ending every species of institution, would attend the
principle of an exact local representation, or a representation on the
principle of numbers. If you reject personal representation, you are
pushed upon expedience; and, then what they wish us to do is, to prefer
their speculations on that subject to the happy experience of this
country, of a growing liberty and a growing prosperity for five hundred
years. Whatever respect I have for their talents, this, for one, I will
not do. Then what is the standard of expedience? Expedience is that
which is good for the community, and good for every individual in it.
Now this expedience is the _desideratum_, to be sought either without
the experience of means or with that experience. If without, as in case
of the fabrication of a new commonwealth, I will hear the learned
arguing what promises to be expedient; but if we are to judge of a
commonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is, What has
been _found_ expedient or inexpedient? And I will not take their
_promise_ rather than the _performance_ of the Constitution.

.... But no, this was not the cause of the discontents. I went through
most of the northern parts,--the Yorkshire election was then raging; the
year before, through most of the western counties,--Bath, Bristol,
Gloucester: not one word, either in the towns or country, on the subject
of representation; much on the receipt tax, something on Mr. Fox's
ambition; much greater apprehension of danger from thence than from want
of representation. One would think that the ballast of the ship was
shifted with us, and that our Constitution had the gunwale under water.
But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievance
has happened which you can refer to the representative not following the
opinion of his constituents? What one symptom do we find of this
inequality? But it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we ought
to trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political equality, this is
the _desideratum_ in our Constitution, and in every constitution in the
world. Moral inequality is as between places and between classes. Now,
I ask, what advantage do you find that the places which abound in
representation possess over others in which it is more scanty, in
security for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of those
means of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness the ends
for which society was formed? Are the loca