It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into the
foundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to resort to
the theory of your government whenever you propose any alteration in the
frame of it, whether that alteration means the revival of some former
antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the introduction of
some new improvement in the commonwealth. The object of our deliberation
is, to promote the good purposes for which elections have been
instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent
elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling
inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would
sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited to
your disease--your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man
thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of
any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sort
of approach to perfection. There is not, there never was, a principle of
government under heaven, that does not, in the very pursuit of the good
it proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into some inconvenience, which
makes it absolutely necessary to counterwork and weaken the application
of that first principle itself; and to abandon something of the extent of
the advantage you proposed by it, in order to prevent also the
inconveniences which have arisen from the instrument of all the good you
had in view.
To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of the
people is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannot
be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular
election is a mighty evil. It is such, and so great an evil, that though
there are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, very
few are now elected. They are the distempers of elections, that have
destroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if not
impossible; the only thing therefore left to save the commonwealth is to
prevent their return too frequently. The objects in view are, to have
parliaments as frequent as they can be without distracting them in the
prosecution of public business; on one hand, to secure their dependence
upon the people, on the other to give them that quiet in their minds, and
that ease in their fortunes, as to enable them to perform the most
arduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency,
with independency, and with experience, as real public counsellors, not
as the canvassers at a perpetual election. It is wise to compass as many
good ends as possibly you can, and seeing there are inconveniences on
both sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit to
soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable, because the
disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be
derived. 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 not
which most likely, or which most dangerous: either that the Crown by its
constant stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear out all
opposition in elections, or that a violent and furious popular spirit
would arise. I must see, to satisfy me, the remedies; I must see, from
their operation in the cure of the old evil, and in the cure of those new
evils, which are inseparable from all remedies, how they balance each
other, and what is the total result. The excellence of mathematics and
metaphysics is to have but one thing before you, but he forms the best
judgment in all moral disquisitions, who has the greatest number and
variety of considerations, in one view before him, and can take them in
with the best possible consideration of the middle results of all.
We of the opposition, who are not friends to the bill, give this pledge
at least of our integrity and sincerity to the people, that in our
situation of systematic opposition to the present ministers, in which all
our hope of rendering it effectual depends upon popular interest and
favour, we will not flatter them by a surrender of our uninfluenced
judgment and opinion; we give a security, that if ever we should be in
another situation, no flattery to any other sort of power and influence
would induce us to act against the true interests of the people.
All are agreed that parliaments should not be perpetual; the only
question is, what is the most convenient time for their duration? On
which there are three opinions. We are agreed, too, that the term ought
not to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, and
to augment the already overgrown influence of the crown. On these
principles I mean to debate the question. It is easy to pretend a zeal
for liberty. Those who think themselves not likely to be encumbered with
the performance of their promises, either from their known inability, or
total indifference about the performance, never fail to entertain the
most lofty ideas. They are certainly the most specious, and they cost
them neither reflection to frame, nor pains to modify, nor management to
support. The task is of another nature to those who mean to promise
nothing that it is not in their intentions, or may possibly be in their
power to perform; to those who are bound and principled no more to delude
the understandings than to violate the liberty of their fellow-subjects.
Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of the
people. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought, is to give
them information, and not to receive it from them; we are not to go to
school to them to learn the principles of law and government. In doing
so we should not dutifully serve, but we should basely and scandalously
betray, the people, who are not capable of this service by nature, nor in
any instance called to it by the Constitution. I reverentially look up
to the opinion of the people, and with an awe that is almost
superstitious. I should be ashamed to show my face before them, if I
changed my ground, as they cried up or cried down men, or things, or
opinions; if I wavered and shifted about with every change, and joined in
it, or opposed, as best answered any low interest or passion; if I held
them up hopes, which I knew I never intended, or promised what I well
knew I could not perform. Of all these things they are perfect sovereign
judges without appeal; but as to the detail of particular measures, or to
any general schemes of policy, they have neither enough of speculation in
the closet, nor of experience in business, to decide upon it. They can
well see whether we are tools of a court, or their honest servants. Of
that they can well judge; and I wish that they always exercised their
judgment; but of the particular merits of a measure I have other
standards. That the frequency of elections proposed by this bill has a
tendency to increase the power and consideration of the electors, not
lessen corruptibility, I do most readily allow; so far as it is
desirable, 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 of
mankind. 2nd. This bill has no tendency to limit the quantity of
influence in the Crown, to render its operation more difficult, or to
counteract that operation, which it cannot prevent, in any way
whatsoever. It has its full weight, its full range, and its uncontrolled
operation on the electors exactly as it had before. 3rd. Nor, thirdly,
does it abate the interest or inclination of Ministers to apply that
influence to the electors: on the contrary, it renders it much more
necessary to them, if they seek to have a majority in parliament, to
increase the means of that influence, and redouble their diligence, and
to sharpen dexterity in the application. The whole effect of the bill is
therefore the removing the application of some part of the influence from
the elected to the electors, and further to strengthen and extend a court
interest already great and powerful in boroughs; here to fix their
magazines and places of arms, and thus to make them the principal, not
the secondary, theatre of their manoeuvres for securing a determined
majority in parliament.
I believe nobody will deny that the electors are corruptible. They are
men; it is saying nothing worse of them; many of them are but
ill-informed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easily
over-reached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruption
are the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible and
hypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there is
already no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blind
fury, and interested faction among the electors in many parts of this
kingdom: nor is it surprising, or at all blamable, in that class of
private men, when they see their neighbours aggrandised, and themselves
poor and virtuous, without that _eclat_ or dignity which attends men in
higher stations.
But admit it were true that the great mass of the electors were too vast
an object for court influence to grasp, or extend to, and that in despair
they must abandon it; he must be very ignorant of the state of every
popular interest, who does not know that in all the corporations, all the
open boroughs--indeed, in every district of the kingdom--there is some
leading man, some agitator, some wealthy merchant, or considerable
manufacturer, some active attorney, some popular preacher, some money-
lender, &c., &c., who is followed by the whole flock. This is the style
of 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, are
neither so many, nor so little powerful, nor so incorruptible, but that a
Minister may, as he does frequently, find means of gaining them, and
through them all their followers. To establish, therefore, a very
general influence among electors will no more be found an impracticable
project, than to gain an undue influence over members of parliament.
Therefore I am apprehensive that this bill, though it shifts the place of
the disorder, does by no means relieve the Constitution. I went through
almost every contested election in the beginning of this parliament, and
acted as a manager in very many of them: by which, though at a school of
pretty severe and ragged discipline, I came to have some degree of
instruction concerning the means by which parliamentary interests are in
general procured and supported.
Theory, I know, would suppose, that every general election is to the
representative a day of judgment, in which he appears before his
constituents to account for the use of the talent with which they
entrusted him, and of the improvement he had made of it for the public
advantage. It would be so, if every corruptible representative were to
find an enlightened and incorruptible constituent. But the practice and
knowledge of the world will not suffer us to be ignorant, that the
Constitution on paper is one thing, and in fact and experience is
another. We must know that the candidate, instead of trusting at his
election to the testimony of his behaviour in parliament, must bring the
testimony of a large sum of money, the capacity of liberal expense in
entertainments, the power of serving and obliging the rulers of
corporations, of winning over the popular leaders of political clubs,
associations, and neighbourhoods. It is ten thousand times more
necessary to show himself a man of power, than a man of integrity, in
almost all the elections with which I have been acquainted. Elections,
therefore, become a matter of heavy expense; and if contests are
frequent, to many they will become a matter of an expense totally
ruinous, which no fortunes can bear; but least of all the landed
fortunes, encumbered as they often, indeed as they mostly are, with
debts, with portions, with jointures; and tied up in the hands of the
possessor by the limitations of settlement. It is a material, it is in
my opinion a lasting, consideration, in all the questions concerning
election. Let no one think the charges of election a trivial matter.
