with each other to divide powers, profits, and
privileges? You shall have so much, and I will have the rest; and with
respect to the nation, it said, for your share, You shall have the right
of petitioning. This being the case, the bill of rights is more properly
a bill of wrongs, and of insult. As to what is called the convention
parliament, it was a thing that made itself, and then made the authority
by which it acted. A few persons got together, and called themselves by
that name. Several of them had never been elected, and none of them for
the purpose.

From the time of William a species of government arose, issuing out
of this coalition bill of rights; and more so, since the corruption
introduced at the Hanover succession by the agency of Walpole; that can
be described by no other name than a despotic legislation. Though the
parts may embarrass each other, the whole has no bounds; and the only
right it acknowledges out of itself, is the right of petitioning. Where
then is the constitution either that gives or restrains power?

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it
less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a
parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated
from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.

I cannot believe that any nation, reasoning on its own rights, would
have thought of calling these things a constitution, if the cry of
constitution had not been set up by the government. It has got into
circulation like the words bore and quoz [quiz], by being chalked up in
the speeches of parliament, as those words were on window shutters and
doorposts; but whatever the constitution may be in other respects, it
has undoubtedly been the most productive machine of taxation that was
ever invented. The taxes in France, under the new constitution, are not
quite thirteen shillings per head,*[18] and the taxes in England, under
what is called its present constitution, are forty-eight shillings
and sixpence per head--men, women, and children--amounting to nearly
seventeen millions sterling, besides the expense of collecting, which is
upwards of a million more.

In a country like England, where the whole of the civil Government is
executed by the people of every town and county, by means of parish
officers, magistrates, quarterly sessions, juries, and assize; without
any trouble to what is called the government or any o