In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the ministry follows the

constitution of the legislature. Both the law and the magistrate are the

creatures of will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear more

certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that _every

sort of government ought to have its administration correspondent to its

legislature_. If it should be otherwise, things must fall into an

hideous disorder. The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken such

care that their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be

so senseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of

persons on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the

public love and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the

use of which the very being of the state depends.

The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewards

and honors, is one of the first advantages of a free state. Without it,

or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the

substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good

government. The frame of our commonwealth did not admit of such an

actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the

constitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the

method of suffrage in any democratic state whatsoever. It had always,

until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament _to refuse to

support government, until power was in the hands of persons who were

acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated in the court in

which the nation had no confidence_. Thus all the good effects of

popular election were supposed to be secured to us, without the

mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for

every particular office throughout the body of the people. This was the

most noble and refined part of our constitution. The people, by their

representatives and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative power

in making laws; the king with the control of his negative. The king was

intrusted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the

people had the negative in a Parliamentary refusal to support. Formerly

this power of control was what kept ministers in awe of Parliaments, and

Parliaments in reverence with the people. If the use of this power of

control on the system and persons of administration is gone, everything

is lost, Parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament

will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strongholds of their

country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a

pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering,

whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures

will not be better than their morals; such a Parliament will give

countenance 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

well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad

men from government, and not to trust for the safety of the state to

subsequent punishment alone; punishment, which has ever been tardy and

uncertain; and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to

fall rather on the injured than the criminal.

Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the state, they

ought by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in

their country, as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public,

that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a

proper use of power, that a man has shown by the general tenor of his

actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his

fellow-citizens have been among the principal objects of his life; and

that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a

settled contempt, or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.

That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming

into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who losing it has no

friends to sympathize with him; he who has no sway among any part of the

landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with

his office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to

be suffered by a controlling Parliament to continue in any of those

situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public

affairs; because such a man _has no connection with the interest of the

people_.

Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any

public principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higher

rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered

to domineer in the state; because they have _no connection with the

sentiments and opinions of the people_.

These are considerations which in my opinion enforce the necessity of

having some better reason, in a free country, and a free Parliament, for

supporting the ministers of the crown, than that short one, _That the

king has thought proper to appoint them_. There is something very

courtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts of

mischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active men

from the country to the court. Whatever be the road to power, that is

the road which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no use

as a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually

procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will

be right, in a state so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave

ambition without popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of

pure virtue in the minds of kings, and ministers, and public men, must

be submitted to the judgment and good sense of the people of England.

Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly

controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty

under which the sovereign labors, to distinguish the genuine voice and

sentiments of his people, from the clamor of a faction, by which it is

so easily counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into

parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the king

should put his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to

disgust the rest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is

a hazard that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however

divided before, will soon run into a body of opposition; which, being a

collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot

and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through the

nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and

much the better part, will seem for a while as it were annihilated by

the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the

blessings of government. Besides that the opinion of the mere vulgar is

a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their

violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their

humor to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their

dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion

are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal

uncertainty as to the effect, what better can a king of England do, than

to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most

conformable to his own; who are least infected with pride and self-will;

and who are least moved by such popular humors as are perpetually

traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that, when

he means 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 his

pleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight and

influence of the crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrument

in the hands of a faction.

I will not pretend to say, that there is nothing at all in this mode of

reasoning; because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in the

art of government. Undoubtedly the very best administration must

encounter a great deal of opposition; and the very worst will find more

support than it deserves. Sufficient appearances will never be wanting

to those who have a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy in

constant use with those who would level all things, and confound right

with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are attached to

every choice, without taking into consideration the different weight and

consequence of those inconveniences. The question is not concerning

_absolute_ discontent or _perfect_ satisfaction in government; neither

of which can be pure and unmixed at any time, or upon any system. The

controversy is about that degree of good humor in the people, which may

possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for. While some

politicians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individual

be against them, accurately distinguishing the vulgar from the better

sort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a faction and the efforts

of a people, they may chance to see the government, which they are so

nicely weighing, and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the ground

in the midst of their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great an

object 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 who

can read the political sky will see a hurricane in a cloud no bigger

than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first

harbor. No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They

are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw

a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness

are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible

for a prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons to

administer 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 of

ordinary 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 at

giving tranquillity to his government. But those who advise him may have

an interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people is

against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no

prevalence. Here it is that the people must on their part show

themselves sensible of their own value. Their whole importance, in the

first instance, and afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their

freedom cannot long survive their importance. Here it is that the

natural strength of the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed

gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, the substantial

yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue their prince, themselves, and their

posterity.

We are at present at issue upon this point. We are in the great crisis

of this contention; and the part which men take, one way or other, will

serve to discriminate their characters and their principles. Until the

matter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion. For

while a system of administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to the

genius of the people, and not conformable to the plan of their

government, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, until

this system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets the

better of this system.

