DEDICATION

ΤΟ THE

ENGLISH NATION.

DEDICATE to You a collection of Letters, written by one of Yourselves, for the common benefit of us all. They would never have grown to this fize without your continued encouragement and applaufe. To me they originally owe nothing but a healthy, fanguine, conftitution. Under Your care they have thriven. To You they are indebted for whatever ftrength or beauty they poffefs. When Kings and Minifters are forgotten, when the force and direction of perfonal fatire is no longer understood, and when meafures are only felt in their remotest confequences, this book will, I believe, be found to contain principles worthy to be tranfmitted to pofterity. When you leave the unimpaired, hereditary freehold to Your children, You do but half Your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the poffeffors have fenfe and fpirit enough to defend them.--This is not the language of vanity. If I am a vain

man,

man, my gratification lies within a narrow circle. I am the fole depofitary of my own fecret, and it fhall perish with me.

If an honeft, and, I may truly affirm, a laborious zeal for the publick fervice, has given me any weight in Your efteem, let me exhort and conjure You never to fuffer an invafion of Your political conftitution, however minute the inftance may appear, to pass by, without a determined, perfevering refiftance. One precedent creates another.-They foon accumulate, and conftitute law. What yefterday was fact, to-day is doctrine. Examples are fuppofed to juftify the most dangerous measures; and where they do not fuit exactly, the defect is fupplied by analogy.—Be affured that the laws, which protect us in our civil rights, grow out of the constitution, and that they must fall or flourish with it. This is not the caufe of faction, or of party, or of any individual, but the common intereft of .every man in Britain. Although the King fhould continue to fupport his prefent fyftem of government, the period is not very diftant at which you will have the means of redress in your own power. It may be nearer, perhaps, than any of us expect; and I would warn You to be prepared for it. The King may poffibly be advised to diffolve the prefent parliament a year or two before it expires of courfe, and precipitate a new election, in hopes of taking the nation by furprize. If fuch a measure be in agitation, this very caution may defeat or prevent it.

I cannot

I cannot doubt that You will unanimously affert the freedom of election, and vindicate your exclufive right to choose your reprefentatives. But other questions have been started, on which your determination should be equally clear and unanimous. Let it be impreffed upon your minds, let it be inftilled into your children, that the liberty of the prefs is the Palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman; and that the right of juries to return a general verdict, in all cafes whatfoever, is an effential part of our conftitution, not to be controlled or limited by the judges, nor, in any fhape, queftionable by the Legislature. The power of King, Lords, and Commons, is not an arbitrary power*. They are the trustees, not the owners, of the eftate. The

fee

* This pofitive denial, of an arbitrary power being vefted in the Legislature, is not, in fact, a new doctrine. When the Earl of Lindfey, in the year 1675, brought a bill into the Houfe of Lords, To prevent the dangers which might arife from perfons difaffected to government, by which an oath and penalty was to be impofed upon the members of both houfes, it was affirmed, in a proteft figned by twenty-three lay Peers, (my Lords the Bishops were not accuftomed to proteft), That the

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privilege of fitting and voting in parliament, was an "honour they had by birth, and a right fo inherent in "them, and infeparable from them, that nothing could "take it away, but what, by the law of the land, muit "withal takeaway their lives, and corrupt their blood.” -Thefe noble Peers (whofe names are a reproach to their pofterity) have, in this inftance, folemnly denied the power of parliament to alter the conftitution. Under a particular propofition, they have afferted a gene ral truth, in which every man in England is concerned

fee-fimple is in US. They cannot alienate, they cannot waste. When we fay that the Legislature is fupreme, we mean, that it is the highest power known to the constitution ;that it is the highest, in comparison with the other fubordinate powers eftablished by the laws. In this fenfe, the word fupreme is relative, not abfolute. The power of the Legiflature is limited, not only by the general rules of natural juftice, and the welfare of the community, but by the forms and principles of our particular conftitution. If this doctrine be not true, we must admit, that King, Lords, and Commons, have no rule to direct their refolutions, but merely their own will and pleasure. They might unite the legislative and executive power in the fame hands, and diffolve the constitution by an act of parliament. But I am perfuaded You will not leave it to the choice of feven hundred perfons, notoriously corrupted by the Crown, whether feven millions of their equals fhall be free men or flaves. The certainty of forfeiting their own rights, when they facrifice thofe of the nation, is no check to a brutal, degenerate mind. Without infiling upon the extravagant conceffion made to Harry the Eighth, there are inftances, in the hiftory of other countries, of a formal, deliberate furrender of the publick liberty into the hands of the Sovereign. If England does not share the fame fate, it is because we have better refources than in the virtue of either houfe of parliament.

I faid that the liberty of the prefs is the palladium of all your rights, and that the right of the juries to return a general verdict, is part of your conftitution. To preferve the whole fyftem, You must correct your Legislature. With regard to any influencce of the conftituent over the conduct of the reprefentative, there is little difference between a feat in parliament for seven years and a feat for life. The profpect of your refentment is too remote; and although the last feffion of a septennial parliament be ufually employed in courting the favour of the people, confider, that, at this rate, your reprefentatives have fix years for offence, and but one for atonement. A death-bed repentance feldom reaches to reftitution. If you reflect, that in the changes. of administration which have marked and difgraced the prefent reign, although your warmeft patriots have, in their turn, been invefted with the lawful and unlawful authority of the Crown, and though other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for fhortening the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minifter) the oppofition to this meafure, ever fince the feptennial act paffed, has been conftant and uniform on the part of Government. You cannot but conclude, without the poffibility of a doubt, that long parliaments are the foundation of the undue influence of the Crown. This influence anfwers every purpose of arbitrary power to the

Crown,