Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/77

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

( 67 )

¬could work no mischief, if rank and property stood honestly and manfully in their places. ¬" From your own account, however, it appears to me, upon the whole, to be a question which demands the most dispassionate consideration, because the consequences are far from being clear. — The principle of balance has been long departed from, and reciprocal jealousies between your crown and your commons have been laid asleep. — Prerogative (depending wholly upon influence) has exerted itself in nothing, and the whole executive government has been, with its own consent, carried on in your popular council. — This has bestowed upon it an entirely new character, and from the operation of other causes, its powers have no actual limitation, though theory defines and limits them. — How far, therefore, under such circumstances, it might be safe entirely to recast this great assembly, and to disturb a system, which without any new organization has in a manner created a new con- stitution, it is not for a stranger to pronounce. ¬f 2 On ¬