though private judgment is every man’s right yet we cannot judge of what we do not know; that we feel at preſent no evils which government can alleviate, and that the public buſineſs is committed to men who have as much right to confidence as their adverſaries; that the freeholders of Middleſex, if they could not chooſe Mr. Wilkes, might have choſen any other man, and that he truſts we have within the realm five hundred as good as he: that even if this which has happened to Middleſex had happened to every other county, that one man ſhould be made incapable of being elected, it could produce no great change in the Parliament, nor much contract the power of election; that what has been done is probably right, and that if it be wrong it is of little conſequence, ſince a like caſe cannot eaſily occur; that expulſions are very rare, and if they ſhould, by unbounded inſolence of faction, become
