the qualification of electors proceeds out of those chartered
monopolies. Is this freedom? Is this what Mr. Burke means by a
constitution?

  In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the
country is hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An
Englishman is not free of his own country; every one of those places
presents a barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman- that
he has no rights. Within these monopolies are other monopolies. In a
city, such for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and
thirty thousand inhabitants, the right of electing representatives
to Parliament is monopolised by about thirty-one persons. And within
these monopolies are still others. A man even of the same town,
whose parents were not in circumstances to give him an occupation,
is debarred, in many cases, from the natural right of acquiring one,
be his genius or industry what it may.

  Are these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating
itself from slavery, like France? Certainly they are not, and
certain am I, that when the people of England come to reflect upon
them they will, like France, annihilate those badges of ancient
oppression, those traces of a conquered nation. Had Mr. Burke
possessed talents similar to the author of "On the Wealth of Nations."
he would have comprehended all the parts which enter into, and, by
assemblage, form a constitution. He would have reasoned from
minutiae to magnitude. It is not from his prejudices only, but from
the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is unfitted for the subject
he writes upon. Even his genius is without a constitution. It is a
genius at random, and not a genius constituted. But he must say
something. He has therefore mounted in the air like a balloon, to draw
the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand upon.

  Much is to be learned from the French Constitution. Conquest and
tyranny transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from
Normandy into England, and the country is yet disfigured with the
marks. May, then, the example of all France contribute to regenerate
the freedom which a province of it destroyed!

  The French Constitution says that to preserve the national
representation from being corrupt, no member of the National
Assembly shall be an officer of the government, a placeman or a
pensioner. What will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper
his answer: Loaves and Fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and
fishes has more mischief in it than people have yet reflected on.
The National Assembly has made the discovery, and it holds out the
example to the world. Had governments agreed to quarrel on purpose
to fleece their countries by taxes, they could not have succeeded
better than they have done.

  Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of
what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament,
imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless
supposed to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in
the manner in which an English Parliament is constructed it is like
a man being both mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of
misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon
himself. If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who
receive the supplies when voted, and are to account for the
expenditure of those supplies to those who voted them, it is
themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of Errors
concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the Ministerial party
nor the Opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse is
the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country
people call "Ride and tie- you ride a little way, and then I."*[5]
They order these things better in France.

  The French Constitution says that the right of war and peace is in
the nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay
the expense?

  In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at the
Tower for sixpence or a shilling a piece: so are the lions; and it
would be a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any
inanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see
the absurdity of worshipping Aaron's molten calf, or
Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but why do men continue to practise
themselves the absurdities they despise in others?

  It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation
is represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in
the Crown or in the Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those
who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in
all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it
is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased
without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing
the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a
bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would
declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars
were raised to carry on taxes.

  Mr. Burke, as a member of the House of Commons, is a part of the
English Government; and though he professes himself an enemy to war,
he abuses the French Constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds
up the English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France; but
he should first know the remarks which the French make upon it. They
contend in favor of their own, that the portion of liberty enjoyed
in England is just enough to enslave a country more productively
than by despotism, and that as the real object of all despotism is
revenue, a government so formed obtains more than it could do either
by direct despotism, or in a full state of freedom, and is,