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THOUGHTSON THEPRESENT DISCONTENTS, ANDSPEECHES

BYEDMUND BURKE. 

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_. 1886. 

Contents

IntroductionThoughts on the Present DiscontentsSpeech on the Middlesex Election. Speech on the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels. Speech on a Bill for Shortening the Duration of ParliamentsSpeech on Reform of Representation in the House of Commons

INTRODUCTION

Edmund Burke was born at Dublin on the first of January, 1730. Hisfather was an attorney, who had fifteen children, of whom all but fourdied in their youth. Edmund, the second son, being of delicate health inhis childhood, was taught at home and at his grandfather's house in thecountry before he was sent with his two brothers Garrett and Richard to aschool at Ballitore, under Abraham Shackleton, a member of the Society ofFriends. For nearly forty years afterwards Burke paid an annual visit toBallitore. 

In 1744, after leaving school, Burke entered Trinity College, Dublin. Hegraduated B. A. In 1748; M. A. , 1751. In 1750 he came to London, to theMiddle Temple. In 1756 Burke became known as a writer, by two pieces. One was a pamphlet called "A Vindication of Natural Society. " This wasan ironical piece, reducing to absurdity those theories of the excellenceof uncivilised humanity which were gathering strength in France, and hadbeen favoured in the philosophical works of Bolingbroke, then latelypublished. Burke's other work published in 1756, was his "Essay on theSublime and Beautiful. "

At this time Burke's health broke down. He was cared for in the house ofa kindly physician, Dr. Nugent, and the result was that in the spring of1757 he married Dr. Nugent's daughter. In the following year Burke madeSamuel Johnson's acquaintance, and acquaintance ripened fast into closefriendship. In 1758, also, a son was born; and, as a way of adding tohis income, Burke suggested the plan of "The Annual Register. "

In 1761 Burke became private secretary to William Gerard Hamilton, whowas then appointed Chief Secretary to Ireland. In April, 1763, Burke'sservices were recognised by a pension of 300 pounds a year; but he threwthis up in April, 1765, when he found that his services were consideredto have been not only recognised, but also bought. On the 10th of Julyin that year (1765) Lord Rockingham became Premier, and a week laterBurke, through the good offices of an admiring friend who had come toknow him in the newly-founded Turk's Head Club, became Rockingham'sprivate secretary. He was now the mainstay, if not the inspirer, ofRockingham's policy of pacific compromise in the vexed questions betweenEngland and the American colonies. Burke's elder brother, who had latelysucceeded to his father's property, died also in 1765, and Burke sold theestate in Cork for 4, 000 pounds. 

Having become private secretary to Lord Rockingham, Burke enteredParliament as member for Wendover, and promptly took his place among theleading speakers in the House. 

On the 30th of July, 1766, the Rockingham Ministry went out, and Burkewrote a defence of its policy in "A Short Account of a late ShortAdministration. " In 1768 Burke bought for 23, 000 pounds an estate calledGregories or Butler's Court, about a mile from Beaconsfield. He calledit by the more territorial name of Beaconsfield, and made it his home. Burke's endeavours to stay the policy that was driving the Americancolonies to revolution, caused the State of New York, in 1771, tonominate him as its agent. About May, 1769, Edmund Burke began thepamphlet here given, _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_. It waspublished in 1770, and four editions of it were issued before the end ofthe year. It was directed chiefly against Court influence, that hadfirst been used successfully against the Rockingham Ministry. Allegianceto Rockingham caused Burke to write the pamphlet, but he based hisargument upon essentials of his own faith as a statesman. It was thebeginning of the larger utterance of his political mind. 

Court influence was strengthened in those days by the large number ofnewly-rich men, who bought their way into the House of Commons forpersonal reasons and could easily be attached to the King's party. In apopulation of 8, 000, 000 there were then but 160, 000 electors, mostlynominal. The great land-owners generally held the counties. When twogreat houses disputed the county of York, the election lasted fourteendays, and the costs, chiefly in bribery, were said to have reached threehundred thousand pounds. Many seats in Parliament were regarded ashereditary possessions, which could be let at rental, or to which thenominations could be sold. Town corporations often let, to the highestbidders, seats in Parliament, for the benefit of the town funds. Theelection of John Wilkes for Middlesex, in 1768, was taken as a triumph ofthe people. The King and his ministers then brought the House of Commonsinto conflict with the freeholders of Westminster. Discontent becameactive and general. "Junius" began, in his letters, to attack boldly theKing's friends, and into the midst of the discontent was thrown a messagefrom the Crown asking for half a million, to make good a shortcoming inthe Civil List. Men asked in vain what had been done with the lostmoney. Confusion at home was increased by the great conflict with theAmerican colonies; discontents, ever present, were colonial as well ashome. In such a time Burke endeavoured to show by what pilotage he wouldhave men weather the storm. 

H. M. 

THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS

It is an undertaking of some degree of delicacy to examine into the causeof public disorders. If a man happens not to succeed in such an inquiry, he will be thought weak and visionary; if he touches the true grievance, there is a danger that he may come near to persons of weight andconsequence, who will rather be exasperated at the discovery of theirerrors than thankful for the occasion of correcting them. If he shouldbe obliged to blame the favourites of the people, he will be consideredas the tool of power; if he censures those in power, he will be looked onas an instrument of faction. But in all exertions of duty something isto be hazarded. In cases of tumult and disorder, our law has investedevery man, in some sort, with the authority of a magistrate. When theaffairs of the nation are distracted, private people are, by the spiritof that law, justified in stepping a little out of their ordinary sphere. They enjoy a privilege of somewhat more dignity and effect than that ofidle lamentation over the calamities of their country. They may lookinto them narrowly; they may reason upon them liberally; and if theyshould be so fortunate as to discover the true source of the mischief, and to suggest any probable method of removing it, though they maydisplease the rulers for the day, they are certainly of service to thecause of Government. Government is deeply interested in everythingwhich, even through the medium of some temporary uneasiness, may tendfinally to compose the minds of the subjects, and to conciliate theiraffections. I have nothing to do here with the abstract value of thevoice of the people. But as long as reputation, the most preciouspossession of every individual, and as long as opinion, the great supportof the State, depend entirely upon that voice, it can never be consideredas a thing of little consequence either to individuals or to Government. Nations are not primarily ruled by laws; less by violence. Whateveroriginal energy may be supposed either in force or regulation, theoperation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations aregoverned by the same methods, and on the same principles, by which anindividual without authority is often able to govern those who are hisequals or his superiors, by a knowledge of their temper, and by ajudicious management of it; I mean, when public affairs are steadily andquietly conducted: not when Government is nothing but a continued scufflebetween the magistrate and the multitude, in which sometimes the one andsometimes the other is uppermost--in which they alternately yield andprevail, in a series of contemptible victories and scandaloussubmissions. The temper of the people amongst whom he presides oughttherefore to be the first study of a statesman. And the knowledge ofthis temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has notan interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn. 

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors ofpower, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greater part of mankind--indeed, thenecessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar. Suchcomplaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have_not_ been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself, indistinguishing that complaint which only characterises the generalinfirmity of human nature from those which are symptoms of the particulardistemperature of our own air and season. 

* * * * *

Nobody, I believe, will consider it merely as the language of spleen ordisappointment, if I say that there is something particularly alarming inthe present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, whoholds any other language. That Government is at once dreaded andcontemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected andsalutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and theirexertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all thesolemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect;that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic economy;that our dependencies are slackened in their affection, and loosened fromtheir obedience; that we know neither how to yield nor how to enforce;that hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home, is sound andentire; but that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in parties, infamilies, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders ofany former time: these are facts universally admitted and lamented. 

This state of things is the more extraordinary, because the great partieswhich formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in amanner entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has visited thenation; no pestilence or famine. We do not labour at present under anyscheme of taxation new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode. Norare we engaged in unsuccessful war, in which our misfortunes might easilypervert our judgment, and our minds, sore from the loss of nationalglory, might feel every blow of fortune as a crime in Government. 

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It is impossible that the cause of this strange distemper should notsometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, andwhich I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to takenotice in the first place of their speculation. Our Ministers are ofopinion that the increase of our trade and manufactures, that our growthby colonisation and by conquest, have concurred to accumulate immensewealth in the hands of some individuals; and this again being dispersedamongst the people, has rendered them universally proud, ferocious, andungovernable; that the insolence of some from their enormous wealth, andthe boldness of others from a guilty poverty, have rendered them capableof the most atrocious attempts; so that they have trampled upon allsubordination, and violently borne down the unarmed laws of a freeGovernment--barriers too feeble against the fury of a populace so fierceand licentious as ours. They contend that no adequate provocation hasbeen given for so spreading a discontent, our affairs having beenconducted throughout with remarkable temper and consummate wisdom. Thewicked industry of some libellers, joined to the intrigues of a fewdisappointed politicians, have, in their opinion, been able to producethis unnatural ferment in the nation. 

Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the present convulsions of thiscountry, if the above account be a true one. I confess I shall assent toit with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the clearest andfirmest proofs; because their account resolves itself into this short butdiscouraging proposition, "That we have a very good Ministry, but that weare a very bad people;" that we set ourselves to bite the hand that feedsus; that with a malignant insanity we oppose the measures, andungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole object is our ownpeace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting under a knot offactious politicians, without virtue, parts, or character (such they areconstantly represented by these gentlemen), are sufficient to excite thisdisturbance, very perverse must be the disposition of that people amongstwhom such a disturbance can be excited by such means. It is besides nosmall aggravation of the public misfortune that the disease, on thishypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation bethe cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introducepoverty as a constable to keep the peace. If our dominions abroad arethe roots which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is notintended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit. If our libertyhas enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call inthe aid of despotism to fill up the deficiencies of law. Whatever may beintended, these things are not yet professed. We seem therefore to bedriven to absolute despair, for we have no other materials to work uponbut those out of which God has been pleased to form the inhabitants ofthis island. If these be radically and essentially vicious, all that canbe said is that those men are very unhappy to whose fortune or duty itfalls to administer the affairs of this untoward people. I hear itindeed sometimes asserted that a steady perseverance in the presentmeasures, and a rigorous punishment of those who oppose them, will incourse of time infallibly put an end to these disorders. But this, in myopinion, is said without much observation of our present disposition, andwithout any knowledge at all of the general nature of mankind. If thematter of which this nation is composed be so very fermentable as thesegentlemen describe it, leaven never will be wanting to work it up, aslong as discontent, revenge, and ambition have existence in the world. Particular punishments are the cure for accidental distempers in theState; they inflame rather than allay those heats which arise from thesettled mismanagement of the Government, or from a natural illdisposition in the people. It is of the utmost moment not to makemistakes in the use of strong measures, and firmness is then only avirtue when it accompanies the most perfect wisdom. In truth, inconstancy is a sort of natural corrective of folly and ignorance. 

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countriesand in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and theirrulers the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When populardiscontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed andsupported that there has been generally something found amiss in theconstitution or in the conduct of Government. The people have nointerest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and nottheir crime. But with the governing part of the State it is farotherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake. "Les revolutions qui arrivent dans les grands etats ne sont point uneffect du hasard, ni du caprice des peuples. Rien ne revolte les grandsd'un royaume comme un Gouvernoment foible et derange. Pour la populace, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve, mais parimpatience de souffrir. " These are the words of a great man, of aMinister of State, and a zealous assertor of Monarchy. They are appliedto the system of favouritism which was adopted by Henry the Third ofFrance, and to the dreadful consequences it produced. What he says ofrevolutions is equally true of all great disturbances. If thispresumption in favour of the subjects against the trustees of power benot the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation, because it is more easy to change an Administration than to reform apeople. 

* * * * *

Upon a supposition, therefore, that, in the opening of the cause, thepresumptions stand equally balanced between the parties, there seemssufficient ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing who attemptssome other scheme besides that easy one which is fashionable in somefashionable companies, to account for the present discontents. It is notto be argued that we endure no grievance, because our grievances are notof the same sort with those under which we laboured formerly--notprecisely those which we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on theStuarts. A great change has taken place in the affairs of this country. For in the silent lapse of events as material alterations have beeninsensibly brought about in the policy and character of governments andnations as those which have been marked by the tumult of publicrevolutions. 

It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerningpublic misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon thecause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of peopleare fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are butvery few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes beforetheir eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole intoa distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them, withoutthe exertion of any considerable diligence or sagacity. For which reasonmen are wise with but little reflection, and good with littleself-denial, in the business of all times except their own. We are veryuncorrupt and tolerably enlightened judges of the transactions of pastages; where no passions deceive, and where the whole train ofcircumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set inan orderly series before us. Few are the partisans of departed tyranny;and to be a Whig on the business of a hundred years ago is veryconsistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospectivewisdom and historical patriotism are things of wonderful convenience, andserve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation andpractice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a fullfeast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxonconstitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuousindignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied tothe coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in. I believethere was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among the instrumentsof the last King James; nor in the court of Henry the Eighth was there, Idare say, to be found a single advocate for the favourites of Richard theSecond. 

No complaisance to our Court, or to our age, can make me believe natureto be so changed but that public liberty will be among us, as among ourancestors, obnoxious to some person or other, and that opportunities willbe furnished for attempting, at least, some alteration to the prejudiceof our constitution. These attempts will naturally vary in their mode, according to times and circumstances. For ambition, though it has everthe same general views, has not at all times the same means, nor the sameparticular objects. A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny isworn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion. Besides, there arefew statesmen so very clumsy and awkward in their business as to fallinto the identical snare which has proved fatal to their predecessors. When an arbitrary imposition is attempted upon the subject, undoubtedlyit will not bear on its forehead the name of _Ship-money_. There is nodanger that an extension of the _Forest laws_ should be the chosen modeof oppression in this age. And when we hear any instance of ministerialrapacity to the prejudice of the rights of private life, it willcertainly not be the exaction of two hundred pullets, from a woman offashion, for leave to lie with her own husband. 

Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them; andthe same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully formedand matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to resist itsgrowth during its infancy. 

Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no designs have everbeen entertained since the Revolution. Every one must perceive that itis strongly the interest of the Court to have some second causeinterposed between the Ministers and the people. The gentlemen of theHouse of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the partof that intermediate cause. However they may hire out the _usufruct_ oftheir voices, they never will part with the _fee and inheritance_. Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the willand pleasure of a Court, have at the same time been most forward inasserting a high authority in the House of Commons. When they knew whowere to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thoughtit never could be carried too far. It must be always the wish of anunconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons who are entirelydependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirelydependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered that the forms ofa free, and the ends of an arbitrary Government, were things notaltogether incompatible. 

The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grownup anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name ofInfluence. An influence which operated without noise and withoutviolence; an influence which converted the very antagonist into theinstrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle ofgrowth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of thecountry equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for aprerogative that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, hadmoulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay anddissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporarysystem; the interest of active men in the State is a foundation perpetualand infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must beconfessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of thisinfluence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable ofexciting any serious apprehensions. Although Government was strong andflourished exceedingly, the _Court_ had drawn far less advantage than onewould imagine from this great source of power. 

* * * * *

At the Revolution, the Crown, deprived, for the ends of the Revolutionitself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against allthe difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a Government. TheCourt was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men ofsuch interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to, its establishment. Such men were able to draw in a greater number to aconcurrence in the common defence. This connection, necessary at first, continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, inall situations, be a useful instrument of Government. At the same time, through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, thepeople possessed a security for their just proportion of importance inthe State. But as the title to the Crown grew stronger by longpossession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helpshave of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances. Thepowerful managers for Government were not sufficiently submissive to thepleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimesfrom a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimesfrom a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in thecountry, which gave them a consideration independent of the Court. Menacted as if the Court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation. The influence of Government, thus divided in appearance between the Courtand the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession rather tothe popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that influence, which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of mortmain andunalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from whence itarose, and circulated among the people. This method therefore ofgoverning by men of great natural interest or great acquiredconsideration, was viewed in a very invidious light by the true lovers ofabsolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held byany means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate allintermediate situations between boundless strength on its own part, andtotal debility on the part of the people. 

To get rid of all this intermediate and independent importance, and _tosecure to the Court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vastinfluence_, _under the sole direction of its own private favour_, has forsome years past been the great object of policy. If this were compassed, the influence of the Crown must of course produce all the effects whichthe most sanguine partisans of the Court could possibly desire. Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on the partof the people; without any attention to the dignity of the greater, or tothe affections of the lower sorts. A new project was therefore devisedby a certain set of intriguing men, totally different from the system ofAdministration which had prevailed since the accession of the House ofBrunswick. This project, I have heard, was first conceived by somepersons in the Court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. 

The earliest attempt in the execution of this design was to set up forMinister a person, in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in fortune;but who, to the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was littleknown or considered in the kingdom. To him the whole nation was to yieldan immediate and implicit submission. But whether it was from want offirmness to bear up against the first opposition, or that things were notyet fully ripened, or that this method was not found the most eligible, that idea was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the project was alittle altered, to accommodate it to the time, and to bring things moregradually and more surely to the one great end proposed. 

The first part of the reformed plan was to draw _a line which shouldseparate the Court from the Ministry_. Hitherto these names had beenlooked upon as synonymous; but, for the future, Court and Administrationwere to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation, twosystems of Administration were to be formed: one which should be in thereal secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible, to perform theofficial and executory duties of Government. The latter were alone to beresponsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, wereeffectually removed from all the danger. 

Secondly, _a party under these leaders was to be formed in favour of theCourt against the Ministry_: this party was to have a large share in theemoluments of Government, and to hold it totally separate from, andindependent of, ostensible Administration. 

The third point, and that on which the success of the whole schemeultimately depended, was _to bring Parliament to an acquiescence in thisproject_. Parliament was therefore to be taught by degrees a totalindifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities, connections, andcharacter of the Ministers of the Crown. By means of a discipline, onwhich I shall say more hereafter, that body was to be habituated to themost opposite interests, and the most discordant politics. Allconnections and dependencies among subjects were to be entirelydissolved. As hitherto business had gone through the hands of leaders ofWhigs or Tories, men of talents to conciliate the people, and to engagetheir confidence, now the method was to be altered; and the lead was tobe given to men of no sort of consideration or credit in the country. This want of natural importance was to be their very title to delegatedpower. Members of parliament were to be hardened into an insensibilityto pride as well as to duty. Those high and haughty sentiments, whichare the great support of independence, were to be let down gradually. Point of honour and precedence were no more to be regarded inParliamentary decorum than in a Turkish army. It was to be avowed, as aconstitutional maxim, that the King might appoint one of his footmen, orone of your footmen, for Minister; and that he ought to be, and that hewould be, as well followed as the first name for rank or wisdom in thenation. Thus Parliament was to look on, as if perfectly unconcernedwhile a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted in the placeof a national Administration. 

With such a degree of acquiescence, any measure of any Court might wellbe deemed thoroughly secure. The capital objects, and by much the mostflattering characteristics of arbitrary power, would be obtained. Everything would be drawn from its holdings in the country to thepersonal favour and inclination of the Prince. This favour would be thesole introduction to power, and the only tenure by which it was to beheld: so that no person looking towards another, and all looking towardsthe Court, it was impossible but that the motive which solely influencedevery man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct; tillat last the servility became universal, in spite of the dead letter ofany laws or institutions whatsoever. 

How it should happen that any man could be tempted to venture upon such aproject of Government, may at first view appear surprising. But the factis that opportunities very inviting to such an attempt have offered; andthe scheme itself was not destitute of some arguments, not whollyunplausible, to recommend it. These opportunities and these arguments, the use that has been made of both, the plan for carrying this new schemeof government into execution, and the effects which it has produced, arein my opinion worthy of our serious consideration. 

His Majesty came to the throne of these kingdoms with more advantagesthan any of his predecessors since the Revolution. Fourth in descent, and third in succession of his Royal family, even the zealots ofhereditary right, in him, saw something to flatter their favouriteprejudices; and to justify a transfer of their attachments, without achange in their principles. The person and cause of the Pretender werebecome contemptible; his title disowned throughout Europe, his partydisbanded in England. His Majesty came indeed to the inheritance of amighty war; but, victorious in every part of the globe, peace was alwaysin his power, not to negotiate, but to dictate. No foreign habitudes orattachments withdrew him from the cultivation of his power at home. Hisrevenue for the Civil establishment, fixed (as it was then thought) at alarge, but definite sum, was ample, without being invidious; hisinfluence, by additions from conquest, by an augmentation of debt, by anincrease of military and naval establishment, much strengthened andextended. And coming to the throne in the prime and full vigour ofyouth, as from affection there was a strong dislike, so from dread thereseemed to be a general averseness from giving anything like offence to amonarch against whose resentment opposition could not look for a refugein any sort of reversionary hope. 

These singular advantages inspired his Majesty only with a more ardentdesire to preserve unimpaired the spirit of that national freedom towhich he owed a situation so full of glory. But to others it suggestedsentiments of a very different nature. They thought they now beheld anopportunity (by a certain sort of statesman never long undiscovered orunemployed) of drawing to themselves, by the aggrandisement of a Courtfaction, a degree of power which they could never hope to derive fromnatural influence or from honourable service; and which it was impossiblethey could hold with the least security, whilst the system ofAdministration rested upon its former bottom. In order to facilitate theexecution of their design, it was necessary to make many alterations inpolitical arrangement, and a signal change in the opinions, habits, andconnections of the greater part of those who at that time acted inpublic. 