The charge, therefore, of elections ought never to be lost sight of, in a
question concerning their frequency, because the grand object you seek is
independence. Independence of mind will ever be more or less influenced
by independence of fortune; and if, every three years, the exhausting
sluices of entertainments, drinkings, open houses, to say nothing of
bribery, are to be periodically drawn up and renewed--if government
favours, for which now, in some shape or other, the whole race of men are
candidates, are to be called for upon every occasion, I see that private
fortunes will be washed away, and every, even to the least, trace of
independence, borne down by the torrent. I do not seriously think this
Constitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive five triennial
elections. If you are to fight the battle, you must put on the armour of
the 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 persuaded
that it has not been overrated) at 1,500,000 pounds; three shillings in
the 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 I
remember well that it was in every one of their mouths--"Sir, your
election will cost you three thousand pounds, if you are independent; but
if the Ministry supports you, it may be done for two, and perhaps for
less;" and, indeed, the thing spoke itself. Where a living was to be got
for one, a commission in the army for another, a post in the navy for a
third, and Custom-house offices scattered about without measure or
number, who doubts but money may be saved? The Treasury may even add
money; but, indeed, it is superfluous. A gentleman of two thousand a
year, who meets another of the same fortune, fights with equal arms; but
if to one of the candidates you add a thousand a year in places for
himself, and a power of giving away as much among others, one must, or
there is no truth in arithmetical demonstration, ruin his adversary, if
he is to meet him and to fight with him every third year. It will be
said, I do not allow for the operation of character; but I do; and I know
it will have its weight in most elections; perhaps it may be decisive in
some. But there are few in which it will prevent great expenses.
The destruction of independent fortunes will be the consequence on the
part of the candidate. What will be the consequence of triennial
corruption, triennial drunkenness, triennial idleness, triennial
law-suits, litigations, prosecutions, triennial frenzy; of society
dissolved, industry interrupted, ruined; of those personal hatreds that
will never be suffered to soften; those animosities and feuds, which will
be rendered immortal; those quarrels, which are never to be appeased;
morals vitiated and gangrened to the vitals? I think no stable and
useful advantages were ever made by the money got at elections by the
voter, but all he gets is doubly lost to the public; it is money given to
diminish the general stock of the community, which is the industry of the
subject. I am sure that it is a good while before he or his family
settle again to their business. Their heads will never cool; the
temptations of elections will be for ever glittering before their eyes.
They will all grow politicians; every one, quitting his business, will
choose 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, though
those of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction,
bribery, bread, and stage plays to debauch them. We have the
inflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them. There
the contest was only between citizen and citizen; here you have the
contests of ambitious citizens on one side, supported by the Crown, to
oppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambition
on the other. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge of
elections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to the
people. I think, therefore, the independent candidate and elector may
each be destroyed by it, the whole body of the community be an infinite
sufferer, and a vicious Ministry the only gainer. Gentlemen, I know,
feel the weight of this argument; they agree that this would be the
consequence of more frequent elections, if things were to continue as
they are. But they think the greatness and frequency of the evil would
itself be a remedy for it; that, sitting but for a short time, the member
would not find it worth while to make such vast expenses, while the fear
of their constituents will hold them the more effectually to their duty.
To this I answer, that experience is full against them. This is no new
thing; we have had triennial parliaments; at no period of time were seats
more eagerly contested. The expenses of elections ran higher, taking the
state of all charges, than they do now. The expense of entertainments
was such, that an Act, equally severe and ineffectual, was made against
it; every monument of the time bears witness of the expense, and most of
the Acts against corruption in elections were then made; all the writers
talked of it and lamented it. Will any one think that a corporation will
be contented with a bowl of punch, or a piece of beef the less, because
elections are every three, instead of every seven years? Will they
change their wine for ale, because they are to get more ale three years
hence? Do not think it. Will they make fewer demands for the advantages
of patronage in favours and offices, because their member is brought more
under their power? We have not only our own historical experience in
England upon this subject, but we have the experience co-existing with us
in Ireland, where, since their Parliament has been shortened, the expense
of elections has been so far from being lowered that it has been very
near doubled. Formerly they sat for the king's life; the ordinary charge
of 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 of
emulation has also been extremely increased, and all who are acquainted
with the tone of that country have no doubt that the spirit is still
growing, that new candidates will take the field, that the contests will
be more violent, and the expenses of elections larger than ever.
