with men of the same description.  But to be selected and marked out by a particular brand of unworthiness among our fellow-citizens is a lot of all others the hardest to be borne, and consequently is of all others that act winch ought only to be trusted to the legislature, as not only legislative in its nature, but of all parts of legislature the most odious.  The question is over, if this is shown not to be a legislative act.

But what is very usual and natural is, to corrupt judicature into legislature.  On this point it is proper to inquire whether a court of judicature which decides without appeal has it as a necessary incident of such judicature, that whatever it decides is de jure law.  Nobody will, I hope, assert this; because the direct consequence would be the entire extinction of the difference between true and false judgments.  For if the judgment makes the law, and not the law directs the judgment, it is impossible there should be such a thing as an illegal judgment given.

But instead of standing upon this ground, they introduce another question wholly foreign to it:  Whether it ought not to be submitted to as if it were law?  And then the question is,—­By the Constitution of this country, what degree of submission is due to the authoritative acts of a limited power?  This question of submission, determine it how you please, has nothing to do in this discussion and in this House.  Here it is not, how long the people are bound to tolerate the illegality of our judgments, but whether we have a right to substitute our occasional opinion in the place of law, so as to deprive the citizen of his franchise....

SPEECH

ON

A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS.

MAY 8, 1780.

It is always to be lamented, when men are driven to search into the foundations of the commonwealth.  It is certainly necessary to resort to the theory of your government, whenever you propose any alteration in the frame of it,—­whether that alteration means the revival of some former antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the introduction of some new improvement in the commonwealth.  The object of our deliberation is, to promote the good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences.  If we thought frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them.  But your remedy is to be suited to your disease, your present disease, and to your whole disease.  That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sort of approach to perfection.  There is not, there never was, a principle of government under heaven, that does not, in the very pursuit of the good it proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into some inconvenience which makes it absolutely necessary to counterwork and weaken the application of that first principle itself, and to abandon something of the extent of the advantage you proposed by it, in order to prevent also the inconveniences which have arisen from the instrument of all the good you had in view.