27.The legislature cannot do it?The legislature cannot make a law to this effect?Why cannot?What is there that should hinder them?Why not this,as well as so many other laws murmured at,perhaps,as inexpedient,yet submitted to without any question of the right?With men of the same party,with men whose affections are already listed against the law in question,any thing will go down:any rubbish is good that will add fuel to the flame.But with regard to an impartial by-stander,it is plain that it is not denying the right of the legislature,heir authority,their power,or whatever be the wordit is not denying hat they can do what is in questionit is not that,I say,or any discourse verging that way that can tend to give him the smallest satisfaction.
28.Grant even the proposition in general:What are we the nearer?Grant that there are certain bounds to the authority of the legislature:Of what use is it to say so,when these bounds are what nobody has ever attempted to mark out to any useful purpose;that is,in any such manner whereby it might be known beforehand what description a law must be of to fall within,and what to fall beyond them?Grant that there are things which the legislature cannot do;grant that there are laws which exceed the power of the legislature to establish.What rule does this sort of discourse furnish us for determining whether any one that is in question is,or is not of the number?As far as I can discover,none.Either the discourse goes on in the confusion it began;either all rests in vague assertions,and no intelligible argument at all is offered;or if any,such arguments as are drawn from the principle of utility:arguments which,in whatever variety of words expressed,come at last to neither more nor less than this;that the tendency of the law is,to a greater or a less degree,pernicious.
If this then be the result of the argument,why not come home to it at once?Why turn aside into a wilderness of sophistry,when the path of plain reason is straight before us?