It never can be otherwise. A seat in this House, for good purposes, for
bad purposes, for no purpose at all (except the mere consideration
derived 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 is
certain, that in this political game the great lottery of power is that
into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In
Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are so
insecure, that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that the
bowstring is the natural death of Bashaws, yet in no country is power and
distinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with such
boundless avidity, as if the value of place was enhanced by the danger
and insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ever make a seat in this
House 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 of
Commons without power and without dignity, either in itself or its
members, 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 their
account is always near. I wish it were true, but it is not; here again
we have experience, and experience is against us. The distemper of this
age is a poverty of spirit and of genius; it is trifling, it is futile,
worse than ignorant, superficially taught, with the politics and morals
of girls at a boarding-school, rather than of men and statesmen; but it
is not yet desperately wicked, or so scandalously venal as in former
times. Did not a triennial parliament give up the national dignity,
approve the Peace of Utrecht, and almost give up everything else in
taking every step to defeat the Protestant succession? Was not the
Constitution saved by those who had no election at all to go to, the
Lords, because the Court applied to electors, and by various means
carried them from their true interests; so that the Tory Ministry had a
majority without an application to a single member? Now, as to the
conduct 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 William
Musgrave was a wise man, a grave man, an independent man, a man of good
fortune and good family; however, he carried on while in opposition a
traffic, a shameful traffic with the Ministry. Bishop Burnet knew of
6,000 pounds which he had received at one payment. I believe the payment
of sums in hard money--plain, naked bribery--is rare amongst us. It was
then far from uncommon.
A triennial was near ruining, a septennial parliament saved, your
Constitution; nor perhaps have you ever known a more flourishing period
for the union of national prosperity, dignity, and liberty, than the
sixty 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 them
infinitely more ravenous. They rush violently and precipitately on their
object, they lose all regard to decorum. The moments of profit are
precious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It was
so in the great plague at Athens, every symptom of which (and this its
worst amongst the rest) is so finely related by a great historian of
antiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. It appears in
soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render the life of man
much shorter than it is, would, I am satisfied, find the surest recipe
for increasing the wickedness of our nature.
Thus, in my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have the
following ill effects:--It would make the member more shamelessly and
shockingly corrupt, it would increase his dependence on those who could
best support him at his election, it would wrack and tear to pieces the
fortunes of those who stood upon their own fortunes and their private
interest, it would make the electors infinitely more venal, and it would
make the whole body of the people, who are, whether they have votes or
not, concerned in elections, more lawless, more idle, more debauched; it
would utterly destroy the sobriety, the industry, the integrity, the
simplicity of all the people, and undermine, I am much afraid, the
deepest and best laid foundations of the commonwealth.
Those who have spoken and written upon this subject without doors, do not
so much deny the probable existence of these inconveniences in their
measure, as they trust for the prevention to remedies of various sorts,
which they propose. First, a place bill; but if this will not do, as
they fear it will not, then, they say, we will have a rotation, and a
certain number of you shall be rendered incapable of being elected for
ten years. Then, for the electors, they shall ballot; the members of
parliament also shall decide by ballot; and a fifth project is the change
of the present legal representation of the kingdom. On all this I shall
observe, that it will be very unsuitable to your wisdom to adopt the
project of a bill, to which there are objections insuperable by anything
in the bill itself, upon the hope that those objections may be removed by
subsequent projects; every one of which is full of difficulties of its
own, and which are all of them very essential alterations in the
Constitution. This seems very irregular and unusual. If anything should
make this a very doubtful measure, what can make it more so than that, in
the opinion of its advocates, it would aggravate all our old
inconveniences in such a manner as to require a total alteration in the
Constitution 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 these
inconveniences.
