obliged to you, if you would reduce your several demands to one, that 
 I might know if the whole kingdom can satisfy you."— Abbe Raynal's 
 Hist. Pari. Eng. p. 275. 
 
 (f) It may be asked, if a vote be. a man's property, may he not sell it ? 
 Hear what that truly great and good man, Major Cartwright, says on Urn
 
 45 
 
 at a fair, and bribery and corruption openly practised (g) alt 
 over the kingdom; and where bribes are not given in a 
 barefaced manner, there are methods of evading- the oath (A) 
 though it be a very strict one («"). There is also an enor- 
 mous expense of conveying electors from place to place, 
 sometimes hundreds of miles : hiring rooms, bands of music, 
 Hags, ribbons, entertainments, &c. They make the people 
 drunk (k) for seven days, in order to make them slaves for 
 seven years. But the system has more evil than I have 
 
 subject. "I have," says he, "no fox-hunting vote to bestow on any one, 
 no, not even for sacred friendship. To my friend, I will give my purse, 
 my hand, my heart ; but I will not give him that which is not mine. My 
 vote I hold in trust ; my vote belongs to my country, and my country 
 shall have it." 
 
 (g) At an election of Aldermen for Norwich last March, corruption 
 was openly practised on both sides, and in one instance fifty pounds were 
 offered for a vote ! 
 
 (A) For instance, a candidate who is like to lose his election, goes to 
 an elector, a glover, perhaps, to solicit his vote ; and if the glover is 
 inflexible, he offers him twenty guineas for a pair of gloves, worth twenty- 
 pence. Solomon says, that " every man is a friend to him that giveth 
 gifts;" and as money speaks all languages, and will make an honest 
 man a rogue, you will soon see the glover on the hustings, where he not 
 only sells himself, but also the liberties of his country. The candidate 
 will, however, swear that he has given no bribe, and the glover that he 
 has received none, for the gloves were bought; and thus the oath is 
 evaded on both sides. Many more such examples may be given, but 
 I shall only adduce one concerning a barber : 
 
 A barber, in a borough town, it seems, 
 
 Had voted for Sir John against Sir James ; 
 
 Sir James, in an angry mood, calls Suds aside ; 
 
 " Don't you remember shaving me?" he cried; 
 
 " Five pieces for five minutes' work I gave ; 
 
 " And don't one good turn another crave ?" 
 
 " Yea," said the barber, and his fingers smackt ; 
 
 " I grant the doctrine, and admit the fact." 
 
 Sir John, on the same score, paid the same price; 
 
 But he took two shavings, and of course paid twice. 
 (i) The freeholders' oath, to be taken by 2d Geo. II. is as follows : — 
 " I, A.B. do swear (or, being one of the people calledQuakers, I, A. 1?., 
 do solemnly affirm), I have not received, or had by myself, or any person 
 whatsoever in trust for ine, or for my use and benefit, directly or indi- 
 rectly, any sum or sums of money, office, place, or employment, gift, or 
 reward, or any promise or security for any money, office, employment, 
 or gift, in order to give my vote at this election, and that I have not been 
 before polled at this election. 
 
 (fc) The day of election is madmen's holiday ; it is the golden day of 
 liberty which every voter on that day takes to market, and is his own 
 salesman ; for man, at that time, being considered as a mere machine, is 
 acted upon as machines are, and to make his wheels go properly he is 
 properly greased in the fist. Every freeholder enjoys his portion of 
 septennial insanity : he will eat and drink with every body, without pay- 
 ing for it, because he is bold and free : then he will knock down every- 
 body who will not say as he says, to prove his abhorrence of arbitrary 
 power, and preserve the liberty of Old England for ever, huzza ! — 
 Stevens's Lecture upon Heads.
 
 46 
 
 words to tell them; it is corrupt, and must be supported by 
 all manner of corrupt methods, and can never produce any 
 one real and diffusive good ; it has been the cause of the late 
 expensive war (I), or liberticide, and of the present national 
 distress consequent thereon ; it has ruined thousands. In 
 a word, it is of no use for the people to expect that their 
 miseries will ever be relieved till the system of election is 
 changed. 
 
 Now, according- to the proposed plan, all such evils would 
 be prevented ; there would be no lawyers to prove black 
 white and white black ; no violent speeches or harangues to 
 inflame the people's minds, and to divide the people against 
 the people in order to conquer them ; no " slippery elo- 
 quence" to mislead them ; for every man would vote for 
 whom he pleased in his cool moments of reflection, without 
 fear or favour, when there would be no temptation held out 
 to him on either side ; and as all disputes about qualification 
 would be settled in every parish before the votes were taken 
 to the Recorder, he of course would have no person to 
 examine about any one thing, and would have nothing to do 
 but make a simple list of the local majorities, and sign 
 a certificate. This system would prevent all the evils and 
 expence of the boroughmongering system, and would pro- 
 duce all the good that any other system can produce, with 
 the least possible trouble or expence. " Thus may the peo- 
 ple," as Hume says, " be admitted into the first concoctions, 
 or first elections of government ;" and 1 hope I have con- 
 vinced you, that this is not an impracticable scheme, or 
 insolent demand. 
 
 Pupil. You have convinced me, Sir, (and any carter may 
 easily be convinced) that it is reasonable and practicable ; 
 its means easy, obvious, just, and legal. 
 
 Tutor. And I think the motives of its necessity are as 
 strong at the present critical state of things, as ever did, or 
 ever can happen, in any circumstances of human affairs. 
 
 Had this plan been adopted thirty years ago, we should 
 never have had the late bloody wars (m), nor the present 
 
 (l) The late wars are calculated to have cost England two thousand 
 and forty millions, equal, at 51. per ounce, to eleven thousand and four 
 hundred tons of gold ! — Moore's Aim. Impr., 1820. 
 
 (m) Put together all the vices of all ages and places, and never will 
 they come up to the mischiefs and enormities of only one campaign. — 
 Voltaire. 
 
 War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows. — Machiavel't 
 Art of War, b. i. ch. 2. 
 
 A soldier is a being hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own 
 species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. — GvUiver'n 
 Travel*.
 
 47 
 
 standing- armies, consequently those unfortunate men, women, 
 and helpless infants, would not have been chopped down, 
 rode over, and basely and inhumanly murdered at Man- 
 chester, when asking- for bread. This is enough to convince 
 us of the ultimate use of standing- armies (n). 
 
 If he that shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and, after bleeding 
 in the battle grew rich by the victory, he might shew his gains without 
 envy. But at the conclusion of a ten years' war, how are we recom- 
 pensed for the death of multitudes, and the expense of millions, but by 
 contemplating an increase of debt, and the sudden glories of paymasters 
 and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like 
 meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations. These are the men 
 who rejoice in the misery of thousands ; who laugh from their desks at 
 bravery and science, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to 
 slaughter and devastation ; men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, 
 are growing rich as their country is impoverished. — Johnson's Faulk- 
 land Islands. 
 