There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this

political distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former

times the projectors of arbitrary government attacked only the liberties

of their country; a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a

mind of the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavorable to freedom

may be so formed, as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the state;

and men may find, in the pride and splendor of that prosperity, some

sort of consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed the

increase of the power of the state has often been urged by artful men,

as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme

of the junto under consideration, not only strikes a palsy into every

nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and

stupefies the whole executive power: rendering government in all its

grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective; making ministers

fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing any useful plan of

domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics. It tends to produce

neither the security of a free government, nor the energy of a monarchy

that is absolute. Accordingly the crown has dwindled away, in proportion

to the unnatural and turgid growth of this excrescence on the court.

The interior ministry are sensible, that war is a situation which sets

in its full light the value of the hearts of a people; and they well

know, that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end

of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost

fear of everything, which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do

not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to

commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Such

a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is

regulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness,

which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear

betrays to the first glance of the eye, its true cause, and its real

object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character,

have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance

of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the

heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed

enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were

formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same

powers: 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 and

Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of

Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But

these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the _double

cabinet_. These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast

towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread her

cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuable

branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same

cause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the

vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly

secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the

loss 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 or

affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign courts and

ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this

invention of the _double cabinet_, attend very little to their

remonstrances. They know that those shadows of ministers have nothing to

do in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are

sedulously nourished in the outward administration, and have been even

considered as a _causa sine qua non_ in its constitution: thence foreign

courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in

this nation. If one of those ministers officially takes up a business

with spirit, it serves only the better to signalize the meanness of the

rest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in haste

to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of this

nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our

ambassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, in

consequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne. This remonstrance

the French minister treated with the contempt that was natural: as he

was assured, from the ambassador of his court to ours, that these orders

of Lord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to

have said British) administration. Lord Rochford, a man of spirit,

could not endure this situation. The consequences were, however,

curious. He returns from Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord

Shelburne, who gave the orders, is obliged to give up the seals. Lord

Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives them. He goes, however, into

another department of the same office, that he might not be obliged

officially to acquiesce, in one situation, under what he had officially

remonstrated against, in another. At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul

considered this office arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was

spoken of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether

the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By

this transaction the condition of our court lay exposed in all its

nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to

authenticity: British policy is brought into derision in those nations,

that a while ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked

up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candor, which shone in

all our negotiations. I represent this matter exactly in the light in

which it has been universally received.

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

it should have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this scheme

should have a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the

first, the dearest, and most delicate objects, of the interior policy of

this empire. The colonies know, that administration is separated from

the court, divided within itself, and detested by the nation. The

_double cabinet_ has, in both the parts of it, shown the most malignant

dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest

mischief.

They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either of

lenity, or rigor, can be pursued with uniformity and perseverance.

Therefore they turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where they

have neither dependence on friendship, nor apprehension from enmity.

They look to themselves, and their own arrangements. They grow every day

into alienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming

disconnected with our government, we have not the consolation to find,

that they are even friendly in their new independence. Nothing can equal

the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual

contradiction in the management of our affairs in that part of the

world. A volume might be written on this melancholy subject; but it were

better to leave it entirely to the reflections of the reader himself,

than not to treat it in the extent it deserves.

In what manner our domestic economy is affected by this system, it is

needless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their own

complaints.

The court party resolve the whole into faction Having said something

before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they

give this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very

favorable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own

government. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with

a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of

that great and only foundation of government, the confidence of the

people, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When men

imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they

neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of

the roast beef of Old England, that will persuade them to sit down to

the table that is spread for them. When the people conceive that laws,

and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends

of their institution, they find in those names of degenerated

establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when

full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and

comfort, when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from

remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom and furious disorder

prevail by fits; the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity;

as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the

time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom a state of order

would become a sentence of obscurity are nourished into a dangerous

magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder

that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the

disorders which are the parents of all their consequence. Superficial

observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness,

when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men

look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands

are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might

enable them to reconcile the strength of government with the rights of

the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the

election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion,

than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is

not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The

military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what

you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every

other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by

the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of

government will not trust solely to the military power; because they are

cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in

the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they

endeavor to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy

another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the

populace, and justly increases their discontent. Men become pensioners

of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the

discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful

necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very

licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress.

Everything partakes of the original disorder. Anarchy predominates

without freedom, and servitude without submission or subordination.

These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the

scheme of rendering the executory government at once odious and feeble;

of freeing administration from the constitutional and salutary control

of Parliament, and inventing for it a _new control_, unknown to the

constitution, an _interior cabinet_; which brings the whole body of

government into confusion and contempt.

After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this system

on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our government with regard to

our dependencies, and on the interior economy of the commonwealth;

there remains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the

grand principle which first recommended this system at court. The

pretence was, to prevent the king from being enslaved by a faction, and

made a prisoner in his closet. This scheme might have been expected to

answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the king, in his personal

capacity, for all the confusion into which it has thrown his government.

But has it in reality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every

affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience

all the evils which attend it.

In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to

consider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the king, and not of the

crown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent of

that greatness which a king possesses merely by being a representative

of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual

interest seem to be these:--wealth accumulated; wealth spent in

magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention;

and, above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose the

inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a prince or a

subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they

are formed.