The honourable gentleman sees that I respect the principle upon which he
goes, as well as his intentions and his abilities. He will believe that
I do not differ from him wantonly, and on trivial grounds. He is very
sure that it was not his embracing one way which determined me to take
the other. I have not, in newspapers, to derogate from his fair fame
with the nation, printed the first rude sketch of his bill with
ungenerous and invidious comments. I have not, in conversations
industriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches of
this House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and as
groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with
this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which
was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of
incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of
his muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a
perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts
between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who
start up three at a time, and fall upon and strike at him with so much
eagerness, that our daggers hack one another in his sides. My honourable
friend has not brought down a spirited imp of chivalry, to win the first
achievement and blazon of arms on his milk-white shield in a field listed
against him, nor brought out the generous offspring of lions, and said to
them, "Not against that side of the forest, beware of that--here is the
prey where you are to fasten your paws;" and seasoning his unpractised
jaws with blood, tell him, "This is the milk for which you are to thirst
hereafter." We furnish at his expense no holiday, nor suspend hell that
a crafty Ixion may have rest from his wheel; nor give the common
adversary, if he be a common adversary, reason to say, "I would have put
in my word to oppose, but the eagerness of your allies in your social war
was 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 difference
between amicable dissent and civil discord.
SPEECH ON REFORM OF REPRESENTATION IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
JUNE, 1784
Mr. Speaker,--We have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenth
century, that the Constitution of England, which for a series of ages had
been the proud distinction of this country, always the admiration, and
sometimes the envy, of the wise and learned in every other nation--we
have discovered that this boasted Constitution, in the most boasted part
of it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding of mankind, an insult
to their feelings, and acting by contrivances destructive to the best and
most valuable interests of the people. Our political architects have
taken a survey of the fabric of the British Constitution. It is singular
that they report nothing against the Crown, nothing against the Lords;
but in the House of Commons everything is unsound; it is ruinous in every
part. It is infested by the dry rot, and ready to tumble about our ears
without their immediate help. You know by the faults they find what are
their 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 the
first blast of public discontent and popular tumult, it tumbles to the
ground.
In considering this question, they who oppose it, oppose it on different
grounds; one is in the nature of a previous question--that some
alterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for making
them. 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 be
meddling with the fundamental principles and ancient tried usages of our
Constitution--that our representation is as nearly perfect as the
necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will
suffer it to be; and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and
thankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and rash experiment.
On the other side, there are two parties, who proceed on two grounds--in
my opinion, as they state them, utterly irreconcilable. The one is
juridical, the other political. The one is in the nature of a claim of
right, on the supposed rights of man as man; this party desire the
decision of a suit. The other ground, as far as I can divine what it
directly means, is, that the representation is not so politically framed
as 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 the
best; in some respects his claim is more favourable on account of his
ignorance; 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. But
when the other ground is taken, when the question is political, when a
new Constitution is to be made on a sound theory of government, then the
presumptuous pride of didactic ignorance is to be excluded from the
council in this high and arduous matter, which often bids defiance to the
experience of the wisest. The first claims a personal representation;
the latter rejects it with scorn and fervour. The language of the first
party is plain and intelligible; they who plead an absolute right, cannot
be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all
natural rights must be the rights of individuals: as by nature there is
no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these ideas are
mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as
men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the
principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and
eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of
reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British Constitution
upon any or all of its bases; for they lay it down, that every man ought
to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his
representative; that all other government is usurpation, and is so far
from having a claim to our obedience, that it is not only our right, but
our duty, to resist it. Nine-tenths of the reformers argue thus--that
is, on the natural right. It is impossible not to make some reflection
on the nature of this claim, or avoid a comparison between the extent of
the principle and the present object of the demand. If this claim be
founded, it is clear to what it goes. The House of Commons, in that
light, undoubtedly is no representative of the people as a collection of
individuals. Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion.
