connected as friends; otherwise nothing but confusion could be the result of such a complex Constitution.  It is natural, therefore, that they who wish the common destruction of the whole and of all its parts should contend for their total separation.  But as the House of Commons is that link which connects both the other parts of the Constitution (the Crown and the Lords) with the mass of the people, it is to that link (as it is natural enough) that their incessant attacks are directed.  That artificial representation of the people being once discredited and overturned, all goes to pieces, and nothing but a plain French democracy or arbitrary monarchy can possibly exist.

43.  Some of these gentlemen who have attacked the House of Commons lean to a representation of the people by the head,—­that is, to individual representation.  None of them, that I recollect, except Mr. Fox, directly rejected it.  It is remarkable, however, that he only rejected it by simply declaring an opinion.  He let all the argument go against his opinion.  All the proceedings and arguments of his reforming friends lead to individual representation, and to nothing else.  It deserves to be attentively observed, that this individual representation is the only plan of their reform which has been explicitly proposed.  In the mean time, the conduct of Mr. Fox appears to be far more inexplicable, on any good ground, than theirs, who propose the individual representation; for he neither proposes anything, nor even suggests that he has anything to propose, in lieu of the present mode of constituting the House of Commons; on the contrary, he declares against all the plans which have yet been suggested, either from himself or others:  yet, thus unprovided with any plan whatsoever, he pressed forward this unknown reform with all possible warmth; and for that purpose, in a speech of several hours, he urged the referring to a committee the libellous impeachment of the House of Commons by the association of the Friends of the People.  But for Mr. Fox to discredit Parliament as it stands, to countenance leagues, covenants, and associations for its further discredit, to render it perfectly odious and contemptible, and at the same time to propose nothing at all in place of what he disgraces, is worse, if possible, than to contend for personal individual representation, and is little less than demanding, in plain terms, to bring on plain anarchy.

44.  Mr. Fox and these gentlemen have for the present been defeated; but they are neither converted nor disheartened.  They have solemnly declared that they will persevere until they shall have obtained their ends,—­persisting to assert that the House of Commons not only is not the true representative of the people, but that it does not answer the purpose of such representation:  most of them insist that all the debts, the taxes, and the burdens of all kinds on the people, with every other evil and inconvenience which we have suffered since the Revolution, have been owing solely to an House of Commons which does not speak the sense of the people.