Constitution; nor perhaps have you ever known a more flourishing
period for the union of national prosperity, dignity, and liberty,
than the sixty years you have passed under that Constitution of
parliament.

The shortness of time, in which they are to reap the profits of
iniquity, is far from checking the avidity of corrupt men; it
renders them infinitely more ravenous. They rush violently and
precipitately on their object, they lose all regard to decorum. The
moments of profit are precious; never are men so wicked as during a
general mortality. It was so in the great plague at Athens, every
symptom of which (and this its worst amongst the rest) is so finely
related by a great historian of antiquity. It was so in the plague
of London in 1665. It appears in soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever
would contrive to render the life of man much shorter than it is,
would, I am satisfied, find the surest recipe for increasing the
wickedness of our nature.

Thus, in my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have
the following ill effects:- It would make the member more
shamelessly and shockingly corrupt, it would increase his dependence
on those who could best support him at his election, it would wrack
and tear to pieces the fortunes of those who stood upon their own
fortunes and their private interest, it would make the electors
infinitely more venal, and it would make the whole body of the
people, who are, whether they have votes or not, concerned in
elections, more lawless, more idle, more debauched; it would utterly
destroy the sobriety, the industry, the integrity, the simplicity of
all the people, and undermine, I am much afraid, the deepest and
best laid foundations of the commonwealth.