In England no one seems to have objected to this right, that it cannot be enforced, or disobedient delegates punished, although there, delegates may alter or refuse to alter the constitution itself, in despite of their constituents—still less is the want of power to recall, or the length of term urged against it. If this last was a sound reason, then it would follow that members of the old parliaments were bound to obey, but not those elected since the septennial act! That is, the stronger the reason for the right the weaker it becomes, which militates against every principle of British law. The sublime and eloquent BURKE appeared before the electors of Bristol in all the proud consciousness of lofty virtue and commanding intellect. But strip his arguments of the gilded cloud of drapery flung around them by the magic of his fancy, and his sophistry, naked, unadorned, loses half its force by losing all its beauty.[7] The most powerful and legitimate argument he uses, applies only to the expediency of disobedience in that particular case, and if his facts were correct, ought to have excused him, if such an offence can ever be excused. “Was I not to foresee, or foreseeing, was I not to endeavor to save you from all these multiplied mischiefs and disgraces.” He then artfully asks, if the “little, silly canvass prattle of obedience to instructions would save them from the ‘pelting of the pitiless storm.’” Thus presenting them only the awful _alternatives_ of _destruction_ or disobedience, and appealing to subsequent _developements_ to prove that disobedience was their preservation. By placing it in this position, he ventures to ridicule instructions. His next best argument also applied only to special cases. He appeals to “near two years tranquillity” to prove that “the late horrible spirit was in a great measure the effect of insidious art, and perverse industry, and gross misrepresentation.” In a word, any thing but the deliberate sense of the people. From this it seems the people ought not to be tranquil under insult, or their deliberate will may be mistaken for a “fashionable gale.” After thus fortifying himself by all the strength which his ingenuity and eloquence could give to his own peculiar position, he ventures to fire his gilded shot at the sacred citadel. He contends that if the “dislike had been much more deliberate, and much more general than it was,” he ought not to make the “opinions of the greatest multitudes the masters of his conscience,” unless they “were the standard of rectitude,” which was not expected of him. All they asked was, in a question of expediency, that he would substitute their judgment for his own. He doubts if “Omnipotence itself can alter the essential constitution of right and wrong,” much less such _things_ as his constituents and himself. This was pretty gilding for their chains merely. They never attempted to