 War is the most dreadful of all evils with which Heaven has afflicted 
 man. How various and how dreadful are the miseries of war ! All men 
 are brothers, and yet they hunt each other as prey. The wild beasts of 
 the desert are less cruel ; lions wage not war with lions ; and to the 
 tiger the tiger is peaceable ; the only objects of their ferocity are ani- 
 mals of a different species ; man does, in opposition to reason, what by 
 animals, that are without reason, is never done. And for what are these wars 
 undertaken ? some tyrant would be call ed a conqueror, and for this he kindles 
 a flame that would desolate the earth. Ruin must spread, blood must 
 flow, fire must consume ; and he who escapes from the flames and the 
 sword must perish by famine with yet more anguish and horror ; that 
 one man, to whom the miseries of a world is sport, may, from this 
 general destruction, obtain a fanciful possession of what he calls glory. 
 — Fenelon's Telemaqve, liv. 17. 
 
 One murder makes a villain : 
 
 Millions, a hero. Princes were privileged 
 
 To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime. 
 
 Ah ! Why will kings forget that they are men ? 
 
 And men that they are brethren? — Porteus's Death, a Poem. 
 
 The King has been shot at! Just God! and have not thousands, yea, 
 millions of his subjects, not only been shot at, but shot and killed for 
 his cause ? Have not the decks of his ships of war been paid over with 
 the blood of dying, agonizing men ? Thousands fell in battle to gain 
 hiin his crown — tens of thousands to support his dignity ; while the 
 cries iiiid tears of widows and orphans ; of sacked towns and a con- 
 vulsed world; while millions have endured hardships and death to sup- 
 ply the splendors of his throne, and the artificial wants of the sycophants 
 who surround it : by the politics of that King thousands of families have 
 been deprived of their head and support; mourning, lamentation, and 
 woe, have been heard in every part of his dominions. The King has 
 been shot at ^ and if all the kings (except the good ones) and emperors 
 of the earth could be shot, and deposited in one grave, all the repub- 
 licans throughout the earth might say, " The Lord gave and the Lord 
 hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." — Connecticut Rc~ 
 publicanism, p. 28. 
 
 (n) The sword is in the hands of a single person, who will always 
 neglect to discipline the militia, in order to have a pretext for keeping 
 up a standing army. It is evident, that this is a mortal distemper in the 
 British government, of which it must at last inevitably perish. — Hume.
 
 48 
 
 But let us hope that the soldiery of Great Britain will ra* 
 ther imitate the soldiers of Spain, Naples, and Portugal, than 
 consent to forg-e base letters for their fellow-countrymen, of 
 be an instrument of ministerial oppression ; for, as the sol- 
 diers are part of the people, if the people be ruined, the 
 ruin, oppression, and misery of the soldiers must follow. But 
 it was not the regular soldiers who committed this bloody 
 butchery (o) : no, it was the Yeomanry, who were thank- 
 ed for so doing- by a dandy of sixty. What implacable 
 men those must be who are mercilessly bent on the ruin 
 of their country ! There have been times and countries when 
 public ministers and public enemies have been the same in- 
 dividual men. What a melancholy reflection is this, that the 
 most terrible and mischievous foes to a nation, should be its 
 own magistrates ! And yet, in every enslaved country, which 
 is almost every country, this is their woeful case. Great and 
 good governors scorn to play, and cannot play such parts ; 
 their designs, like their stations, being purely public, are 
 open and undisguised They do not consider their people 
 as their prey, nor lie in ambush for their, subjects, nor dread 
 and treat them like enemies, as all ill magistrates do ; who 
 
 (o) What have the people done, the sheep of princes. 
 That they should suffer for their shepherd's fault I 
 They bring their yearly wool to clothe their owners, 
 And yet, when bare themselves, are culled for slaughter. 
 
 Dryden's Lvve Triumphant, 
 Oh ! iniquitous beings ! sovereigns, or ministers, who sport with thp 
 life and property of the people! Was it you who gave birth to man, 
 that you take it from him? Is it you who fertilize the earth, that you 
 dissipate its fruits? Do you fatigue your arms with ploughing the fields? 
 Do you expose yourselves to the heat of the sun, and endure the tor- 
 ment of thirst in cutting down the harvest and binding it into sheaves ? 
 Do you watch like the shepherd in the nocturnal dew ? Do you traverse 
 deserts like the indefatigable merchant? Alas ! When I have reflected 
 on the cruelty and insolence of the powerful, my indignation has been 
 roused, and I have said in my anger. What ! will there never appear 
 upon the earth a race of men who shall avenge the people and punish ty- 
 rants ? A small number of robbers devour the multitude, and the multi- 
 tude suffer themselves to be devoured ! Oh ! degraded people ! awake 
 to the knowledge of your rights ! authority proceeds from you ; your's 
 is all the power. Vainly do tyrants command vou in the name of God 
 and by their lance. Soldiers, obey not the summons ; since God supports 
 the Sultan, your succour is useless : since the sword of heaven suffices 
 him, he has no need of yours; let us see what he can do of himself. 
 The soldiers have laid down their arms, and lo ! the masters of the world 
 are as feeble as the meanest of their subjects ! Ye people, know then 
 that those who govern you are your chiefs, and not your masters ; your 
 guardians, appointed by yourselves, and not vour proprietors : that 
 your wealth is your own, and to you they are accountable for the adminis- 
 tration of it. That kings or subjects, God has made all men equal ; and 
 no human being has a right to oppress his fellow-creatures.— Volney'M 
 lluins. ]>. 7H.
 
 49 
 
 are not governors, but jailors and spunges; who chain them, 
 and squeeze them, and terrify them with a standing- band of 
 cut throats, and yet take it very ill if they do but murmur ; 
 which is much less than a people so abused ought to do. 
 But, it is impossible to subdue an armed people (p), or a 
 nation that has a good militia (<?). Those who would de- 
 stroy the people ought by that people to be destroyed ; the 
 blood of the people ought never to be shed but to save the 
 people, and the occasion ought to be extreme : and, indeed 
 the honest soldier in most countries begins to feel that he has 
 not put off the rights and duties of humanity, by putting on 
 a scarlet coat (r) ; they know they are men, that they owe 
 an allegiance to the people, and that they ought to love 
 
 (;;) Another operation in America is the making every soldier a citi- 
 zen, and every citizen a soldier ; not only permitting every man to arm, 
 but obliging him to arm ; and that the people are with safety armed, is an 
 effect of their conscious dignity as citizens enjoying equal rights ; and 
 there are many advantages in being armed, and no disadvantages ; there 
 cannot be any danger to the government while it continues in the hands 
 of the people. — Barlow. 
 
 When men are the soldiers of the people, they will defend the people ; 
 when they are the soldiers of the court, the court will attempt to per- 
 suade them that they have an interest separate from the people ; there- 
 fore, liberty cannot be secured in so firm a manner, in any other way, as 
 by arming the people themselves, alternately, man after man, every one 
 taking his share of the risk and burthen, to defend the great interest of 
 the people. Thus, by dismissing them in their turns, to mix with that 
 body of the people whom they have at one time stepped forward to de- 
 fend, and taking others to be trained to the use of arms, at the same 
 time that you take care that every soldier shall be a cilizen, you make 
 every citizen a soldier ; that is, you teach every man the use of arms, 
 and every man being equally able to defend himself, it will be impossi- 
 ble for any faction to overawe the honest majority of the nation. — Thcl- 
 nalVs Tribune. 
 
