I see that your example is held out to shame us.  I know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive by finding our situation tolerable, and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its full perfection.  Your leaders in France began by affecting to admire, almost to adore, the British Constitution; but as they advanced, they came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt.  The friends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly thought the glory of their country.  The Revolution Society has discovered that the English nation is not free.  They are convinced that the inequality in our representation is a “defect in our Constitution so gross and palpable as to make it excellent chiefly in form and theory";[87]—­that a representation in the legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutional liberty in it, but of “all legitimate government; that without it a government is nothing but an usurpation";—­that, “when the representation is partial, the kingdom possesses liberty only partially; and if extremely partial, it gives only a semblance; and if not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance.”  Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of representation as our fundamental grievance; and though, as to the corruption of this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its full perfection of depravity, he fears that “nothing will be done towards gaining for us this essential blessing, until some great abuse of power again provokes our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a pure and equal representation by other countries, whilst we are mocked with the shadow, kindles our shame.”  To this he subjoins a note in these words:—­“A representation chosen chiefly by the Treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes.”

You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.  It would require a long discourse to point out to you the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and equivocal nature of the terms “inadequate representation.”  I shall only say here, in justice to that old-fashioned Constitution under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or devised.  I defy the enemies of our Constitution to show the contrary.  To detail the particulars in which it is found so well to promote its ends would demand a treatise on our practical Constitution.  I state here the