must send his representative;
that all other government is usurpation, and is so far from having a
claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to
resist it. Nine tenths of the reformers argue thus,--that is, on the
natural right.

It is impossible not to make some reflection on the nature of this
claim, or avoid a comparison between the extent of the principle and the
present object of the demand. If this claim be founded, it is clear to
what it goes. The House of Commons, in that light, undoubtedly, is no
representative of the people, as a collection of individuals. Nobody
pretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion. When you come to
examine into this claim of right, founded on the right of
self-government in each individual, you find the thing demanded
infinitely short of the principle of the demand. What! _one third_ only
of the legislature, and of the government no share at all? What sort of
treaty of partition is this for those who have an inherent right to the
whole? Give them all they ask, and your grant is still a cheat: for how
comes only a third to be their younger-children's fortune in this
settlement? How came they neither to have the choice of kings, or lords,
or judges, or generals, or admirals, or bishops, or priests, or
ministers, or justices of peace? Why, what have you to answer in favor
of the prior rights of the crown and peerage but this: Our Constitution
is a prescriptive constitution; it is a constitution whose sole
authority is, that it has existed time out of mind? It is settled in
these _two_ portions against one, legislatively,--and in the whole of
the judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of the executive, the
prudential, and the financial administration, in one alone. Nor was your
House of Lords and the prerogatives of the crown settled on any
adjudication in favor of natural rights: for they could never be so
partitioned. Your king, your lords, your judges, your juries, grand and
little, all are prescriptive; and what proves it is the disputes, not
yet concluded, and never near becoming so, when any of them first
originated. Prescription is the most solid of all titles, not only to
property, but, which is to secure that property, to government. They
harmonize with each other, and give mutual aid to one another. It is
accompanied with another ground of authority in the constitution of the
human mind, presumption. It is a presumption in favor of any settled