 (q) A good militia is of such importance to a nation, that it is the 
 chief part of the constitution of any free government. For though, as 
 to other things, the constitution be never so slight, a good militia will 
 always preserve the public liberty. But, in the best constitution that 
 ever was, as to all other parts of government, if the militia be not on a 
 right footing, the liberty of that people must perish. The militia of ancient 
 Rome, the best that ever was in any government, made her the mistress 
 of the world ; but standing armies enslaved that great people, and their 
 excellent militia and freedom perished together. The Lacedemonians 
 continued eight hundred years free, and in great honour, because they 
 had a good militia. The Switzers at this day are the freeest, happiest, 
 and the people of all Europe who can best defend themselves, because 
 they have the best militia. — Fletcher's Discourse on Militias. 
 
 (r) To destroy British liberty with an army of Britons, is not a mea- 
 sure so sure of success as some people may believe. To corrupt the 
 parliament is a slower, but might prove a more effectual method ; and 
 two or three hundred mercenaries in the two houses, if they could be 
 enlisted there, would be more fatal to the constitution than ten times as 
 manv thousand in red and in blue out of them. — Disserla'ion on Parties, 
 p. lifl. 
 
 K
 
 50 
 
 mankind («) ; and have continually in view, above all 
 things, the freedom and happiness of their country. 
 
 Pupil. But suppose the governors of any country were to 
 command the soldiers to act in an hostile manner against 
 the people, would they be justified in disobeying; such an 
 unlawful command ? 
 
 Tutor. Certainly ; the soldiers are appointed to protect 
 the people and not to destroy them : and they would be jus- 
 tided in not obeying, and ought not to obey any command 
 that was unlawful, unjust, or contrary to the good of the 
 people; for the safety of the people is the supreme of all 
 laws ; and as to the people themselves, they are at all times, 
 and on all occasions, justified in resisting oppression {t) 
 
 (s) And the soldiery likewise demanded of Jesus, saying, and whal 
 shall we do ? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither ac- 
 cuse any falsely, and be content with your wages. — L»ke, ch. iii. v. 14. 
 
 (t) If a lawfully created magistrate acts above and contrary to law, 
 the law which he breaks can allow him no protection, and whatever is 
 lawful against a thief who submits to no law, is lawful against him. 
 Why should not kings, princes, or magistrates, be suspended if they be- 
 come enemies to the people, and set up an interest in their own persons 
 inconsistent with the public good, for the promotion of which they were 
 created? If they were created by the public consent, for the public 
 good, shall they not be removed when they prove to be of public da- 
 mage ? If they set up themselves, may they not be thrown down ? 
 Shall it be lawful for them to usurp a power over the liberties of others, 
 and shall it not be lawful for an injured people to resume their own ? If 
 injustice exalt itself, must it be for ever established .' Shall great per- 
 sons be rendered sacred by rapine, perjury, and murder ? Shall the ene- 
 mies for which private men do justly suffer the most grievous punish- 
 ments, exempt them from all, who commit them in the highest excess, 
 with most power, and most to the prejudice of mankind .' Shall the laws 
 that solely aim at the prevention of crimes, be made to patronize them. 
 and become snares to the innocent, whom they ought to protect .' Shall 
 the powers that are set up for the distribution of justice be made sub- 
 servient to the lust of one or a few men, and by impunity encourage them 
 to commit nil manner of crimes .' If he be justly accounted an enemy t<> 
 all who injures all ; he, above all, must be the public enemy of a na- 
 tion, who, by usurping a power over them, does the greatest and most 
 public injury that a people can sutler ; for which reason, by an esta- 
 blished law among the most virtuous nations, every man might kill a ty- 
 rant; and no names are recorded in history with more honour than of 
 those who did it. The same rule holds though they are more in num- 
 ber ; for though the multitude of offenders may sometimes procure im- 
 punity, yet that act which is wicked in one, must be so in ten, or twenty : 
 and whatsoever is lawful against one usurper, is so against them all. 
 The laws which they overthrow can give them no protection, ami every 
 man is a soldier agamst him who is a public enemy. — Algernon Sydney 
 on (rarernmcut, ch. "it. 
 
 Resistance of oppression is a right in every people ; it is a right ac- 
 knowledged by the laws of England, upon which the people of ICngland 
 have acted in many instances. In the reign of Charles II. the gallant 
 and learned Sydney was tried, condemned, ami executed, for having 
 maintained, in writings found in his beaureau, this right to resist oppress-
 
 51 
 
 of any kind, or from any person or persons whatever ; for 
 self-preservation is the first law of nature, and an oppressor 
 is an oppressor, let his title be what it will (m) ; and a di- 
 vine right to govern wrong- is an absurdity, to assert it is 
 blasphemy. 
 
 Not even the high anointed hand of heaven, 
 Can authorize oppression, give a law 
 For lawless power, nor faith to violation ; 
 On reason build misrule, orjustly bind 
 Allegiance to injustice. Tyranny 
 Absolves all faith; and who invades our rights, 
 However his own commence, can never be 
 But an usurper. 
 
 Brooke's Guslavus Vasa. 
 
 ■ion. But, the judge (the bloody Jefferies^ who tried him, was in the 
 next reign knocked in the head by the populace, having disguised him- 
 self in a sailor's dress : the Royal Family who sanctioned and prompted 
 the base murder (of Sydney) were driven from the throne for ever ; and 
 the parliament afterwards passed a law, declaring the judgment against 
 Sydney to be contrary to the law of the land, unjust, the judge corrupt, 
 the jury perjured, and annulling the whole of the proceedings. Thus, 
 then, it cannot be denied, that, agreeably to the laws of England, the 
 right of resisting oppression does exist. The next thing to be consider- 
 ed is, in what eases that right ought to be acted upon ; the people would, 
 doubtless, be guided by circumstances, and would employ every species 
 of means which fell within their power, open or secret, against the op- 
 pressors, as far as is necessary to put an end to the oppression, and as far 
 as is necessary to the ends of justice unmixed with vindictiveness. — C'ob- 
 bett's Register, vol. xxxii. No. 15. 
 
 (a) Every act of arbitrary power is unjust. A nation, whatever 
 name its enemy may bear, has a right to attack and destroy it. Now, 
 every legitimate sovereignty is founded on election, on the free choice of 
 the people. It is therefore evident, that every supreme magistrate, what- 
 ever title he bear, is nothing more than the first deputy or commissioner 
 of his nation ; and no commissioner has a right to make a contract disad- 
 vantageous to those that appointed him. The society may, at all times, 
 even annul its own appointments if they be too oppressive. All arbi- 
 trary power is an usurpation against which a people may at all times re- 
 volt ; when men fall under despotism, they are bound to make etforts to 
 shake it off: the laws that are sacred are such as are conformable to the 
 public interest, every ordonnance contrary to it is not a law, but a legal 
 abuse. What is arbitrary power I The seed of calamities, which, sown in 
 the bosom of a state, springs up to produce the fruit of misery and devas- 
 tation. The most formidable enemy of the public welfare, is not riot or 
 sedition, but despotism. — Helretins. 
 
 Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things, 
 The good of subjects is the end of kings ! 
 To guide in war. and to protect in peace, 
 Where tyrants once commence the kings do cease : 
 For arbitrary power is so strange a thing, 
 It makes the tyrant and unmakes the king. 
 Whate'er the dialects ot courts may tell. 
 lie that his right demands can ne'er rebel :
 
 52 
 
 Whatever is unjust, says Sydney, is not law, and what is 
 not law ought not to be obeyed ; when, therefore, a whole 
 nation endeavours to get rid of its oppressors, they cannot be 
 said to rebel ; (a;) for, as Buchanan observes, the law is 
 above the king', and the people are above the law ; and 
 they have a right to restrain any man from having more 
 power or more riohes (y) than is consistent with the public 
 good. 
 
 Which right, if 'tis by governors deny'd, 
 May be procur'd by force or foreign aid. 
 For tyranny's a nation's term of grief, 
 As folks cry fire to hasten in relief : 
 And when the hatred word is heard about, 
 All men should come to help the people out. — Daniel Drfoc. 
 (jc) A nation cannot be a rebel ; tyrants only are rebels. — Volnry. 
 Although every private man, singly taken, be subject to the commands 
 of the magistrate, the whole body of the people is not so : tor he is by 
 and for the people ; and the people is neither by nor for him. The wholo 
 body of a nation cannot be tied to any other obedience than is consist- 
 eot with the common good, according to their own judgment. They 
 cannot therefore be said to revolt or rebel against them to whom they 
 owe no more than seems good to themselves, and who are nothing of or 
 by themselves, more than other men. When nations fall under such 
 princes as are utterly incapable of making a right use of their power, 
 or do maliciously abuse that authority with which they are entrusted, 
 those nations stand obliged, by the duty they owe to themselves and their 
 posterity, to use the best of their endeavours to remove the evil, what- 
 ever danger or difficulties they may meet with in the performance. — Sydney, 
 (y) As liberty can never subsist without equality, nor equality bo 
 long preserved without an Agrarian law, or something like it ; so when 
 men's riches are become immeasurably or surprisingly great, a people 
 who regard their own security, ought to oblige them to take down their 
 own size, for fear of terrifying the community, or mastering it. If the 
 Romans had well observed the Agrarian law, by which the extent of 
 every citizen's estate was ascertained, some citizens could never have 
 risen so high as they did above others ; and one man Ijvould never 
 have been set above all the rest, and have established, as Caesar did at 
 last, a tyranny in that great and glorious state. In every country, and 
 under every government, particular men may be too rich. But some will 
 say, is it a crime to be rich? Yes, certainly, at the public expense, or 
 to the danger of the public. A man may be too rich for a subject; 
 even the revenues of Kings may be too large. It is one of the effects of 
 arbitrary power, that the prince has too much, and the people too little ; 
 and such inequality may be the cause too of arbitrary power. It is as 
 astonishing as it is melancholy, to travel through a whole country, as 
 one may through many in Europe, gasping under endless taxes, groaning 
 under dragoons and poverty, and all to make a wanton and luxurious 
 court, filled for the most with the worst and vilest of all men. Good 
 God ! what hard-heartedness and barbarity, to starve, perhaps, half a 
 province, to make a gay garden, or building ! And yet, sometimes, even 
 this gross wickedness is called public spirit, because forsooth a few 
 workmen and labourers are maintained out of the bread and blood of 
 half a million ! In those countries, were the judgment, of the people 
 consulted, things would go better ; but they are despised, and esteemed 
 by their governors happy enough, if they do not eat grass ; and having 
 no representatives, or share in the government, they have no remedy. — 
 Gordon'* Cato's Letters, No. 3d.
 
 53 
 
 Pupil. Is it not a maxim in politics that the king can do 
 no wrong-? (z) 
 
 Tutor. Yes; and he ought not to suffer those who are 
 under him to do wrong ; but the experience of every age 
 convinces us that we must not judge of men by what they 
 ought to do, but by what they will do ; and all history 
 affords but few instances of men trusted with great power 
 without abusing it, when with security they could. For 
 these reasons, societies ought to lay strong restraints upon 
 their magistrates or public servants of all kinds : and put 
 checks upon those who would otherwise put chains upon 
 them. The only security that we can have that man will 
 be honest is to make it their interest to be honest: and the 
 best defence which we can have against their being knaves, 
 is to make it terrible for them if they are knaves ; and as 
 there are many men wicked in some stations, who would be 
 innocent in others, the best way is to make wickedness 
 unsafe in any station. But so long as the passions of men 
 govern them, they will always govern by their passions ; 
 and their passions will always increase with their power : 
 and, therefore, whenever a whole people, or any part of 
 them, cross the passions of any man that governs them, lie 
 will turn his passions against a whole people, or any part of 
 them that offend him ; and will destroy a whole people, or 
 enslave them rather than stifle his passions. 
 
 Plpil. It is a dreadful picture of governors! 
 
 Tutor. It is a true one : and 1 could, if time would al- 
 low, give ten thousand instances, without going far abroad ; 
 and the public will ever, and certainly, be sacrificed to 
 
 (z) When akin? does wrong, he ceases to be king. I say this is the 
 meaning' of the maxim ; and I can prove it from acts of parliament, by 
 precedents, thai the king's power is given to him for the benefit and advan- 
 tage of the people, and not for the arbitrary pleasure of the individual, and 
 that therefore fie has no power to do as king, that which is inconsistent 
 with the purpose for which his power was given. The difference between 
 king and tyrant consists in this — that the former is a magistrate created 
 by law, and the latter an usurper who sets himself up above the law: 
 ergo — the man, who, being made king by law, for the benefit of the 
 people, governs in an arbitrary way, in opposition to the law by which 
 he was so made, does that which, as king, he cannot do ; or, in other 
 words, ceases to be king, and becomes a tyrant, whom the people are 
 neither bound to obey, nor constitutionally can obey ; for he has aban- 
 doned his constitutional existence, and ceased to be one of the consti- 
 tuted authorities. So that the kin? can do no wrong, means that he has 
 no authority vested in him. by right of his kingly office, to injure his 
 subjects ; that whatever wrong he does, is not the act of a king, but 
 the act of an usurper: and as you are called upon to obey him when he 
 does right, you are also called upon to resist him when he does wrong", 
 with this provision, however, which is necessary for the peace and ex- 
 istence of society — that the wrons; is to be judged, not by the caprice 
 of the individual, but by the maxims and spirit of the constitution, and 
 tin- general decision of the nation. — Thttwall's Tribune. No, \:>.
 
 54 
 
 private lust, when private lust governs the public ; and that 
 people who would not suffer many insults from their go- 
 vernors should not suffer one ; and when governors act in a 
 hostile (a) manner against the public interest, by endea- 
 vouring to reduce them to slavery (6) or poverty ( c), and to 
 destroy their liberties, the people are justified in resisting 
 the attempt (d), and to have such a government as best 
 
 (a) I never knew a writer on the theory of government so partial to 
 authority, as not to allow, that the hostile ininds of the rulers to their 
 people, did fully justify a change of government. I see no other way 
 for the preservation of the public interest, but the interposition of the 
 body of the people itself, whenever it shall appear by some flagrant 
 and notorious act, that the representatives are going to overleap the 
 fences of the law, and to introduce arbitrary power. — Burke's Letter to 
 Sheriffs of Bristol. 
 
