This would be the event,
though its conduct in such a perversion of its functions should be
tolerably just and moderate; but if it should be iniquitous,
violent, full of passion, and full of faction, it would be
considered as the most intolerable of all the modes of tyranny.
For a considerable time this separation of the representatives from
their constituents went on with a silent progress; and had those,
who conducted the plan for their total separation, been persons of
temper and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their design,
the success would have been infallible; but by their precipitancy
they have laid it open in all its nakedness; the nation is alarmed
at it; and the event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the
scheme. In the last session, the corps called the KING'S FRIENDS
made a hardy attempt all at once, TO ALTER THE RIGHT OF ELECTION
ITSELF; to put it into the power of the House of Commons to disable
any person disagreeable to them from sitting in Parliament, without
any other rule than their own pleasure; to make incapacities, either
general for descriptions of men, or particular for individuals; and
to take into their body, persons who avowedly had never been chosen
by the majority of legal electors, nor agreeably to any known rule
of law.
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