In the first place, they proceeded gradually, but not slowly, to destroyeverything of strength which did not derive its principal nourishmentfrom the immediate pleasure of the Court. The greatest weight of popularopinion and party connection were then with the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt. Neither of these held his importance by the _new tenure_ of theCourt; they were not, therefore, thought to be so proper as others forthe services which were required by that tenure. It happened veryfavourably for the new system, that under a forced coalition thererankled an incurable alienation and disgust between the parties whichcomposed the Administration. Mr. Pitt was first attacked. Not satisfiedwith removing him from power, they endeavoured by various artifices toruin his character. The other party seemed rather pleased to get rid ofso oppressive a support; not perceiving that their own fall was preparedby his, and involved in it. Many other reasons prevented them fromdaring to look their true situation in the face. To the great Whigfamilies it was extremely disagreeable, and seemed almost unnatural, tooppose the Administration of a Prince of the House of Brunswick. Dayafter day they hesitated, and doubted, and lingered, expecting that othercounsels would take place; and were slow to be persuaded that all whichhad been done by the Cabal was the effect, not of humour, but of system. It was more strongly and evidently the interest of the new Court factionto get rid of the great Whig connections than to destroy Mr. Pitt. Thepower of that gentleman was vast indeed, and merited; but it was in agreat degree personal, and therefore transient. Theirs was rooted in thecountry. For, with a good deal less of popularity, they possessed a farmore natural and fixed influence. Long possession of Government; vastproperty; obligations of favours given and received; connection ofoffice; ties of blood, of alliance, of friendship (things at that timesupposed of some force); the name of Whig, dear to the majority of thepeople; the zeal early begun and steadily continued to the Royal Family;all these together formed a body of power in the nation, which wascriminal and devoted. The great ruling principle of the Cabal, and thatwhich animated and harmonised all their proceedings, how various soeverthey may have been, was to signify to the world that the Court wouldproceed upon its own proper forces only; and that the pretence ofbringing any other into its service was an affront to it, and not asupport. Therefore when the chiefs were removed, in order to go to theroot, the whole party was put under a proscription, so general and severeas to take their hard-earned bread from the lowest officers, in a mannerwhich had never been known before, even in general revolutions. But itwas thought necessary effectually to destroy all dependencies but one, and to show an example of the firmness and rigour with which the newsystem was to be supported. 

Thus for the time were pulled down, in the persons of the Whig leadersand of Mr. Pitt (in spite of the services of the one at the accession ofthe Royal Family, and the recent services of the other in the war), the_two only securities for the importance of the people_: _power arisingfrom popularity_, _and power arising from connection_. Here and thereindeed a few individuals were left standing, who gave security for theirtotal estrangement from the odious principles of party connection andpersonal attachment; and it must be confessed that most of them havereligiously kept their faith. Such a change could not, however, be madewithout a mighty shock to Government. 

To reconcile the minds of the people to all these movements, principlescorrespondent to them had been preached up with great zeal. Every onemust remember that the Cabal set out with the most astonishing prudery, both moral and political. Those who in a few months after soused overhead and ears into the deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption, cried outviolently against the indirect practices in the electing and managing ofParliaments, which had formerly prevailed. This marvellous abhorrencewhich the Court had suddenly taken to all influence, was not onlycirculated in conversation through the kingdom, but pompously announcedto the public, with many other extraordinary things, in a pamphlet whichhad all the appearance of a manifesto preparatory to some considerableenterprise. Throughout, it was a satire, though in terms managed anddecent enough, on the politics of the former reign. It was indeedwritten with no small art and address. 

In this piece appeared the first dawning of the new system; there firstappeared the idea (then only in speculation) of _separating the Courtfrom the Administration_; of carrying everything from national connectionto personal regards; and of forming a regular party for that purpose, under the name of _King's men_. 

To recommend this system to the people, a perspective view of the Court, gorgeously painted, and finely illuminated from within, was exhibited tothe gaping multitude. Party was to be totally done away, with all itsevil works. Corruption was to be cast down from Court, as _Ate_ was fromheaven. Power was thenceforward to be the chosen residence of publicspirit; and no one was to be supposed under any sinister influence, except those who had the misfortune to be in disgrace at Court, which wasto stand in lieu of all vices and all corruptions. A scheme ofperfection to be realised in a Monarchy, far beyond the visionaryRepublic of Plato. The whole scenery was exactly disposed to captivatethose good souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a treasure tocrafty politicians. Indeed, there was wherewithal to charm everybody, except those few who are not much pleased with professions ofsupernatural virtue, who know of what stuff such professions are made, for what purposes they are designed, and in what they are sure constantlyto end. Many innocent gentlemen, who had been talking prose all theirlives without knowing anything of the matter, began at last to open theireyes upon their own merits, and to attribute their not having been Lordsof the Treasury and Lords of Trade many years before merely to theprevalence of party, and to the Ministerial power, which had frustratedthe good intentions of the Court in favour of their abilities. Now wasthe time to unlock the sealed fountain of Royal bounty, which had beeninfamously monopolised and huckstered, and to let it flow at large uponthe whole people. The time was come to restore Royalty to its originalsplendour. _Mettre le Roy hors de page_, became a sort of watchword. Andit was constantly in the mouths of all the runners of the Court, thatnothing could preserve the balance of the constitution from beingoverturned by the rabble, or by a faction of the nobility, but to freethe Sovereign effectually from that Ministerial tyranny under which theRoyal dignity had been oppressed in the person of his Majesty'sgrandfather. 

These were some of the many artifices used to reconcile the people to thegreat change which was made in the persons who composed the Ministry, andthe still greater which was made and avowed in its constitution. As toindividuals, other methods were employed with them, in order sothoroughly to disunite every party, and even every family, that _noconcert_, _order_, _or effect_, _might appear in any future opposition_. And in this manner an Administration without connection with the people, or with one another, was first put in possession of Government. Whatgood consequences followed from it, we have all seen; whether with regardto virtue, public or private; to the ease and happiness of the Sovereign;or to the real strength of Government. But as so much stress was thenlaid on the necessity of this new project, it will not be amiss to take aview of the effects of this Royal servitude and vile durance, which wasso deplored in the reign of the late Monarch, and was so carefully to beavoided in the reign of his successor. The effects were these. 

In times full of doubt and danger to his person and family, George theSecond maintained the dignity of his Crown connected with the liberty ofhis people, not only unimpaired, but improved, for the space of thirty-three years. He overcame a dangerous rebellion, abetted by foreignforce, and raging in the heart of his kingdoms; and thereby destroyed theseeds of all future rebellion that could arise upon the same principle. He carried the glory, the power, the commerce of England, to a heightunknown even to this renowned nation in the times of its greatestprosperity: and he left his succession resting on the true and only truefoundation of all national and all regal greatness; affection at home, reputation abroad, trust in allies, terror in rival nations. The mostardent lover of his country cannot wish for Great Britain a happier fatethan to continue as she was then left. A people emulous as we are inaffection to our present Sovereign, know not how to form a prayer toHeaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or a higher state offelicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and, whenProvidence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustriouspredecessor. 

A great Prince may be obliged (though such a thing cannot happen veryoften) to sacrifice his private inclination to his public interest. Awise Prince will not think that such a restraint implies a condition ofservility; and truly, if such was the condition of the last reign, andthe effects were also such as we have described, we ought, no less forthe sake of the Sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to heararguments convincing indeed, before we depart from the maxims of thatreign, or fly in the face of this great body of strong and recentexperience. 

One of the principal topics which was then, and has been since, muchemployed by that political school, is an effectual terror of the growthof an aristocratic power, prejudicial to the rights of the Crown, and thebalance of the constitution. Any new powers exercised in the House ofLords, or in the House of Commons, or by the Crown, ought certainly toexcite the vigilant and anxious jealousy of a free people. Even a newand unprecedented course of action in the whole Legislature, withoutgreat and evident reason, may be a subject of just uneasiness. I willnot affirm, that there may not have lately appeared in the House of Lordsa disposition to some attempts derogatory to the legal rights of thesubject. If any such have really appeared, they have arisen, not from apower properly aristocratic, but from the same influence which is chargedwith having excited attempts of a similar nature in the House of Commons;which House, if it should have been betrayed into an unfortunate quarrelwith its constituents, and involved in a charge of the very same nature, could have neither power nor inclination to repel such attempts inothers. Those attempts in the House of Lords can no more be calledaristocratic proceedings, than the proceedings with regard to the countyof Middlesex in the House of Commons can with any sense be calleddemocratical. 

It is true, that the Peers have a great influence in the kingdom, and inevery part of the public concerns. While they are men of property, it isimpossible to prevent it, except by such means as must prevent allproperty from its natural operation: an event not easily to be compassed, while property is power; nor by any means to be wished, while the leastnotion exists of the method by which the spirit of liberty acts, and ofthe means by which it is preserved. If any particular Peers, by theiruniform, upright, constitutional conduct, by their public and theirprivate virtues, have acquired an influence in the country; the people onwhose favour that influence depends, and from whom it arose, will neverbe duped into an opinion, that such greatness in a Peer is the despotismof an aristocracy, when they know and feel it to be the effect and pledgeof their own importance. 

I am no friend to aristocracy, in the sense at least in which that wordis usually understood. If it were not a bad habit to moot cases on thesupposed ruin of the constitution, I should be free to declare, that ifit must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any otherform, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatevermy dislikes may be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question, onthe influence of a Court, and of a Peerage, is not, which of the twodangers is the most eligible, but which is the most imminent. He is buta poor observer, who has not seen, that the generality of Peers, far fromsupporting themselves in a state of independent greatness, are but tooapt to fall into an oblivion of their proper dignity, and to run headlonginto an abject servitude. Would to God it were true, that the fault ofour Peers were too much spirit! It is worthy of some observation, thatthese gentlemen, so jealous of aristocracy, make no complaints of thepower of those peers (neither few nor inconsiderable) who are always inthe train of a Court, and whose whole weight must be considered as aportion of the settled influence of the Crown. This is all safe andright; but if some Peers (I am very sorry they are not as many as theyought to be) set themselves, in the great concern of Peers and Commons, against a back-stairs influence and clandestine government, then thealarm begins; then the constitution is in danger of being forced into anaristocracy. 

I rest a little the longer on this Court topic, because it was muchinsisted upon at the time of the great change, and has been sincefrequently revived by many of the agents of that party: for, whilst theyare terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of mob-government, they are by other managers attempting (though hitherto with littlesuccess) to alarm the people with a phantom of tyranny in the Nobles. Allthis is done upon their favourite principle of disunion, of sowingjealousies amongst the different orders of the State, and of disjointingthe natural strength of the kingdom; that it may be rendered incapable ofresisting the sinister designs of wicked men, who have engrossed theRoyal power. 

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Thus much of the topics chosen by the courtiers to recommend theirsystem; it will be necessary to open a little more at large the nature ofthat party which was formed for its support. Without this, the wholewould have been no better than a visionary amusement, like the scheme ofHarrington's political club, and not a business in which the nation had areal concern. As a powerful party, and a party constructed on a newprinciple, it is a very inviting object of curiosity. 

It must be remembered, that since the Revolution, until the period we arespeaking of, the influence of the Crown had been always employed insupporting the Ministers of State, and in carrying on the public businessaccording to their opinions. But the party now in question is formedupon a very different idea. It is to intercept the favour, protection, and confidence of the Crown in the passage to its Ministers; it is tocome between them and their importance in Parliament; it is to separatethem from all their natural and acquired dependencies; it is intended asthe control, not the support, of Administration. The machinery of thissystem is perplexed in its movements, and false in its principle. It isformed on a supposition that the King is something external to hisgovernment; and that he may be honoured and aggrandised, even by itsdebility and disgrace. The plan proceeds expressly on the idea ofenfeebling the regular executory power. It proceeds on the idea ofweakening the State in order to strengthen the Court. The schemedepending entirely on distrust, on disconnection, on mutability byprinciple, on systematic weakness in every particular member; it isimpossible that the total result should be substantial strength of anykind. 

As a foundation of their scheme, the Cabal have established a sort of_Rota_ in the Court. All sorts of parties, by this means, have beenbrought into Administration, from whence few have had the good fortune toescape without disgrace; none at all without considerable losses. In thebeginning of each arrangement no professions of confidence and supportare wanting, to induce the leading men to engage. But while theMinisters of the day appear in all the pomp and pride of power, whilethey have all their canvas spread out to the wind, and every sail filledwith the fair and prosperous gale of Royal favour, in a short time theyfind, they know not how, a current, which sets directly against them;which prevents all progress, and even drives them backwards. They growashamed and mortified in a situation, which, by its vicinity to power, only serves to remind them the more strongly of their insignificance. They are obliged either to execute the orders of their inferiors, or tosee themselves opposed by the natural instruments of their office. Withthe loss of their dignity, they lose their temper. In their turn theygrow troublesome to that Cabal, which, whether it supports or opposes, equally disgraces and equally betrays them. It is soon found necessaryto get rid of the heads of Administration; but it is of the heads only. As there always are many rotten members belonging to the bestconnections, it is not hard to persuade several to continue in officewithout their leaders. By this means the party goes out much thinnerthan it came in; and is only reduced in strength by its temporarypossession of power. Besides, if by accident, or in course of changes, that power should be recovered, the Junto have thrown up a retrenchmentof these carcases, which may serve to cover themselves in a day ofdanger. They conclude, not unwisely, that such rotten members willbecome the first objects of disgust and resentment to their ancientconnections. 

They contrive to form in the outward Administration two parties at theleast; which, whilst they are tearing one another to pieces, are bothcompetitors for the favour and protection of the Cabal; and, by theiremulation, contribute to throw everything more and more into the hands ofthe interior managers. 

A Minister of State will sometimes keep himself totally estranged fromall his colleagues; will differ from them in their counsels, willprivately traverse, and publicly oppose, their measures. He will, however, continue in his employment. Instead of suffering any mark ofdispleasure, he will be distinguished by an unbounded profusion of Courtrewards and caresses; because he does what is expected, and all that isexpected, from men in office. He helps to keep some form ofAdministration in being, and keeps it at the same time as weak anddivided as possible. 

However, we must take care not to be mistaken, or to imagine that suchpersons have any weight in their opposition. When, by them, Administration is convinced of its insignificancy, they are soon to beconvinced of their own. They never are suffered to succeed in theiropposition. They and the world are to be satisfied, that neither office, nor authority, nor property, nor ability, eloquence, counsel, skill, orunion, are of the least importance; but that the mere influence of theCourt, naked of all support, and destitute of all management, isabundantly sufficient for all its own purposes. 

When any adverse connection is to be destroyed, the Cabal seldom appearin the work themselves. They find out some person of whom the partyentertains a high opinion. Such a person they endeavour to delude withvarious pretences. They teach him first to distrust, and then to quarrelwith his friends; among whom, by the same arts, they excite a similardiffidence of him; so that in this mutual fear and distrust, he maysuffer himself to be employed as the instrument in the change which isbrought about. Afterwards they are sure to destroy him in his turn; bysetting up in his place some person in whom he had himself reposed thegreatest confidence, and who serves to carry on a considerable part ofhis adherents. 

When such a person has broke in this manner with his connections, he issoon compelled to commit some flagrant act of iniquitous personalhostility against some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particularfriend of his family estate), by which the Cabal hope to render theparties utterly irreconcilable. In truth, they have so contrivedmatters, that people have a greater hatred to the subordinate instrumentsthan to the principal movers. 

As in destroying their enemies they make use of instruments notimmediately belonging to their corps, so in advancing their own friendsthey pursue exactly the same method. To promote any of them toconsiderable rank or emolument, they commonly take care that therecommendation shall pass through the hands of the ostensible Ministry:such a recommendation might, however, appear to the world as some proofof the credit of Ministers, and some means of increasing their strength. To prevent this, the persons so advanced are directed in all companies, industriously to declare, that they are under no obligations whatsoeverto Administration; that they have received their office from anotherquarter; that they are totally free and independent. 

When the Faction has any job of lucre to obtain, or of vengeance toperpetrate, their way is, to select, for the execution, those verypersons to whose habits, friendships, principles, and declarations, suchproceedings are publicly known to be the most adverse; at once to renderthe instruments the more odious, and therefore the more dependent, and toprevent the people from ever reposing a confidence in any appearance ofprivate friendship, or public principle. 

If the Administration seem now and then, from remissness, or from fear ofmaking themselves disagreeable, to suffer any popular excesses to gounpunished, the Cabal immediately sets up some creature of theirs toraise a clamour against the Ministers, as having shamefully betrayed thedignity of Government. Then they compel the Ministry to become active inconferring rewards and honours on the persons who have been theinstruments of their disgrace; and, after having first vilified them withthe higher orders for suffering the laws to sleep over the licentiousnessof the populace, they drive them (in order to make amends for theirformer inactivity) to some act of atrocious violence, which renders themcompletely abhorred by the people. They who remember the riots whichattended the Middlesex Election; the opening of the present Parliament;and the transactions relative to Saint George's Fields, will not be at aloss for an application of these remarks. 

That this body may be enabled to compass all the ends of its institution, its members are scarcely ever to aim at the high and responsible officesof the State. They are distributed with art and judgment through all thesecondary, but efficient, departments of office, and through thehouseholds of all the branches of the Royal Family: so as on one hand tooccupy all the avenues to the Throne; and on the other to forward orfrustrate the execution of any measure, according to their own interests. For with the credit and support which they are known to have, though forthe greater part in places which are only a genteel excuse for salary, they possess all the influence of the highest posts; and they dictatepublicly in almost everything, even with a parade of superiority. Whenever they dissent (as it often happens) from their nominal leaders, the trained part of the Senate, instinctively in the secret, is sure tofollow them; provided the leaders, sensible of their situation, do not ofthemselves recede in time from their most declared opinions. This latteris generally the case. It will not be conceivable to any one who has notseen it, what pleasure is taken by the Cabal in rendering these heads ofoffice thoroughly contemptible and ridiculous. And when they are becomeso, they have then the best chance, for being well supported. 

The members of the Court faction are fully indemnified for not holdingplaces on the slippery heights of the kingdom, not only by the lead inall affairs, but also by the perfect security in which they enjoy lessconspicuous, but very advantageous, situations. Their places are, inexpress legal tenure, or in effect, all of them for life. Whilst thefirst and most respectable persons in the kingdom are tossed about liketennis balls, the sport of a blind and insolent caprice, no Ministerdares even to cast an oblique glance at the lowest of their body. If anattempt be made upon one of this corps, immediately he flies tosanctuary, and pretends to the most inviolable of all promises. Noconveniency of public arrangement is available to remove any one of themfrom the specific situation he holds; and the slightest attempt upon oneof them, by the most powerful Minister, is a certain preliminary to hisown destruction. 

Conscious of their independence, they bear themselves with a lofty air tothe exterior Ministers. Like Janissaries, they derive a kind of freedomfrom the very condition of their servitude. They may act just as theyplease; provided they are true to the great ruling principle of theirinstitution. It is, therefore, not at all wonderful, that people shouldbe so desirous of adding themselves to that body, in which they maypossess and reconcile satisfactions the most alluring, and seemingly themost contradictory; enjoying at once all the spirited pleasure ofindependence, and all the gross lucre and fat emoluments of servitude. 

Here is a sketch, though a slight one, of the constitution, laws, andpolicy, of this new Court corporation. The name by which they choose todistinguish themselves, is that of _King's men_, or the _King's friends_, by an invidious exclusion of the rest of his Majesty's most loyal andaffectionate subjects. The whole system, comprehending the exterior andinterior Administrations, is commonly called, in the technical languageof the Court, _Double Cabinet_; in French or English, as you choose topronounce it. 

Whether all this be a vision of a distracted brain, or the invention of amalicious heart, or a real faction in the country, must be judged by theappearances which things have worn for eight years past. Thus far I amcertain, that there is not a single public man, in or out of office, whohas not, at some time or other, borne testimony to the truth of what Ihave now related. In particular, no persons have been more strong intheir assertions, and louder and more indecent in their complaints, thanthose who compose all the exterior part of the present Administration; inwhose time that faction has arrived at such a height of power, and ofboldness in the use of it, as may, in the end, perhaps bring about itstotal destruction. 

It is true, that about four years ago, during the administration of theMarquis of Rockingham, an attempt was made to carry on Government withouttheir concurrence. However, this was only a transient cloud; they werehid but for a moment; and their constellation blazed out with greaterbrightness, and a far more vigorous influence, some time after it wasblown over. An attempt was at that time made (but without any idea ofproscription) to break their corps, to discountenance their doctrines, torevive connections of a different kind, to restore the principles andpolicy of the Whigs, to reanimate the cause of Liberty by Ministerialcountenance; and then for the first time were men seen attached in officeto every principle they had maintained in opposition. No one will doubt, that such men were abhorred and violently opposed by the Court faction, and that such a system could have but a short duration. 

It may appear somewhat affected, that in so much discourse upon thisextraordinary party, I should say so little of the Earl of Bute, who isthe supposed head of it. But this was neither owing to affectation norinadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction of personalreflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which havebeen used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. Atbest, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter calamitya wrong direction, and to turn a public grievance into a mean personal, or a dangerous national, quarrel. Where there is a regular scheme ofoperations carried on, it is the system, and not any individual personwho acts in it, that is truly dangerous. This system has not risensolely from the ambition of Lord Bute, but from the circumstances whichfavoured it, and from an indifference to the constitution which had beenfor some time growing among our gentry. We should have been tried withit, if the Earl of Bute had never existed; and it will want neither acontriving head nor active members, when the Earl of Bute exists nolonger. It is not, therefore, to rail at Lord Bute, but firmly to embodyagainst this Court party and its practices, which can afford us anyprospect of relief in our present condition. 

Another motive induces me to put the personal consideration of Lord Butewholly out of the question. He communicates very little in a directmanner with the greater part of our men of business. This has never beenhis custom. It is enough for him that he surrounds them with hiscreatures. Several imagine, therefore, that they have a very good excusefor doing all the work of this faction, when they have no personalconnection with Lord Bute. But whoever becomes a party to anAdministration, composed of insulated individuals, without faithplighted, tie, or common principle; an Administration constitutionallyimpotent, because supported by no party in the nation; he who contributesto destroy the connections of men and their trust in one another, or inany sort to throw the dependence of public counsels upon private will andfavour, possibly may have nothing to do with the Earl of Bute. Itmatters little whether he be the friend or the enemy of that particularperson. But let him be who or what he will, he abets a faction that isdriving hard to the ruin of his country. He is sapping the foundation ofits liberty, disturbing the sources of its domestic tranquillity, weakening its government over its dependencies, degrading it from all itsimportance in the system of Europe. 

It is this unnatural infusion of a _system of Favouritism_ into aGovernment which in a great part of its constitution is popular, that hasraised the present ferment in the nation. The people, without enteringdeeply into its principles, could plainly perceive its effects, in muchviolence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general disorder in allthe functions of Government. I keep my eye solely on this system; if Ispeak of those measures which have arisen from it, it will be so far onlyas they illustrate the general scheme. This is the fountain of all thosebitter waters of which, through a hundred different conducts, we havedrunk until we are ready to burst. The discretionary power of the Crownin the formation of Ministry, abused by bad or weak men, has given riseto a system, which, without directly violating the letter of any law, operates against the spirit of the whole constitution. 

