Page:A Few Plain Observations Upon the End and Means of Political Reform.djvu/32

 to exact from every member an oath, strictly corresponding to that which the law has required from the electors.

There remains another and a serious consideration which has often been urged against the practicability, or rather against the eligibility of parliamentary Reform.—It is this:—

Under the present system of Borough patronage it is not to be denied that men of the most eminent and brilliant talents have been raised from the obscurity and inactivity, to which their original situation in life appeared to have confined them, by mere personal connexion—while others have risen to the station for which it would seem that Nature had designed them by the facility of purchase which the present system affords.