Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/42

 of great trust and power should be suffered to continue a long time in the same hands, the succession might be so rapid, that the remedy would be worse than the disease. With respect to this nation, it seems to be agreed, that septennial parliaments have brought our liberties into very eminent hazard, and that triennial, if not annual parliaments would be better. Indeed septennial parliaments were at first a direct usurpation of the rights of the people: for, by the same authority that one parliament prolonged their own power to seven years, they might have continued it to twice seven, or, like the parliament in 1641, have made it perpetual. The bulk of the people never see the most obvious tendencies of things, or so flagrant a violation of the constitution would never have been suffered. But whereas a general clamour might have prevented the evil, it may require something more to redress it.

But though the exact medium of political liberty, with respect either to the