Suppose then we were to ask, whether the king has been richer than his

predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the plan

of favoritism? I believe it will be found that the picture of royal

indigence, which our court has presented until this year, has been truly

humiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but

by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken

their confidence in Parliament. If the public treasures had been

exhausted in magnificence and splendor, this distress would have been

accounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be more

unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete

out the splendor of the crown. Indeed I have found very few persons

disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, it

must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the

wants of the court with its expenses. They do not behold the cause of

this distress in any part of the apparatus of royal magnificence. In all

this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with

all the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved.

Their wonder is increased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue

settled on his Majesty's civil list to the amount of 800,000_l._ a year,

he has a farther aid from a large pension list, near 90,000_l._ a year,

in Ireland; from the produce of the duchy of Lancaster (which we are

told has 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 in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure

considerably more than 40,000_l._ a year. The whole is certainly not

much short of a million annually.

These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national

councils. We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from his

Majesty's German dominions, and the bishopric of Osnaburg. This is

unquestionably true. But that which is not within the province of

Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man's own reflection. If

a foreign prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not

fail of becoming the subject of our speculation. Filled with an anxious

concern for whatever regards the welfare of our sovereign, it is

impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has

been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over.

There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not

inconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments. This produce

the people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent. It is

accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn

away, for the support of that court faction, which, whilst it distresses

the nation, impoverishes the prince in every one of his resources. I

once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration

concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right

to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the

purpose of showing how little this system of favoritism has been

advantageous to the monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has

sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that he

possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this

country, and in other parts of his dominions.

Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and

sacred character, and secured the king from those disgusts attached to

the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable? This is

a topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but the

pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the

corner-stone of the court-party. It has however so happened, that if I

were to fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more

particularly and shamefully blamable, the effects which it has produced

would justify me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the

personal dignity of the sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand

contradictions and mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner

these projectors of royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent

promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign,

every one of which is, more or less, a melancholy proof of the truth of

what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the court but a

few years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external

administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings

of the sovereign could possibly contrive a keener instrument of

mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part

and member of the present arrangement? Nor, in the whole course of our

history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known

to extort from any prince a greater contradiction to all his own

declared affections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in

direct opposition to everything the people approve and desire.

An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised to

submit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been

denied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependent

instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence

may depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantage

accordingly. Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary to

what we have made our object is sure, in some way, or in some time or

other, to become our master. All this however is submitted to, in order

to avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence with the

opinion of the people. For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a

king has some sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects:

that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to

him: that as soon as the persons who are odious at court are known to be

odious to the people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering

down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honors. None are considered

as well-wishers to the crown, but those who advise to some unpopular

course of action; none capable of serving it, but those who are obliged

to call at every instant upon all its power for the safety of their

lives. None are supposed to be fit priests in the temple of government,

but the persons who are compelled to fly into it for sanctuary. Such is

the effect of this refined project; such is ever the result of all the

contrivances, which are used to free men from the servitude of their

reason, and from the necessity of ordering their affairs according to

their evident interests. These contrivances oblige them to run into a

real and ruinous servitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint, that

might be attended with advantage.

If therefore this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence of

saving the king from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable to

him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty's private

hours? No, most certainly. The father of his people cannot possibly

enjoy repose, while his family is in such a state of distraction. Then

what 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 labors and contrivances? Have they not beggared his

exchequer, tarnished the splendor of his court, sunk his dignity, galled

his feelings, discomposed the whole order and happiness of his private

life?

It will be very hard, I believe, to state in what respect the king has

profited by that faction which presumptuously choose to call themselves

_his friends_.

If particular men had grown into an attachment, by the distinguished

honor of the society of their sovereign; and, by being the partakers of

his amusements, came sometimes to prefer the gratification of his

personal inclinations to the support of his high character, the thing

would be very natural, and it would be excusable enough. But the

pleasant part of the story is, that these _king's friends_ have no more

ground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder in

Cumberland or in Cornwall. They are only known to their sovereign by

kissing his hand, for the offices, pensions, and grants, into which they

have deceived his benignity. May no storm ever come, which will put the

firmness of their attachment to the proof; and which, in the midst of

confusions, and terrors, and sufferings, may demonstrate the eternal

difference between a true and severe friend to the monarchy, and a

slippery sycophant of the court! _Quantum infido scurræ distabit

amicus._

So far I have considered the effect of the court system, chiefly as it

operates upon the executive government, on the temper of the people, and

on 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

at which they aimed, as well as the instrument by which they were to

operate. 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 its

original 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 and

character of that assembly; not with regard to its _legal form and

power_, but to its _spirit_, and to the purposes it is meant to answer

in the constitution.

The House of Commons was supposed originally to be _no part of the

standing government of this country_. It was considered as a _control_

issuing _immediately_ from the people, and speedily to be resolved into

the mass from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the higher part

of government what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistrate

being transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity

it was hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not only

between the people and the standing authority of the crown, but between

the people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. It

was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and government,

they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything that

concerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts of

legislature.

Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business

may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the

House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual

disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes)

be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should

be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would

indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their

constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by

the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of

sympathy they would cease to be a House of Commons. For it is not the

derivation of the power of that House from the people, which makes it in

a distinct sense their representative. The king is the representative of

the people; so are the lords; so are the judges. They all are trustees

for the people, as well as the commons; because no power is given for

the sole sake of the holder; and although government certainly is an

institution of divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who

administer it, all originate from the people.

