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 all proclamations and in acts of Parliament. Henry the Eighth was the first who issued writs for it to return two members to Parliament. The Crown exercised this right ad libitum, from whence arises the inequality of representation in our constitution at this day. Henry the Eighth issued a writ to Calais to send one burgess to Parliament.

One of the counties palatine (I think he said Durham) was taxed fifty years to subsidies before it sent members to Parliament. The clergy were at no time unrepresented in Parliament. When they taxed themselves, it was done with the concurrence and consent of Parliament, who permitted them to tax themselves upon their petition, the convocation sitting at the same time with the Parliament. They had, too, their representatives always sitting in this House, bishops and abbots, and in the other House they were at no time without a right of voting singly for the election of members; so that the argument fetched from the case of the clergy is not an argument of any force, because they were at no time unrepresented here.

The reasoning about the colonies of Great Britain, drawn from the colonies of antiquity, is a mere useless display of learning; for the colonies of the Tyrians in Africa, and of the Greeks in Asia, were totally different from our system. No nation before ourselves formed any regular system of colonization but the Romans; and their system was a military one, and of