mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else.  They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it.  As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British Constitution upon any or upon all of its bases:  for they lay it down, that every man ought to govern, himself, and that, where he cannot go, himself, he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation, and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it.  Nine tenths of the reformers argue thus,—­that is, on the natural right.

It is impossible not to make some reflection on the nature of this claim, or avoid a comparison between the extent of the principle and the present object of the demand.  If this claim be founded, it is clear to what it goes.  The House of Commons, in that light, undoubtedly, is no representative of the people, as a collection of individuals.  Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion.  When you come to examine into this claim of right, founded on the right of self-government in each individual, you find the thing demanded infinitely short of the principle of the demand.  What! one third only of the legislature, and of the government no share at all?  What sort of treaty of partition is this for those who have an inherent right to the whole?  Give them all they ask, and your grant is still a cheat:  for how comes only a third to be their younger-children’s fortune in this settlement?  How came they neither to have the choice of kings, or lords, or judges, or generals, or admirals, or bishops, or priests, or ministers, or justices of peace?  Why, what have you to answer in favor of the prior rights of the crown and peerage but this:  Our Constitution is a prescriptive constitution; it is a constitution whose sole authority is, that it has existed time out of mind?  It is settled in these two portions against one, legislatively,—­and in the whole of the judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of the executive, the prudential, and the financial administration, in one alone.  Nor was your House of Lords and the prerogatives of the crown settled on any adjudication in favor of natural rights:  for they could never be so partitioned.  Your king, your lords, your judges, your juries, grand and little, all are prescriptive; and what proves it is the disputes, not yet concluded, and never near becoming so, when any of them first originated.  Prescription is the most solid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to secure that property, to government.  They harmonize with each other, and give mutual aid to one another.  It is accompanied with another ground of authority in the constitution of the human mind, presumption.  It is a presumption in favor of any settled scheme