lve upon it.

The county will in some way or other be called upon to declare it your
opinion, that the House of Commons is not sufficiently numerous, and
that the elections are not sufficiently frequent,--that an hundred new
knights of the shire ought to be added, and that we are to have a new
election once in three years for certain, and as much oftener as the
king pleases. Such will be the state of things, if the proposition made
shall take effect.

All this may be proper. But, as an honest man, I cannot possibly give my
rote for it, until I have considered it more fully. I will not deny that
our Constitution may have faults, and that those faults, when found,
ought to be corrected; but, on the whole, that Constitution has been our
own pride, and an object of admiration to all other nations. It is not
everything which appears at first view to be faulty, in such a
complicated plan, that is to be determined to be so in reality. To
enable us to correct the Constitution, the whole Constitution must be
viewed together; and it must be compared with the actual state of the
people, and the circumstances of the time. For that which taken singly
and by itself may appear to be wrong, when considered with relation to
other things, may be perfectly right,--or at least such as ought to be
patiently endured, as the means of preventing something that is worse.
So far with regard to what at first view may appear a _distemper_ in the
Constitution. As to the _remedy_ of that distemper an equal caution
ought to be used; because this latter consideration is not single and
separate, no more than the former. There are many things in reformation
which would be proper to be done, if other things can be done along with
them, but which, if they cannot be so accompanied, ought not to be done
at all. I therefore wish, when any new matter of this deep nature is
proposed to me, to have the whole scheme distinctly in my view, and full
time to consider of it. Please God, I will walk with caution, whenever I
am not able clearly to see my way before me.

I am now growing old. I have from my very early youth been conversant in
reading and thinking upon the subject of our laws and Constitution, as
well as upon those of other times and other countries; I have been for
fifteen years a very laborious member of Parliament, and in that time
have had great opportunities of seeing with my own eyes the working of
the machine of our government, and remarking wh