A plan of Favouritism for our executory Government is essentially atvariance with the plan of our Legislature. One great end undoubtedly ofa mixed Government like ours, composed of Monarchy, and of controls, onthe part of the higher people and the lower, is that the Prince shall notbe able to violate the laws. This is useful indeed and fundamental. Butthis, even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage; an armourmerely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal inimportance, _that the discretionary powers which are necessarily vestedin the Monarch_, _whether for the execution of the laws_, _or for thenomination to magistracy and office_, _or for conducting the affairs ofpeace and war_, _or for ordering the revenue_, _should all be exercisedupon public principles and national grounds_, _and not on the likings orprejudices_, _the intrigues or policies of a Court_. This, I said, isequal in importance to the securing a Government according to law. Thelaws reach but a very little way. Constitute Government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of thepowers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness ofMinisters of State. Even all the use and potency of the laws dependsupon them. Without them, your Commonwealth is no better than a schemeupon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It ispossible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfullyconducted, Ministers may suffer one part of Government to languish, another to be perverted from its purposes: and every valuable interest ofthe country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixingany single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far frombeing foreign to the purposes of a wise Government, ought to be among itsvery first and dearest objects. When, therefore, the abettors of newsystem tell us, that between them and their opposers there is nothing buta struggle for power, and that therefore we are no-ways concerned in it;we must tell those who have the impudence to insult us in this manner, that, of all things, we ought to be the most concerned, who and what sortof men they are, that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but whatmust either render us totally desperate, or soothe us into the securityof idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness ofinfancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignitytruly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked andcorrupt. Men are in public life as in private--some good, some evil. Theelevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the firstobjects of all true policy. But that form of Government, which, neitherin its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, hascontrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but hasleft its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to theuncontrolled pleasure of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is aplan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentiallyerroneous in every part of it. 

In arbitrary Governments, the constitution of the Ministry follows theconstitution of the Legislature. Both the Law and the Magistrate are thecreatures of Will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear morecertain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that _everysort of Government ought to have its Administration correspondent to itsLegislature_. If it should be otherwise, things must fall into a hideousdisorder. The people of a free Commonwealth, who have taken such carethat their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be sosenseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of personson whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the public loveand confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the use of whichthe very being of the State depends. 

The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewardsand honours, is one of the first advantages of a free State. Without it, or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy thesubstance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of goodGovernment. The frame of our Commonwealth did not admit of such anactual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of theconstitution is preserved) better, for all the effects of it, than by themethod of suffrage in any democratic State whatsoever. It had always, until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament _to refuse tosupport Government_, _until power was in the hands of persons who wereacceptable to the people_, _or while factions predominated in the Courtin which the nation had no confidence_. Thus all the good effects ofpopular election were supposed to be secured to us, without the mischiefsattending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for everyparticular office throughout the body of the people. This was the mostnoble and refined part of our constitution. The people, by theirrepresentatives and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative power inmaking laws; the King with the control of his negative. The King wasintrusted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; thepeople had the negative in a Parliamentary refusal to support. Formerlythis power of control was what kept Ministers in awe of Parliaments, andParliaments in reverence with the people. If the use of this power ofcontrol on the system and persons of Administration is gone, everythingis lost, Parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliamentwill tamely see evil men take possession of all the strongholds of theircountry, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under apretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering, whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measureswill not be better than their morals; such a Parliament will givecountenance to their measures also, whatever that Parliament may pretend, and whatever those measures may be. 

Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as wellas a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad menfrom Government, and not to trust for the safety of the State tosubsequent punishment alone--punishment which has ever been tardy anduncertain, and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance tofall rather on the injured than the criminal. 

Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the State, they oughtby their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in theircountry as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public thatthey will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a properuse of power, that a man has shown by the general tenor of his actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of hisfellow-citizens have been among the principal objects of his life, andthat he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to asettled contempt or occasional forfeiture of their esteem. 

That man who, before he comes into power, has no friends, or who, cominginto power, is obliged to desert his friends, or who, losing it, has nofriends to sympathise with him, he who has no sway among any part of thelanded or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun withhis office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to besuffered by a controlling Parliament, to continue in any of thosesituations which confer the lead and direction of all our public affairs;because such a man _has no connection with the sentiments and opinions ofthe people_. 

Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without anypublic principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higherrate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered todomineer in the State; because they have _no connection with thesentiments and opinions of the people_. 

These are considerations which, in my opinion, enforce the necessity ofhaving some better reason, in a free country and a free Parliament, forsupporting the Ministers of the Crown, than that short one, _That theKing has thought proper to appoint them_. There is something verycourtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts ofmischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active menfrom the country to the Court. Whatever be the road to power, that isthe road which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no useas a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually procurethat opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will be right, in a State so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave ambitionwithout popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of pure virtuein the minds of Kings and Ministers, and public men, must be submitted tothe judgment and good sense of the people of England. 

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Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly controvertingthe principle, to raise objections from the difficulty under which theSovereign labours to distinguish the genuine voice and sentiments of hispeople from the clamour of a faction, by which it is so easilycounterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the King should puthis affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to disgust therest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is a hazardthat he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however dividedbefore, will soon run into a body of opposition, which, being acollection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hotand violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through thenation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, andmuch the better part, will seem for awhile, as it were, annihilated bythe quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy theblessings of Government. Besides that, the opinion of the mere vulgar isa miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of theirviolence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in theirhumour to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of theirdissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinionare to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equaluncertainty as to the effect, what better can a King of England do thanto employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations mostconformable to his own, who are least infected with pride and self-will, and who are least moved by such popular humours as are perpetuallytraversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that when hemeans no ill to his people he will be supported in his appointments, whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment or hispleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight andinfluence of the Crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrumentin the hands of a faction. 

I will not pretend to say that there is nothing at all in this mode ofreasoning, because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in theart of government. Undoubtedly the very best Administration mustencounter a great deal of opposition, and the very worst will find moresupport than it deserves. Sufficient appearances will never be wantingto those who have a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy inconstant use with those who would level all things, and confound rightwith wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are attached to everychoice, without taking into consideration the different weight andconsequence of those inconveniences. The question is not concerningabsolute discontent or perfect satisfaction in Government, neither ofwhich can be pure and unmixed at any time or upon any system. Thecontroversy is about that degree of good-humour in the people, which maypossibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for. While somepoliticians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individualbe against them, accurately distinguishing the vulgar from the bettersort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a faction and the effortsof a people, they may chance to see the Government, which they are sonicely weighing, and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the groundin the midst of their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great anobject as the security of Government, or even its peace, is at stake, will not run the risk of a decision which may be fatal to it. They whocan read the political sky will seen a hurricane in a cloud no biggerthan a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the firstharbour. No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. Theyare a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can drawa stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darknessare upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossiblefor a Prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons toadminister it, as will give a great degree of content to his people, without any curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal, perfect harmony, which, while he is seeking, he abandons those means ofordinary tranquillity which are in his power without any research at all. 

It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a Prince to aim atgiving tranquillity to his Government. If those who advise him may havean interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people isagainst them, they will naturally wish that it should have no prevalence. Here it is that the people must on their part show themselves sensible oftheir own value. Their whole importance, in the first instance, andafterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their freedom cannot longsurvive their importance. Here it is that the natural strength of thekingdom, the great peers, the leading landed gentlemen, the opulentmerchants and manufacturers, the substantial yeomanry, must interpose, torescue their Prince, themselves, and their posterity. 

We are at present at issue upon this point. We are in the great crisisof this contention, and the part which men take, one way or other, willserve to discriminate their characters and their principles. Until thematter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion. Forwhile a system of Administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to thegenius of the people, and not conformable to the plan of theirGovernment, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, untilthis system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets thebetter of this system. 

There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this politicaldistemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former lines theprojectors of arbitrary Government attacked only the liberties of theircountry, a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a mind ofthe most unruly ambition. But a system unfavourable to freedom may be soformed as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the State, and men mayfind in the pride and splendour of that prosperity some sort ofconsolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed, the increaseof the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as apretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of thejunto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve ofour free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies thewhole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operationslanguid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic arrangement, orof foreign politics. It tends to produce neither the security of a freeGovernment, nor the energy of a Monarchy that is absolute. Accordingly, the Crown has dwindled away in proportion to the unnatural and turgidgrowth of this excrescence on the Court. 

The interior Ministry are sensible that war is a situation which sets inits full light the value of the hearts of a people, and they well knowthat the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end oftheirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost fearof everything which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do notmean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward tocommit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Sucha fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it isregulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness, which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fearbetrays to the first glance of the eye its true cause and its realobject. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character, have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defianceof them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in theheart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professedenemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerlyits professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the samepowers--rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us, as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France andSpain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom ofManilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. Butthese powers put a just confidence in their resource of the doubleCabinet. These demands (one of them, at least) are hastening fasttowards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread hercobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuablebranches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the samecause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of thevine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerlysecured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, theloss of which, and the power of the Cabal, have one and the same era. 

If, by any chance, the Ministers who stand before the curtain possess oraffect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign Courts andMinisters, who were among the first to discover and to profit by thisinvention of the _double Cabinet_, attended very little to theirremonstrances. They know that those shadows of Ministers have nothing todo in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities aresedulously nourished in the outward Administration, and have been evenconsidered as a _causa sine qua non_ in its constitution: thence foreignCourts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel inthis nation. If one of those Ministers officially takes up a businesswith spirit, it serves only the better to signalise the meanness of therest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in hasteto shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of thisnature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, ourAmbassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, inconsequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne. This remonstrancethe French Minister treated with the contempt that was natural; as he wasassured, from the Ambassador of his Court to ours, that these orders ofLord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to havesaid British) Administration. Lord Rochford, a man of spirit, could notendure this situation. The consequences were, however, curious. Hereturns from Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord Shelburne, whogave the orders, is obliged to give up the seals. Lord Rochford, whoobeyed these orders, receives them. He goes, however, into anotherdepartment of the same office, that he might not be obliged officially toacquiesce in one situation, under what he had officially remonstratedagainst in another. At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul considered thisoffice arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was spoke of as anattention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether the complimentwas to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By this transactionthe condition of our Court lay exposed in all its nakedness. Our officecorrespondence has lost all pretence to authenticity; British policy isbrought into derision in those nations, that a while ago trembled at thepower of our arms, whilst they looked up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candour, which shone in all our negotiations. I representthis matter exactly in the light in which it has been universallyreceived. 

* * * * *

Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics under the influence of a_double Cabinet_. With such an arrangement at Court, it is impossible itshould have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this scheme shouldhave a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the first, the dearest, and most delicate objects of the interior policy of thisempire. The Colonies know that Administration is separated from theCourt, divided within itself, and detested by the nation. The doubleCabinet has, in both the parts of it, shown the most malignantdispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallestmischief. 

They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either oflenity or rigour, can be pursued with uniformity and perseverance. Therefore they turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where theyhave neither dependence on friendship nor apprehension from enmity. Theylook to themselves, and their own arrangements. They grow every day intoalienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming disconnectedwith our Government, we have not the consolation to find that they areeven friendly in their new independence. Nothing can equal the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual contradiction, inthe management of our affairs in that part of the world. A volume mightbe written on this melancholy subject; but it were better to leave itentirely to the reflections of the reader himself, than not to treat itin the extent it deserves. 

In what manner our domestic economy is affected by this system, it isneedless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their owncomplaints. 

The Court party resolve the whole into faction. Having said somethingbefore upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they givethis account of the prevalence of faction, they present no veryfavourable aspect of the confidence of the people in their ownGovernment. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves witha variety of projects for substituting something else in the place ofthat great and only foundation of Government, the confidence of thepeople, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When menimagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they neitherlove nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roastbeef of Old England that will persuade them to sit down to the table thatis spread for them. When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of theirinstitution, they find in those names of degenerated establishments onlynew motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full of life andbeauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort; when dead andputrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of formerendearments. A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits: thenation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in thatseason of fulness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles theFirst. A species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentenceof obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat ofintestine disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinisterpiety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parentsof all their consequence. Superficial observers consider such persons asthe cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing morethan the effect of it. Good men look upon this distracted scene withsorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They aredespoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile thestrength of Government with the rights of the people. They stand in amost distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hopebetter things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fiercelicentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the solereliance; and then, call your constitution what you please, it is thesword that governs. The civil power, like every other that calls in theaid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance itreceives. But the contrivers of this scheme of Government will not trustsolely to the military power, because they are cunning men. Theirrestless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kindof expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavour to raisedivisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedurewhich at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and justlyincreases their discontent. Men become pensioners of state on account oftheir abilities in the array of riot, and the discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful necessity of protecting from theseverity of the laws that very licentiousness, which the laws had beenbefore violated to repress. Everything partakes of the originaldisorder. Anarchy predominates without freedom, and servitude withoutsubmission or subordination. These are the consequences inevitable toour public peace, from the scheme of rendering the executory Governmentat once odious and feeble; of freeing Administration from theconstitutional and salutary control of Parliament, and inventing for it anew control, unknown to the constitution, an _interior_ Cabinet; whichbrings the whole body of Government into confusion and contempt. 

* * * * *

After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this systemon our foreign affairs, on the policy of our Government with regard toour dependencies, and on the interior economy of the Commonwealth; thereremains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the grandprinciple which first recommended this system at Court. The pretence wasto prevent the King from being enslaved by a faction, and made a prisonerin his closet. This scheme might have been expected to answer at leastits own end, and to indemnify the King, in his personal capacity, for allthe confusion into which it has thrown his Government. But has it inreality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every affectionatesubject would have one motive for enduring with patience all the evilswhich attend it. 

In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss toconsider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the King, and not of theCrown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent ofthat greatness which a King possesses merely by being a representative ofthe national dignity, the things in which he may have an individualinterest seem to be these: wealth accumulated; wealth spent inmagnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention;and above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose theinventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a Prince or asubject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they areformed. 

Suppose then we were to ask, whether the King has been richer than hispredecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the planof Favouritism? I believe it will be found that the picture of royalindigence which our Court has presented until this year, has been trulyhumiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, butby means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shakentheir confidence in Parliament. If the public treasures had beenexhausted in magnificence and splendour, this distress would have beenaccounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be moreunworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to meteout the splendour of the Crown. Indeed, I have found very few personsdisposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, itmust be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare thewants of the Court with its expenses. They do not behold the cause ofthis distress in any part of the apparatus of Royal magnificence. In allthis, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with allthe consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved. Theirwonder is increased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue settledon his Majesty's Civil List to the amount of 800, 000 pounds a year, hehas a farther aid, from a large pension list, near 90, 000 pounds a year, in Ireland; from the produce of the Duchy of Lancaster (which we are toldhas been greatly improved); from the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall;from the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per cent. Duty inthe Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more than40, 000 pounds a year. The whole is certainly not much short of a millionannually. 

These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our nationalCouncils. We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from hisMajesty's German Dominions, and the Bishopric of Osnaburg. This isunquestionably true. But that which is not within the province ofParliament, is yet within the sphere of every man's own reflection. If aforeign Prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could notfail of becoming the subject of our speculation. Filled with an anxiousconcern for whatever regards the welfare of our Sovereign, it isimpossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he hasbeen brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over. There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something notinconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments. This producethe people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent. It isaccounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawnaway, for the support of that Court faction, which, whilst it distressesthe nation, impoverishes the Prince in every one of his resources. Ionce more caution the reader, that I do not urge this considerationconcerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right toexamine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for thepurpose of showing how little this system of Favouritism has beenadvantageous to the Monarch himself; which, without magnificence, hassunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that hepossessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in thiscountry and in other parts of his dominions. 

Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high andsacred character, and secured the King from those disgusts attached tothe necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable? This isa topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but thepretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the corner-stone of the Court party. It has however so happened, that if I were tofix upon any one point, in which this system has been more particularlyand shamefully blameable, the effects which it has produced would justifyme in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the personaldignity of the Sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand contradictionsand mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner theseprojectors of Royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificentpromises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign, every one of which is more or less a melancholy proof of the truth ofwhat I have advanced, let us consider the language of the Court but a fewyears ago, concerning most of the persons now in the externalAdministration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings ofthe Sovereign, could possibly contrive a keener instrument ofmortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part andmember of the present arrangement? Nor, in the whole course of ourhistory, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been knownto extort from any Prince a greater contradiction to all his own declaredaffections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in directopposition to every thing the people approve and desire. 

An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised tosubmit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have beendenied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependentinstrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existencemay depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantageaccordingly. Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary towhat we have made our object, is sure, in some way, or in some time orother, to become our master. All this however is submitted to, in orderto avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence with the opinionof the people. For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a King hassome sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects: that all whoare pleasing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to him: that assoon as the persons who are odious at Court are known to be odious to thepeople, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering down upon themall kinds of emoluments and honours. None are considered as well-wishersto the Crown, but those who advised to some unpopular course of action;none capable of serving it, but those who are obliged to call at everyinstant upon all its power for the safety of their lives. None aresupposed to be fit priests in the temple of Government, but the personswho are compelled to fly into it for sanctuary. Such is the effect ofthis refined project; such is ever the result of all the contrivanceswhich are used to free men from the servitude of their reason, and fromthe necessity of ordering their affairs according to their evidentinterests. These contrivances oblige them to run into a real and ruinousservitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint that might be attendedwith advantage. 

If therefore this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence ofsaving the King from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable tohim, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty's privatehours? No, most certainly. The father of his people cannot possiblyenjoy repose, while his family is in such a state of distraction. Thenwhat has the Crown or the King profited by all this fine-wrought scheme?Is he more rich, or more splendid, or more powerful, or more at his ease, by so many labours and contrivances? Have they not beggared hisExchequer, tarnished the splendour of his Court, sunk his dignity, galledhis feelings, discomposed the whole order and happiness of his privatelife?

It will be very hard, I believe, to state in what respect the King hasprofited by that faction which presumptuously choose to call themselves_his friends_. 

If particular men had grown into an attachment, by the distinguishedhonour of the society of their Sovereign, and, by being the partakers ofhis amusements, came sometimes to prefer the gratification of hispersonal inclinations to the support of his high character, the thingwould be very natural, and it would be excusable enough. But thepleasant part of the story is, that these _King's friends_ have no moreground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder inCumberland or in Cornwall. They are only known to their Sovereign bykissing his hand, for the offices, pensions, and grants into which theyhave deceived his benignity. May no storm ever come, which will put thefirmness of their attachment to the proof; and which, in the midst ofconfusions and terrors, and sufferings, may demonstrate the eternaldifference between a true and severe friend to the Monarchy, and aslippery sycophant of the Court; _Quantum infido scurrae distabitamicus_!

* * * * *

So far I have considered the effect of the Court system, chiefly as itoperates upon the executive Government, on the temper of the people andon the happiness of the Sovereign. It remains that we should consider, with a little attention, its operation upon Parliament. 

Parliament was indeed the great object of all these politics, the end atwhich they aimed, as well as the instrument by which they were tooperate. But, before Parliament could be made subservient to a system, by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council, into a mere member of the Court, it must be greatly changed from itsoriginal character. 

In speaking of this body, I have my eye chiefly on the House of Commons. I hope I shall be indulged in a few observations on the nature andcharacter of that assembly; not with regard to its _legal form andpower_, but to its _spirit_, and to the purposes it is meant to answer inthe constitution. 

The House of Commons was supposed originally to be _no part of thestanding Government of this country_. It was considered as a control, issuing immediately from the people, and speedily to be resolved into themass from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the higher part ofGovernment what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistratebeing transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity itwas hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not onlybetween the people and the standing authority of the Crown, but betweenthe people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. Itwas hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and Government, they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything thatconcerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts ofLegislature. 

Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business mayhave introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the Houseof Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual disposition ofthe people at large. It would (among public misfortunes) be an evil morenatural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should be infected withevery epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would indicate someconsanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their constituents, than thatthey should in all cases be wholly untouched by the opinions and feelingsof the people out of doors. By this want of sympathy they would cease tobe a House of Commons. For it is not the derivation of the power of thatHouse from the people, which makes it in a distinct sense theirrepresentative. The King is the representative of the people; so are theLords; so are the Judges. They all are trustees for the people, as wellas the Commons; because no power is given for the sole sake of theholder; and although Government certainly is an institution of Divineauthority, yet its forms, and the persons who administer it, alloriginate from the people. 

A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction ofa popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts ofGovernment, and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a Houseof Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of thenation. It was not instituted to be a control upon the people, as oflate it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency. It was designed as a control _for_ the people. Other institutions havebeen formed for the purpose of checking popular excesses; and they are, Iapprehend, fully adequate to their object. If not, they ought to be madeso. The House of Commons, as it was never intended for the support ofpeace and subordination, is miserably appointed for that service; havingno stronger weapon than its Mace, and no better officer than its Serjeant-at-Arms, which it can command of its own proper authority. A vigilantand jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an anxious careof public money, an openness, approaching towards facility, to publiccomplaint; these seem to be the true characteristics of a House ofCommons. But an addressing House of Commons, and a petitioning nation; aHouse of Commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged indespair; in the utmost harmony with Ministers, whom the people regardwith the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the public opinioncalls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant, when thegeneral voice demands account; who, in all disputes between the peopleand Administration, presume against the people; who punish theirdisorder, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them; thisis an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this constitution. Suchan Assembly may be a great, wise, awful senate; but it is not, to anypopular purpose, a House of Commons. This change from an immediate stateof procuration and delegation to a course of acting as from originalpower, is the way in which all the popular magistracies in the world havebeen perverted from their purposes. It is indeed their greatest andsometimes their incurable corruption. For there is a materialdistinction between that corruption by which particular points arecarried against reason (this is a thing which cannot be prevented byhuman wisdom, and is of less consequence), and the corruption of theprinciple itself. For then the evil is not accidental, but settled. Thedistemper becomes the natural habit. 

For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the principle of Parliamentto be totally corrupted, and therefore its ends entirely defeated, when Isee two symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate support to allMinisters; because this destroys the very end of Parliament as a control, and is a general previous sanction to misgovernment; and secondly, thesetting up any claims adverse to the right of free election; for thistends to subvert the legal authority by which the House of Commons sits. 

I know that, since the Revolution, along with many dangerous, many usefulpowers of Government have been weakened. It is absolutely necessary tohave frequent recourse to the Legislature. Parliaments must thereforesit every year, and for great part of the year. The dreadful disordersof frequent elections have also necessitated a septennial instead of atriennial duration. These circumstances, I mean the constant habit ofauthority, and the infrequency of elections, have tended very much todraw the House of Commons towards the character of a standing Senate. Itis a disorder which has arisen from the cure of greater disorders; it hasarisen from the extreme difficulty of reconciling liberty under amonarchical Government, with external strength and with internaltranquillity. 

