Wesley Corpus

Worse and worse! After depriving half the human species of their natural right for want of a beard; after having deprived myriads more for want of a stiff beard, for not having lived one-and-twenty years; you rob others, many hundred thou sands, of their birthright for want of money ! Yet not alto gether on this account neither; if so, it might be more tolerable. But here is an Englishman who has money enough to buy the estates of fifty freeholders, and yet he must not be numbered among the people, because he has not two or three acres of land How is this? By what right do you exclude a man from being one of the people, because he has not forty shillings a year; yea, or not a groat? Is he not a man, whether he be rich or poor? Has he not a soul and a body? Has he not the nature of a man; consequently, all the rights of a man, all that flow from human nature; and, among the rest, that of not being controlled by any but by his own consent? “But he that has not a freehold is excluded by law.” By a law of his own making? Did he consent to the making of it? If he did not, what is that law to him ? No man, you aver, has any power over another, but by his own consent: Of consequence, a law made without his consent is, with regard to him, null and void. You cannot say other wise, without destroying the supposition, that “none can be governed but by his own consent.” 26. See now to what your argument comes. You affirm, all power is derived from the people; and presently exclude one half of the people from having any part or lot in the matter. At another stroke, suppose England to contain eight millions of people, you exclude one or two millions more. At a third, suppose two millions left, you exclude three-fourths of these; and the poor pittance that remains, by I know not what figure of speech, you call the people of England ! 27.