As Britain is so confessedly superior to all the maritime powers of the ancients by the advantages of situation; so the British constitution, as settled at the revolution, is demonstrably far preferable to, and better formed for duration, than any of the most celebrated republicks of antiquity. As the executive power is vested in a single person, who is deemed the first branch in the legislature; and as that power is for life and hereditary; our constitution is neither liable to those frequent convulsions, which attended the annual elections of consuls, nor to that solecism in politicks, two supreme heads of one body for life, and hereditary, which was the great defect in the Spartan institution. As the house of commons, elected by, and out of the body of the people, is vested with all the power annexed to the tribunitial office amongst the Romans; the people enjoy every advantage which ever accrued to the Roman people by that institution, whilst the nation is secure from all those calamitous seditions, in which every factious tribune could involve his country at pleasure. And as all our questions in parliament are decided by a majority of voices; we can never be subject to that capital defect in the Carthaginian constitution, where the single _veto_, of one discontented senator, referred the decision of the most important affair to a wrong-headed, ungovernable populace. The house of peers is placed in the middle of the balance, to prevent the regal scale from preponderating to despotism or tyranny; or the democratical to anarchy and its consequences. The equitable intent of our laws is plainly calculated, like those of Solon, to preserve the liberty and property of every individual in the community; and to restrain alike the richest or the poorest, the greatest or the meanest, from doing or suffering wrong from each other. This is the wise and salutary plan of power established at the revolution. Would we always adhere steadily to this plan, and preserve the just æquilibrium, as delivered down to us by our great ancestors, our constitution would remain firm and unshaken to the end of time.