A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction of

a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of

government and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House

of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of

the nation. It was not instituted to be a control _upon_ the people, as

of late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious

tendency. It was designed as a control _for_ the people. Other

institutions have been formed for the purpose of checking popular

excesses; and they are, I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If

not, they ought to be made so. The House of Commons, as it was never

intended for the support of peace and subordination, is miserably

appointed for that service; having no stronger weapon than its mace,

and no better officer than its serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of

its own proper authority. A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and

judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money; an openness,

approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these seem to be the

true characteristics of a House of Commons. But an addressing House of

Commons, and a petitioning nation; a House of Commons full of

confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony

with ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who

vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments;

who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in

all disputes between the people and administration, presume against the

people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the

provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things

in this constitution. Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful

senate; but it is not, to any popular purpose, a House of Commons. This

change from an immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course

of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular

magistracies in the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is

indeed their greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For

there is a material distinction between that corruption by which

particular points are carried against reason, (this is a thing which

cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is of loss consequence,) and

the corruption of the principle itself For then the evil is not

accidental, but settled. The distemper becomes the natural habit.

For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the principle of

Parliament to be totally corrupted, and therefore its ends entirely

defeated, when I see two symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate

support to all ministers; because this destroys the very end of

Parliament as a control, and is a general, previous sanction to

misgovernment: and secondly, the setting up any claims adverse to the

right of free election; for this tends to subvert the legal authority by

which the House of Commons sits.

I know that, since the Revolution, along with many dangerous, many

useful powers of government have been weakened. It is absolutely

necessary to have frequent recourse to the legislature. Parliaments must

therefore sit every year, and for great part of the year. The dreadful

disorders of frequent elections have also necessitated a septennial

instead of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I mean the

constant habit of authority, and the unfrequency of elections, have

tended very much to draw the House of Commons towards the character of a

standing senate. It is a disorder which has arisen from the cure of

greater disorders; it has arisen from the extreme difficulty of

reconciling liberty under a monarchical government, with external

strength and with internal tranquillity.

It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely from this great

inconvenience; but I would not increase an evil, because I was not able

to remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep the House of

Commons religiously true to its first principles, I would not argue for

carrying it to a total oblivion of them. This has been the great scheme

of power in our time. They, who will not conform their conduct to the

public good, and cannot support it by the prerogative of the crown, have

adopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and

old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the

stronghold of Parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which

there is no ordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into

Parliament. In Parliament the whole is executed from the beginning to

the end. In Parliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute;

and the safety in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no

after-reckonings to terrify. Parliament cannot, with any great

propriety, punish others for things in which they themselves have been

accomplices. Thus the control of Parliament upon the executory power is

lost; because Parliament 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 the

authority of Parliament supports itself, the credit of every act of

government, which they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so very

odious that the whole strength of Parliament is insufficient to

recommend it, then Parliament is itself discredited; and this discredit

increases more and more that indifference to the constitution, which it

is the constant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of Parliamentary

powers, to render general among the people. Whenever Parliament is

persuaded to assume the offices of executive government, it will lose

all the confidence, love, and veneration, which it has ever enjoyed

whilst it was supposed the _corrective and control_ of the acting powers

of the state. This would be the event, though its conduct in such a

perversion of its functions should be tolerably just and moderate; but

if it should be iniquitous, violent, full of passion, and full of

faction, it would be considered as the most intolerable of all the modes

of tyranny.

For a considerable time this separation of the representatives from

their constituents went on with a silent progress; and had those, who

conducted the plan for their total separation, been persons of temper

and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their design, the

success would have been infallible: but by their precipitancy they have

laid it open in all its nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it: and the

event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the scheme. In the last

session, the corps called the _king's friends_ made a hardy attempt, all

at once, _to alter the right of election itself_; to put it into the

power of the House of Commons to disable any person disagreeable to them

from sitting in Parliament, without any other rule than their own

pleasure; to make incapacities, either general for descriptions of men,

or particular for individuals; and to take into their body, persons who

avowedly had never been chosen by the majority of legal electors, nor

agreeably to any known rule of law.

The arguments upon which this claim was founded and combated, are not my

business here. Never has a subject been more amply and more learnedly

handled, nor upon one side, in my opinion, more satisfactorily; they who

are 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 to

consider it as a part of the favorite project of government; to observe

on 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 the

whole. This gentleman, by setting himself strongly in opposition to the

court cabal, had become at once an object of their persecution, and of

the popular favor. The hatred of the court party pursuing, and the

countenance of the people protecting him, it very soon became not at all

a 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 operation

upon 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 be

established, tending to show, _That the favor of the people was not so

sure a road as the favor of the court even to popular honors and popular

trusts_. A strenuous resistance to every appearance of lawless power; a

spirit of independence carried to some degree of enthusiasm; an

inquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every

corruption and every error of government; these are the qualities which

recommend a man to a seat in the House of Commons, in open and merely

popular elections. An indolent and submissive disposition; a disposition

to think charitably of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a

mutual intercourse of favors with them; an inclination rather to

countenance a strong use of authority, than to bear any sort of

licentiousness on the part of the people; these are unfavorable

qualities 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 its

exorbitances, does not directly contradict the purposes of a trust, the

end of which is a control on power. The latter character, even when it

is not in its extreme, will execute this trust but very imperfectly;

