Page:Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.pdf/86

72 ducted the plan for their total separation, been persons of temper and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their design, the success would have been infallible: but by their precipitancy they have laid it open in all its nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it; and the event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the scheme. In the last session, the corps called the King's friends made an hardy attempt all at once, to alter the right of election itself; to put it into the power of the House of Commons to disable any person disagreeable to them from fitting in Parliament, without any other rule than their own pleasure; to make incapacities, either general for descriptions of men, or particular for individuals; and to take into their body, persons who avowedly had never been chosen by the majority. of legal electors, nor agreeably to any known rule of law.

The arguments upon which this claim was founded and combated, are not my business litre. Never has a subject been more amply and more learnedly handled, nor upon one side in my opinion more satisfactorily; they who ate not convinced by what is already written would not receive conviction though one arose from the dead.

I too have thought on this subject: but my purpose here, is only to consider it as a part of the favourite project of Government; to observe on the motives which led to it; and to trace its political consequences.

A violent rage for the punishment of Mr. Wilkes was the pretence of the whole. This gentleman, by setting himself strongly in oppo-