When you come to examine into this claim of right, founded on the right
of self-government in each individual, you find the thing demanded
infinitely short of the principle of the demand. What! one-third only of
the legislature, of the government no share at all? What sort of treaty
of 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 comes
only 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, or
justices of peace? Why, what have you to answer in favour of the prior
rights of the Crown and peerage but this--our Constitution is a
proscriptive Constitution; it is a Constitution whose sole authority is,
that it has existed time out of mind. It is settled in these two
portions against one, legislatively; and in the whole of the judicature,
the whole of the federal capacity, of the executive, the prudential and
the financial administration, in one alone. Nor were your House of Lords
and the prerogatives of the Crown settled on any adjudication in favour
of natural rights, for they could never be so portioned. Your king, your
lords, your judges, your juries, grand and little, all are prescriptive;
and what proves it is the disputes not yet concluded, and never near
becoming so, when any of them first originated. Prescription is the most
solid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to secure that
property, to government. They harmonise with each other, and give mutual
aid to one another. It is accompanied with another ground of authority
in the constitution of the human mind--presumption. It is a presumption
in favour of any settled scheme of government against any untried
project, that a nation has long existed and flourished under it. It is a
better presumption even of the choice of a nation, far better than any
sudden and temporary arrangement by actual election. Because a nation is
not an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation,
but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in
numbers and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one set of
people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of
ages and of generations; it is a Constitution made by what is ten
thousand times better than choice--it is made by the peculiar
circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and
social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long
space of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body.
Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind, unmeaning
prejudices--for man is a most unwise, and a most wise being. The
individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, are foolish, when
they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is
given 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 my
reason for the Commons as they are, the electors as they are. Now, if
the Crown and the Lords, and the judicatures, are all prescriptive, so is
the House of Commons of the very same origin, and of no other. We and
our electors have powers and privileges both made and circumscribed by
prescription, as much to the full as the other parts; and as such we have
always claimed them, and on no other title. The House of Commons is a
legislative body corporate by prescription, not made upon any given
theory, but existing prescriptively--just like the rest. This
prescription has made it essentially what it is--an aggregate collection
of three parts--knights, citizens, burgesses. The question is, whether
this has been always so, since the House of Commons has taken its present
shape and circumstances, and has been an essential operative part of the
Constitution; which, I take it, it has been for at least five hundred
years.
This I resolve to myself in the affirmative: and then another question
arises; whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and
is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to
want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it
upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;--whether it
continues true to the principles upon which it has hitherto
stood;--whether this be _de facto_ the Constitution of the House of
Commons as it has been since the time that the House of Commons has,
without dispute, become a necessary and an efficient part of the British
Constitution? To ask whether a thing, which has always been the same,
stands to its usual principle, seems to me to be perfectly absurd; for
how do you know the principles but from the construction? and if that
remains the same, the principles remain the same. It is true, that to
say your Constitution is what it has been, is no sufficient defence for
those who say it is a bad Constitution. It is an answer to those who say
that 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 results
are its test.
On what grounds do we go to restore our Constitution to what it has been
at some given period, or to reform and reconstruct it upon principles
more conformable to a sound theory of government? A prescriptive
government, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, never was
made upon any foregone theory. It seems to me a preposterous way of
reasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories, which
learned and speculative men have made from that government, and then,
supposing it made on these theories, which were made from it, to accuse
the government as not corresponding with them. I do not vilify theory
and speculation--no, because that would be to vilify reason itself.
"_Neque decipitur ratio_, _neque decipit unquam_." No; whenever I speak
against theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded,
or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is a
false theory is by comparing it with practice. This is the true
touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men: Does
it suit his nature in general?--does it suit his nature as modified by
his habits?
