ABSTRACT
The great excitement prevailing throughout the nation upon the subject of Parliamentary Reform, must attract the most anxious attention, in every one alive to the importance of the question. The petitions which are presented to the House of Commons, and the views which are taken by the newspapers, are founded upon many assertions, which are entirely assumed, upon principles, which are greatly controverted, and upon expectations of future benefits, which could never be realized. The proof of the dogma of the Sovereignty of the People is the object of Rousseau's celebrated treatise, " Le Contrat Social;" and to reconcile his theory with facts, he makes a gratuitous supposition of an implied compact originally entered into between the governors, and the governed, and reasons upon the imaginary conditions of this compact, as astronomers found their calculations upon the ideal lines of the Equator and the Zodiac.
