Page:A Few Plain Observations Upon the End and Means of Political Reform.djvu/26

 estimated, and the opinion of the nation conciliated in their favour—an effect which steady perseverance, when founded on generous principle and enforced by prudent and manly conduct, can never fail to produce.

And now having briefly stated the quarter from which alone I conceive that every Constitutional Reform must originate, I will enter more fully upon the detail of those principles on which I most earnestly desire that it should proceed.

In the first place, as I am by no means desirous to increase the number of those Voters whose only pretensions to such a franchise are the accidents of birth, servitude, simple inhabitancy, or freeholds of trifling value, so on the other hand would I wish scrupulously to avoid depriving any man of his existing franchise, or it's