It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely from this greatinconvenience; but I would not increase an evil, because I was not ableto remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep the House ofCommons religiously true to its first principles, I would not argue forcarrying it to a total oblivion of them. This has been the great schemeof power in our time. They who will not conform their conduct to thepublic good, and cannot support it by the prerogative of the Crown, haveadopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the strongholdof Parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which there is noordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into Parliament. InParliament the whole is executed from the beginning to the end. InParliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute, and thesafety in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no afterreckonings to terrify. Parliament cannot with any great propriety punishothers for things in which they themselves have been accomplices. Thusthe control of Parliament upon the executory power is lost; becauseParliament is made to partake in every considerable act of Government. _Impeachment_, _that great guardian of the purity of the Constitution_, _is in danger of being lost_, _even to the idea of it_. 

By this plan several important ends are answered to the Cabal. If theauthority of Parliament supports itself, the credit of every act ofGovernment, which they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so veryodious that the whole strength of Parliament is insufficient to recommendit, then Parliament is itself discredited; and this discredit increasesmore and more that indifference to the constitution, which it is theconstant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of Parliamentary powers, torender general among the people. Whenever Parliament is persuaded toassume the offices of executive Government, it will lose all theconfidence, love, and veneration which it has ever enjoyed, whilst it wassupposed the _corrective_ and _control_ of the acting powers of theState. This would be the event, though its conduct in such a perversionof its functions should be tolerably just and moderate; but if it shouldbe iniquitous, violent, full of passion, and full of faction, it would beconsidered as the most intolerable of all the modes of tyranny. 

For a considerable time this separation of the representatives from theirconstituents went on with a silent progress; and had those, who conductedthe plan for their total separation, been persons of temper and abilitiesany way equal to the magnitude of their design, the success would havebeen infallible; but by their precipitancy they have laid it open in allits nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it; and the event may not bepleasant to the contrivers of the scheme. In the last session, the corpscalled the _King's friends_ made a hardy attempt all at once, _to alterthe right of election itself_; to put it into the power of the House ofCommons to disable any person disagreeable to them from sitting inParliament, without any other rule than their own pleasure; to makeincapacities, either general for descriptions of men, or particular forindividuals; and to take into their body, persons who avowedly had neverbeen chosen by the majority of legal electors, nor agreeably to any knownrule of law. 

The arguments upon which this claim was founded and combated, are not mybusiness here. Never has a subject been more amply and more learnedlyhandled, nor upon one side, in my opinion, more satisfactorily; they whoare not convinced by what is already written would not receive conviction_though one arose from the dead_. 

I too have thought on this subject; but my purpose here, is only toconsider it as a part of the favourite project of Government; to observeon the motives which led to it; and to trace its political consequences. 

A violent rage for the punishment of Mr. Wilkes was the pretence of thewhole. This gentleman, by setting himself strongly in opposition to theCourt Cabal, had become at once an object of their persecution, and ofthe popular favour. The hatred of the Court party pursuing, and thecountenance of the people protecting him, it very soon became not at alla question on the man, but a trial of strength between the two parties. The advantage of the victory in this particular contest was the present, but not the only, nor by any means, the principal, object. Its operationupon the character of the House of Commons was the great point in view. The point to be gained by the Cabal was this: that a precedent should beestablished, tending to show, _That the favour of the people was not sosure a road as the favour of the Court even to popular honours andpopular trusts_. A strenuous resistance to every appearance of lawlesspower; a spirit of independence carried to some degree of enthusiasm; aninquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, everycorruption and every error of Government; these are the qualities whichrecommend a man to a seat in the House of Commons, in open and merelypopular elections. An indolent and submissive disposition; a dispositionto think charitably of all the actions of men in power, and to live in amutual intercourse of favours with them; an inclination rather tocountenance a strong use of authority, than to bear any sort oflicentiousness on the part of the people; these are unfavourablequalities in an open election for Members of Parliament. 

The instinct which carries the people towards the choice of the former, is justified by reason; because a man of such a character, even in itsexorbitancies, does not directly contradict the purposes of a trust, theend of which is a control on power. The latter character, even when itis not in its extreme, will execute this trust but very imperfectly; and, if deviating to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead offorwarding the purposes of a control on Government. But when the Houseof Commons was to be new modelled, this principle was not only to bechanged, but reversed. Whist any errors committed in support of powerwere left to the law, with every advantage of favourable construction, ofmitigation, and finally of pardon; all excesses on the side of liberty, or in pursuit of popular favour, or in defence of popular rights andprivileges, were not only to be punished by the rigour of the known law, but by a _discretionary_ proceeding, which brought on _the loss of thepopular object itself_. Popularity was to be rendered, if not directlypenal, at least highly dangerous. The favour of the people might leadeven to a disqualification of representing them. Their odium mightbecome, strained through the medium of two or three constructions, themeans of sitting as the trustee of all that was dear to them. This ispunishing the offence in the offending part. Until this time, theopinion of the people, through the power of an Assembly, still in somesort popular, led to the greatest honours and emoluments in the gift ofthe Crown. Now the principle is reversed; and the favour of the Court isthe only sure way of obtaining and holding those honours which ought tobe in the disposal of the people. 

It signifies very little how this matter may be quibbled away. Example, the only argument of effect in civil life, demonstrates the truth of myproposition. Nothing can alter my opinion concerning the pernicioustendency of this example, until I see some man for his indiscretion inthe support of power, for his violent and intemperate servility, renderedincapable of sitting in parliament. For as it now stands, the fault ofoverstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly if you please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the oppositefault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance to powerhas shut the door of the House of Commons to one man; obsequiousness andservility, to none. 

Not that I would encourage popular disorder, or any disorder. But Iwould leave such offences to the law, to be punished in measure andproportion. The laws of this country are for the most part constituted, and wisely so, for the general ends of Government, rather than for thepreservation of our particular liberties. Whatever therefore is done insupport of liberty, by persons not in public trust, or not acting merelyin that trust, is liable to be more or less out of the ordinary course ofthe law; and the law itself is sufficient to animadvert upon it withgreat severity. Nothing indeed can hinder that severe letter fromcrushing us, except the temperaments it may receive from a trial by jury. But if the habit prevails of _going beyond the law_, and superseding thisjudicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed, into the legislativebodies, who shall establish themselves into _courts of criminal equity_, (so _the Star Chamber_ has been called by Lord Bacon, ) all the evils ofthe _Star_ Chamber are revived. A large and liberal construction inascertaining offences, and a discretionary power in punishing them, isthe idea of criminal equity; which is in truth a monster inJurisprudence. It signifies nothing whether a court for this purpose bea Committee of Council, or a House of Commons, or a House of Lords; theliberty of the subject will be equally subverted by it. The true end andpurpose of that House of Parliament which entertains such a jurisdictionwill be destroyed by it. 

I will not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkeswas punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of hisransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of libellersand blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was meant thanwas pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full asimpious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue, andorder, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced; thatthe most audacious libels on Royal Majesty have passed without notice;that the most treasonable invectives against the laws, liberties, andconstitution of the country, have not met with the slightestanimadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and shameless pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything sacred and civil, public and private, rage through the kingdom with such a furious andunbridled licence. All this while the peace of the nation must beshaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a singlefavourite. 

Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptibleimpunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not onlygenerally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, bytheir society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement, have drawn this man into the very faults which have furnished the Cabalwith a pretence for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favour, honour, and distinction, which a Court can bestow? Add but the crime ofservility (the _foedum crimem servitutis_) to every other crime, and thewhole mass is immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the justsubject of reward and honour. When therefore I reflect upon this methodpursued by the Cabal in distributing rewards and punishments, I mustconclude that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution, not on account ofwhat he has done in common with others who are the objects of reward, butfor that in which he differs from many of them: that he is pursued forthe spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for hisunconquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuousresistance against oppression. 

In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, norhis faults that were to be discountenanced. Opposition to acts of powerwas to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The popularity whichshould arise from such an opposition was to be shown unable to protectit. The qualities by which court is made to the people, were to renderevery fault inexpiable, and every error irretrievable. The qualities bywhich court is made to power, were to cover and to sanctify everything. He that will have a sure and honourable seat, in the House of Commons, must take care how he adventures to cultivate popular qualities;otherwise he may, remember the old maxim, _Breves et infaustos populiRomani amores_. If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man togreater dangers than a disposition to servility, the principle which isthe life and soul of popular elections will perish out of theConstitution. 

It behoves the people of England to consider how the House of Commonsunder the operation of these examples must of necessity be constituted. On the side of the Court will be, all honours, offices, emoluments; everysort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of moremoment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable pettyservices to individuals, into a spreading interest in their country. Onthe other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the Court, andin opposition to its system. For his own person, no office, oremolument, or title; no promotion ecclesiastical, or civil, or military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kindred. In vain an expiringinterest in a borough calls for offices, or small livings, for thechildren of mayors, and aldermen, and capital burgesses. His court rivalhas them all. He can do an infinite number of acts of generosity andkindness, and even of public spirit. He can procure indemnity fromquarters. He can procure advantages in trade. He can get pardons foroffences. He can obtain a thousand favours, and avert a thousand evils. He may, while he betrays every valuable interest of the kingdom, be abenefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel, to his borough. Theunfortunate independent member has nothing to offer, but harsh refusal, or pitiful excuse, or despondent representation of a hopeless interest. Except from his private fortune, in which he may be equalled, perhapsexceeded, by his Court competitor, he has no way of showing any one goodquality, or of making a single friend. In the House, he votes for everin a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors are locked. A body ofloquacious placemen go out to tell the world, that all he aims at, is toget into office. If he has not the talent of elocution, which is thecase of many as wise and knowing men as any in the House, he is liable toall these inconveniences, without the eclat which attends upon anytolerably successful exertion of eloquence. Can we conceive a morediscouraging post of duty than this? Strip it of the poor reward ofpopularity; suffer even the excesses committed in defence of the popularinterest to become a ground for the majority of that House to form adisqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure, attended not only with the loss of the franchise, but with every kind ofpersonal disgrace; if this shall happen, the people of this kingdom maybe assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man. Itis out of the nature of men and things that they should; and theirpresumption will be equal to their folly, if they expect it. The powerof the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to protectevery representative in the animated performance of his duty, or thatduty cannot be performed. The House of Commons can never be a control onother parts of Government, unless they are controlled themselves by theirconstituents; and unless these constituents possess some right in thechoice of that House, which it is not in the power of that House to takeaway. If they suffer this power of arbitrary incapacitation to stand, they have utterly perverted every other power of the House of Commons. The late proceeding, I will not say, _is_ contrary to law; it _must_ beso; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any possibility, be a legalpower in any limited member of Government. 

The power which they claim, of declaring incapacities, would not be abovethe just claims of a final judicature, if they had not laid it down as aleading principle, that they had no rule in the exercise of this claimbut their own _discretion_. Not one of their abettors has everundertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species or degree ofdelinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the mode ofproceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is established. Thedirect consequence of which is, that the first franchise of anEnglishman, and that on which all the rest vitally depend, is to beforfeited for some offence which no man knows, and which is to be provedby no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence. This is so anomalous toour whole constitution, that I will venture to say, the most trivialright, which the subject claims, never was, nor can be, forfeited in sucha manner. 

The whole of their usurpation is established upon this method of arguing. We do not make laws. No; we do not contend for this power. We onlydeclare law; and, as we are a tribunal both competent and supreme, whatwe declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been sobefore. Thus the circumstance of having no appeal from theirjurisdiction is made to imply that they have no rule in the exercise ofit: the judgment does not derive its validity from its conformity to thelaw; but preposterously the law is made to attend on the judgment; andthe rule of the judgment is no other than the _occasional will of theHouse_. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows; which is justthe very nature and description of a legislative act. 

This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into itsutmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondentpractice. A systematic spirit has been shown upon both sides. Theelectors of Middlesex chose a person whom the House of Commons had votedincapable; and the House of Commons has taken in a member whom theelectors of Middlesex had not chosen. By a construction on thatlegislative power which had been assumed, they declared that the truelegal sense of the country was contained in the minority, on thatoccasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote of incapacity, becontained in any minority. 

When any construction of law goes against the spirit of the privilege itwas meant to support, it is a vicious construction. It is material to usto be represented really and bona fide, and not in forms, in types, andshadows, and fictions of law. The right of election was not establishedmerely as a _matter of form_, to satisfy some method and rule oftechnical reasoning; it was not a principle which might substitute a_Titius_ or a _Maevius_, a _John Doe_ or _Richard Roe_, in the place of aman specially chosen; not a principle which was just as well satisfiedwith one man as with another. It is a right, the effect of which is togive to the people that man, and that man only, whom by their voices, actually, not constructively given, they declare that they know, esteem, love, and trust. This right is a matter within their own power ofjudging and feeling; not an _ens rationis_ and creature of law: nor canthose devices, by which anything else is substituted in the place of suchan actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of representation. 

I know that the courts of law have made as strained constructions inother cases. Such is the construction in common recoveries. The methodof construction which in that case gives to the persons in remainder, fortheir security and representative, the door-keeper, crier, or sweeper ofthe Court, or some other shadowy being without substance or effect, is afiction of a very coarse texture. This was however suffered, by theacquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of theold Statute of Westminster, which authorised perpetuities, had more senseand utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to turn theright of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine andrecovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give itare infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely contemptible. 

The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionarydisqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will besure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something in thisargument differing from that on which every mode of despotism has beendefended, I shall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. Thepeople are satisfied to trust themselves with the exercise of their ownprivileges, and do not desire this kind intervention of the House ofCommons to free them from the burthen. They are certainly in the right. They ought not to trust the House of Commons with a power over theirfranchises; because the constitution, which placed two other co-ordinatepowers to control it, reposed no such confidence in that body. It were afolly well deserving servitude for its punishment, to be full ofconfidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to an Houseof Commons, arrogating to its sole resolution the most harsh and odiouspart of legislative authority, that degree of submission which is dueonly to the Legislature itself. 

When the House of Commons, in an endeavour to obtain new advantages atthe expense of the other orders of the State, for the benefits of the_Commons at large_, have pursued strong measures; if it were not just, itwas at least natural, that the constituents should connive at all theirproceedings; because we were ourselves ultimately to profit. But whenthis submission is urged to us, in a contest between the representativesand ourselves, and where nothing can be put into their scale which is nottaken from ours, they fancy us to be children when they tell us they areour representatives, our own flesh and blood, and that all the stripesthey give us are for our good. The very desire of that body to have sucha trust contrary to law reposed in them, shows that they are not worthyof it. They certainly will abuse it; because all men possessed of anuncontrolled discretionary power leading to the aggrandisement and profitof their own body have always abused it: and I see no particular sanctityin our times, that is at all likely, by a miraculous operation, tooverrule the course of nature. 

But we must purposely shut our eyes, if we consider this matter merely asa contest between the House of Commons and the Electors. The truecontest is between the Electors of the Kingdom and the Crown; the Crownacting by an instrumental House of Commons. It is precisely the same, whether the Ministers of the Crown can disqualify by a dependent House ofCommons, or by a dependent court of _Star Chamber_, or by a dependentcourt of King's Bench. If once Members of Parliament can be practicallyconvinced that they do not depend on the affection or opinion of thepeople for their political being, they will give themselves over, withouteven an appearance of reserve, to the influence of the Court. 

Indeed, a Parliament unconnected with the people, is essential to aMinistry unconnected with the people; and therefore those who saw throughwhat mighty difficulties the interior Ministry waded, and the exteriorwere dragged, in this business, will conceive of what prodigiousimportance, the new corps of _King's men_ held this principle ofoccasional and personal incapacitation, to the whole body of theirdesign. 

When the House of Commons was thus made to consider itself as the masterof its constituents, there wanted but one thing to secure that Houseagainst all possible future deviation towards popularity; an unlimitedfund of money to be laid out according to the pleasure of the Court. 

* * * * *

To complete the scheme of bringing our Court to a resemblance to theneighbouring Monarchies, it was necessary, in effect, to destroy thoseappropriations of revenue, which seem to limit the property, as the otherlaws had done the powers, of the Crown. An opportunity for this purposewas taken, upon an application to Parliament for payment of the debts ofthe Civil List; which in 1769 had amounted to 513, 000 pounds. Suchapplication had been made upon former occasions; but to do it in theformer manner would by no means answer the present purpose. 

Whenever the Crown had come to the Commons to desire a supply for thedischarging of debts due on the Civil List, it was always asked andgranted with one of the three following qualifications; sometimes withall of them. Either it was stated that the revenue had been divertedfrom its purposes by Parliament; or that those duties had fallen short ofthe sum for which they were given by Parliament, and that the intentionof the Legislature had not been fulfilled; or that the money required todischarge the Civil List debt was to be raised chargeable on the CivilList duties. In the reign of Queen Anne, the Crown was found in debt. The lessening and granting away some part of her revenue by Parliamentwas alleged as the cause of that debt, and pleaded as an equitable ground(such it certainly was), for discharging it. It does not appear that theduties which wore then applied to the ordinary Government produced clearabove 580, 000 pounds a year; because, when they were afterwards grantedto George the First, 120, 000 pounds was added, to complete the whole to700, 000 pounds a year. Indeed it was then asserted, and, I have nodoubt, truly, that for many years the nett produce did not amount toabove 550, 000 pounds. The Queen's extraordinary charges were besidesvery considerable; equal, at least, to any we have known in our time. Theapplication to Parliament was not for an absolute grant of money, but toempower the Queen to raise it by borrowing upon the Civil List funds. 

The Civil List debt was twice paid in the reign of George the First. Themoney was granted upon the same plan which had been followed in the reignof Queen Anne. The Civil List revenues were then mortgaged for the sumto be raised, and stood charged with the ransom of their own deliverance. 

George the Second received an addition to his Civil List. Duties weregranted for the purpose of raising 800, 000 pounds a year. It was notuntil he had reigned nineteen years, and after the last rebellion, thathe called upon Parliament for a discharge of the Civil List debt. Theextraordinary charges brought on by the rebellion, account fully for thenecessities of the Crown. However, the extraordinary charges ofGovernment were not thought a ground fit to be relied on. A deficiencyof the Civil List duties for several years before was stated as theprincipal, if not the sole, ground on which an application to Parliamentcould be justified. About this time the produce of these duties hadfallen pretty low; and even upon an average of the whole reign they neverproduced 800, 000 pounds a year clear to the Treasury. 

That Prince reigned fourteen years afterwards: not only no new demandswere made, but with so much good order were his revenues and expensesregulated, that, although many parts of the establishment of the Courtwere upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since, there was a considerable sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about170, 000 pounds, applicable to the service of the Civil List of hispresent Majesty. So that, if this reign commenced with a greater chargethan usual, there was enough, and more than enough, abundantly to supplyall the extraordinary expense. That the Civil List should have beenexceeded in the two former reigns, especially in the reign of George theFirst, was not at all surprising. His revenue was but 700, 000 poundsannually; if it ever produced so much clear. The prodigious anddangerous disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and thecause of a Pretender then powerfully abetted from abroad, produced manydemands of an extraordinary nature both abroad and at home. Muchmanagement and great expenses were necessary. But the throne of noPrince has stood upon more unshaken foundations than that of his presentMajesty. 

To have exceeded the sum given for the Civil List, and to have incurred adebt without special authority of Parliament, was, _prima facie_, acriminal act: as such Ministers ought naturally rather to have withdrawnit from the inspection, than to have exposed it to the scrutiny, ofParliament. Certainly they ought, of themselves, officially to have comearmed with every sort of argument, which, by explaining, could excuse amatter in itself of presumptive guilt. But the terrors of the House ofCommons are no longer for Ministers. 

On the other hand, the peculiar character of the House of Commons, astrustee of the public purse, would have led them to call with apunctilious solicitude for every public account, and to have examinedinto them with the most rigorous accuracy. 

The capital use of an account is, that the reality of the charge, thereason of incurring it, and the justice and necessity of discharging it, should all appear antecedent to the payment. No man ever pays first, andcalls for his account afterwards; because he would thereby let out of hishands the principal, and indeed only effectual, means of compelling afull and fair one. But, in national business, there is an additionalreason for a previous production of every account. It is a cheek, perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt and prodigal use of public money. Anaccount after payment is to no rational purpose an account. However, theHouse of Commons thought all these to be antiquated principles; they wereof opinion that the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was, to payfirst what the Court thought proper to demand, and to take its chance foran examination into accounts at some time of greater leisure. 

The nation had settled 800, 000 pounds a year on the Crown, as sufficientfor the purpose of its dignity, upon the estimate of its own Ministers. When Ministers came to Parliament, and said that this allowance had notbeen sufficient for the purpose, and that they had incurred a debt of500, 000 pounds, would it not have been natural for Parliament first tohave asked, how, and by what means, their appropriated allowance came tobe insufficient? Would it not have savoured of some attention tojustice, to have seen in what periods of Administration this debt hadbeen originally incurred; that they might discover, and if need were, animadvert on the persons who were found the most culpable? To put theirhands upon such articles of expenditure as they thought improper orexcessive, and to secure, in future, against such misapplication orexceeding? Accounts for any other purposes are but a matter ofcuriosity, and no genuine Parliamentary object. All the accounts whichcould answer any Parliamentary end were refused, or postponed by previousquestions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying animproper suspicion of the Ministers of the Crown. 

When every leading account had been refused, many others were grantedwith sufficient facility. 

But with great candour also, the House was informed, that hardly any ofthem could be ready until the next session; some of them perhaps not sosoon. But, in order firmly to establish the precedent of _paymentprevious to account_, and to form it into a settled rule of the House, the god in the machine was brought down, nothing less than the wonder-working _Law of Parliament_. It was alleged, that it is the law ofParliament, when any demand comes from the Crown, that the House must goimmediately into the Committee of Supply; in which Committee it wasallowed, that the production and examination of accounts would be quiteproper and regular. It was therefore carried that they should go intothe Committee without delay, and without accounts, in order to examinewith great order and regularity things that could not possibly comebefore them. After this stroke of orderly and Parliamentary wit andhumour, they went into the Committee, and very generously voted thepayment. 

There was a circumstance in that debate too remarkable to be overlooked. This debt of the Civil List was all along argued upon the same footing asa debt of the State, contracted upon national authority. Its payment wasurged as equally pressing upon the public faith and honour; and when thewhole year's account was stated, in what is called _The Budget_, theMinistry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just asif they had discharged 500, 000 pounds of navy or exchequer bills. Though, in truth, their payment, from the Sinking Fund, of debt which was nevercontracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to all intents and purposes, so much debt incurred. But such is the present notion of public creditand payment of debt. No wonder that it produces such effects. 

Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident security againstfuture, than it had been to a vindictive retrospect to past, mismanagements. I should have thought indeed that a Ministerial promise, during their own continuance in office, might have been given, thoughthis would have been but a poor security for the public. Mr. Pelham gavesuch an assurance, and he kept his word. But nothing was capable ofextorting from our Ministers anything which had the least resemblance toa promise of confining the expenses of the Civil List within the limitswhich had been settled by Parliament. This reserve of theirs I look uponto be equivalent to the clearest declaration that they were resolved upona contrary course. 

However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in the Speech from theThrone, after thanking Parliament for the relief so liberally granted, the Ministers inform the two Houses that they will _endeavour_ to confinethe expenses of the Civil Government--within what limits, think you?those which the law had prescribed? Not in the least--"such limits asthe _honour of the Crown_ can possibly admit. "

Thus they established an arbitrary standard for that dignity whichParliament had defined and limited to a legal standard. They gavethemselves, under the lax and indeterminate idea of the _honour of theCrown_, a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner ofcorruption. This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out toboth Houses; while an idle and inoperative Act of Parliament, estimatingthe dignity of the Crown at 800, 000 pounds, and confining it to that sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves oflibraries without any sort of advantage to the people. 

After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to thinkthat the Crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever. For ifthe Ministry has 800, 000 pounds a year by the law of the land, and if bythe law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paidprevious to the production of any account, I presume that this isequivalent to an income with no other limits than the abilities of thesubject and the moderation of the Court--that is to say, it is such inincome as is possessed by every absolute Monarch in Europe. It amounts, as a person of great ability said in the debate, to an unlimited power ofdrawing upon the Sinking Fund. Its effect on the public credit of thiskingdom must be obvious; for in vain is the Sinking Fund the greatbuttress of all the rest, if it be in the power of the Ministry to resortto it for the payment of any debts which they may choose to incur, underthe name of the Civil List, and through the medium of a committee, whichthinks itself obliged by law to vote supplies without any other accountthan that of the more existence of the debt. 

Five hundred thousand pounds is a serious sum. But it is nothing to theprolific principle upon which the sum was voted--a principle that may bewell called, _the fruitful mother of a hundred more_. Neither is thedamage to public credit of very great consequence when compared with thatwhich results to public morals and to the safety of the Constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption opened by the precedent, and tobe wrought by the principle of the late payment of the debts of the CivilList. The power of discretionary disqualification by one law ofParliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List byanother law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establishsuch a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the bestappendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by thewit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun between theRepresentatives and the People. The Court Faction have at lengthcommitted them. 

In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldeststaggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardlyany landmarks from the wisdom of our ancestors to guide us. At best wecan only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases. I knowthe diligence with which my observations on our public disorders havebeen made. I am very sure of the integrity of the motives on which theyare published: I cannot be equally confident in any plan for the absolutecure of those disorders, or for their certain future prevention. My aimis to bring this matter into more public discussion. Let the sagacity ofothers work upon it. It is not uncommon for medical writers to describehistories of diseases, very accurately, on whose cure they can say butvery little. 

The first ideas which generally suggest themselves for the cure ofParliamentary disorders are, to shorten the duration of Parliaments, andto disqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in theHouse of Commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in those remedies, I amsure in the present state of things it is impossible to apply them. Arestoration of the right of free election is a preliminary indispensableto every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be madein the constitution is a matter of deep and difficult research. 

If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be aslittle troublesome to me as to another to extol these remedies, so famousin speculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never attemptedseriously to resort in practice. I confess them, that I have no sort ofreliance upon either a Triennial Parliament or a Place-bill. With regardto the former, perhaps, it might rather serve to counteract than topromote the ends that are proposed by it. To say nothing of the horribledisorders among the people attending frequent elections, I should befearful of committing, every three years, the independent gentlemen ofthe country into a contest with the Treasury. It is easy to see which ofthe contending parties would be ruined first. Whoever has taken acareful view of public proceedings, so as to endeavour to ground hisspeculations on his experience, must have observed how prodigiouslygreater the power of Ministry is in the first and last session of aParliament, than it is in the intermediate periods, when Members sit alittle on their seats. The persons of the greatest Parliamentaryexperience, with whom I have conversed, did constantly, in canvassing thefate of questions, allow something to the Court side, upon account of theelections depending or imminent. The evil complained of, if it exists inthe present state of things, would hardly be removed by a triennialParliament: for, unless the influence of Government in elections can beentirely taken away, the more frequently they return, the more they willharass private independence; the more generally men will be compelled tofly to the settled systematic interest of Government, and to theresources of a boundless Civil List. Certainly something may be done, and ought to be done, towards lessening that influence in elections; andthis will be necessary upon a plan either of longer or shorter durationof Parliament. But nothing can so perfectly remove the evil, as not torender such contentions, foot frequently repeated, utterly ruinous, firstto independence of fortune, and then to independence of spirit. As I amonly giving an opinion on this point, and not at all debating it in anadverse line, I hope I may be excused in another observation. With greattruth I may aver that I never remember to have talked on this subjectwith any man much conversant with public business who considered shortParliaments as a real improvement of the Constitution. Gentlemen, warmin a popular cause, are ready enough to attribute all the declarations ofsuch persons to corrupt motives. But the habit of affairs, if, on onehand, it tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes it, on the other, with the, means of better information. The authority of such persons will alwayshave some weight. It may stand upon a par with the speculations of thosewho are less practised in business; and who, with perhaps purerintentions, have not so effectual means of judging. It is besides aneffect of vulgar and puerile malignity to imagine that every Statesman isof course corrupt: and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point, is solely formed upon some sinister interest. 

The next favourite remedy is a Place-bill. The same principle guides inboth: I mean the opinion which is entertained by many of theinfallibility of laws and regulations, in the cure of public distempers. Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are unwisely confident, Iwill only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious andmature reflection. It is not easy to foresee what the effect would be ofdisconnecting with Parliament, the greatest part of those who hold civilemployments, and of such mighty and important bodies as the military andnaval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that they should have acorrupt interest in the forms of the constitution, than they should havenone at all. This is a question altogether different from thedisqualification of a particular description of Revenue Officers fromseats in Parliament; or, perhaps, of all the lower sorts of them fromvotes in elections. In the former case, only the few are affected; inthe latter, only the inconsiderable. But a great official, a greatprofessional, a great military and naval interest, all necessarilycomprehending many people of the first weight, ability, wealth, andspirit, has been gradually formed in the kingdom. These new interestsmust be let into a share of representation, else possibly they may beinclined to destroy those institutions of which they are not permitted topartake. This is not a thing to be trifled with: nor is it every well-meaning man that is fit to put his hands to it. Many other seriousconsiderations occur. I do not open them here, because they are notdirectly to my purpose; proposing only to give the reader some taste ofthe difficulties that attend all capital changes in the Constitution;just to hint the uncertainty, to say no worse, of being able to preventthe Court, as long as it has the means of influence abundantly in itspower, from applying that influence to Parliament; and perhaps, if thepublic method were precluded, of doing it in some worse and moredangerous method. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. Thescience of evasion, already tolerably understood, would then be broughtto the greatest perfection. It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, toknow how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting adegree of purity impracticable in degenerate times and manners, insteadof cutting off the subsisting ill practices, new corruptions might beproduced for the concealment and security of the old. It were better, undoubtedly, that no influence at all could affect the mind of a Memberof Parliament. But of all modes of influence, in my opinion, a placeunder the Government is the least disgraceful to the man who holds it, and by far the most safe to the country. I would not shut out that sortof influence which is open and visible, which is connected with thedignity and the service of the State, when it is not in my power toprevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery, and those innumerable methods of clandestine corruption, which areabundantly in the hands of the Court, and which will be applied as longas these means of corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, haveexistence amongst us. Our Constitution stands on a nice equipoise, withsteep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing itfrom a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk ofoversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in aGovernment so complicated as ours, combined at the same time withexternal circumstances still more complicated, is a matter full ofdifficulties; in which a considerate man will not be too ready to decide;a prudent man too ready to undertake; or an honest man too ready topromise. They do not respect the public nor themselves, who engage formore than they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they are ableto perform. These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest andunbiassed; and submitted entirely to the opinion of grave men, wellaffected to the constitution of their country, and of experience in whatmay best promote or hurt it. 

Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an immense revenue, anenormous debt, mighty establishments, Government itself a great bankerand a great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of a decentattention to public interest in the Representatives, but _theinterposition of the body of the people itself_, whenever it shallappear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that these Representatives are going to over-leap the fences of the law, and to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition is a mostunpleasant remedy. But, if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on someoccasion to be used; to be used then only, when it is evident thatnothing else can hold the Constitution to its true principles. 

* * * * *

The distempers of Monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension andredress, in the last century; in this, the distempers of Parliament. Itis not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parliamentary disorderscan be completed; hardly, indeed, can it begin there. Until a confidencein Government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a morestrict and detailed attention to the conduct of their Representatives. Standards, for judging more systematically upon their conduct, ought tobe settled in the meetings of counties and corporations. Frequent andcorrect lists of the voters in all important questions ought to beprocured. 

By such means something may be done. By such means it may appear whothose are, that, by an indiscriminate support of all Administrations, have totally banished all integrity and confidence out of publicproceedings; have confounded the best men with the worst; and weakenedand dissolved, instead of strengthening and compacting, the general frameof Government. If any person is more concerned for government and orderthan for the liberties of his country, even he is equally concerned toput an end to this course of indiscriminate support. It is this blindand undistinguishing support that feeds the spring of those verydisorders, by which he is frighted into the arms of the faction whichcontains in itself the source of all disorders, by enfeebling all thevisible and regular authority of the State. The distemper is increasedby his injudicious and preposterous endeavours, or pretences, for thecure of it. 

An exterior Administration, chosen for its impotency, or after it ischosen purposely rendered impotent, in order to be rendered subservient, will not be obeyed. The laws themselves will not be respected, whenthose who execute them are despised: and they will be despised, whentheir power is not immediate from the Crown, or natural in the kingdom. Never were Ministers better supported in Parliament. Parliamentarysupport comes and goes with office, totally regardless of the man, or themerit. Is Government strengthened? It grows weaker and weaker. Thepopular torrent gains upon it every hour. Let us learn from ourexperience. It is not support that is wanting to Government, butreformation. When Ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeedbuilt upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But whenit stands upon private humour, its structure is of stubble, and itsfoundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again--He that supports everyAdministration, subverts all Government. The reason is this. The wholebusiness in which a Court usually takes an interest goes on at presentequally well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise or foolish, scandalous or reputable; there is nothing, therefore, to hold it firm toany one body of men, or to any one consistent scheme of politics. Nothinginterposes to prevent the full operation of all the caprices and all thepassions of a Court upon the servants of the public. The system ofAdministration is open to continual shocks and changes, upon theprinciples of the meanest cabal, and the most contemptible intrigue. Nothing can be solid and permanent. All good men at length fly withhorror from such a service. Men of rank and ability, with the spiritwhich ought to animate such men in a free state, while they decline thejurisdiction of dark cabal on their actions and their fortunes, will, forboth, cheerfully put themselves upon their country. They will trust aninquisitive and distinguishing Parliament; because it does inquire, anddoes distinguish. If they act well, they know that, in such aParliament, they will be supported against any intrigue; if they act ill, they know that no intrigue can protect them. This situation, howeverawful, is honourable. But in one hour, and in the self-same Assembly, without any assigned or assignable cause, to be precipitated from thehighest authority to the most marked neglect, possibly into the greatestperil of life and reputation, is a situation full of danger, anddestitute of honour. It will be shunned equally by every man ofprudence, and every man of spirit. 

Such are the consequences of the division of Court from theAdministration; and of the division of public men among themselves. Bythe former of these, lawful Government is undone; by the latter, allopposition to lawless power is rendered impotent. Government may in agreat measure be restored, if any considerable bodies of men have honestyand resolution enough never to accept Administration, unless thisgarrison of _King's_ meat, which is stationed, as in a citadel, tocontrol and enslave it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every workthey have thrown up be levelled with the ground. The disposition ofpublic men to keep this corps together, and to act under it, or to co-operate with it, is a touchstone by which every Administration ought infuture to be tried. There has not been one which has not sufficientlyexperienced the utter incompatibility of that faction with the publicpeace, and with all the ends of good Government; since, if they opposedit, they soon lost every power of serving the Crown; if they submitted toit they lost all the esteem of their country. Until Ministers give tothe public a full proof of their entire alienation from that system, however plausible their pretences, we may be sure they are more intent onthe emoluments than the duties of office. If they refuse to give thisproof, we know of what stuff they are made. In this particular, it oughtto be the electors' business to look to their Representatives. Theelectors ought to esteem it no less culpable in their Member to give asingle vote in Parliament to such an Administration, than to take anoffice under it; to endure it, than to act in it. The notoriousinfidelity and versatility of Members of Parliament, in their opinions ofmen and things, ought in a particular manner to be considered by theelectors in the inquiry which is recommended to them. This is one of theprincipal holdings of that destructive system which has endeavoured tounhinge all the virtuous, honourable, and useful connections in thekingdom. 

This cabal has, with great success, propagated a doctrine which servesfor a colour to those acts of treachery; and whilst it receives anydegree of countenance, it will be utterly senseless to look for avigorous opposition to the Court Party. The doctrine is this: That allpolitical connections are in their nature factious, and as such ought tobe dissipated and destroyed; and that the rule for formingAdministrations is mere personal ability, rated by the judgment of thiscabal upon it, and taken by drafts from every division and denominationof public men. This decree was solemnly promulgated by the head of theCourt corps, the Earl of Bute himself, in a speech which he made, in theyear 1766, against the then Administration, the only Administrationwhich, he has ever been known directly and publicly to oppose. 

It is indeed in no way wonderful, that such persons should make suchdeclarations. That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is anopinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times byunconstitutional Statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men arelinked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of anevil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and tooppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are notacquainted with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other'stalents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositionsby joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, nocommon interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible thatthey can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. Ina connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of thewhole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents arewholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed byvainglory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat, the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad mencombine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, anunpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. 

It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a manmeans well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person henever did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, andeven harangued against every design which he apprehended to beprejudicial to the interests of his country. This innoxious andineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology anddisculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of public duty. Thatduty demands and requires, that what is right should not only be madeknown, but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected, but defeated. When the public man omits to put himself in a situation ofdoing his duty with effect, it is an omission that frustrates thepurposes of his trust almost as much as if he had formally betrayed it. It is surely no very rational account of a man's life that he has alwaysacted right; but has taken special care to act in such a manner that hisendeavours could not possibly be productive of any consequence. 

I do not wonder that the behaviour of many parties should have madepersons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat out of humour with allsorts of connection in politics. I admit that people frequently acquirein such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and proscriptive spirit; thatthey are apt to sink the idea of the general good in this circumscribedand partial interest. But, where duty renders a critical situation anecessary one, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendantupon it, and not to fly from the situation itself. If a fortress isseated in an unwholesome air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to beattentive to his health, but he must not desert his station. Everyprofession, not excepting the glorious one of a soldier, or the sacredone of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices; which, however, form no argument against those ways of life; nor are the vices themselvesinevitable to every individual in those professions. Of such a natureare connections in politics; essentially necessary for the fullperformance of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate intofaction. Commonwealths are made of families, free Commonwealths ofparties also; and we may as well affirm, that our natural regards andties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that the bondsof our party weaken those by which we are held to our country. 

Some legislators went so far as to make neutrality in party a crimeagainst the State. I do not know whether this might not have been ratherto overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in thegreatest commonwealths have always commanded and promoted suchconnections. _Idem sentire de republica_, was with them a principalground of friendship and attachment; nor do I know any other capable offorming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more honourable, and more virtuoushabitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even theholding of offices together, the disposition of which arose from chance, not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It wascalled _necessitudo sortis_; and it was looked upon with a sacredreverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation wereconsidered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole peoplewas distributed into political societies, in which they acted in supportof such interests in the State as they severally affected. For it wasthen thought no crime, to endeavour by every honest means to advance tosuperiority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions. Thiswise people was far from imagining that those connections had no tie, andobliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without shame, uponevery call of interest. They believed private honour to be the greatfoundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean step towardspatriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, showed heregarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in a publicsituation, might probably consult some other interest than his own. Nevermay we become _plus sages que les sages_, as the French comedian hashappily expressed it--wiser than all the wise and good men who have livedbefore us. It was their wish, to see public and private virtues, notdissonant and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniouslycombined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation, reciprocally supporting and supported. In one of the most fortunateperiods of our history this country was governed by a connection; I meanthe great connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They werecomplimented upon the principle of this connection by a poet who was inhigh esteem with them. Addison, who knew their sentiments, could notpraise them for what they considered as no proper subject ofcommendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could not applaud themfor a thing which in general estimation was not highly reputable. Addressing himself to Britain, "Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's sport, Or from the crimes or follies of a Court; On the firm basis of desert they rise, From long-tried faith, and friendship's holy ties. "

The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper method of risinginto power was through bard essays of practised friendship andexperimented fidelity. At that time it was not imagined that patriotismwas a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of children and parents, or dearest connections in private life, and of all the virtues that risefrom those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxicalmorality to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown inpatiently bearing the sufferings of your friends, or thatdisinterestedness was clearly manifested at the expense of other people'sfortune. They believed that no men could act with effect who did not actin concert; that no men could act in concert who did not act withconfidence; that no men could act with confidence who were not boundtogether by common opinions, common affections, and common interests. 

These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland, Lord Godolphin, Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well principled in thesemaxims, upon which the whole fabric of public strength is built, to beblown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker. They werenot afraid that they should be called an ambitious Junto, or that theirresolution to stand or fall together should, by placemen, be interpretedinto a scuffle for places. 

Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours thenational interest, upon some particular principle in which they are allagreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive that any onebelieves in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, whorefuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It isthe business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends ofGovernment. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopherin action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employthem with effect. Therefore, every honourable connection will avow it astheir first purpose to pursue every just method to put the men who holdtheir opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry theircommon plans into execution, with all the power and authority of theState. As this power is attached to certain situations, it is their dutyto contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, theyare bound to give to their own party the preference in all things, and byno means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power inwhich the whole body is not included, nor to suffer themselves to be led, or to be controlled, or to be over-balanced, in office or in council, bythose who contradict, the very fundamental principles on which theirparty is formed, and even those upon which every fair connection muststand. Such a generous contention for power, on such manly andhonourable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean andinterested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of suchpersons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostorswho have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with humanpractice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the levelof vulgar rectitude. 

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that theirmaxims have a plausible air, and, on a cursory view, appear equal tofirst principles. They are light and portable. They are as current ascopper coin, and about as valuable. They serve equally the firstcapacities and the lowest, and they are, at least, as useful to the worstmen as the best. Of this stamp is the cant of _Not men_, _but measures_;a sort of charm, by which many people got loose from every honourableengagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and disconnectedpart, with as much detriment to his own fortune as prejudice to the causeof any party, I am not persuaded that he is right, but I am ready tobelieve he is in earnest. I respect virtue in all its situations, evenwhen it is found in the unsuitable company of weakness. I lament to seequalities, rare and valuable, squandered away without any public utility. But when a gentleman with great visible emoluments abandons the party inwhich he has long acted, and tells you it is because he proceeds upon hisown judgment that he acts on the merits of the several measures as theyarise, and that he is obliged to follow his own conscience, and not thatof others, he gives reasons which it is impossible to controvert, anddiscovers a character which it is impossible to mistake. What shall wethink of him who never differed from a certain set of men until themoment they lost their power, and who never agreed with them in a singleinstance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of interest andopinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraordinary cast uponthe dice that a man's connections should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when they lose their power or he acceptsa place? When people desert their connections, the desertion is amanifest fact, upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plainmen. Whether a _measure_ of Government be right or wrong is _no matterof fact_, but a mere affair of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without end. But whether the individual thinks themeasure right or wrong is a point at still a greater distance from thereach of all human decision. It is therefore very convenient topoliticians not to put the judgment of their conduct on overt acts, cognisable in any ordinary court, but upon such a matter as can betriable only in that secret tribunal, where they are sure of being heardwith favour, or where at worst the sentence will be only privatewhipping. 

I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doctrine whichhas a tendency to destroy all test of character as deduced from conduct. He will therefore excuse my adding something more towards the furtherclearing up a point which the great convenience of obscurity todishonesty has been able to cover with some degree of darkness and doubt. 

In order to throw an odium on political connection, these politicianssuppose it a necessary incident to it that you are blindly to follow theopinions of your party when in direct opposition to your own clear ideas, a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought ofsubmitting to, and such as, I believe, no connections (except some Courtfactions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose. Menthinking freely will, in particular instances, think differently. Butstill, as the greater Part of the measures which arise in the course ofpublic business are related to, or dependent on, some great leadinggeneral principles in Government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate inthe choice of his political company if he does not agree with them atleast nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these generalprinciples upon which the party is founded, and which necessarily draw ona concurrence in their application, he ought from the beginning to havechosen some other, more conformable to his opinions. When the questionis in its nature doubtful, or not very material, the modesty whichbecomes an individual, and (in spite of our Court moralists) thatpartiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship, will frequently bringon an acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus the disagreement willnaturally be rare; it will be only enough to indulge freedom, withoutviolating concord or disturbing arrangement. And this is all that everwas required for a character of the greatest uniformity and steadiness inconnection. How men can proceed without any connection at all is to meutterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of materials must that man bemade, how must he be tempered and put together, who can sit whole yearsin Parliament, with five hundred and fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidstthe storm of such tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so manywits, and tempers, and characters, in the agitation of such mightyquestions, in the discussion of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort of men, whose character, conduct, ordisposition would lead him to associate himself with them, to aid and beaided, in any one system of public utility?

