those of wisdom? No wonder then Mr.
Burke has declined the comparison, and endeavored to lead his readers
from the point by a wild, unsystematical display of paradoxical
rhapsodies.

The French Constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected
every two years. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? Why,
that the nation has no right at all in the case; that the government is
perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point; and he can quote for his
authority the precedent of a former Parliament.

The French Constitution says there shall be no game laws, that the
farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce
of his lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can take; that
there shall be no monopolies of any kind--that all trades shall be free
and every man free to follow any occupation by which he can procure
an honest livelihood, and in any place, town, or city throughout the
nation. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England, game is made the
property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and with respect to
monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every chartered
town is an aristocratical monopoly in itself, and the qualification of
electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is
this what Mr. Burke means by a constitution?

In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the
country is hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An Englishman
is not free of his own country; every one of those places presents a
barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman--that he has no
rights. Within these monopolies are other monopolies. In a city, such
for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and thirty thousand
inhabitants, the right of electing representatives to Parliament is
monopolised by about thirty-one persons. And within these monopolies
are still others. A man even of the same town, whose parents were not
in circumstances to give him an occupation, is debarred, in many cases,
from the natural right of acquiring one, be his genius or industry what
it may.

Are these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating itself
from slavery, like France? Certainly they are not, and certain am I,
that when the people of England come to reflect upon them they will,
like France, annihilate those badges of ancient oppression, those traces
of a conquered nation. Had Mr. Burke possessed talents