e that their welfare was the object of all government.

"In all forms of government the people is the true legislator. The
remote and efficient cause is the consent of the people, either actual
or implied, and such consent is absolutely essential to its validity.
Whiggism did not consist in the support of the power of Parliament or
of any other power, but of the rights of the people. If Parliament
should become an instrument in invading them, it was no better in any
respect, and much worse in some, than any other instrument of
arbitrary power. They who call upon you to belong wholly to the people
are those who wish you to belong to your proper home, to the sphere of
your duty, to the post of your honour. Let the Commons in Parliament
assembled be one and the same thing with the Commons at large. I see
no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public
interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of
the people itself, whenever, it shall appear by some flagrant and
notorious act, by some capital innovation, that those representatives
are going to overleap the fences of the law and to introduce an
arbitrary power. This interposition is a most unpleasant remedy; but
if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some occasion to be
used--to be used then only when it is evident that nothing else can
hold the Constitution to its true principles. It is not in Parliament
alone that the remedy for parliamentary disorders can be completed;
hardly, indeed, can it begin there. A popular origin cannot therefore
be the characteristic distinction of a popular representative. This
belongs equally to all parts of government, and in all forms. The
virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consists in its
being the express image of the feelings of the nation. It was not
instituted to be a control upon the people. It was designed as a
control for the people. Privilege of the crown and privilege of
Parliament are only privilege so long as they are exercised for the
benefit of the people. The voice of the people is a voice that is to
be heard, and not the votes and resolutions of the House of Commons.
He would preserve thoroughly every privilege of the people, because it
is a privilege known and written in the law of the land; and he would
support it, not against the crown or the aristocratic party only, but
against the representatives of the people themselves. This was not a
government of balances. I