SPEECH

ON

A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS.

MAY 8, 1780.


It is always to be lamented, when men are driven to search into the
foundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to resort to
the theory of your government, whenever you propose any alteration in
the frame of it,--whether that alteration means the revival of some
former antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the
introduction of some new improvement in the commonwealth. The object of
our deliberation is, to promote the good purposes for which elections
have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought
frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a
trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the
Constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy
is to be suited to your disease, your present disease, and to your whole
disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly
and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it
can make any sort of approach to perfection. There is not, there never
was, a principle of government under heaven, that does not, in the very
pursuit of the good it proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into some
inconvenience which makes it absolutely necessary to counterwork and
weaken the application of that first principle itself, and to abandon
something of the extent of the advantage you proposed by it, in order