347.  If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather; if it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative theory; if it were but an abstract principle; on any of these suppositions, it might be considered as of little importance.  But it is none of these; it is a practical matter; the want of it not only is, but must of necessity be, felt by every man who lives under that want.  If it were proposed to the shopkeepers in a town, that a rich man or two, living in the neighbourhood, should have power to send, whenever they pleased, and take away as much as they pleased of the money of the shopkeepers, and apply it to what uses they please; what an outcry the shopkeepers would make!  And yet, what would this be more than taxes imposed on those who have no voice in choosing the persons who impose them?  Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases?  Who, that has the power to help himself, surrenders his goods or his money to the will of another?  Has it not always been, and must it not always be, true, that, if your property be at the absolute disposal of others, your ruin is certain?  And if this be, of necessity, the case amongst individuals and parts of the community, it must be the case with regard to the whole community.

348.  Aye, and experience shows us that it always has been the case.  The natural and inevitable consequences of a want of this right in the people have, in all countries, been taxes pressing the industrious and laborious to the earth; severe laws and standing armies to compel the people to submit to those taxes; wealth, luxury, and splendour, amongst those who make the laws and receive the taxes; poverty, misery, immorality and crime, amongst those who bear the burdens; and at last commotion, revolt, revenge, and rivers of blood.  Such have always been, and such must always be, the consequences of a want of this right of all men to share in the making of the laws, a right, as I have before shown, derived immediately from the law of Nature, springing up out of the same source with civil society, and cherished in the heart of man by reason and by experience.

349.  Well, then, this right being that, without the enjoyment of which there is, in reality, no right at all, how manifestly is it the first duty of every man to do all in his power to maintain this right where it exists, and to restore it where it has been lost?  For observe, it must, at one time, have existed in every civil community, it being impossible that it could ever be excluded by any social compact; absolutely impossible, because it is contrary to the law of self-preservation to believe, that men would agree to give up the rights of nature without stipulating for some benefit.  Before we can affect to believe that this right was not reserved, in such compact, as completely as the right to live was reserved, we must affect to believe, that millions of men, under no control but that of their own passions and desires, and having all the earth and its products at the command of their strength and skill, consented to be for ever, they and their posterity, the slaves of a few.