s unknown,
And build on their past actions, not our own;
They'd cancel records, and their tombs deface,
And openly disown the vile degenerate race:
For fame of families is all a cheat,
'Tis pers'nal virtue only makes us great.

The next satire of any consequence which De Foe wrote, was entitled
Reformation of Manners, in which some private characters are severely
attacked. It is chiefly aimed at some persons, who being vested with
authority to suppress vice, yet rendered themselves a disgrace to
their country, encouraging wickedness by that very authority they have
to suppress it.

Poetry was far from being the talent of De Foe. He wrote with more
perspicuity and strength in prose, and he seems to have understood, as
well as any man, the civil constitution of the kingdom, which indeed
was his chief study.

In the first volume of his works there is a prose essay, which he
entitles The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of
England, Examined and Asserted; this was intended to refute a very
ridiculous opinion, which politicians, more zealous than wise, had
industriously propagated, viz. 'That the representatives of the
people, i.e. the House of Commons had a right to enact whatever laws,
and enter into whatever measures they please, without any dependence
on, or even consulting the opinion of, their constituents; and that
the collective body of the people have no right to call them to an
account, or to take any cognizance of their conduct.' In answer to
which Mr. De Foe very sensibly observes, 'that it is possible for even
a House of Commons to be in the wrong. They may be misled by factions
and parties, and it is as ridiculous to suppose them infallible; as
to suppose the Pope of Rome, or the Popish conclave infallible, which
have more than once determined against one another. It is possible
(says he) for them to be bribed by pensions and places, and by either
of those extremes to betray their trust, and abuse the people who
entrust them; and if the people should have no redress in such a
case, then would the nation be in hazard of being ruined by their own
representatives. And it is a wonder to find it asserted in a certain
treatise, _That it is not to be supposed, that ever the House of
Commons can injure the people who entrust them._ There can be no
better way to demonstrate the possibility of a thing, than by proving
that it has been already; and we need go no further back than to the
r