If that be all, the thing is innocent.

If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior.

But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion, in which one set of men deliberate and another decide, and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments ?...

_Authoritative_ instructions, _mandates_ issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest convictions of his judgment and conscience--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.[1] [Footnote 1: "Speech at the conclusion of the Poll."] For six years the Bristol electors were content to be represented by a man of this independence.

They never, however, really acquiesced in the principle that a member of Parliament owes as much to his own convictions as to the will of his constituents.