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 all opposition in elections, or that a violent and furious
popular spirit would arise. I must see, to satisfy me, the
remedies; I must see, from their operation in the cure of the old
evil, and in the cure of those new evils, which are inseparable from
all remedies, how they balance each other, and what is the total
result. The excellence of mathematics and metaphysics is to have