on the subject of representation; much on the receipt tax, something
on Mr. Fox's ambition; much greater apprehension of danger from
thence than from want of representation. One would think that the
ballast of the ship was shifted with us, and that our Constitution
had the gunnel under water. But can you fairly and distinctly point
out what one evil or grievance has happened, which you can refer to
the representative not following the opinion of his constituents?
What one symptom do we find of this inequality? But it is not an
arithmetical inequality with which we ought to trouble ourselves.
If there be a moral, a political equality, this is the desideratum
in our Constitution, and in every Constitution in the world. Moral
inequality is as between places and between classes. Now, I ask,
what advantage do you find, that the places which abound in
representation possess over others in which it is more scanty, in
security for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of
those means of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness,
the ends for which society was formed? Are the local interests of
Cornwall and Wiltshire, for instance--their roads, canals, their
prisons, their police--better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or
Staffordshire? Warwick has members; is Warwick or Stafford more
opulent, happy, or free, than Newcastle or than Birmingham? Is
Wiltshire the pampered favourite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child
of the bondwoman, is turned out to the desert? This is like the
unhappy persons who live, if they can be said to live, in the
statical chair; who are ever feeling their pulse, and who do not
judge of health by the aptitude of the body to perform its
functions, but by their ideas of what ought to be the true balance
between the several secretions. Is a committee of Cornwall, &c.,
thronged, and the others deserted? No. You have an equal
representation, because you have men equally interested in the