118 
A POOPIE NUDIT Bt Naw 
and totally annihilate all attention to the inconveniences they 
occafion. The aét was obtained late in the feffions, hurried 
through a very thin houfe, and with the flighteft oppofition. 
The legiflature obliges a certain time of notice to be given be- 
fore the introduction of a common turnpike bill. Let me afk, 
Should not at left the interval of a feffion have been given for 
the difcuffion of fo ftrange and unequal a taxation? 
Wuat, may I afk, could make the individual liable to cen- 
fure; and the actions of the collective body be pafied over 
without blame? Either the numbers defend, or fome dzmon, 
like the ghoftly father ef Charles 1. has whifpered in your ears, 
Have a double confcience! one that is to make you confult the. 
plain diétates of honefty: the other telling you to fupport fome 
fancied public good, at the expence of a certain number of 
perfons, who, in times not very remote, had trufted their money 
to the fecurity of the public faith. 
Or may you not hold the fame doétrine as the nuns in I7ri/- 
tram Shandy; that the divifibility of fin may enable you to fritter 
it away into almoft nothing?—yYou certainly have the advan- 
tage. The nuns were but two, you are five hundred and fifty- 
two to bear the feather-weight of the wrong decifion, you had 
moft unwarily been induced to make. 
Ler me now afk, Are there no inftances of repeal of aéts on 
far lefs important occafions? I well recollect two. The firft is 
the ‘few A, which had in fact no confequences to -be feared, 
religious or political. The other was the cyder tax, efteemed 
like ours a partial grievance; and yet its overthrow was eafily 
effected. I reflect on thefe two acts sepealed without caufe, 
and on our oppreffions continued in defiance of every principle 
of juftice. 
SINCE 