and, if deviating to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead

of forwarding the purposes of a control on government. But when the

House of Commons was to be new modelled, this principle was not only to

be changed but reversed. Whilst any errors committed in support of power

were left to the law, with every advantage of favorable construction, of

mitigation, and finally of pardon; all excesses on the side of liberty,

or in pursuit of popular favor, or in defence of popular rights and

privileges, were not only to be punished by the rigor of the known law,

but by a _discretionary_ proceeding, which brought on _the loss of the

popular object itself_. Popularity was to be rendered, if not directly

penal, at least highly dangerous. The favor of the people might lead

even to a disqualification of representing them. Their odium might

become, strained through the medium of two or three constructions, the

means of sitting as the trustee of all that was dear to them. This is

punishing the offence in the offending part. Until this time, the

opinion of the people, through the power of an assembly, still in some

sort popular, led to the greatest honors and emoluments in the gift of

the crown. Now the principle is reversed; and the favor of the court is

the only sure way of obtaining and holding those honors which ought to

be 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 my

proposition. Nothing can alter my opinion concerting the pernicious

tendency of this example, until I see some man for his indiscretion in

the support of power, for his violent and intemperate servility,

rendered incapable of sitting in Parliament. For as it now stands, the

fault of overstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly if you

please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the

opposite fault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance

to power has shut the door of the House of Commons to one man;

obsequiousness and servility, to none.

Not that I would encourage popular disorder, or any disorder. But I

would leave such offences to the law, to be punished in measure and

proportion. The laws of this country are for the most part constituted,

and wisely so, for the general ends of government, rather than for the

preservation of our particular liberties. Whatever therefore is done in

support of liberty, by persons not in public trust, or not acting merely

in that trust, is liable to be more or less out of the ordinary course

of the law; and the law itself is sufficient to animadvert upon it with

great severity. Nothing indeed can hinder that severe letter from

crushing us, except the temperaments it may receive from a trial by

jury. But if the habit prevails of _going beyond the law_, and

superseding this judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed,

into the legislative bodies, who shall establish themselves into _courts

of criminal equity_ (so the _Star Chamber_ has been called by Lord

Bacon), all the evils of the _Star Chamber_ are revived. A large and

liberal construction in ascertaining offences, and a discretionary

power in punishing them, is the idea of _criminal equity_; which is in

truth a monster in jurisprudence. It signifies nothing whether a court

for this purpose be a committee of council, or a House of Commons, or a

House of Lords; the liberty of the subject will be equally subverted by

it. The true end and purpose of that House of Parliament, which

entertains such a jurisdiction, will be destroyed by it.

I will not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes

was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of

his ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of

libellers and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was

meant than was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full

as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue,

and order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced;

that the most audacious libels on royal majesty have passed without

notice; that the most treasonable invectives against the laws,

liberties, and constitution of the country, have not met with the

slightest animadversion; 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 and unbridled license. All this while the peace of the nation

must be shaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a

single favorite.

Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible

impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only

generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by

their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement,

have drawn this man into the very faults which have furnished the cabal

with a pretence for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favor,

honor, and distinction, which a court can bestow? Add but the crime of

servility (the _foedum crimen servitutis_) to every other crime, and the

whole mass is immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the just

subject of reward and honor. When therefore I reflect upon this method

pursued by the cabal in distributing rewards and punishments, I must

conclude that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution, not on account of

what he has done in common with others who are the objects of reward,

but for that in which he differs from many of them: that he is pursued

for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his

unconquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous

resistance against oppression.

In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, nor

his faults that were to be discountenanced. Opposition to acts of power

was to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The popularity which

should arise from such an opposition was to be shown unable to protect

it. The qualities by which court is made to the people, were to render

every fault inexpiable, and every error irretrievable. The qualities by

which court is made to power, were to cover and to sanctify everything.

He that will have a sure and honorable 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 populi Romani amores_.

If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to greater dangers

than a disposition to servility, the principle which is the life and

soul of popular elections will perish out of the constitution.

It behoves the people of England to consider how the House of Commons,

under the operation of these examples, must of necessity be constituted.

On the side of the court will be, all honors, offices, emoluments; every

sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of

more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable

petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their

country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the

court, and in opposition to its system. For his own person, no office,

or emolument, or title; no promotion, ecclesiastical, or civil, or

military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kindred. In vain an

expiring interest in a borough calls for offices, or small livings, for

the children of mayors, and aldermen, and capital burgesses. His court

rival has them all. He can do an infinite number of acts of generosity

and kindness, and even of public spirit. He can procure indemnity from

quarters. He can procure advantages in trade. He can get pardons for

offences. He can obtain a thousand favors, and avert a thousand evils.

