There has been no question about the right of every man who is free to exercise his will, who has a settled place in society, and who pays a tax of any sort, to vote for Members of Parliament.  The difficulty is in taking the votes by any other means than by the Rate-book; for if there be no list of tax-payers in the hands of any person, mere menial servants, vagrants, pickpockets, and scamps of all sorts might not only come to the poll, but they might poll in several parishes or places, on one and the same day.  A corrupt rich man might employ scores of persons of this description, and in this way would the purpose of reform be completely defeated.  In America, where one branch of the Congress is elected for four years and the other for two years, they have still adhered to the principle of direct taxation, and in some of the States they have made it necessary for a voter to be worth one hundred pounds.  Yet they have, in that country, duties on goods, custom duties, and excise duties also; and, of course, there are many persons who really pay taxes, and who, nevertheless, are not permitted to vote.  The people do not complain of this.  They know that the number of votes is so great that no corruption can take place, and they have no desire to see livery servants, vagrants, and pickpockets take part in their elections.  Nevertheless it would be very easy for a reformed Parliament, when once it had taken root, to make a just arrangement of this matter.  The most likely method would be to take off the indirect taxes, and to put a small direct tax upon every master of a house, however low his situation in life.

But this and all other good things, must be done by a reformed Parliament.  We must have that first, or we shall have nothing good; and any man who would beforehand take up your time with the detail of what a reformed Parliament ought to do in this respect, or with respect to any changes in the form of government, can have no other object than that of defeating the cause of reform; and, indeed, the very act must show, that to raise obstacles is his wish.

Such men, now that they find you justly irritated, would persuade you that, because things have been perverted from their true ends, there is nothing good in our constitution and laws.  For what, then, did Hampden die in the field, and Sydney on the scaffold?  And has it been discovered at last that England has always been an enslaved country from top to toe?  The Americans, who are a very wise people, and who love liberty with all their hearts, and who take care to enjoy it too, took special care not to part with any of the great principles and laws which they derived from their forefathers.  They took special care to speak with reverence of, and to preserve Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, and not only all the body of the Common Law of England, but most of the rules of our courts, and all our form of jurisprudence.  Indeed it is the greatest glory of England that she has thus supplied with sound principles of freedom those immense regions which will be peopled perhaps by hundreds of millions.