The road to a seat in Parliament should be accessible to all; but it should be long, so that many things, which all may in time obtain, shall be requisite for qualifying the candidate. The road should also be such that all should be induced to walk in it, in the prosecution of their ordinary business; and their admission into public offices should depend on the progress which they have made in the advancement of their own fortunes. Such regulations would, I think, give the greatest chance of filling the offices with persons fittest for them, by their talents, their experience, and their habits of thinking. These habits, and the views of life which a man forms in consequence of his situation, are of the utmost importance.
After all these observations, I must still recur to a position which I have repeated more than once, namely, that our constitution, which nearly embraces all these circumstances, has attained its present excellence chiefly in consequence of the innate worth of the British character. About the time of the Conquest, our constitution hardly differed from that of France. But the clashing of interests between the different Orders of