He may, while he betrays every valuable interest of the kingdom, be a

benefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel to his borough. The

unfortunate 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, perhaps

exceeded, by his court competitor, he has no way of showing any one good

quality, or of making a single friend. In the House, he votes forever in

a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors are locked. A body of

loquacious placemen go out to tell the world that all he aims at is to

get into office. If he has not the talent of elocution, which is the

case of many as wise and knowing men as any in the House, he is liable

to all these inconveniences, without the _éclat_ which attends upon any

tolerably successful exertion of eloquence. Can we conceive a more

discouraging post of duty than this? Strip it of the poor reward of

popularity; suffer even the excesses committed in defence of the popular

interest to become a ground for the majority of that House to form a

disqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure,

attended not only with the loss of the franchise, but with every kind of

personal disgrace.--If this shall happen, the people of this kingdom may

be assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man.

It is out of the nature of men and things that they should; and their

presumption will be equal to their folly if they expect it. The power of

the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to protect

every representative in the animated performance of his duty, or that

duty cannot be performed. The House of Commons can never be a control on

other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by

their constituents; and unless those constituents possess some right in

the choice of that House, which it is not in the power of that House to

take away. 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_ be so; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any possibility,

be a legal power in any limited member of government.

The power which they claim, of declaring incapacities, would not be

above the just claims of a final judicature, if they had not laid it

down as a leading principle, that they had no rule in the exercise of

this claim, but their own _discretion_. Not one of their abettors has

ever undertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species or

degree of delinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the

mode of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is

established. The direct consequence of which is, that the first

franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally

depend, is to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and

which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence.

This is so anomalous to our whole constitution, that I will venture to

say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor

can be, forfeited in such a 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

only _declare_ law; and as we are a tribunal both competent and supreme,

what we declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been

so before. Thus the circumstance of having no _appeal_ from their

jurisdiction is made to imply that they have no _rule_ in the exercise

of it: the judgment does not derive its validity from its conformity to

the law; but preposterously the law is made to attend on the judgment;

and the rule of the judgment is no other than the _occasional will of

the House_. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows; which is

just the very nature and description of a legislative act.

This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into its

utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondent

practice. A systematic spirit has been shown upon both sides. The

electors of Middlesex chose a person whom the House of Commons had voted

incapable; and the House of Commons has taken in a member whom the

electors of Middlesex had not chosen. By a construction on that

legislative power which had been assumed, they declared that the true

legal sense of the country was contained in the minority, on that

occasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote of incapacity, be

contained in any minority.

When any construction of law goes against the spirit of the privilege it

was meant to support, it is a vicious construction. It is material to us

to be represented really and _bonâ fide_, and not in forms, in types,

and shadows, and fictions of law. The right of election was not

established merely as a _matter of form_, to satisfy some method and

rule of technical reasoning; it was not a principle which might

substitute a _Titius_ or a _Mævius_, a _John Doe_ or _Richard Roe_, in

the place of a man specially chosen; not a principle which was just as

well satisfied with one man as with another. It is a right, the effect

of which is to give 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 of judging and feeling; not an _ens rationis_ and creature of

law: nor can those devices, by which anything else is substituted in the

place of such an actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of

representation.

I know that the courts of law have made as strained constructions in

other cases. Such is the construction in common recoveries. The method

of construction which in that case gives to the persons in remainder,

for their security and representative, the door-keeper, crier, or

sweeper of the court, or some other shadowy being without substance or

effect, is a fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however suffered

by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion

of the old statute of Westminster, which authorized perpetuities, had

more sense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to

turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious

fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws

which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely

contemptible.

The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionary

disqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will be

sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something in this

argument differing from that on which every mode of despotism has been

defended, I shall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. The

people are satisfied to trust themselves with the exercise of their own

privileges, and do not desire this kind intervention of the House of

Commons to free them from the burden. They are certainly in the right.

They ought not to trust the House of Commons with a power over their

franchises; because the constitution, which placed two other co-ordinate

powers to control it, reposed no such confidence in that body. It were a

folly well deserving servitude for its punishment, to be full of

confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to a House

of Commons, arrogating to its sole resolution the most harsh and odious

part of legislative authority, that degree of submission which is due

only to the legislature itself.

When the House of Commons, in an endeavor to obtain new advantages at

the expense of the other orders of the state, for the benefit of the

_commons at large_, have pursued strong measures; if it were not just,

it was at least natural, that the constituents should connive at all

their proceedings; because we were ourselves ultimately to profit. But

when this submission is urged to us, in a contest between the

representatives and ourselves, and where nothing can be put into their

scale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us to be children when

they tell us they are our representatives, our own flesh and blood, and

that all the stripes they give us are for our good. The very desire of

that body to have such a trust contrary to law reposed in them, shows

that they are not worthy of it. They certainly will abuse it; because

all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretionary power leading to the

aggrandizement and profit of their own body have always abused it: and I

see no particular sanctity in our times, that is at all likely, by a

miraculous operation, to overrule the course of nature.

But we must purposely shut our eyes, if we consider this matter merely

as a contest between the House of Commons and the electors. The true

contest is between the electors of the kingdom and the crown; the crown

acting by an instrumental House of Commons. It is precisely the same,

whether the ministers of the crown can disqualify by a dependent House

of Commons, or by a dependent Court of _Star Chamber_, or by a dependent

Court of King's Bench If once members of Parliament can be practically

convinced that they do not depend on the affection or opinion of the

people for their political being, they will give themselves over,

without even an appearance of reserve, to the influence of the court.

