For my part, I readily profess that in all cases I am disposed to have recourse to the old ways of our constitution for the redress of any pressing grievance. There was formerly a reasonable proportion between the representatives of Counties which were about 90, and those of Cities and great Towns which amounted to about 100, and those of lesser burroughs which returned about 70 deputies, these making in all about 256 members of Parliament. This proportion of representation lasted till the time of Q. Elizabeth: but since the beginning of her reign, it has been gradually destroying, and is now so entirely overturned, that the smaller burroughs, though they do not possess the thousandth part of the others property, can outvote them both in the House of Commons, there having been as many representatives for these paltry burroughs added to the Parliament, as it consisted of before that time. In one Session of Parliament in that Queen’s reign eight small burroughs in Cornwall were called upon to send Deputies, and the humour went on till the Parliament of 1641 made up the disproportion now complained of with so much reason. There does not therefore appear to me any means of rectifying this abuse and of restoring the ancient balance of our Constitution, so natural as the disfranchising at once of all those late created Parliamentary burroughs, whose constant corruption and bribery of late years so well known and so easy to be proved, call loudly for such a method to be taken. If this should be thought too great a change, and the disfranchising of these burroughs should be deemed improper, their corruption may probably be prevented by allowing all the freeholders of 40s. a year within the hundred, in which such burrough is situated, to vote equally with the present electors or inhabitants in the burrough for the representatives thereof: and in case this method be taken, such Freeholders being allowed a right of voting for representatives, no wrong would be done them, if the right of voting in elections of Knights of the Shire were restrained to Freeholders that pay for 10£ a year to the land tax: which would render County elections much more easy and less expensive.