Thus to regulate candidates and
electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to
cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain
of public security? for the people having reserved to themselves
the choice of their representatives, as the fence to their
properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might
always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act, and advise,
as the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good
should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to
require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the
debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not
capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and
endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for
the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers of the
society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect
a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is
possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and
punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of
perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand
in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to
betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what
is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus
employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first
institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that
he, who has once attempted any such thing as this, cannot any
longer be trusted.
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