If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without
question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are
matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of
reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in
which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who
form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those
who hear the arguments?
PARLIAMENT.
Parliament is not a CONGRESS of ambassadors from different and hostile
interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate,
against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a DELIBERATIVE
assembly of ONE nation, with ONE interest, that of the whole; where, not
local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general
good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a
member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of
Bristol, but he is a member of PARLIAMENT.
MORAL LEVELLERS.
This moral levelling is a SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical
passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant
accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by the
roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil
opposition. It disposes men to an abject submission, not by opinion,
which may be shaken by argument or altered by passion, but by the strong
ties of public and private interest.
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