Indeed a Parliament unconnected with the people is essential to a

ministry unconnected with the people; and therefore those who saw

through what mighty difficulties the interior ministry waded, and the

exterior were dragged, in this business, will conceive of what

prodigious importance, the new corps of _king's men_ held this principle

of occasional and personal incapacitation, to the whole body of their

design.

When the House of Commons was thus made to consider itself as the master

of its constituents, there wanted but one thing to secure that House

against all possible future deviation towards popularity: an _unlimited_

fund 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 the

neighboring monarchies, it was necessary, in effect, to destroy those

appropriations of revenue, which seem to limit the property, as the

other laws had done the powers, of the crown. An opportunity for this

purpose was taken, upon an application to Parliament for payment of the

debts of the civil list; which in 1769 had amounted to 513,000_l._ Such

application had been made upon former occasions; but to do it in the

former manner would by no means answer the present purpose.

Whenever the crown had come to the commons to desire a supply for the

discharging of debts due on the civil list, it was always asked and

granted with one of the three following qualifications; sometimes with

all of them. Either it was stated, that the revenue had been diverted

from its purposes by Parliament; or that those duties had fallen short

of the sum for which they were given by Parliament, and that the

intention of the legislature had not been fulfilled; or that the money

required to discharge the civil list debt was to be raised chargeable on

the civil list duties. In the reign of Queen Anne, the crown was found

in debt. The lessening and granting away some part of her revenue by

Parliament was 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 the duties which were then applied to the ordinary

government produced clear above 580,000_l._ a year; because, when they

were afterwards granted to George the First, 120,000_l._ was added to

complete the whole to 700,000_l._ a year. Indeed it was then asserted,

and, I have no doubt, truly, that for many years the net produce did not

amount to above 550,000_l._ The queen's extraordinary charges were

besides very considerable; equal, at least, to any we have known in our

time. The application to Parliament was not for an absolute grant of

money; but to empower 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. The

money was granted upon the same plan which had been followed in the

reign of Queen Anne. The civil list revenues were then mortgaged for the

sum to be raised, and stood charged with the ransom of their own

deliverance.

George the Second received an addition to his civil list. Duties were

granted for the purpose of raising 800,000_l._ a year. It was not until

he had reigned nineteen years, and after the last rebellion, that he

called upon Parliament for a discharge of the civil list debt. The

extraordinary charges brought on by the rebellion, account fully for the

necessities of the crown. However, the extraordinary charges of

government were not thought a ground fit to be relied on.

A deficiency of the civil list duties for several years before was

stated as the principal, if not the sole ground on which an application

to Parliament could be justified. About this time the produce of these

duties had fallen pretty low; and even upon an average of the whole

reign they never produced 800,000_l._ a year clear to the treasury.

That prince reigned fourteen years afterwards: not only no new demands

were made; but with so much good order were his revenues and expenses

regulated, that, although many parts of the establishment of the court

were upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since,

there was a considerable sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about

170,000_l._ applicable to the service of the civil list of his present

Majesty. So that, if this reign commenced with a greater charge than

usual, there was enough and more than enough, abundantly to supply all

the extraordinary expense. That the civil list should have been exceeded

in the two former reigns, especially in the reign of George the First,

was not at all surprising. His revenue was but 700,000_l._ annually; if

it ever produced so much clear. The prodigious and dangerous

disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and the cause of a

pretender then powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many demands of

an extraordinary nature both abroad and at home. Much management and

great expenses were necessary. But the throne of no prince has stood

upon more unshaken foundations than that of his present Majesty.

To have exceeded the sum given for the civil list, and to have incurred

a debt without special authority of Parliament, was _prima facie_, a

criminal act: as such, ministers ought naturally rather to have

withdrawn it from the inspection, than to have exposed it to the

scrutiny of Parliament. Certainly they ought, of themselves, officially

to have come armed with every sort of argument, which, by explaining,

could excuse, a matter in itself of presumptive guilt. But the terrors

of the House of Commons are no longer for ministers.

On the other hand, the peculiar character of the House of Commons, as

trustee of the public purse, would have led them to call with a

punctilious solicitude for every public account, and to have examined

into them with the most rigorous accuracy.

The capital use of an account is, that the reality of the charge, the

reason of incurring it, and the justice and necessity of discharging it,

should all appear antecedent to the payment. No man ever pays first, and

calls for his account afterwards; because he would thereby let out of

his hands the principal, and indeed only effectual, means of compelling

a full and fair one. But, in national business, there is an additional

reason for a previous production of every account. It is a check,

perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt and prodigal use of public money.

An account after payment is to no rational purpose an account. However,

the House of Commons thought all these to be antiquated principles:

they were of opinion, that the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was,

to pay first what the court thought proper to demand, and to take its

chance for an examination into accounts at some time of greater leisure.

The nation had settled 800,000_l._ a year on the crown, as sufficient

for the support of its dignity, upon the estimate of its own ministers.