I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says that "the man who liveswholly detached from others must be either an angel or a devil. " When Isee in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them to be angels. In themeantime, we are born only to be men. We shall do enough if we formourselves to be good ones. It is therefore our business carefully tocultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigour and maturity, every sort of generous and honest feeling that belongs to our nature. Tobring the, dispositions that are lovely in private life into the serviceand conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, as not to forget weare gentlemen. To cultivate friendships, and to incur enmities. To haveboth strong, but both selected: in the one, to be placable; in the other, immovable. To model our principles to our duties and our situation. Tobe fully persuaded that all virtue which is impracticable is spurious, and rather to run the risk of falling into faults in a course which leadsus to act with effect and energy than to loiter out our days withoutblame and without use. Public life is a situation of power and energy;he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as hethat goes over to the enemy. 

There is, however, a time for all things. It is not every conjuncturewhich calls with equal force upon the activity of honest men; butcritical exigences now and then arise, and I am mistaken if this be notone of them. Men will see the necessity of honest combination, but theymay see it when it is too late. They may embody when it will be ruinousto themselves, and of no advantage to the country; when, for want of sucha timely union as may enable them to oppose in favour of the laws, withthe laws on their side, they may at length find themselves under thenecessity of conspiring, instead of consulting. The law, for which theystand, may become a weapon in the hands of its bitterest enemies; andthey will be cast, at length, into that miserable alternative, betweenslavery and civil confusion, which no good man can look upon withouthorror, an alternative in which it is impossible he should take eitherpart with a conscience perfectly at repose. To keep that situation ofguilt and remorse at the utmost distance is, therefore, our firstobligation. Early activity may prevent late and fruitless violence. Asyet we work in the light. The scheme of the enemies of publictranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us. 

If the reader believes that there really exists such a Faction as I havedescribed, a Faction ruling by the private inclinations of a Court, against the general sense of the people; and that this Faction, whilst itpursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations of our freedom, weakens (for the present at least) all the powers of executoryGovernment, rendering us abroad contemptible, and at home distracted; hewill believe, also, that nothing but a firm combination of public menagainst this body, and that, too, supported by the hearty concurrence ofthe people at large, can possibly get the better of it. The people willsee the necessity of restoring public men to an attention to the publicopinion, and of restoring the Constitution to its original principles. Above all, they will endeavour to keep the House of Commons from assuminga character which does not belong to it. They will endeavour to keepthat House, for its existence for its powers, and its privileges, asindependent of every other, and as dependent upon themselves, aspossible. This servitude is to a House of Commons (like obedience to theDivine law), "perfect freedom. " For if they once quit this natural, rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted the only properfoundation of their power, they must seek a support in an abject andunnatural dependence somewhere else. When, through the medium of thisjust connection with their constituents, the genuine dignity of the Houseof Commons is restored, it will begin to think of casting from it, withscorn, as badges of servility, all the false ornaments of illegal power, with which it has been, for some time, disgraced. It will begin to thinkof its old office of CONTROL. It will not suffer that last of evils topredominate in the country; men without popular confidence, publicopinion, natural connection, or natural trust, invested with all thepowers of Government. 

When they have learned this lesson themselves, they will be willing andable to teach the Court, that it is the true interest of the Prince tohave but one Administration; and that one composed of those who recommendthemselves to their Sovereign through the opinion of their country, andnot by their obsequiousness to a favourite. Such men will serve theirSovereign with affection and fidelity; because his choice of them, uponsuch principles, is a compliment to their virtue. They will be able toserve him effectually; because they will add the weight of the country tothe force of the executory power. They will be able to serve their Kingwith dignity; because they will never abuse his name to the gratificationof their private spleen or avarice. This, with allowances for humanfrailty, may probably be the general character of a Ministry, whichthinks itself accountable to the House of Commons, when the House ofCommons thinks itself accountable to its constituents. If other ideasshould prevail, things must remain in their present confusion, until theyare hurried into all the rage of civil violence; or until they sink intothe dead repose of despotism. 

SPEECH ON THE MIDDLESEX ELECTIONFEBRUARY, 1771

Mr. Speaker, --In every complicated Constitution (and every freeConstitution is complicated) cases will arise, when the several orders ofthe State will clash with one another, and disputes will arise about thelimits of their several rights and privileges. It may be almostimpossible to reconcile them. 

Carry the principle on by which you expelled Mr. Wilkes, there is not aman in the House, hardly a man in the nation, who may not bedisqualified. That this House should have no power of expulsion is ahard saying. That this House should have a general discretionary powerof disqualification is a dangerous saying. That the people should notchoose their own representative, is a saying that shakes theConstitution. That this House should name the representative, is asaying which, followed by practice, subverts the constitution. They havethe right of electing, you have a right of expelling; they of choosing, you of judging, and only of judging, of the choice. What bounds shall beset to the freedom of that choice? Their right is prior to ours, we alloriginate there. They are the mortal enemies of the House of Commons, who would persuade them to think or to act as if they were aself-originated magistracy, independent of the people and unconnectedwith their opinions and feelings. Under a pretence of exalting thedignity, they undermine the very foundations of this House. When thequestion is asked here, what disturbs the people, whence all thisclamour, we apply to the treasury-bench, and they tell us it is from theefforts of libellers and the wickedness of the people, a worn-outministerial pretence. If abroad the people are deceived by popular, within we are deluded by ministerial, cant. The question amounts tothis, whether you mean to be a legal tribunal, or an arbitrary anddespotic assembly. I see and I feel the delicacy and difficulty of theground upon which we stand in this question. I could wish, indeed, thatthey who advised the Crown had not left Parliament in this veryungraceful distress, in which they can neither retract with dignity norpersist with justice. Another parliament might have satisfied the peoplewithout lowering themselves. But our situation is not in our own choice:our conduct in that situation is all that is in our own option. Thesubstance of the question is, to put bounds to your own power by therules and principles of law. This is, I am sensible, a difficult thingto the corrupt, grasping, and ambitious part of human nature. But thevery difficulty argues and enforces the necessity of it. First, becausethe greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. Since theRevolution, at least, the power of the nation has all flowed with a fulltide into the House of Commons. Secondly, because the House of Commons, as it is the most powerful, is the most corruptible part of the wholeConstitution. Our public wounds cannot be concealed; to be cured, theymust be laid open. The public does think we are a corrupt body. In ourlegislative capacity we are, in most instances, esteemed a very wisebody. In our judicial, we have no credit, no character at, all. Ourjudgments stink in the nostrils of the people. They think us to be notonly without virtue, but without shame. Therefore, the greatness of ourpower, and the great and just opinion of our corruptibility and ourcorruption, render it necessary to fix some bound, to plant somelandmark, which we are never to exceed. That is what the bill proposes. First, on this head, I lay it down as a fundamental rule in the law andconstitution of this country, that this House has not by itself alone alegislative authority in any case whatsoever. I know that the contrarywas the doctrine of the usurping House of Commons which threw down thefences and bulwarks of law, which annihilated first the lords, then theCrown, then its constituents. But the first thing that was done on therestoration of the Constitution was to settle this point. Secondly, Ilay it down as a rule, that the power of occasional incapacitation, ondiscretionary grounds, is a legislative power. In order to establishthis principle, if it should not be sufficiently proved by being stated, tell me what are the criteria, the characteristics, by which youdistinguish between a legislative and a juridical act. It will benecessary to state, shortly, the difference between a legislative and ajuridical act. A legislative act has no reference to any rule but thesetwo: original justice, and discretionary application. Therefore, it cangive rights; rights where no rights existed before; and it can take awayrights where they were before established. For the law, which binds allothers, does not and cannot bind the law-maker; he, and he alone, isabove the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, isneither to apply to original justice, nor to a discretionary applicationof it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, andthrough the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon hisopinion of the one nor of the other; but upon a fixed rule, of which hehas not the making, but singly and solely the application to the case. 

The power assumed by the House neither is, nor can be, judicial powerexercised according to known law. The properties of law are, first, thatit should be known; secondly, that it should be fixed and not occasional. First, this power cannot be according to the first property of law;because no man does or can know it, nor do you yourselves know upon whatgrounds you will vote the incapacity of any man. No man in WestminsterHall, or in any court upon earth, will say that is law, upon which, if aman going to his counsel should say to him, "What is my tenure in law ofthis estate?" he would answer, "Truly, sir, I know not; the court has norule but its own discretion: they will determine. " It is not a, fixedlaw, because you profess you vary it according to the occasion, exerciseit according to your discretion; no man can call for it as a right. Itis argued that the incapacity is not originally voted, but a consequenceof a power of expulsion: but if you expel, not upon legal, but uponarbitrary, that is, upon discretionary grounds, and the incapacity is _exvi termini_ and inclusively comprehended in the expulsion, is not theincapacity voted in the expulsion? Are they not convertible terms? and, if incapacity is voted to be inherent in expulsion, if expulsion bearbitrary, incapacity is arbitrary also. I have, therefore, shown thatthe power of incapacitation is a legislative power; I have shown thatlegislative power does not belong to the House of Commons; and, therefore, it follows that the House of Commons has not a power ofincapacitation. 

I know not the origin of the House of Commons, but am very sure that itdid not create itself; the electors wore prior to the elected; whoserights originated either from the people at large, or from some otherform of legislature, which never could intend for the chosen a power ofsuperseding the choosers. 

If you have not a power of declaring an incapacity simply by the mere actof declaring it, it is evident to the most ordinary reason you cannothave a right of expulsion, inferring, or rather, including, anincapacity, For as the law, when it gives any direct right, gives also asnecessary incidents all the means of acquiring the possession of thatright, so where it does not give a right directly, it refuses all themeans by which such a right may by any mediums be exercised, or in effectbe indirectly acquired. Else it is very obvious that the intention ofthe law in refusing that right might be entirely frustrated, and thewhole power of the legislature baffled. If there be no certaininvariable rule of eligibility, it were better to get simplicity, ifcertainty is not to be had; and to resolve all the franchises of thesubject into this one short proposition--the will and pleasure of theHouse of Commons. 

The argument, drawn from the courts of law, applying the principles oflaw to new cases as they emerge, is altogether frivolous, inapplicable, and arises from a total ignorance of the bounds between civil andcriminal jurisdiction, and of the separate maxims that govern these twoprovinces of law, that are eternally separate. Undoubtedly the courts oflaw, where a new case comes before them, as they do every hour, then, that there may be no defect in justice, call in similar principles, andthe example of the nearest determination, and do everything to draw thelaw to as near a conformity to general equity and right reason as theycan bring it with its being a fixed principle. _Boni judicis estampliare justitiam_--that is, to make open and liberal justice. But incriminal matters this parity of reason, and these analogies, ever havebeen, and ever ought to be, shunned. 

Whatever is incident to a court of judicature, is necessary to the Houseof Commons, as judging in elections. But a power of making incapacitiesis not necessary to a court of judicature; therefore a power of makingincapacities is not necessary to the House of Commons. 

Incapacity, declared by whatever authority, stands upon two principles:first, an incapacity arising from the supposed incongruity of two dutiesin the commonwealth; secondly, an incapacity arising from unfitness byinfirmity of nature, or the criminality of conduct. As to the firstclass of incapacities, they have no hardship annexed to them. Thepersons so incapacitated are paid by one dignity for what they abandon inanother, and, for the most part, the situation arises from their ownchoice. But as to the second, arising from an unfitness not fixed bynature, but superinduced by some positive acts, or arising fromhonourable motives, such as an occasional personal disability, of allthings it ought to be defined by the fixed rule of law--what Lord Cokecalls the Golden Metwand of the Law, and not by the crooked cord ofdiscretion. Whatever is general is better born. We take our common lotwith men of the same description. But to be selected and marked out by aparticular brand of unworthiness among our fellow-citizens, is a lot ofall others the hardest to be borne: and consequently is of all othersthat act which ought only to be trusted to the legislature, as not onlylegislative in its nature, but of all parts of legislature the mostodious. The question is over, if this is shown not to be a legislativeact. But what is very usual and natural, is to corrupt judicature intolegislature. On this point it is proper to inquire whether a court ofjudicature, which decides without appeal, has it as a necessary incidentof such judicature, that whatever it decides _de jure_ is law. Nobodywill, I hope, assert this, because the direct consequence would be theentire extinction of the difference between true and false judgments. For, if the judgment makes the law, and not the law directs the judgment, it is impossible there could be such a thing as an illegal judgmentgiven. 

But, instead of standing upon this ground, they introduce anotherquestion, wholly foreign to it, whether it ought not to be submitted toas if it were law. And then the question is, By the Constitution of thiscountry, what degree of submission is due to the authoritative acts of alimited power? This question of submission, determine it how you please, has nothing to do in this discussion and in this House. Here it is nothow long the people are bound to tolerate the illegality of ourjudgments, but whether we have a right to substitute our occasionalopinion in the place of law, so as to deprive the citizen of hisfranchise. 

SPEECH ON THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELSMARCH, 1771

I have always understood that a superintendence over the doctrines, aswell as the proceedings, of the courts of justice, was a principal objectof the constitution of this House; that you were to watch at once overthe lawyer and the law; that there should he an orthodox faith as well asproper works: and I have always looked with a degree of reverence andadmiration on this mode of superintendence. For being totally disengagedfrom the detail of juridical practice, we come to something, perhaps, thebetter qualified, and certainly much the better disposed to assert thegenuine principle of the laws; in which we can, as a body, have no otherthan an enlarged and a public interest. We have no common cause of aprofessional attachment, or professional emulations, to bias our minds;we have no foregone opinions, which, from obstinacy and false point ofhonour, we think ourselves at all events obliged to support. So thatwith our own minds perfectly disengaged from the exercise, we maysuperintend the execution of the national justice; which from thiscircumstance is better secured to the people than in any other countryunder heaven it can be. As our situation puts us in a proper condition, our power enables us to execute this trust. We may, when we see cause ofcomplaint, administer a remedy; it is in our choice by an address toremove an improper judge, by impeachment before the peers to pursue todestruction a corrupt judge, or by bill to assert, to explain, toenforce, or to reform the law, just as the occasion and necessity of thecase shall guide us. We stand in a situation very honourable toourselves, and very useful to our country, if we do not abuse or abandonthe trust that is placed in us. 

The question now before you is upon the power of juries in prosecutingfor libels. There are four opinions. 1. That the doctrine as held bythe courts is proper and constitutional, and therefore should not bealtered. 2. That it is neither proper nor constitutional, but that itwill be rendered worse by your interference. 3. That it is wrong, butthat the only remedy is a bill of retrospect. 4. The opinion of thosewho bring in the bill; that the thing is wrong, but that it is enough todirect the judgment of the court in future. 

The bill brought in is for the purpose of asserting and securing a greatobject in the juridical constitution of this kingdom; which, from a longseries of practices and opinions in our judges, has, in one point, and inone very essential point, deviated from the true principle. 

It is the very ancient privilege of the people of England that they shallbe tried, except in the known exceptions, not by judges appointed by theCrown, but by their own fellow-subjects, the peers of that county courtat which they owe their suit and service; out of this principle trial byjuries has grown. This principle has not, that I can find, beencontested in any case, by any authority whatsoever; but there is onecase, in which, without directly contesting the principle, the wholesubstance, energy, acid virtue of the privilege, is taken out of it; thatis, in the case of a trial by indictment or information for libel. Thedoctrine in that case laid down by several judges amounts to this, thatthe jury have no competence where a libel is alleged, except to find thegross corporeal facts of the writing and the publication, together withthe identity of the things and persons to which it refers; but that theintent and the tendency of the work, in which intent and tendency thewhole criminality consists, is the sole and exclusive province of thejudge. Thus having reduced the jury to the cognisance of facts, not inthemselves presumptively criminal, but actions neutral and indifferentthe whole matter, in which the subject has any concern or interest, istaken out of the hands of the jury: and if the jury take more uponthemselves, what they so take is contrary to their duty; it is no moral, but a merely natural power; the same, by which they may do any otherimproper act, the same, by which they may even prejudice themselves withregard to any other part of the issue before them. Such is the matter asit now stands, in possession of your highest criminal courts, handed downto them from very respectable legal ancestors. If this can once beestablished in this case, the application in principle to other caseswill be easy; and the practice will run upon a descent, until theprogress of an encroaching jurisdiction (for it is in its nature toencroach, when once it has passed its limits) coming to confine thejuries, case after case, to the corporeal fact, and to that alone, andexcluding the intention of mind, the only source of merit and demerit, ofreward or punishment, juries become a dead letter in the constitution. 

For which reason it is high time to take this matter into theconsideration of Parliament, and for that purpose it will be necessary toexamine, first, whether there is anything in the peculiar nature of thiscrime that makes it necessary to exclude the jury from considering theintention in it, more than in others. So far from it, that I take it tobe much less so from the analogy of other criminal cases, where no suchrestraint is ordinarily put upon them. The act of homicide is _primafacie_ criminal. The intention is afterwards to appear, for the jury toacquit or condemn. In burglary do they insist that the jury have nothingto do but to find the taking of goods, and that, if they do, they mustnecessarily find the party guilty, and leave the rest to the judge; andthat they have nothing to do with the word _felonice_ in the indictment?

The next point is to consider it as a question of constitutional policy, that is, whether the decision of the question of libel ought to be leftto the judges as a presumption of law, rather than to the jury as matterof popular judgment, as the malice in the case of murder, the felony inthe case of stealing. If the intent and tendency are not matters withinthe province of popular judgment, but legal and technical conclusions, formed upon general principles of law, let us see what they are. Certainly they are most unfavourable, indeed, totally adverse, to theConstitution of this country. 

Here we must have recourse to analogies, for we cannot argue on ruledcases one way or the other. See the history. The old books, deficientin general in Crown cases furnish us with little on this head. As to thecrime, in the very early Saxon Law, I see an offence of this species, called Folk-leasing, made a capital offence, but no very precisedefinition of the crime, and no trial at all: see the statute of 3rdEdward I. Cap. 34. The law of libels could not have arrived at a veryearly period in this country. It is no wonder that we find no vestige ofany constitution from authority, or of any deductions from legal sciencein our old books and records upon that subject. The statute of_scandalum magnatum_ is the oldest that I know, and this goes but alittle way in this sort of learning. Libelling is not the crime of anilliterate people. When they were thought no mean clerks who could readand write, when he who could read and write was presumptively a person inholy orders, libels could not be general or dangerous; and scandalsmerely oral could spread little, and must perish soon. It is writing, itis printing more emphatically, that imps calumny with those eagle wings, on which, as the poet says, "immortal slanders fly. " By the press theyspread, they last, they leave the sting in the wound. Printing was notknown in England much earlier than the reign of Henry VII. , and in thethird year of that reign the Court of Star Chamber was established. Thepress and its enemy are nearly coeval. As no positive law against libelsexisted, they fell under the indefinite class of misdemeanours. For thetrial of misdemeanours that court was instituted, their tendency toproduce riots and disorders was a main part of the charge, and was laid, in order to give the court jurisdiction chiefly against libels. Theoffence was new. Learning of their own upon the subject they had none, and they were obliged to resort to the only emporium where it was to behad, the Roman Law. After the Star Chamber was abolished in the 10th ofCharles I. Its authority indeed ceased, but its maxims subsisted andsurvived it. The spirit of the Star Chamber has transmigrated and livedagain, and Westminster Hall was obliged to borrow from the Star Chamber, for the same reasons as the Star Chamber had borrowed from the RomanForum, because they had no law, statute, or tradition of their own. Thusthe Roman Law took possession of our courts, I mean its doctrine, not itssanctions; the severity of capital punishment was omitted, all the restremained. The grounds of these laws are just and equitable. Undoubtedlythe good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the lawsas well as his life, and liberty, and property. Good fame is an outwork, that defends them all, and renders them all valuable. The law forbidsyou to revenge; when it ties up the hands of some, it ought to restrainthe tongues of others. The good fame of government is the same, it oughtnot to be traduced. This is necessary in all government, and if opinionbe support, what takes away this destroys that support; but the libertyof the press is necessary to this government. 

The wisdom, however, of government is of more importance than the laws. Ishould study the temper of the people before I ventured on actions ofthis kind. I would consider the whole of the prosecution of a libel ofsuch importance as Junius, as one piece, as one consistent plan ofoperations; and I would contrive it so that, if I were defeated, I shouldnot be disgraced; that even my victory should not be more ignominiousthan my defeat; I would so manage, that the lowest in the predicament ofguilt should not be the only one in punishment. I would not informagainst the mere vender of a collection of pamphlets. I would not puthim to trial first, if I could possibly avoid it. I would rather standthe consequences of my first error, than carry it to a judgment that mustdisgrace my prosecution, or the court. We ought to examine these thingsin a manner which becomes ourselves, and becomes the object of theinquiry; not to examine into the most important consideration which cancome before us, with minds heated with prejudice and filled withpassions, with vain popular opinions and humours, and when we propose toexamine into the justice of others, to be unjust ourselves. 

An inquiry is wished, as the most effectual way of putting an end to theclamours and libels, which are the disorder and disgrace of the times. For people remain quiet, they sleep secure, when they imagine that thevigilant eye of a censorial magistrate watches over all the proceedingsof judicature, and that the sacred fire of an eternal constitutionaljealousy, which is the guardian of liberty, law, and justice, is alivenight and day, and burning in this house. But when the magistrate givesup his office and his duty, the people assume it, and they inquire toomuch, and too irreverently, because they think their representatives donot inquire at all. 

We have in a libel, 1st. The writing. 2nd. The communication, calledby the lawyers the publication. 3rd. The application to persons andfacts. 4th. The intent and tendency. 5th. The matter--diminution offame. The law presumptions on all these are in the communication. Nointent can, make a defamatory publication good, nothing can make it havea good tendency; truth is not pleadable. Taken juridically, thefoundation of these law presumptions is not unjust; takenconstitutionally, they are ruinous, and tend to the total suppression ofall publication. If juries are confined to the fact, no writing whichcensures, however justly, or however temperately, the conduct ofadministration, can be unpunished. Therefore, if the intent and tendencybe left to the judge, as legal conclusions growing from the fact, you maydepend upon it you can have no public discussion of a public measure, which is a point which even those who are most offended with thelicentiousness of the press (and it is very exorbitant, very provoking)will hardly contend for. 