The more frequently this affair is discussed, the stronger the case
appears to the sense and the feelings of mankind. I have no more doubt
than I entertain of my existence, that this very thing, which is stated
as a horrible thing, is the means of the preservation of our Constitution
whilst it lasts: of curing it of many of the disorders which, attending
every species of institution, would attend the principle of an exact
local representation, or a representation on the principle of numbers. If
you reject personal representation, you are pushed upon expedience; and
then what they wish us to do is, to prefer their speculations on that
subject to the happy experience of this country of a growing liberty and
a growing prosperity for five hundred years. Whatever respect I have for
their talents, this, for one, I will not do. Then what is the standard
of expedience? Expedience is that which is good for the community, and
good for every individual in it. Now this expedience is the
_desideratum_ to be sought, either without the experience of means, or
with that experience. If without, as in the case of the fabrication of a
new commonwealth, I will hear the learned arguing what promises to be
expedient; but if we are to judge of a commonwealth actually existing,
the first thing I inquire is, What has been found expedient or
inexpedient? And I will not take their promise rather than the
performance of the Constitution.
But no; this was not the cause of the discontents. I went through most
of the northern parts--the Yorkshire election was then raging; the year
before, through most of the western counties--Bath, Bristol,
Gloucester--not one word, either in the towns or country, on the subject
of representation; much on the receipt tax, something on Mr. Fox's
ambition; much greater apprehension of danger from thence than from want
of representation. One would think that the ballast of the ship was
shifted with us, and that our Constitution had the gunnel under water.
But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievance
has happened, which you can refer to the representative not following the
opinion of his constituents? What one symptom do we find of this
inequality? But it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we ought
to trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political equality, this is
the _desideratum_ in our Constitution, and in every Constitution in the
world. Moral inequality is as between places and between classes. Now,
I ask, what advantage do you find, that the places which abound in
representation possess over others in which it is more scanty, in
security for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of those
means of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness, the ends
for which society was formed? Are the local interests of Cornwall and
Wiltshire, for instance--their roads, canals, their prisons, their
police--better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or Staffordshire? Warwick
has members; is Warwick or Stafford more opulent, happy, or free, than
Newcastle or than Birmingham? Is Wiltshire the pampered favourite,
whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to the
desert? This is like the unhappy persons who live, if they can be said
to live, in the statical chair; who are ever feeling their pulse, and who
do not judge of health by the aptitude of the body to perform its
functions, but by their ideas of what ought to be the true balance
between the several secretions. Is a committee of Cornwall, &c.,
thronged, and the others deserted? No. You have an equal
representation, because you have men equally interested in the prosperity
of the whole, who are involved in the general interest and the general
sympathy; and perhaps these places, furnishing a superfluity of public
agents and administrators (whether, in strictness, they are
representatives or not, I do not mean to inquire, but they are agents and
administrators), will stand clearer of local interests, passions,
prejudices, and cabals than the others, and therefore preserve the
balance of the parts, and with a more general view and a more steady hand
than the rest.
In every political proposal we must not leave out of the question the
political views and object of the proposer; and these we discover, not by
what he says, but by the principles he lays down. "I mean," says he, "a
moderate and temperate reform;" that is, "I mean to do as little good as
possible. If the Constitution be what you represent it, and there be no
danger in the change, you do wrong not to make the reform commensurate to
the abuse." Fine reformer, indeed! generous donor! What is the cause of
this parsimony of the liberty which you dole out to the people? Why all
this limitation in giving blessings and benefits to mankind? You admit
that there is an extreme in liberty, which may be infinitely noxious to
those who are to receive it, and which in the end will leave them no
liberty at all. I think so too; they know it, and they feel it. The
question is, then, What is the standard of that extreme? What that
gentleman, and the associations, or some parts of their phalanxes, think
proper. Then our liberties are in their pleasure; it depends on their
arbitrary will how far I shall be free. I will have none of that
freedom. If, therefore, the standard of moderation be sought for, I will
seek for it. Where? Not in their fancies, nor in my own: I will seek
for it where I know it is to be found--in the Constitution I actually
enjoy. Here it says to an encroaching prerogative--"Your sceptre has its
length; you cannot add a hair to your head, or a gem to your crown, but
what an eternal law has given to it." Here it says to an overweening
peerage--"Your pride finds banks that it cannot overflow;" here to a
tumultuous and giddy people--"There is a bound to the raging of the sea."
