Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/87

 months with their friends in the country, they could not shew their faces after passing an act, by which gentlemen like themselves, or even their electors, should be much aggrieved; though they may now and then oppress the poor by unreasonable game acts, &c. because they never converse with any of the poor except their immediate dependants, who would not chuse to remonstrate on the subject.

Besides, so long as the members of parliament are elected, though only once in seven years, those of them that are really chosen by the people can have no chance of being re-elected but by pleasing the people; and many of them would not chuse to reduce themselves and their posterity, out of the house, to a worse condition than they originally were. Let them be ever so obsequious to a court, they will hardly chuse to deprive themselves of all power of giving any thing for the future.

Independent, therefore, of all conviction of mind, there must be a minority