So far as to the first opinion, that the doctrine is right and needs noalteration. 2nd. The next is, that it is wrong, but that we are not in acondition to help it. I admit, it is true, that there are cases of anature so delicate and complicated, that an Act of Parliament on thesubject may become a matter of great difficulty. It sometimes cannotdefine with exactness, because the subject-matter will not bear an exactdefinition. It may seem to take away everything which it does notpositively establish, and this might be inconvenient; or it may seem_vice versa_ to establish everything which it does not expressly takeaway. It may be more advisable to leave such matters to the enlighteneddiscretion of a judge, awed by a censorial House of Commons. But then itrests upon those who object to a legislative interposition to prove theseinconveniences in the particular case before them. For it would be amost dangerous, as it is a most idle and most groundless, conceit toassume as a general principle, that the rights and liberties of thesubject are impaired by the care and attention of the legislature tosecure them. If so, very ill would the purchase of Magna Charta havemerited the deluge of blood, which was shed in order to have the body ofEnglish privileges defined by a positive written law. This charter, theinestimable monument of English freedom, so long the boast and glory ofthis nation, would have been at once an instrument of our servitude, anda monument of our folly, if this principle were true. The thirty fourconfirmations would have been only so many repetitions of theirabsurdity, so many new links in the chain, and so many invalidations oftheir right. 

You cannot open your statute book without seeing positive provisionsrelative to every right of the subject. This business of juries is thesubject of not fewer than a dozen. To suppose that juries are somethinginnate in the Constitution of Great Britain, that they have jumped, likeMinerva, out of the head of Jove in complete armour, is a weak fancy, supported neither by precedent nor by reason. Whatever is most ancientand venerable in our Constitution, royal prerogative, privileges ofparliament, rights of elections, authority of courts, juries, must havebeen modelled according to the occasion. I spare your patience, and Ipay a compliment to your understanding, in not attempting to prove thatanything so elaborate and artificial as a jury was not the work ofchance, but a matter of institution, brought to its present state by thejoint efforts of legislative authority and juridical prudence. It neednot be ashamed of being (what in many parts of it at least it is) theoffspring of an Act of Parliament, unless it is a shame for our laws tobe the results of our legislature. Juries, which sensitively shrank fromthe rude touch of parliamentary remedy, have been the subject of notfewer than, I think, forty-three Acts of Parliament, in which they havebeen changed with all the authority of a creator over its creature, fromMagna Charta to the great alterations which were made in the 29th ofGeorge II. 

To talk of this matter in any other way is to turn a rational principleinto an idle and vulgar superstition, like the antiquary, Dr. Woodward, who trembled to have his shield scoured, for fear it should be discoveredto be no better than an old pot-lid. This species of tenderness to ajury puts me in mind of a gentleman of good condition, who had beenreduced to great poverty and distress; application was made to some richfellows in his neighbourhood to give him some assistance; but they beggedto be excused for fear of affronting a person of his high birth; and sothe poor gentleman was left to starve out of pure respect to theantiquity of his family. From this principle has risen an opinion that Ifind current amongst gentlemen, that this distemper ought to be left tocure itself; that the judges having been well exposed, and somethingterrified on account of these clamours, will entirely change, if not verymuch relax from their rigour; if the present race should not change, thatthe chances of succession may put other more constitutional judges intheir place; lastly, if neither should happen, yet that the spirit of anEnglish jury will always be sufficient for the vindication of its ownrights, and will not suffer itself to be overborne by the bench. Iconfess that I totally dissent from all these opinions. Thesesuppositions become the strongest reasons with me to evince the necessityof some clear and positive settlement of this question of contestedjurisdiction. If judges are so full of levity, so full of timidity, ifthey are influenced by such mean and unworthy passions, that a popularclamour is sufficient to shake the resolution they build upon the solidbasis of a legal principle, I would endeavour to fix that mercury by apositive law. If to please an administration the judges can go one wayto-day, and to please the crowd they can go another to-morrow; if theywill oscillate backward and forward between power and popularity, it ishigh time to fix the law in such a manner as to resemble, as it ought, the great Author of all law, in "whom there is no variableness nor shadowof turning. "

As to their succession, I have just the same opinion. I would not leaveit to the chances of promotion, or to the characters of lawyers, what thelaw of the land, what the rights of juries, or what the liberty of thepress should be. My law should not depend upon the fluctuation of thecloset, or the complexion of men. Whether a black-haired man or a fair-haired man presided in the Court of King's Bench, I would have the lawthe same: the same whether he was born in _domo regnatrice_, and suckedfrom his infancy the milk of courts, or was nurtured in the ruggeddiscipline of a popular opposition. This law of court cabal and ofparty, this _mens quaedam nullo perturbata affectu_, this law ofcomplexion, ought not to be endured for a moment in a country whose beingdepends upon the certainty, clearness, and stability of institutions. 

Now I come to the last substitute for the proposed bill, the spirit ofjuries operating their own jurisdiction. This, I confess, I think theworst of all, for the same reasons on which I objected to the others, andfor other weighty reasons besides which are separate and distinct. First, because juries, being taken at random out of a mass of men infinitelylarge, must be of characters as various as the body they arise from islarge in its extent. If the judges differ in their complexions, muchmore will a jury. A timid jury will give way to an awful judgedelivering oracularly the law, and charging them on their oaths, andputting it home to their consciences, to beware of judging where the lawhad given them no competence. We know that they will do so, they havedone so in a hundred instances; a respectable member of your own house, no vulgar man, tells you that on the authority of a judge he found a manguilty, in whom, at the same time, he could find no guilt. But supposingthem full of knowledge and full of manly confidence in themselves, howwill their knowledge, or their confidence, inform or inspirit others?They give no reason for their verdict, they can but condemn or acquit;and no man can tell the motives on which they have acquitted orcondemned. So that this hope of the power of juries to assert their ownjurisdiction must be a principle blind, as being without reason, and aschangeable as the complexion of men and the temper of the times. 

But, after all, is it fit that this dishonourable contention between thecourt and juries should subsist any longer? On what principle is it thata jury refuses to be directed by the court as to his competence? Whethera libel or no libel be a question of law or of fact may be doubted, but aquestion of jurisdiction and competence is certainly a question of law;on this the court ought undoubtedly to judge, and to judge solely andexclusively. If they judge wrong from excusable error, you ought tocorrect it, as to-day it is proposed, by an explanatory bill; or if bycorruption, by bill of penalties declaratory, and by punishment. Whatdoes a juror say to a judge when he refuses his opinion upon a questionof judicature? You are so corrupt, that I should consider myself apartaker of your crime, were I to be guided by your opinion; or you areso grossly ignorant, that I, fresh from my bounds, from my plough, mycounter, or my loom, am fit to direct you in your profession. This is anunfitting, it is a dangerous, state of things. The spirit of any sort ofmen is not a fit rule for deciding on the bounds of their jurisdiction. First, because it is different in different men, and even different inthe same at different times; and can never become the proper directingline of law; next, because it is not reason, but feeling; and when onceit is irritated, it is not apt to confine itself within its properlimits. If it becomes, not difference in opinion upon law, but a trialof spirit between parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple ofjustice, but the amphitheatre for gladiators. No--God forbid! Juriesought to take their law from the bench only; but it is our business thatthey should hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to theprinciples of the Constitution. The jury are to hear the judge, thejudge is to hear the law where it speaks plain; where it does not, he isto hear the legislature. As I do not think these opinions of the judgesto be agreeable to those principles, I wish to take the only method inwhich they can or ought to be corrected, by bill. 

Next, my opinion is, that it ought to be rather by a bill for removingcontroversies than by a bill in the state of manifest and expressdeclaration, and in words _de praeterito_. I do this upon reasons ofequity and constitutional policy. I do not want to censure the presentjudges. I think them to be excused for their error. Ignorance is noexcuse for a judge: it is changing the nature of his crime--it is notabsolving. It must be such error as a wise and conscientious judge maypossibly fall into, and must arise from one or both these causes: first, a plausible principle of law; secondly, the precedents of respectableauthorities, and in good times. In the first, the principle of law, thatthe judge is to decide on law, the jury to decide on fact, is an ancientand venerable principle and maxim of the law, and if supported in thisapplication by precedents of good times and of good men, the judge, ifwrong, ought to be corrected; he ought not to be reproved, or to bedisgraced, or the authority or respect to your tribunals to be impaired. In cases in which declaratory bills have been made, where by violence andcorruption some fundamental part of the Constitution has been struck at;where they would damn the principle, censure the persons, and annul theacts; but where the law having been, by the accident of human frailty, depraved, or in a particular instance misunderstood, where you neithermean to rescind the acts, nor to censure the persons, in such cases youhave taken the explanatory mode, and, without condemning what is done, you direct the future judgment of the court. 

All bills for the reformation of the law must be according to the subject-matter, the circumstances, and the occasion, and are of four kinds:--1. Either the law is totally wanting, and then a new enacting statute mustbe made to supply that want; or, 2. It is defective, then a new law mustbe made to enforce it. 3. Or it is opposed by power or fraud, and thenan act must be made to declare it. 4 Or it is rendered doubtful andcontroverted, and then a law must be made to explain it. These must beapplied according to the exigence of the case; one is just as good asanother of them. Miserable, indeed, would be the resources, poor andunfurnished the stores and magazines of legislation, if we were bound upto a little narrow form, and not able to frame our acts of parliamentaccording to every disposition of our own minds, and to every possibleemergency of the commonwealth; to make them declaratory, enforcing, explanatory, repealing, just in what mode, or in what degree we please. 

Those who think that the judges, living and dead, are to be condemned, that your tribunals of justice are to be dishonoured, that their acts andjudgments on this business are to be rescinded, they will undoubtedlyvote against this bill, and for another sort. 

I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbing thepublic repose; I like a clamour whenever there is an abuse. The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burnedin your bed. The hue and cry alarms the county, but it preserves all theproperty of the province. All these clamours aim at redress. But aclamour made merely for the purpose of rendering the people discontentedwith their situation, without an endeavour to give them a practicalremedy, is indeed one of the worst acts of sedition. 

I have read and heard much upon the conduct of our courts in the businessof libels. I was extremely willing to enter into, and very free to actas facts should turn out on that inquiry, aiming constantly at remedy asthe end of all clamour, all debate, all writing, and all inquiry; forwhich reason I did embrace, and do now with joy, this method of givingquiet to the courts, jurisdiction to juries, liberty to the press, andsatisfaction to the people. I thank my friends for what they have done;I hope the public will one day reap the benefit of their pious andjudicious endeavours. They have now sown the seed; I hope they will liveto see the flourishing harvest. Their bill is sown in weakness; it will, I trust, be reaped in power; and then, however, we shall have reason toapply to them what my Lord Coke says was an aphorism continually in themouth of a great sage of the law, "Blessed be not the complaining tongue, but blessed be the amending hand. "

SPEECH ON A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS

It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into thefoundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to resort tothe theory of your government whenever you propose any alteration in theframe of it, whether that alteration means the revival of some formerantiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the introduction ofsome new improvement in the commonwealth. The object of our deliberationis, to promote the good purposes for which elections have beeninstituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequentelections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a triflinginconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution wouldsweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited toyour disease--your present disease, and to your whole disease. That manthinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, ofany contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sortof approach to perfection. There is not, there never was, a principle ofgovernment under heaven, that does not, in the very pursuit of the goodit proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into some inconvenience, whichmakes it absolutely necessary to counterwork and weaken the applicationof that first principle itself; and to abandon something of the extent ofthe advantage you proposed by it, in order to prevent also theinconveniences which have arisen from the instrument of all the good youhad in view. 

To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of thepeople is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannotbe obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popularelection is a mighty evil. It is such, and so great an evil, that thoughthere are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, veryfew are now elected. They are the distempers of elections, that havedestroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if notimpossible; the only thing therefore left to save the commonwealth is toprevent their return too frequently. The objects in view are, to haveparliaments as frequent as they can be without distracting them in theprosecution of public business; on one hand, to secure their dependenceupon the people, on the other to give them that quiet in their minds, andthat ease in their fortunes, as to enable them to perform the mostarduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency, with independency, and with experience, as real public counsellors, notas the canvassers at a perpetual election. It is wise to compass as manygood ends as possibly you can, and seeing there are inconveniences onboth sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit tosoften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable, because thedisorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly bederived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible hour, and may it be a very late one!

This bill, I fear, would precipitate one of two consequences, I know notwhich most likely, or which most dangerous: either that the Crown by itsconstant stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear out allopposition in elections, or that a violent and furious popular spiritwould arise. I must see, to satisfy me, the remedies; I must see, fromtheir operation in the cure of the old evil, and in the cure of those newevils, which are inseparable from all remedies, how they balance eachother, and what is the total result. The excellence of mathematics andmetaphysics is to have but one thing before you, but he forms the bestjudgment in all moral disquisitions, who has the greatest number andvariety of considerations, in one view before him, and can take them inwith the best possible consideration of the middle results of all. 

We of the opposition, who are not friends to the bill, give this pledgeat least of our integrity and sincerity to the people, that in oursituation of systematic opposition to the present ministers, in which allour hope of rendering it effectual depends upon popular interest andfavour, we will not flatter them by a surrender of our uninfluencedjudgment and opinion; we give a security, that if ever we should be inanother situation, no flattery to any other sort of power and influencewould induce us to act against the true interests of the people. 

All are agreed that parliaments should not be perpetual; the onlyquestion is, what is the most convenient time for their duration? Onwhich there are three opinions. We are agreed, too, that the term oughtnot to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, andto augment the already overgrown influence of the crown. On theseprinciples I mean to debate the question. It is easy to pretend a zealfor liberty. Those who think themselves not likely to be encumbered withthe performance of their promises, either from their known inability, ortotal indifference about the performance, never fail to entertain themost lofty ideas. They are certainly the most specious, and they costthem neither reflection to frame, nor pains to modify, nor management tosupport. The task is of another nature to those who mean to promisenothing that it is not in their intentions, or may possibly be in theirpower to perform; to those who are bound and principled no more to deludethe understandings than to violate the liberty of their fellow-subjects. Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of thepeople. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought, is to givethem information, and not to receive it from them; we are not to go toschool to them to learn the principles of law and government. In doingso we should not dutifully serve, but we should basely and scandalouslybetray, the people, who are not capable of this service by nature, nor inany instance called to it by the Constitution. I reverentially look upto the opinion of the people, and with an awe that is almostsuperstitious. I should be ashamed to show my face before them, if Ichanged my ground, as they cried up or cried down men, or things, oropinions; if I wavered and shifted about with every change, and joined init, or opposed, as best answered any low interest or passion; if I heldthem up hopes, which I knew I never intended, or promised what I wellknew I could not perform. Of all these things they are perfect sovereignjudges without appeal; but as to the detail of particular measures, or toany general schemes of policy, they have neither enough of speculation inthe closet, nor of experience in business, to decide upon it. They canwell see whether we are tools of a court, or their honest servants. Ofthat they can well judge; and I wish that they always exercised theirjudgment; but of the particular merits of a measure I have otherstandards. That the frequency of elections proposed by this bill has atendency to increase the power and consideration of the electors, notlessen corruptibility, I do most readily allow; so far as it isdesirable, this is what it has; I will tell you now what it has not: 1st. It has no sort of tendency to increase their integrity and public spirit, unless an increase of power has an operation upon voters in elections, that it has in no other situation in the world, and upon no other part ofmankind. 2nd. This bill has no tendency to limit the quantity ofinfluence in the Crown, to render its operation more difficult, or tocounteract that operation, which it cannot prevent, in any waywhatsoever. It has its full weight, its full range, and its uncontrolledoperation on the electors exactly as it had before. 3rd. Nor, thirdly, does it abate the interest or inclination of Ministers to apply thatinfluence to the electors: on the contrary, it renders it much morenecessary to them, if they seek to have a majority in parliament, toincrease the means of that influence, and redouble their diligence, andto sharpen dexterity in the application. The whole effect of the bill istherefore the removing the application of some part of the influence fromthe elected to the electors, and further to strengthen and extend a courtinterest already great and powerful in boroughs; here to fix theirmagazines and places of arms, and thus to make them the principal, notthe secondary, theatre of their manoeuvres for securing a determinedmajority in parliament. 

I believe nobody will deny that the electors are corruptible. They aremen; it is saying nothing worse of them; many of them are butill-informed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easilyover-reached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruptionare the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible andhypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there isalready no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blindfury, and interested faction among the electors in many parts of thiskingdom: nor is it surprising, or at all blamable, in that class ofprivate men, when they see their neighbours aggrandised, and themselvespoor and virtuous, without that _eclat_ or dignity which attends men inhigher stations. 

But admit it were true that the great mass of the electors were too vastan object for court influence to grasp, or extend to, and that in despairthey must abandon it; he must be very ignorant of the state of everypopular interest, who does not know that in all the corporations, all theopen boroughs--indeed, in every district of the kingdom--there is someleading man, some agitator, some wealthy merchant, or considerablemanufacturer, some active attorney, some popular preacher, some money-lender, &c. , &c. , who is followed by the whole flock. This is the styleof all free countries. 

 --Multum in Fabia valet hic, valet ille Velina; Cuilibet hic fasces dabit eripietque curule. 

These spirits, each of which informs and governs his own little orb, areneither so many, nor so little powerful, nor so incorruptible, but that aMinister may, as he does frequently, find means of gaining them, andthrough them all their followers. To establish, therefore, a verygeneral influence among electors will no more be found an impracticableproject, than to gain an undue influence over members of parliament. Therefore I am apprehensive that this bill, though it shifts the place ofthe disorder, does by no means relieve the Constitution. I went throughalmost every contested election in the beginning of this parliament, andacted as a manager in very many of them: by which, though at a school ofpretty severe and ragged discipline, I came to have some degree ofinstruction concerning the means by which parliamentary interests are ingeneral procured and supported. 

Theory, I know, would suppose, that every general election is to therepresentative a day of judgment, in which he appears before hisconstituents to account for the use of the talent with which theyentrusted him, and of the improvement he had made of it for the publicadvantage. It would be so, if every corruptible representative were tofind an enlightened and incorruptible constituent. But the practice andknowledge of the world will not suffer us to be ignorant, that theConstitution on paper is one thing, and in fact and experience isanother. We must know that the candidate, instead of trusting at hiselection to the testimony of his behaviour in parliament, must bring thetestimony of a large sum of money, the capacity of liberal expense inentertainments, the power of serving and obliging the rulers ofcorporations, of winning over the popular leaders of political clubs, associations, and neighbourhoods. It is ten thousand times morenecessary to show himself a man of power, than a man of integrity, inalmost all the elections with which I have been acquainted. Elections, therefore, become a matter of heavy expense; and if contests arefrequent, to many they will become a matter of an expense totallyruinous, which no fortunes can bear; but least of all the landedfortunes, encumbered as they often, indeed as they mostly are, withdebts, with portions, with jointures; and tied up in the hands of thepossessor by the limitations of settlement. It is a material, it is inmy opinion a lasting, consideration, in all the questions concerningelection. Let no one think the charges of election a trivial matter. 

The charge, therefore, of elections ought never to be lost sight of, in aquestion concerning their frequency, because the grand object you seek isindependence. Independence of mind will ever be more or less influencedby independence of fortune; and if, every three years, the exhaustingsluices of entertainments, drinkings, open houses, to say nothing ofbribery, are to be periodically drawn up and renewed--if governmentfavours, for which now, in some shape or other, the whole race of men arecandidates, are to be called for upon every occasion, I see that privatefortunes will be washed away, and every, even to the least, trace ofindependence, borne down by the torrent. I do not seriously think thisConstitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive five triennialelections. If you are to fight the battle, you must put on the armour ofthe Ministry; you must call in the public, to the aid of private, money. The expense of the last election has been computed (and I am persuadedthat it has not been overrated) at 1, 500, 000 pounds; three shillings inthe pound more on the Land Tax. About the close of the last Parliament, and the beginning of this, several agents for boroughs went about, and Iremember well that it was in every one of their mouths--"Sir, yourelection will cost you three thousand pounds, if you are independent; butif the Ministry supports you, it may be done for two, and perhaps forless;" and, indeed, the thing spoke itself. Where a living was to be gotfor one, a commission in the army for another, a post in the navy for athird, and Custom-house offices scattered about without measure ornumber, who doubts but money may be saved? The Treasury may even addmoney; but, indeed, it is superfluous. A gentleman of two thousand ayear, who meets another of the same fortune, fights with equal arms; butif to one of the candidates you add a thousand a year in places forhimself, and a power of giving away as much among others, one must, orthere is no truth in arithmetical demonstration, ruin his adversary, ifhe is to meet him and to fight with him every third year. It will besaid, I do not allow for the operation of character; but I do; and I knowit will have its weight in most elections; perhaps it may be decisive insome. But there are few in which it will prevent great expenses. 

The destruction of independent fortunes will be the consequence on thepart of the candidate. What will be the consequence of triennialcorruption, triennial drunkenness, triennial idleness, trienniallaw-suits, litigations, prosecutions, triennial frenzy; of societydissolved, industry interrupted, ruined; of those personal hatreds thatwill never be suffered to soften; those animosities and feuds, which willbe rendered immortal; those quarrels, which are never to be appeased;morals vitiated and gangrened to the vitals? I think no stable anduseful advantages were ever made by the money got at elections by thevoter, but all he gets is doubly lost to the public; it is money given todiminish the general stock of the community, which is the industry of thesubject. I am sure that it is a good while before he or his familysettle again to their business. Their heads will never cool; thetemptations of elections will be for ever glittering before their eyes. They will all grow politicians; every one, quitting his business, willchoose to enrich himself by his vote. They will take the gauging-rod;new places will be made for them; they will run to the Custom-house quay, their looms and ploughs will be deserted. 

So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, thoughthose of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction, bribery, bread, and stage plays to debauch them. We have theinflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them. Therethe contest was only between citizen and citizen; here you have thecontests of ambitious citizens on one side, supported by the Crown, tooppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambitionon the other. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge ofelections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to thepeople. I think, therefore, the independent candidate and elector mayeach be destroyed by it, the whole body of the community be an infinitesufferer, and a vicious Ministry the only gainer. Gentlemen, I know, feel the weight of this argument; they agree that this would be theconsequence of more frequent elections, if things were to continue asthey are. But they think the greatness and frequency of the evil woulditself be a remedy for it; that, sitting but for a short time, the memberwould not find it worth while to make such vast expenses, while the fearof their constituents will hold them the more effectually to their duty. 

