Representation and Legislation, as well as taxation, are inseparable,
according to the spirit of our constitution; and of all others that
are free. Human foresight is incapable of providing against every
accident. A small part of the nation may be "at sea, as Chronus tells
us, when writs are issued out for the election of members of
parliament"; and to admit that they, after their return "should be
exempt from any acts of parliament, the members of which were chosen
in their absence ", would be attended with greater evil to the
community, the safety and welfare of which is the end of all
legislation, than the misfortune of their voluntary absence, if it
should prove one, could be to them. I say, if it should prove a
misfortune to them; for those acts being made by the consent of
representatives chosen by all the rest of the nation, it is presum'd
they are calculated for the good of the whole, of which they, as a
part, must necessarily partake: But the supposed case of these persons
is far different from that of the colonists; who are, not by a
voluntary choice of their own, but through necessity, not by mere
accident, but by means of the local distance of their constant
residence, excluded from being present by representation in the
British legislature.
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