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 intention, 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 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 situations.
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, etc. etc. 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 as at a school of pretty severe and rugged 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
intrusted him, and for the improvement he has 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 elections 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 over-rated) at
1,500,000 pounds;--three shillings in the pound more in 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 lift 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 be 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 phrensy, 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 in 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 all 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
contest 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 vitious ministry the only gainer.