Where then is the constitution either that gives or restrains power?
It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers.

Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.
I cannot believe that any nation, reasoning on its own rights, would have thought of calling these things a constitution, if the cry of constitution had not been set up by the government.

It has got into circulation like the words bore and quoz [quiz], by being chalked up in the speeches of parliament, as those words were on window shutters and doorposts; but whatever the constitution may be in other respects, it has undoubtedly been the most productive machine of taxation that was ever invented.

The taxes in France, under the new constitution, are not quite thirteen shillings per head,*[18] and the taxes in England, under what is called its present constitution, are forty-eight shillings and sixpence per head--men, women, and children--amounting to nearly seventeen millions sterling, besides the expense of collecting, which is upwards of a million more.
In a country like England, where the whole of the civil Government is executed by the people of every town and county, by means of parish officers, magistrates, quarterly sessions, juries, and assize; without any trouble to what is called the government or any other expense to the revenue than the salary of the judges, it is astonishing how such a mass of taxes can be employed.

Not even the internal defence of the country is paid out of the revenue.