To this I answer, that experience is full against them. This is no newthing; we have had triennial parliaments; at no period of time were seatsmore eagerly contested. The expenses of elections ran higher, taking thestate of all charges, than they do now. The expense of entertainmentswas such, that an Act, equally severe and ineffectual, was made againstit; every monument of the time bears witness of the expense, and most ofthe Acts against corruption in elections were then made; all the writerstalked of it and lamented it. Will any one think that a corporation willbe contented with a bowl of punch, or a piece of beef the less, becauseelections are every three, instead of every seven years? Will theychange their wine for ale, because they are to get more ale three yearshence? Do not think it. Will they make fewer demands for the advantagesof patronage in favours and offices, because their member is brought moreunder their power? We have not only our own historical experience inEngland upon this subject, but we have the experience co-existing with usin Ireland, where, since their Parliament has been shortened, the expenseof elections has been so far from being lowered that it has been verynear doubled. Formerly they sat for the king's life; the ordinary chargeof a seat in Parliament was then 1, 500 pounds. They now sit eight years, four sessions: it is now 2, 500 pounds and upwards. The spirit ofemulation has also been extremely increased, and all who are acquaintedwith the tone of that country have no doubt that the spirit is stillgrowing, that new candidates will take the field, that the contests willbe more violent, and the expenses of elections larger than ever. 

It never can be otherwise. A seat in this House, for good purposes, forbad purposes, for no purpose at all (except the mere considerationderived from being concerned in the public councils) will ever be a first-rate object of ambition in England. Ambition is no exact calculator. Avarice itself does not calculate strictly when it games. One thing iscertain, that in this political game the great lottery of power is thatinto which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. InTurkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are soinsecure, that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that thebowstring is the natural death of Bashaws, yet in no country is power anddistinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with suchboundless avidity, as if the value of place was enhanced by the dangerand insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ever make a seat in thisHouse not an object of desire to numbers by any means or at any charge, but the depriving it of all power and all dignity. This would do it. This is the true and only nostrum for that purpose. But a House ofCommons without power and without dignity, either in itself or itsmembers, is no House of Commons for the purposes of this Constitution. 

But they will be afraid to act ill, if they know that the day of theiraccount is always near. I wish it were true, but it is not; here againwe have experience, and experience is against us. The distemper of thisage is a poverty of spirit and of genius; it is trifling, it is futile, worse than ignorant, superficially taught, with the politics and moralsof girls at a boarding-school, rather than of men and statesmen; but itis not yet desperately wicked, or so scandalously venal as in formertimes. Did not a triennial parliament give up the national dignity, approve the Peace of Utrecht, and almost give up everything else intaking every step to defeat the Protestant succession? Was not theConstitution saved by those who had no election at all to go to, theLords, because the Court applied to electors, and by various meanscarried them from their true interests; so that the Tory Ministry had amajority without an application to a single member? Now, as to theconduct of the members, it was then far from pure and independent. Bribery was infinitely more flagrant. A predecessor of yours, Mr. Speaker, put the question of his own expulsion for bribery. Sir WilliamMusgrave was a wise man, a grave man, an independent man, a man of goodfortune and good family; however, he carried on while in opposition atraffic, a shameful traffic with the Ministry. Bishop Burnet knew of6, 000 pounds which he had received at one payment. I believe the paymentof sums in hard money--plain, naked bribery--is rare amongst us. It wasthen far from uncommon. 

A triennial was near ruining, a septennial parliament saved, yourConstitution; nor perhaps have you ever known a more flourishing periodfor the union of national prosperity, dignity, and liberty, than thesixty years you have passed under that Constitution of parliament. 

The shortness of time, in which they are to reap the profits of iniquity, is far from checking the avidity of corrupt men; it renders theminfinitely more ravenous. They rush violently and precipitately on theirobject, they lose all regard to decorum. The moments of profit areprecious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It wasso in the great plague at Athens, every symptom of which (and this itsworst amongst the rest) is so finely related by a great historian ofantiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. It appears insoldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render the life of manmuch shorter than it is, would, I am satisfied, find the surest recipefor increasing the wickedness of our nature. 

Thus, in my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have thefollowing ill effects:--It would make the member more shamelessly andshockingly corrupt, it would increase his dependence on those who couldbest support him at his election, it would wrack and tear to pieces thefortunes of those who stood upon their own fortunes and their privateinterest, it would make the electors infinitely more venal, and it wouldmake the whole body of the people, who are, whether they have votes ornot, concerned in elections, more lawless, more idle, more debauched; itwould utterly destroy the sobriety, the industry, the integrity, thesimplicity of all the people, and undermine, I am much afraid, thedeepest and best laid foundations of the commonwealth. 

Those who have spoken and written upon this subject without doors, do notso much deny the probable existence of these inconveniences in theirmeasure, as they trust for the prevention to remedies of various sorts, which they propose. First, a place bill; but if this will not do, asthey fear it will not, then, they say, we will have a rotation, and acertain number of you shall be rendered incapable of being elected forten years. Then, for the electors, they shall ballot; the members ofparliament also shall decide by ballot; and a fifth project is the changeof the present legal representation of the kingdom. On all this I shallobserve, that it will be very unsuitable to your wisdom to adopt theproject of a bill, to which there are objections insuperable by anythingin the bill itself, upon the hope that those objections may be removed bysubsequent projects; every one of which is full of difficulties of itsown, and which are all of them very essential alterations in theConstitution. This seems very irregular and unusual. If anything shouldmake this a very doubtful measure, what can make it more so than that, inthe opinion of its advocates, it would aggravate all our oldinconveniences in such a manner as to require a total alteration in theConstitution of the kingdom? If the remedies are proper in a triennial, they will not be less so in septennial elections; let us try them first, see how the House relishes them, see how they will operate in the nation;and then, having felt your way, you will be prepared against theseinconveniences. 

The honourable gentleman sees that I respect the principle upon which hegoes, as well as his intentions and his abilities. He will believe thatI do not differ from him wantonly, and on trivial grounds. He is verysure that it was not his embracing one way which determined me to takethe other. I have not, in newspapers, to derogate from his fair famewith the nation, printed the first rude sketch of his bill withungenerous and invidious comments. I have not, in conversationsindustriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches ofthis House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and asgroundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened withthis proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, whichwas to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind ofincantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools ofhis muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by aperversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition haltsbetween the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those whostart up three at a time, and fall upon and strike at him with so mucheagerness, that our daggers hack one another in his sides. My honourablefriend has not brought down a spirited imp of chivalry, to win the firstachievement and blazon of arms on his milk-white shield in a field listedagainst him, nor brought out the generous offspring of lions, and said tothem, "Not against that side of the forest, beware of that--here is theprey where you are to fasten your paws;" and seasoning his unpractisedjaws with blood, tell him, "This is the milk for which you are to thirsthereafter. " We furnish at his expense no holiday, nor suspend hell thata crafty Ixion may have rest from his wheel; nor give the commonadversary, if he be a common adversary, reason to say, "I would have putin my word to oppose, but the eagerness of your allies in your social warwas such that I could not break in upon you. " I hope he sees and feels, and that every member sees and feels along with him, the differencebetween amicable dissent and civil discord. 

SPEECH ON REFORM OF REPRESENTATION IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONSJUNE, 1784

Mr. Speaker, --We have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenthcentury, that the Constitution of England, which for a series of ages hadbeen the proud distinction of this country, always the admiration, andsometimes the envy, of the wise and learned in every other nation--wehave discovered that this boasted Constitution, in the most boasted partof it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding of mankind, an insultto their feelings, and acting by contrivances destructive to the best andmost valuable interests of the people. Our political architects havetaken a survey of the fabric of the British Constitution. It is singularthat they report nothing against the Crown, nothing against the Lords;but in the House of Commons everything is unsound; it is ruinous in everypart. It is infested by the dry rot, and ready to tumble about our earswithout their immediate help. You know by the faults they find what aretheir ideas of the alteration. As all government stands upon opinion, they know that the way utterly to destroy it is to remove that opinion, to take away all reverence, all confidence from it; and then, at thefirst blast of public discontent and popular tumult, it tumbles to theground. 

In considering this question, they who oppose it, oppose it on differentgrounds; one is in the nature of a previous question--that somealterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for makingthem. The other is, that no essential alterations are at all wanting, and that neither now, nor at any time, is it prudent or safe to bemeddling with the fundamental principles and ancient tried usages of ourConstitution--that our representation is as nearly perfect as thenecessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures willsuffer it to be; and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use andthankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and rash experiment. 

On the other side, there are two parties, who proceed on two grounds--inmy opinion, as they state them, utterly irreconcilable. The one isjuridical, the other political. The one is in the nature of a claim ofright, on the supposed rights of man as man; this party desire thedecision of a suit. The other ground, as far as I can divine what itdirectly means, is, that the representation is not so politically framedas to answer the theory of its institution. As to the claim of right, the meanest petitioner, the most gross and ignorant, is as good as thebest; in some respects his claim is more favourable on account of hisignorance; his weakness, his poverty and distress only add to his titles;he sues _in forma pauperis_: he ought to be a favourite of the Court. Butwhen the other ground is taken, when the question is political, when anew Constitution is to be made on a sound theory of government, then thepresumptuous pride of didactic ignorance is to be excluded from thecouncil in this high and arduous matter, which often bids defiance to theexperience of the wisest. The first claims a personal representation;the latter rejects it with scorn and fervour. The language of the firstparty is plain and intelligible; they who plead an absolute right, cannotbe satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because allnatural rights must be the rights of individuals: as by nature there isno such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these ideas aremere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men asmen are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject theprinciple of natural and personal representation, are essentially andeternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort ofreformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British Constitutionupon any or all of its bases; for they lay it down, that every man oughtto govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send hisrepresentative; that all other government is usurpation, and is so farfrom having a claim to our obedience, that it is not only our right, butour duty, to resist it. Nine-tenths of the reformers argue thus--thatis, on the natural right. It is impossible not to make some reflectionon the nature of this claim, or avoid a comparison between the extent ofthe principle and the present object of the demand. If this claim befounded, it is clear to what it goes. The House of Commons, in thatlight, undoubtedly is no representative of the people as a collection ofindividuals. Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion. When you come to examine into this claim of right, founded on the rightof self-government in each individual, you find the thing demandedinfinitely short of the principle of the demand. What! one-third only ofthe legislature, of the government no share at all? What sort of treatyof partition is this for those who have no inherent right to the whole?Give them all they ask, and your grant is still a cheat; for how comesonly a third to be their younger children's fortune in this settlement?How came they neither to have the choice of kings, or lords, or judges, or generals, or admirals, or bishops, or priests, or ministers, orjustices of peace? Why, what have you to answer in favour of the priorrights of the Crown and peerage but this--our Constitution is aproscriptive Constitution; it is a Constitution whose sole authority is, that it has existed time out of mind. It is settled in these twoportions against one, legislatively; and in the whole of the judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of the executive, the prudential andthe financial administration, in one alone. Nor were your House of Lordsand the prerogatives of the Crown settled on any adjudication in favourof natural rights, for they could never be so portioned. Your king, yourlords, your judges, your juries, grand and little, all are prescriptive;and what proves it is the disputes not yet concluded, and never nearbecoming so, when any of them first originated. Prescription is the mostsolid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to secure thatproperty, to government. They harmonise with each other, and give mutualaid to one another. It is accompanied with another ground of authorityin the constitution of the human mind--presumption. It is a presumptionin favour of any settled scheme of government against any untriedproject, that a nation has long existed and flourished under it. It is abetter presumption even of the choice of a nation, far better than anysudden and temporary arrangement by actual election. Because a nation isnot an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as innumbers and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one set ofpeople, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election ofages and of generations; it is a Constitution made by what is tenthousand times better than choice--it is made by the peculiarcircumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, andsocial habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a longspace of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body. Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind, unmeaningprejudices--for man is a most unwise, and a most wise being. Theindividual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, are foolish, whenthey act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time isgiven to it, as a species it almost always acts right. 

The reason for the Crown as it is, for the Lords as they are, is myreason for the Commons as they are, the electors as they are. Now, ifthe Crown and the Lords, and the judicatures, are all prescriptive, so isthe House of Commons of the very same origin, and of no other. We andour electors have powers and privileges both made and circumscribed byprescription, as much to the full as the other parts; and as such we havealways claimed them, and on no other title. The House of Commons is alegislative body corporate by prescription, not made upon any giventheory, but existing prescriptively--just like the rest. Thisprescription has made it essentially what it is--an aggregate collectionof three parts--knights, citizens, burgesses. The question is, whetherthis has been always so, since the House of Commons has taken its presentshape and circumstances, and has been an essential operative part of theConstitution; which, I take it, it has been for at least five hundredyears. 

This I resolve to myself in the affirmative: and then another questionarises; whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, andis not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as towant the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set itupright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;--whether itcontinues true to the principles upon which it has hithertostood;--whether this be _de facto_ the Constitution of the House ofCommons as it has been since the time that the House of Commons has, without dispute, become a necessary and an efficient part of the BritishConstitution? To ask whether a thing, which has always been the same, stands to its usual principle, seems to me to be perfectly absurd; forhow do you know the principles but from the construction? and if thatremains the same, the principles remain the same. It is true, that tosay your Constitution is what it has been, is no sufficient defence forthose who say it is a bad Constitution. It is an answer to those who saythat it is a degenerate Constitution. To those who say it is a bad one, I answer, Look to its effects. In all moral machinery the moral resultsare its test. 

On what grounds do we go to restore our Constitution to what it has beenat some given period, or to reform and reconstruct it upon principlesmore conformable to a sound theory of government? A prescriptivegovernment, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, never wasmade upon any foregone theory. It seems to me a preposterous way ofreasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories, whichlearned and speculative men have made from that government, and then, supposing it made on these theories, which were made from it, to accusethe government as not corresponding with them. I do not vilify theoryand speculation--no, because that would be to vilify reason itself. "_Neque decipitur ratio_, _neque decipit unquam_. " No; whenever I speakagainst theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is afalse theory is by comparing it with practice. This is the truetouchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men: Doesit suit his nature in general?--does it suit his nature as modified byhis habits?

The more frequently this affair is discussed, the stronger the caseappears to the sense and the feelings of mankind. I have no more doubtthan I entertain of my existence, that this very thing, which is statedas a horrible thing, is the means of the preservation of our Constitutionwhilst it lasts: of curing it of many of the disorders which, attendingevery species of institution, would attend the principle of an exactlocal representation, or a representation on the principle of numbers. Ifyou reject personal representation, you are pushed upon expedience; andthen what they wish us to do is, to prefer their speculations on thatsubject to the happy experience of this country of a growing liberty anda growing prosperity for five hundred years. Whatever respect I have fortheir talents, this, for one, I will not do. Then what is the standardof expedience? Expedience is that which is good for the community, andgood for every individual in it. Now this expedience is the_desideratum_ to be sought, either without the experience of means, orwith that experience. If without, as in the case of the fabrication of anew commonwealth, I will hear the learned arguing what promises to beexpedient; but if we are to judge of a commonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is, What has been found expedient orinexpedient? And I will not take their promise rather than theperformance of the Constitution. 

But no; this was not the cause of the discontents. I went through mostof the northern parts--the Yorkshire election was then raging; the yearbefore, through most of the western counties--Bath, Bristol, Gloucester--not one word, either in the towns or country, on the subjectof representation; much on the receipt tax, something on Mr. Fox'sambition; much greater apprehension of danger from thence than from wantof representation. One would think that the ballast of the ship wasshifted with us, and that our Constitution had the gunnel under water. But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievancehas happened, which you can refer to the representative not following theopinion of his constituents? What one symptom do we find of thisinequality? But it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we oughtto trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political equality, this isthe _desideratum_ in our Constitution, and in every Constitution in theworld. Moral inequality is as between places and between classes. Now, I ask, what advantage do you find, that the places which abound inrepresentation possess over others in which it is more scanty, insecurity for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of thosemeans of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness, the endsfor which society was formed? Are the local interests of Cornwall andWiltshire, for instance--their roads, canals, their prisons, theirpolice--better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or Staffordshire? Warwickhas members; is Warwick or Stafford more opulent, happy, or free, thanNewcastle or than Birmingham? Is Wiltshire the pampered favourite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to thedesert? This is like the unhappy persons who live, if they can be saidto live, in the statical chair; who are ever feeling their pulse, and whodo not judge of health by the aptitude of the body to perform itsfunctions, but by their ideas of what ought to be the true balancebetween the several secretions. Is a committee of Cornwall, &c. , thronged, and the others deserted? No. You have an equalrepresentation, because you have men equally interested in the prosperityof the whole, who are involved in the general interest and the generalsympathy; and perhaps these places, furnishing a superfluity of publicagents and administrators (whether, in strictness, they arerepresentatives or not, I do not mean to inquire, but they are agents andadministrators), will stand clearer of local interests, passions, prejudices, and cabals than the others, and therefore preserve thebalance of the parts, and with a more general view and a more steady handthan the rest. 

In every political proposal we must not leave out of the question thepolitical views and object of the proposer; and these we discover, not bywhat he says, but by the principles he lays down. "I mean, " says he, "amoderate and temperate reform;" that is, "I mean to do as little good aspossible. If the Constitution be what you represent it, and there be nodanger in the change, you do wrong not to make the reform commensurate tothe abuse. " Fine reformer, indeed! generous donor! What is the cause ofthis parsimony of the liberty which you dole out to the people? Why allthis limitation in giving blessings and benefits to mankind? You admitthat there is an extreme in liberty, which may be infinitely noxious tothose who are to receive it, and which in the end will leave them noliberty at all. I think so too; they know it, and they feel it. Thequestion is, then, What is the standard of that extreme? What thatgentleman, and the associations, or some parts of their phalanxes, thinkproper. Then our liberties are in their pleasure; it depends on theirarbitrary will how far I shall be free. I will have none of thatfreedom. If, therefore, the standard of moderation be sought for, I willseek for it. Where? Not in their fancies, nor in my own: I will seekfor it where I know it is to be found--in the Constitution I actuallyenjoy. Here it says to an encroaching prerogative--"Your sceptre has itslength; you cannot add a hair to your head, or a gem to your crown, butwhat an eternal law has given to it. " Here it says to an overweeningpeerage--"Your pride finds banks that it cannot overflow;" here to atumultuous and giddy people--"There is a bound to the raging of the sea. "Our Constitution is like our island, which uses and restrains its subjectsea; in vain the waves roar. In that Constitution I know, and exultinglyI feel, both that I am free and that I am not free dangerously to myselfor to others. I know that no power on earth, acting as I ought to do, can touch my life, my liberty, or my property. I have that inward anddignified consciousness of my own security and independence, whichconstitutes, and is the only thing which does constitute, the proud andcomfortable sentiment of freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and Ibless God for my safe mediocrity; I know that if I possessed all thetalents of the gentlemen on the side of the House I sit, and on theother, I cannot, by royal favour, or by popular delusion, or byoligarchical cabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point, soas to endanger my own fall or the ruin of my country. I know there is anorder that keeps things fast in their place; it is made to us, and we aremade to it. Why not ask another wife, other children, another body, another mind?

The great object of most of these reformers is to prepare the destructionof the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting the House of Commons. For they think--prudently, in my opinion--that if they can persuade thenation that the House of Commons is so constituted as not to secure thepublic liberty; not to have a proper connection with the publicinterests; so constituted as not, either actually or virtually, to be therepresentative of the people, it will be easy to prove that a governmentcomposed of a monarchy, an oligarchy chosen by the Crown, and such aHouse of Commons, whatever good can be in such a system, can by no meansbe a system of free government. 

The Constitution of England is never to have a quietus; it is to becontinually vilified, attacked, reproached, resisted; instead of beingthe hope and sure anchor in all storms, instead of being the means ofredress to all grievances, itself is the grand grievance of the nation, our shame instead of our glory. If the only specific planproposed--individual, personal representation--is directly rejected bythe person who is looked on as the great support of this business, thenthe only way of considering it is as a question of convenience. Anhonourable gentleman prefers the individual to the present. He thereforehimself sees no middle term whatsoever, and therefore prefers of what hesees the individual; this is the only thing distinct and sensible thathas been advocated. He has then a scheme, which is the individualrepresentation; he is not at a loss, not inconsistent--which scheme theother right honourable gentleman reprobates. Now, what does this go to, but to lead directly to anarchy? For to discredit the only governmentwhich he either possesses or can project, what is this but to destroy allgovernment; and this is anarchy. My right honourable friend, insupporting this motion, disgraces his friends and justifies his enemies, in order to blacken the Constitution of his country, even of that Houseof Commons which supported him. There is a difference between a moral orpolitical exposure of a public evil, relative to the administration ofgovernment, whether in men or systems, and a declaration of defects, realor supposed, in the fundamental Constitution of your country. The firstmay be cured in the individual by the motives of religion, virtue, honour, fear, shame, or interest. Men may be made to abandon, also, false systems by exposing their absurdity or mischievous tendency totheir own better thoughts, or to the contempt or indignation of thepublic; and after all, if they should exist, and exist uncorrected, theyonly disgrace individuals as fugitive opinions. But it is quiteotherwise with the frame and Constitution of the State; if that isdisgraced, patriotism is destroyed in its very source. No man has everwillingly obeyed, much less was desirous of defending with his blood, amischievous and absurd scheme of government. Our first, our dearest, most comprehensive relation, our country, is gone. 

It suggests melancholy reflections, in consequence of the strange coursewe have long held, that we are now no longer quarrelling about thecharacter, or about the conduct of men, or the tenor of measures; but weare grown out of humour with the English Constitution itself; this isbecome the object of the animosity of Englishmen. This Constitution informer days used to be the admiration and the envy of the world; it wasthe pattern for politicians; the theme of the eloquent; the meditation ofthe philosopher in every part of the world. As to Englishmen, it wastheir pride, their consolation. By it they lived, for it they were readyto die. Its defects, if it had any, were partly covered by partiality, and partly borne by prudence. Now all its excellencies are forgotten, its faults are now forcibly dragged into day, exaggerated by everyartifice of representation. It is despised and rejected of men; andevery device and invention of ingenuity, or idleness, set up inopposition or in preference to it. It is to this humour, and it is tothe measures growing out of it, that I set myself (I hope not alone) inthe most determined opposition. Never before did we at any time in thiscountry meet upon the theory of our frame of government, to sit injudgment on the Constitution of our country, to call it as a delinquentbefore us, and to accuse it of every defect and every vice; to seewhether it, an object of our veneration, even our adoration, did or didnot accord with a preconceived scheme in the minds of certain gentlemen. Cast your eyes on the journals of Parliament. It is for fear of losingthe inestimable treasure we have, that I do not venture to game it out ofmy hands for the vain hope of improving it. I look with filial reverenceon the Constitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces, andput it into the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with thepuddle of their compounds, into youth and vigour. On the contrary, Iwill drive away such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and withlenient arts extend a parent's breath.