In the first volume of his works there is a prose essay, which he entitles The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, Examined and Asserted; this was intended to refute a very ridiculous opinion, which politicians, more zealous than wise, had industriously propagated, viz.  ’That the representatives of the people, i.e. the House of Commons had a right to enact whatever laws, and enter into whatever measures they please, without any dependence on, or even consulting the opinion of, their constituents; and that the collective body of the people have no right to call them to an account, or to take any cognizance of their conduct.’  In answer to which Mr. De Foe very sensibly observes, ’that it is possible for even a House of Commons to be in the wrong.  They may be misled by factions and parties, and it is as ridiculous to suppose them infallible; as to suppose the Pope of Rome, or the Popish conclave infallible, which have more than once determined against one another.  It is possible (says he) for them to be bribed by pensions and places, and by either of those extremes to betray their trust, and abuse the people who entrust them; and if the people should have no redress in such a case, then would the nation be in hazard of being ruined by their own representatives.  And it is a wonder to find it asserted in a certain treatise, That it is not to be supposed, that ever the House of Commons can injure the people who entrust them. There can be no better way to demonstrate the possibility of a thing, than by proving that it has been already; and we need go no further back than to the reign of King Charles ii. in which we have seen lists of 180 members, who received private pensions from the court; and if any body should ask whether that parliament preserved the ballance of power in the three branches of our constitution, in the due distribution some have mentioned?  I am not afraid to answer in the negative.  And why, even to this day, are gentlemen so fond of spending their estates to sit in the House, that ten thousand pounds have been spent at a time to be chosen, and now that way of procuring elections is at an end, private briberies, and clandestine contrivances are made use of to get into the House?  No man would give a groat to sit, where he cannot get a groat himself for sitting, unless there were either parties to gratify, profits to be made, or interest to support.  In this case it is plain a people may be ruined by their representatives, and the first law of nature, self-preservation, give the people a right to resent public encroachments upon their valuable liberties.’