If neither of these methods should be approved, it may be considered whether all these burroughs should not be limited to one representative, and the choice of the other transferred to the several Counties of the kingdom in proportion to their payments towards the Land Tax; by which means the present number of representatives may be preserved. One or other of these methods seems necessary to be taken, or else the corruption, being grown so general and barefaced in these burroughs, will not admit of a cure: and unless it be cured, Parliaments that should naturally be the guardians of all our rights and liberties, will prove the worst of our grievances, and such an one as will make all the rest irremediable. If these great points, of the proportion of our representation, and the unbiassed freedome of elections were once secured, everything else will easily be secured by Parliament. To establish this freedom and put a stop to the corruption or violence that destroy it, nothing appears at first sight more proper than the putting of Parliaments upon their ancient foot, allowing them to sit but one Session, and never to continue above a year. In such a case foreigners or strangers who have no merit or interest in a burrough but what their bribes and money purchase them, will never be able to carry elections against the Gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who have a natural interest in the place. For as the present circumstances of the Crown and Nation, so different from what they formerly were, require Parliament to be annually held for the granting of new supplies, no private purse can hold out for any length of time in furnishing those immense sums that are now squandered away by strangers in the expences of disputed elections: and as this evill is grown very rife, and all laws made to remedy it have hitherto proved ineffectual, it is scarce possible to be cured by any other method. There is another practice in the House of Commons itself, that helps to destroy the freedome of Parliaments: I mean the method taken by the stronger party of thinning the House, and expelling such as are of different sentiments from themselves, however duely chosen; altering the rights of electors as they see fit and as will best furnish them a pretence for that purpose. Some method should therefore be taken in fixing the right of voting in elections on an invariable foot, so as not to be violated or altered by any determination of the House of Commons. If this were done by an Act of Parliament, and every person whose vote is refused by the returning officer, or whose right is infringed by the intrusion of a wrong member, had power to bring an action and to recover very great damages, from both of these, this scandalous and mischievous evill might possibly be prevented.