 (b) Whenever the legislators endeavour to reduce the people to sla- 
 very under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war 
 with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, 
 and left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men 
 against force or violence. Whenever, therefore, the legislative shall, 
 either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp to 
 themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over 
 the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust, 
 they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite con- 
 trary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume 
 their original liberties, and by the establishment of a new legislative 
 (such as they shall think fit), provide for their own safety and security, 
 which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here 
 concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the 
 supreme executor, who acts contrary to his trust, when he either em- 
 ploys the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the 
 representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages 
 the electors, and prescribes to their choice such whom he has by solici- 
 tations, threats, promises, or otherwise won to his designs ; and em- 
 ploys them to bring in such who have promised before-hand what to 
 vote, and what to enact. — Locke on Civil Government, b 2, ch. 19. 
 
 (r) To see the sufferings of my fellow creatures, 
 And own myself a man : to see our senators 
 Cheat the deluded people with a shew 
 Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of. 
 They say, by them, our hands are free from fetters, 
 Yet whom they please they lay in basest bonds ; 
 Bring whom they please to infamy and sorrow ; 
 Drive us, like wrecks, down the rough tide of power, 
 Whilst no hold is to save us from destruction ! 
 All who bear tins are villains, and I one, 
 Not to rouse up at that great call of nature, 
 And check the growth of these domestic spoilers, 
 That make us slaves, and tell us 'tis our charter ! 
 
 Otnay's Venice Preserved, Act I. 
 (d) Suppose the two Houses of Parliament to make a cession of their 
 own rights and privileges, and of those of the whole nation, to the 
 crown; who hath the right and the means to resist the supreme legis- 
 lative power? I answer, the whole nation hath the right ; and a peo- 
 ple who deserve to enjoy liberty, will find the means. The legislative 
 is a power that hath no other but the good of society, and therefore can 
 never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the 
 subjects, or to establish grievances instead of redressing them, and if 
 they attempt it, the nation is justified in resisting the attempt. — Boling- 
 broke'* Ui**.vn Parties.
 
 55 
 
 accords with their wishes (e), by changing, or totally 
 abolishing their old system, or reforming it as they think 
 best (/). " The world," says the eloquent and indefatigable 
 champion of liberty, Wooler, " is beginning to perceive 
 that there are only two sorts of government properly speak- 
 ing, namely, legal and illegal ; and that the consent of the 
 people being the only test of the legality of a government, 
 whenever they please to express their disapprobation of a 
 
 (r) Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the nation only, 
 and not to any man or family: and a nation has at all times an inherent 
 indefeasible right to abolish any form of government it finds inconve- 
 nient, and establish such as accords with its interest, disposition, and 
 happiness. — Paine. 
 
 The community hath an indisputable, unalienable, and indefeasible 
 right to reform, alter, or abolish government in such manner as shall be 
 by that community judged most conducive to the public weal. — Pensyl- 
 vania Decl. of Rights. 
 
 No usage, law, or authority whatever, is so binding, that it need or 
 ought to be continued, when it mav be changed with advantage to the 
 community. — Palc/s Principles of Philosophy, vol. (), cli. 3. 
 
 (f) If a brave people, seeing the original detects of their govern- 
 ment, or the corruption into which it may have fallen, do either correct 
 and reform what may be amended, or abolish that which was evil in the 
 institution, or so perverted, that it cannot be restored to integrity, some 
 men impute it to sedition, and blame those actions, which, of all that 
 can be performed by men, are the most glorious. "We are not, therefore, 
 to inquire, what is most ancient, or that which is best, and most con- 
 ducive to the ends of obtaining justice, and preserving liberty; for 
 whatever the institution be, and how long soever it may have lasted, 
 it is void, if it thwarts, or u ,-es not provide for the end of its es- 
 tablishment, and ought to be abolished ; and if any man should shew 
 himself wiser than others, by proposing a law. or a government, more 
 beneficial to mankind than any that had been formerly known, he would 
 merit the highest veneration. 
 
 Laws and Constitutions ought to lie weighed ; and whilst all due 
 reverence is paid to such as are good, every nation may not only retain 
 in itself a power of changing or abolishing all such as are not so, 
 but ought to exercise that power according to the best of their under- 
 standing : and in the place of what was either at first mistaken, or after- 
 wards corrupted, to constitute that which is most conducive to the esta- 
 blishing of justice and liberty: and nothing can better shew the wisdom 
 and virtue, or the vices and folly of nat ons, than the use they make of 
 this right. 
 
 .Men are subject to errors, and it is the work of the best and wisest 
 to discover and amend such, as their ancestors have committed; nothing 
 can be so perfectly frame;l as not to need reparations and amendments ; 
 some men. observing this, are for reducing every state, once in an age 
 or two. to its original or first principle; but they ought to haveex- 
 amined whether that principle be good or evil. Those who are of better 
 understanding, weigh all thing--, and often find reasons to abrogate that 
 which their fathers, according to their knowledge, or the state of tilings 
 amongst them, had rightly instituted: and nothing can mark a greater 
 stupidity, than for men to continue in an evil way. because their fathers 
 had brought them into it. 
 
 The laws that may be good for one people, are not so for all, and 
 that which agrees with the manners of one age, is utterly abhorrent 
 from that of another. — • Sydney, p. 331-
 
 56 
 
 government it becomes instantly illegal, and may not only 
 be resisted in its injurious operations, but changed, or to- 
 tally dismissed. These sentiments are those upon which 
 the ancestors of Englishmen invariably acted." But people 
 are generally unwilling to change that which has pleased 
 their ancestors, unless they find in it great inconvenience, 
 defects, or absurdity ; however, as one generation has a 
 right to make their own laws, or institute their own govern- 
 ment, the next generation must have the same right. If the 
 people in one age put themselves under a fool, a child, or a 
 mad or desperate person, another generation is not bound 
 by the same law ; and when laws are found contrary to the 
 happiness of the majority, they are justly to be abolished. 
 
 Pupil. But is not every proposal to alter them regarded 
 in a citizenas a criminal temerity? 
 
 Tutor. It is so by some, but man, says Machiavel, has a 
 right to think all things, speak all things, and write all 
 things, but not to impose his opinions. A free people will 
 be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech (g) ; 
 and as bad governors will not reform themselves, it is the 
 imperative duty of every citizen to propose to his nation 
 what he thinks may contribute to the general felicity; truth 
 has no enemies but the enemies of the public ,• bad men 
 alone oppose its publication, but every good government will 
 encourage the means of discovering it, and of all others the 
 most certain is the liberty of the press (/*) ; and although 
 
 (ff) Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as 
 wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech ; 
 only wicked governors dread what is said of them ; and it is the terror 
 of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them. That men ought 
 to speak well of their governors is true; while their governors deserve 
 to be well spoken of: but to do public mischief, without hearing of it, 
 is only the prerogative of tyranny. All oppressors, therefore, have 
 been loud in their complaints against freedom of speech and the liberty 
 of the press, and always endeavoured to restrain both ; they have brow- 
 beaten authors, punished them violently, against law, and burnt their 
 works ; by all which they showed how much truth alarmed them, and 
 how much they were at enmity with truth. The best way to prevent 
 libels is not to deserve them : guilty men alone fear them, or are hurt by 
 them, whose actions will not bear examination, and therefore must not 
 be examined. It is fact alone which annoys them. Misrepresentation 
 of public measures is easily overthrown by representing them truly ; 
 when they are honest, they ought to be publicly known, that they may 
 be publicly commended; if they be knavish, or pernicious, they ought 
 to be publicly exposed, in order to be publicly detested. — Trenchard. 
 
