If this claim be founded, it is
clear to what it goes. The House of Commons, in that light,
undoubtedly is no representative of the people as a collection of
individuals. Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such an
assertion. When you come to examine into this claim of right,
founded on the right of self-government in each individual, you find
the thing demanded infinitely short of the principle of the demand.
What! one-third only of the legislature, of the government no share
at all? What sort of treaty of partition is this for those who have
no inherent right to the whole? Give them all they ask, and your
grant is still a cheat; for how comes only a third to be their
younger children's fortune in this settlement? How came they
neither to have the choice of kings, or lords, or judges, or
generals, or admirals, or bishops, or priests, or ministers, or
justices of peace? Why, what have you to answer in favour of the
prior rights of the Crown and peerage but this--our Constitution is
a proscriptive Constitution; it is a Constitution whose sole
authority is, that it has existed time out of mind. It is settled
in these two portions against one, legislatively; and in the whole
of the judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of the
executive, the prudential and the financial administration, in one
alone.
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