Our Constitution is like our island, which uses and restrains its subject
sea; in vain the waves roar. In that Constitution I know, and exultingly
I feel, both that I am free and that I am not free dangerously to myself
or 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 and
dignified consciousness of my own security and independence, which
constitutes, and is the only thing which does constitute, the proud and
comfortable sentiment of freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and I
bless God for my safe mediocrity; I know that if I possessed all the
talents of the gentlemen on the side of the House I sit, and on the
other, I cannot, by royal favour, or by popular delusion, or by
oligarchical cabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point, so
as to endanger my own fall or the ruin of my country. I know there is an
order that keeps things fast in their place; it is made to us, and we are
made 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 destruction
of the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting the House of Commons.
For they think--prudently, in my opinion--that if they can persuade the
nation that the House of Commons is so constituted as not to secure the
public liberty; not to have a proper connection with the public
interests; so constituted as not, either actually or virtually, to be the
representative of the people, it will be easy to prove that a government
composed of a monarchy, an oligarchy chosen by the Crown, and such a
House of Commons, whatever good can be in such a system, can by no means
be a system of free government.
The Constitution of England is never to have a quietus; it is to be
continually vilified, attacked, reproached, resisted; instead of being
the hope and sure anchor in all storms, instead of being the means of
redress to all grievances, itself is the grand grievance of the nation,
our shame instead of our glory. If the only specific plan
proposed--individual, personal representation--is directly rejected by
the person who is looked on as the great support of this business, then
the only way of considering it is as a question of convenience. An
honourable gentleman prefers the individual to the present. He therefore
himself sees no middle term whatsoever, and therefore prefers of what he
sees the individual; this is the only thing distinct and sensible that
has been advocated. He has then a scheme, which is the individual
representation; he is not at a loss, not inconsistent--which scheme the
other right honourable gentleman reprobates. Now, what does this go to,
but to lead directly to anarchy? For to discredit the only government
which he either possesses or can project, what is this but to destroy all
government; and this is anarchy. My right honourable friend, in
supporting this motion, disgraces his friends and justifies his enemies,
in order to blacken the Constitution of his country, even of that House
of Commons which supported him. There is a difference between a moral or
political exposure of a public evil, relative to the administration of
government, whether in men or systems, and a declaration of defects, real
or supposed, in the fundamental Constitution of your country. The first
may 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 to
their own better thoughts, or to the contempt or indignation of the
public; and after all, if they should exist, and exist uncorrected, they
only disgrace individuals as fugitive opinions. But it is quite
otherwise with the frame and Constitution of the State; if that is
disgraced, patriotism is destroyed in its very source. No man has ever
willingly obeyed, much less was desirous of defending with his blood, a
mischievous 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 course
we have long held, that we are now no longer quarrelling about the
character, or about the conduct of men, or the tenor of measures; but we
are grown out of humour with the English Constitution itself; this is
become the object of the animosity of Englishmen. This Constitution in
former days used to be the admiration and the envy of the world; it was
the pattern for politicians; the theme of the eloquent; the meditation of
the philosopher in every part of the world. As to Englishmen, it was
their pride, their consolation. By it they lived, for it they were ready
to 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 every
artifice of representation. It is despised and rejected of men; and
every device and invention of ingenuity, or idleness, set up in
opposition or in preference to it. It is to this humour, and it is to
the measures growing out of it, that I set myself (I hope not alone) in
the most determined opposition. Never before did we at any time in this
country meet upon the theory of our frame of government, to sit in
judgment on the Constitution of our country, to call it as a delinquent
before us, and to accuse it of every defect and every vice; to see
whether it, an object of our veneration, even our adoration, did or did
not accord with a preconceived scheme in the minds of certain gentlemen.
Cast your eyes on the journals of Parliament. It is for fear of losing
the inestimable treasure we have, that I do not venture to game it out of
my hands for the vain hope of improving it. I look with filial reverence
on the Constitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces, and
put it into the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with the
puddle of their compounds, into youth and vigour. On the contrary, I
will drive away such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and with
lenient arts extend a parent's breath.