The very aim and intention of the democratical part, or the house of commons, is to secure the rights of the people. It’s very being depends upon those rights. Its whole power is derived from them, and must be terminated by them.
To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.
The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.
Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.
To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.