 (h) It is apprehended that arbitrary power would steal in upon us, 
 were we not careful to prevent its progress, and were there not an easy 
 method of conveying the alarm from one end of the kingdom to the other. 
 The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the 
 ambition of the court ; nothing is so effectual to this purpose as the 
 liberty of the press, by which all the genius, wit, ami learning of the 
 nation may be employed on the side of freedom, and every one be ani- 
 mated to its defence. As long, therefore, as thu republican paij. of our
 
 .57 
 
 it is dangerous to speak the truth of men in power when 
 those men are in the wrong - ; yet, as the felicity of the hu- 
 man race is. to a sensible mind, the most pleasing- of all 
 prospects, there will be found in every country not totally 
 despotic, upright and disinterested men who will endeavour 
 to put a stop to the career of injustice, boldly advocate the 
 rights of the people : and, in short, use every effort to 
 emancipate them from their hands, or prevent any danger 
 that threatens them. 
 
 Pupil. But, as the consent of the people is necessary to 
 make or constitute a government, I should think that a go- 
 vernment cannot be abolished or changed without their con- 
 sent also (i). 
 
 government can maintain itself against the monarchical, it will naturally 
 be careful to keep the press open, as of importance to its own pre- 
 servation. — Hume's Essays. 
 
 The press should he free ; the magistrate who prevents it. opposes all 
 improvement in morality and politics ; lie sins against his country : to 
 limit the press is to insult the nation ; to prohibit the reading of certain 
 books, is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves. Liberty 
 of thought bears the fruit of truth, elevates the soul, and engenders 
 sublime thoughts. — [[elect ins. 
 
 It is a dangerous thing for a government to say to a nation, thou shalt 
 not read. — Paine. 
 
 The press is the only thing that ought to be employed against the 
 press. — IVoolcr. 
 
 To count a man not fit to print his mind, is the greatest indignity to a 
 free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him. What advantage is it 
 to be a man rather than a boy at school, if we have, only escaped the 
 ferula to come under the frescn of an imprimateur. 
 
 Though all the minds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, 
 so truth be. in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, 
 to doubt her strength, let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew 
 truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Give me the 
 liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely, according to conscience, 
 above all liberties. — Milton. Libert)) of I nlicenscd Printing. 
 
 Political liberty has little to fear while the press is free ; but. if the 
 free agency of the mind, through the medium of the press, .should ever be 
 destroyed, the people have nothing left but to bow the neck, and bend the 
 knee at the shrine of arbitrarv power. — Queen's Answer to the Parish of 
 St. Luke. 
 
 (i) The rights, and the exercise; of the right to alter government 
 either in whole or in part, appertains to the nation only ; and the pro- 
 per means is by a national convention, elected for the purpose, by all the 
 people. By this the will of the nation, whether to reform or not, or what 
 the reform shall be. or how far it shall extend, will be known, and it can- 
 not be known by any oilier means. As the election of a convention must, 
 in order to assertain the general sense of the nation, go on different 
 grounds from that of parliamentary elections, the mode that best per- 
 forms this end will have no difficulties to combat with from absurd customs 
 and pretended rights. The right of every man will be the same, whether 
 he live in a city, town, or village. As to county meetings, the only con- 
 sistent service which such meetings could render, would be tlm' of ap- 
 portioning the country into convenient districts, and when this is done, 
 each district might, according to the number of its inhabitants, elect its 
 quota of county members to the national convention: and the vote of
 
 58 
 
 Tutor. Certainly, and when the nation is to be consulted 
 concerning: its government, every one must allow it to be 
 essential, that all should be nearly alike informed about a 
 concern common to all ; that there be laid before them an 
 account of their present situation ; the dangers that threaten 
 them ; how far their rights extend ; wherein consists their 
 strength ; who are the nation's foes ; whence originate the 
 evils complained of, and what is the proper remedy. In all 
 these things that idol, property, would be entirely left out 
 of the question, the rich and the poor having alike the same 
 stake in the welfare, their all. Whatever a nation wishes to 
 have done within itself, says Paine, it has a right to have 
 done: rebellion consists in forcibly opposing the general will 
 of a nation, whether by a party or by a government. There 
 is no power but the voluntary will of the people, that has a 
 right to act in any matter respecting a general reform. When 
 a nation changes its opinions and habits of thinking, it is no 
 longer to be governed as before; but it would not only be 
 wrong, but bad policy to attempt by force what ought to be 
 accomplished by reason. There ought, therefore, to be in 
 every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state 
 of public opinion with respect to government. 
 
 Pupil. 1 should very much like to know how you are to 
 know the opinion of every man in the nation, or, which is 
 the same thing, how you are to know what the majority of 
 the people are for on any occasion? 
 
 Tutor. Suppose, then, that the country was divided into 
 electorates, as I have before described; and that war was 
 likely to break out with some foreign power: and that the 
 opinion of the whole nation is to be taken, whether it is for 
 peace or war. 
 
 In order to do this, when the Recorder lias given notice to 
 every parish in his electorate, let the constable take down the 
 names of all those who were voters at the last election of re- 
 presentatives, if they are then resident in the parish, unless 
 any are incapacitated since the last election, by becoming ideots 
 or rogues; this would be sufficiently exact for this purpose. 
 Me should set their names down in two columns, headed by 
 the words peace and tear. Let each elector vote as he 
 pleases, according to the dictates of his own mind. After he 
 lias completed the two lists (unless they are unanimous) let 
 
 each elector might be taken in Hie parish where he resided, either by 
 ballot, or by voice, as he should choose to give it. 
 
 A national convention thus formed, would bring together the sense and 
 opinions of every part of the nation fairly taken. To prevent therefore 
 those commotions which too often, and too suddenly arise from suffocated 
 discontents, it is best that the general will should have the full, free op- 
 portunity of being publicly ascertained and known. — Thomas Paine.
 
 59 
 
 them be exposed on the Sunday following" at the several 
 places of worship, that every one may see that his name is 
 in that column for which he voted; and every one will see 
 what the majority is, and what they are for. By this means 
 it will be impossible for the constable to make any mistake 
 without being' detected. On the day appointed by the Re- 
 corder, let the constable of every parish take his list to him, 
 and as fast as he receives them he should form two 
 columns, headed by the words peace and war, by balancing 
 which he will see what the majority is in that electorate, and 
 whether it be for peace or war. This list should be exposed 
 to the inspection of every constable, that each may see that 
 the Recorder has set his majority down faithfully. This list 
 need not be printed, but the Recorder should write a short 
 certificate like the following on the back of each constable's 
 list: viz. 
 
 The majority in this whole electorate is 
 for 
 September 20, 1821. T. Tr u sty, Recorder. 
 
 This list, so signed, should be taken back by the constable 
 and delivered to the churchwarden, to be kept with the 
 electoral registers, and, if necessary, copies of the certificate 
 should be put up at the places of worship on the following 
 Sunday. What is done in one electorate should be done in 
 every one. and on the same day. By such a process no tu- 
 mult is to be apprehended. The poor, says Paine, in all coun- 
 tries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all things 
 in which their interest and happiness are included. It is 
 only by neglecting and rejecting them that they become tu- 
 multuous. 
 
