" "The English nation" (said they) "supports
impatiently the continuance of the war, and _a reply must be made to its
complaints and its reproaches_; the Parliament is about to be opened,
_and the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be
shut; the demands for new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these
results, it is necessary to be able to advance that the French
government refuses every reasonable proposition for peace_." I am sorry
that the language of the friends to ministry and the enemies to mankind
should be so much in unison.
As to the fact in which these parties are so well agreed, that the
experiment ought to have been made for the satisfaction of this country,
(meaning the country of England,) it were well to be wished that persons
of eminence would cease to make themselves representatives of the people
of England, without a letter of attorney, or any other act of
procuration. In legal construction, the sense of the people of England
is to be collected from the House of Commons; and though I do not deny
the possibility of an abuse of this trust as well as any other, yet I
think, without the most weighty reasons and in the most urgent
exigencies, it is highly dangerous to suppose that the House speaks
anything contrary to the sense of the people, or that the representative
is silent, when the sense of the constituent, strongly, decidedly, and
upon long deliberation, speaks audibly upon any topic of moment.
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