others, should bring us at any time to alter our constitution, and
to give up our ancient rights, we shall find our numbers diminish
visibly and fast. For liberty encourages procreation, and not only
keeps our own inhabitants among us, but invites strangers to come
and live under the shelter of our laws.

The Romans, indeed, made use of an adventitious help to enlarge
their city, which was by incorporating foreign cities and nations
into their commonwealth; but this way is not without its mischiefs.
For the strangers in Rome by degrees had grown so numerous, and to
have so great a vote in the councils, that the whole Government
began to totter, and decline from its old to its new inhabitants,
which Fabius the censor observing, he applied a remedy in time by
reducing all the new citizens into four tribes, that being
contracted into so narrow a space, they might not have so malignant
an influence upon the city.

An Act of general naturalisation would likewise probably increase
our numbers very fast, and repair what loss we may have suffered in
our people by the late war. It is a matter that has been very
warmly contended for by many good patriots; but peradventure it
carries also its danger with it, which perhaps would have the less
influence by this expedient, namely, if an Act of Parliament were
made, that no heads of families hereafter to be naturalised for the
first generation, should have votes in any of our elections. But as
the case stands, it seems against the nature of right government
that strangers (who may be spies, and who may have an interest
opposite to that of England, and who at best ever join in one link
of obsequiousness to the Ministers) should be suffered to
intermeddle in that important business of sending members to