to prevent also the inconveniences which have arisen from the instrument
of all the good you had in view.

To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of the
people is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannot
be obtained but through the medium of popular election; and popular
election is a mighty evil. It is such and so great an evil, that, though
there are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, very
few are now elected. They are the distempers of elections that have
destroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if not
impossible; the only thing, therefore, left to save the commonwealth is,
to prevent their return too frequently. The objects in view are, to have
Parliaments as frequent as they can be without distracting them in the
prosecution of public business: on one hand, to secure their dependence
upon the people; on the other, to give them that quiet in their minds
and that ease in their fortunes as to enable them to perform the most
arduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency,
with independency, and with experience, as real public counsellors, not
as the canvassers at a perpetual election. It is wise to compass as many
good ends as possibly you can, and, seeing there are inconveniences on
both sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit to
soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable; because the
disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be
derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite,
to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible
hour,--and may it be a very late one!

This bill, I fear, would precipitate one of two consequences,--I know
not which most likely, or which most dangerous: either that the crown,
by its constant, stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear out