The whole being at discretion, I beg leave just to suggest some matters
for your consideration:--Whether the government in Church or State is
likely to be more secure by continuing causes of grounded discontent to
a very great number (say two millions) of the subjects? or whether the
Constitution, combined and balanced as it is, will be rendered more
solid by depriving so large a part of the people of all concern or
interest or share in its representation, actual or _virtual_? I here
mean to lay an emphasis on the word _virtual_. Virtual representation is
that in which there is a communion of interests and a sympathy in
feelings and desires between those who act in the name of any
description of people and the people in whose name they act, though the
trustees are not actually chosen by them. This is virtual
representation. Such a representation I think to be in many cases even
better than the actual. It possesses most of its advantages, and is free
from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the
literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs or
the acting of public interests in different ways carry it obliquely from
its first line of direction.
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