 Pupil. And nothing can be better calculated to prevent 
 tumults, or is easier on all occasions than this simple plan of 
 universal representation (A) : but pray what is to be done 
 with all the majorities of all the electorates in the nation { 
 
 (k) The representative system provides for every thing, and is the 
 only system in -which nations and governments can always appear in their 
 proper character. All men can understand what representation is. and 
 that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents, ft is 
 calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom from where it 
 can be found. It takes society and civilization for its basis: nature, 
 reason, and experience for its guide. It is the easiest of all forms of go- 
 vernment to be understood, and the most eligible in practice; and the 
 representation being equal throughout the country, and complete of itself, 
 however it may arrange itself into legislative and executive, they have 
 all one and the same natural source. It is a government which is in a
 
 GO 
 
 Tutor. There is but one more man wanted to finish the 
 business, and we will suppose that person to be the secre- 
 tary of state. Let therefore every Recorder in the nation 
 send a certificate of the majority, and what that majority is 
 for, in his electorate, to the secretary ; who should also form 
 two lists, headed by the words peace and war, and set down 
 each majority under its proper word, as they are certified 
 by the Recorders. Then by balancing- the two columns he 
 will see what the majority of the whole nation is, and also 
 what it desires. 
 
 But as great men seldom deserve great confidence, the 
 secretary should sign his list, and have it printed, and send a 
 few copies to the Recorder of each electorate, who should 
 cause them to be exhibited in the most conspicuous or most 
 popular parts of the same; that the people of every electo- 
 rate may see if my lord has set down the same majority and 
 for the same purpose as w r as sent to him from that electorate ; 
 by which means all roguery, if any has been practised, must 
 be found out immediately. 
 
 By this plan you see that the opinion or sense of the nation 
 may be obtained on any occasion whatever, with as little 
 expence or trouble as possibly can be, and that without a 
 National Convention. 
 
 But if persons are to be chosen by the people for a Na- 
 tional Convention, or for a Parliament, or if a King or Presi- 
 
 state of constant maturity: it is never young, never old. It is subject 
 neither to nonage nor dotage ; it is never in the cradle or on crutches. It 
 excludes at once the ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary mode, 
 and the inconvenience of the simple democracy ; it admits not of a separa- 
 tion between knowledge and power, and is superior, as government al- 
 ways ought to be, to all the accidents of individual man ; whereas in the 
 hereditary system, a nation may be incumbered with a knave, or an idiot, 
 for a whole life time, and not be benefited by a successor, who may be a 
 child, a tyrant, or a madman ; for according to the hereditary system, the 
 next in succession, whatever he may be, is put at the head of a nation 
 and a government. When this monarch is a child what does it know of 
 government ? Where is the propriety of calling a lad the father of the 
 people .' Does this appear like an act of wisdom ? Is it consistent with 
 the proper dignity and manly character of a nation ? Nature is orderly in 
 all her works, but this is a system that counteracts nature. It subjects 
 age to be governed by children, and wisdom by folly. It is ridiculous 
 that natio is arc to wait, and government to be interrupted till boys grow 
 to be men. In the representative system nothing of this can happen, for it 
 is always parallel with the order and immutable laws ofnature, and meets 
 the reason of man in every part: the human faculties under this form 
 acquire a gigantic manliness and act with boldness : and it is impossible to 
 conceive a system of government capable of acting over such an extent 
 of territory, and such a circle of interests, as is immediately produced by 
 the operation of representation, which concentrates the knowledge 
 necessary to the interests of the parts and of the whole. — Thvma* 
 I'uinc.
 
 61 
 
 dent was proposed to their choice ; or election of persons to 
 any kind of office whatever, it can be done by this plan with 
 the greatest ease imaginable. 
 
 Pupil. Nothing- can be easier either to be understood or 
 practised, for there cannot, in taking- the sense of the nation, 
 be less than one man to do the business in each parish ; one 
 man to decide between those parishes in each electorate ; 
 and one man only to determine between all the electo- 
 rates in the nation. Fewer people cannot well be employed 
 on such occasions, and these few are quite sufficient, and can- 
 not do their business erroneously or fraudulently without such 
 errors and frauds being found out, and that without any 
 officers or courts to investigate the business, i am now con- 
 vinced that the greater part of what is called government is 
 imposition and craft. 
 
 Tutor. Government, says Dean Swift, is a plain thing, 
 and fitted to the capacity of many heads. 
 
 Pupil. I think so, as far as relates to first principles. The 
 mathematical sciences are very extensive, and in the higher 
 branches many curious problems may be solved which are 
 quite incomprehensible to the lower orders, or those who 
 have not studied those sciences ; and they are generally re- 
 motely useful to mankind : but arithmetic, which is the foun- 
 dation of all the other parts, is necessary to almost every in- 
 dividual, and being the most useful, is universally understood. 
 I carry the same idea into government, and say, that although 
 the business of making laws, wars, treaties with other powers, 
 &c. may not be so well understood by the people, yet the first 
 elections or choice of the people, being the first or fundamental 
 principle of every free government, such elections and prin- 
 ciples are open to every man of common sense. And it ap- 
 pears by all the respectable authorities that you have cited, 
 that there is no way of preserving the public liberty but by 
 giving to every man an equal share in the government ; that 
 when the society consists of too many, or live too far dis- 
 tant from each other to be able to meet together, they can- 
 not exercise those rights otherwise than by deputing or send- 
 ing men to act in their behalf; and that those deputies must 
 be either so numerous that there can be no means of corrupt- 
 ing - the majority, or so often changed that there shall be no 
 time to do it so as to answer any end by doing it. 
 
 Tutor. You are perfectly right ; and the ever-memorable 
 Sydney observes, "that the officers of state, courts of jus- 
 tice, church, armies, fleets, and corporations, are of such num- 
 ber and power as wholly to corrupt a nation when they them- 
 selves are corrupted, and will ever be corrupt when they at- 
 tain to their offices by corruption." And herein lies the great 
 point of nicety and care in forming a constitution ; that the
 
 62 
 
 persons entrusted and representing-, shall either never have 
 any interest detached from the persons entrusting- and repre- 
 sented, or never the means of pursuing it (/). The people 
 may be very sure that the major part of their deputies being 
 honest, will keep the rest so ; and that they will all be honest 
 when they have no temptation to be knaves. Now, when 
 men first enter into magistracy, they have often their former 
 condition before their eyes : they remember what they them- 
 selves suffered, with their fellow subjects, from the abuse of 
 power, and how much they blamed it ; and so their first pur- 
 poses are to be humblo, modest, and just; and probably for 
 some time they continue so. But the possession of power soon 
 alters and vitiates their hearts, which at the same time are sure 
 to be leavened and puffed up to an unnatural size by the de- 
 ceitful incense of false friends, and by the prostrate submission 
 of parasites. First, they grow indifferent to all good de- 
 signs, then drop them ; next, they lose their moderation ; 
 afterwards, they renounce all measures with their old ac- 
 quaintances and old principles ; and seeing themselves in 
 magnifying glasses, grow, in conceit, a different species from 
 their fellow-stibjects : and so, by too sudden degrees, be- 
 come insolent, rapacious, and tyrannical, ready to catch at 
 all means, often the vilest and most oppressive, to raise their 
 fortunes as high as their imaginary greatness ; for the love 
 of money and power increases as the money or power in- 
 creases ; so that the only way to put them in mind of their 
 former condition, and consequently the condition of other 
 people, is often to reduce them to it, and let others of equal 
 capacities share of power in their turn. This is what is 
 called rotation in magistracy, and is the only way to qualify 
 men, and make them equally fit for dominion and subjection. 
 This is essentially necessary to every free government; it is 
 indeed the thing itself, and constitutes, animates, and informs 
 it, as much as the soul constitutes the man, and is a thing 
 sacred and inviolable where liberty is thought sacred ; for, 
 
