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the electors are so few, that they must be considered a burdensome privileged order, and in no wise the people. Their votes are notoriously bought; and so ignorant and corrupt are they, that the right of election is not merely useless; it is fatal to our prosperity and morals. It is a right given to them to sell their consciences: a right to bring down the curse of Heaven upon the nation by the frequency and daringness of their perjuries: a right by the contagion of their gluttony, drunkenness, and party-feuds to render us less and less susceptible of that liberty, with the forms of which it would mock us. And with regard to the legislature, we are conscious, sire! that the plans, which your royal wisdom and the wisdom of your honourable counsellors prepare in your cabinet, are always adopted by the house of nobles, and by that body, misnamed, the house of the people. By dismissing them from a participation of the sovereignty, we should therefore lose nothing: and we should gain much. For to them we do owe in great measure the weight and multitude of our taxes, the frequency of wars, and the decay of virtue and piety among us. For although they constantly adopt all your royal plans, yet they expect to be rewarded for their promptness: in orderto