 (7) That the interest of every part of the community may bo attended 
 to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each 
 sending its proper number of deputies; and that the elected might never 
 form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will 
 point out the propriety of having elections often : because, as the elected 
 might by that means return and mix again with the general body of elec- 
 tors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the 
 prudent reflexion of not making a rod for themselves. And as this fre- 
 quent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the 
 community, they will mutually and naturally supportcach other : and on 
 this (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends the strength of go- 
 vernment and the happiness of the governed. — I'ainc's Common Sense, 
 p. 10.
 
 (>.*5 
 
 there is no means in human policy to preserve the public 
 liberty, but by the frequent fresh elections of the people's 
 deputies. 
 
 These things were well understood by the people, who 
 had suffered severely bv the tyranny of king's, courtiers, 
 priests, and all the rest of the privileged orders, whose 
 cruelty the people determined should no longer continue, for 
 they demanded their rights, and a radical reformation in the 
 system of government. And we will conclude this discourse 
 with the, speech of this free and legislative people, from 
 Volney : 
 
 " Mediators with God, and mediators with the King ! 
 Courtiers and Priests, your services are too expensive ; hence- 
 forth we take our affairs into our own hands. Then the pri- 
 vileged orders exclaimed, • it is over with us, the multitude 
 are enlightened.' And the people replied, ' You shall not. 
 be hurt : we are enlightened, and we will commit no vio- 
 lence. We desire nothing but our rights: resentment we 
 cannot but feel, but we consent to pass it by ; we were slaves, 
 we might now command ; but we ask only to be free, and 
 free we are (»?)• 
 
 "' But it is not enough,' said they. ' that we have freed 
 ourselves from parasites and tyrants : we must prevent for 
 ever the revival of their power. "We are human beings, and 
 we know, by dear-bought experience, that every human 
 being incessantly grasps at authority, and wishes to enjoy it 
 at the expence of others. It is, therefore, necessary to 
 guard ourselves beforehand against this unfortunate pro- 
 pensity, the prolific parent of discord. It is necessary to 
 establish rules by which our rights are to be determined, 
 and our conduct, governed, But in this investigation, ab- 
 struse and difficult questions are involved, which demand all 
 the attention and faculties of the wisest men. Occupied 
 in our respective callings, we have neither leisure for these 
 studies, nor are we competent of ourselves to the exercise 
 of such functions. Let us select from our body certain indivi- 
 duals to whom the employment will be proper. To them let 
 our common powers be delegated, to frame for us a system 
 
 (m) This dialogue (for more of which see the new age in Volney) 
 between the people and the indolent classes, is applicable to every 
 society: it contains the seeds of all the political vices and disorders thai 
 prevail, and which may thus be defined: men who do nothing, and who 
 devour the substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves 
 particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and indolence.— 
 Compare the Mamelukes of Egypt, the nobility of Europe, the Nairs of 
 India, tin- Emirs of Arabia, the Patricians of Home, the Christian 
 Clergy, the lmans. the Bramins. the Bonzes, the Lamas. &c. &c, and 
 you will find in all the same characteristic featur* — " Men lhing in 
 idleness at the expellee, of those who labour," — Ruins, Note '!.
 
 64 
 
 of government and laws : let us constitute them the repre- 
 sentatives of our interests and our wills (n), and that this 
 representation may be as accurate as possible, and have 
 comprehended in it the whole diversity of our wills and 
 interests, let the individuals that comprise it be numerous, 
 and citizens like ourselves.' The selection being made, the 
 people thus addressed their delegates. "We have hitherto 
 lived in a society formed by chance, without stipulation of 
 rights, without reciprocal engagements ; and a multitude 
 of disorders and evils have been the result of this confused 
 state of things. 
 
 " We would now, with mature deliberation, frame a regular 
 compact ,• and we have made choice of you to draw up the 
 articles of it. 
 
 " Examine, then, with care, what ought to be its basis and 
 principles. Investigate the object and tendency of every 
 association ; observe what are the rights which every indi- 
 vidual brings into it, the powers he cedes for the public 
 good, and the powers which he reserves entire to himself. 
 Communicate to us equitable laws and rules of conduct. 
 Prepare for us a new system of government, for we feel that 
 the principles which to this day have guided us are corrupt. 
 Our fathers have wandered in the paths of ignorance, and 
 we, from habit, have trod in their steps. Every thing is 
 conducted by violence, fraud, or delusion: and the laws 
 of morality and reason are still buried in obscurity. Do you 
 unfold the chaos, discover the time, order, and connexion 
 of things ; publish your code of laws and rights, and we 
 will conform to it." And this people raised an immense 
 throne in form of a pyramid (the emblem of stability), and 
 seating upon it the men they had chosen, said to them, 
 " We raise you this day above us, that you may take 
 
 (n) Government is, or ought to he, nothing but an institution for col- 
 lecting and currying into execution the will of the people. All civil 
 government, as far as it can be denominated free, is the creature of the 
 people. It originates with them. It is conducted under their direction, 
 and has in view nothing but their happiness. In every free state every 
 man is his own legislator ; for if the laws are made by one man, or 
 a junto of men, in a state, and not by common consent, a government by 
 them does not differ from slavery. Civil liberty, in its most perfect 
 degree, can be enjoyed only in small states, where every member is 
 capable of giving his suffrage in person, and of being chosen into 
 public offices. When a state becomes so numerous as to render this 
 impracticable, though all the members should not be capable of giving 
 their suffrages on public measures, individually and personally, yet they 
 may do this by the appointment of substitutes or representatives ; and 
 whatever is done by such delegates within the limits of their trust, 
 may be considered as done by the united voice and counsel of the com- 
 munity. In this method a free government may be established in tho 
 largest state. — Dr. Price on Civil Liberty and Government .
 
 65 
 
 a more comprehensive view of our relations, and be exalted 
 above the atmosphere of our passions. But remember, that 
 you are citizens like ourselves ; that the power which we 
 confer upon you belongs to us ; that we give it as a trust, 
 for which you are responsible, not as exclusive property, or 
 hereditary right ; that the laws which you make, you will 
 be the first to submit to ; that at stated periods you will 
 descend from your stations, and rank again with us ; that 
 you will have acquired no distinguishing right, but the right 
 to our gratitude and esteem. And, oh ! with what glory 
 will the universe, that reveres so many apostles of error, 
 honour the first assembly of enlightened and reasonable men, 
 who shall have declared the immutable principles of justice 
 to mankind, and consecrated in the very face of tyrants, the 
 rights of nations !" 
 
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