When ministers came to Parliament, and said that this allowance had not

been sufficient for the purpose, and that they had incurred a debt of

500,000_l._, would it not have been natural for Parliament first to have

asked how, and by what means, their appropriated allowance came to be

insufficient? Would it not have savored of some attention to justice, to

have seen in what periods of administration this debt had been

originally incurred; that they might discover, and if need were,

animadvert on the persons who were found the most culpable? To put their

hands upon such articles of expenditure as they thought improper or

excessive, and to secure, in future, against such misapplication or

exceeding? Accounts for any other purposes are but a matter of

curiosity, and no genuine Parliamentary object. All the accounts which

could answer any Parliamentary end were refused, or postponed by

previous questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying

an improper suspicion of the ministers of the crown.

When every loading account had been refused, many others were granted

with sufficient facility.

But with great candor also, the House was informed, that hardly any of

them could be ready until the next session; some of them perhaps not so

soon. But, in order firmly to establish the precedent of _payment

previous 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

of Parliament, when any demand comes from the crown, that the House must

go immediately into the committee of supply; in which committee it was

allowed, that the production and examination of accounts would be quite

proper and regular. It was therefore carried, that they should go into

the committee without delay, and without accounts, in order to examine

with great order and regularity things that could not possibly come

before them. After this stroke of orderly and Parliamentary wit and

humor, they went into the committee; and very generously voted the

payment.

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

as a debt of the state, contracted upon national authority. Its payment

was urged as equally pressing upon the public faith and honor; and when

the whole year's account was stated, in what is called _the budget_, the

ministry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just

as if they had discharged 500,000_l._ of navy or exchequer bills.

Though, in truth, their payment, from the sinking fund, of debt which

was never contracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to all intents and

purposes, so much debt incurred. But such is the present notion of

public credit, and payment of debt. No wonder that it produces such

effects.

Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident security against

future, 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, though

this would have been but a poor security for the public. Mr. Pelham gave

such an assurance, and he kept his word. But nothing was capable of

extorting from our ministers anything which had the least resemblance to

a promise of confining the expenses of the civil list within the limits

which had been settled by Parliament. This reserve of theirs I look upon

to be equivalent to the clearest declaration, that they were resolved

upon a contrary course.

However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in the speech from the

throne, after thanking Parliament for the relief so liberally granted,

the ministers inform the two Houses, that they will _endeavor_ to

confine the expenses of the civil government--within what limits, think

you? those which the law had prescribed? Not in the least--"such limits

as the _honor of the crown_ can possibly admit."

Thus they established an _arbitrary_ standard for that dignity which

Parliament had defined and limited to a _legal_ standard. They gave

themselves, under the lax and indeterminate idea of the _honor of the

crown_, a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner of

corruption. This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to

both Houses; while an idle and unoperative act of Parliament, estimating

the dignity of the crown at 800,000_l._ and confining it to that sum,

adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of

libraries, without any sort of advantage to the people.

After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think

that the crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever. For if

the ministry has 800,000_l._ a year by the law of the land; and if by

the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paid

previously to the production of any account; I presume that this is

equivalent to an income with no other limits than the abilities of the

subject and the moderation of the court; that is to say, it is such an

income 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

of drawing upon the sinking fund. Its effect on the public credit of

this kingdom must be obvious; for in vain is the sinking fund the great

buttress of all the rest, if it be in the power of the ministry to

resort to it for the payment of any debts which they may choose to

incur, under the name of the civil list, and through the medium of a

committee, which thinks itself obliged by law to vote supplies without

any other account than that of the mere existence of the debt.

Five hundred thousand pounds is a serious sum. But it is nothing to the

prolific principle upon which the sum was voted: a principle that may be

well called, _the fruitful mother of an hundred more_. Neither is the

damage to public credit of very great consequence, when compared with

that which results to public morals and to the safety of the

constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption opened by the

precedent, and to be wrought by the principle, of the late payment of

the debts of the civil list. The power of discretionary disqualification

by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the

civil list by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed,

must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make

Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever

was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun

between the representatives and the people. The court faction have at

length committed them.

In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest

staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly

any landmarks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we

can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases. I know

the diligence with which my observations on our public disorders have

been made; I am very sure of the integrity of the motives on which they

are published; I cannot be equally confident in any plan for the

absolute cure of those disorders, or for their certain future

prevention. My aim is to bring this matter into more public discussion.

Let the sagacity of others work upon it. It is not uncommon for medical

writers to describe histories of diseases very accurately, on whose cure

they can say but very little.

The first ideas which generally suggest themselves, for the cure of

Parliamentary disorders, are, to shorten the duration of Parliaments;

and to disqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in the

House of Commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in those remedies, I am

sure in the present state of things it is impossible to apply them. A

restoration of the right of free election is a preliminary indispensable

to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made

in the constitution, is a matter of deep and difficult research.

If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as

little troublesome to me as to another, to extol these remedies, so

famous in speculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never

attempted seriously to resort in practice. I confess then, that I have

no sort of reliance upon either a triennial Parliament, or a place-bill.

With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counteract,

than to promote the ends that are proposed by it. To say nothing of the

horrible disorders among the people attending frequent elections, I

should be fearful of committing, every three years, the independent

gentlemen of the country into a contest with the treasury. It is easy to

see which of the contending parties would be ruined first. Whoever has

taken a careful view of public proceedings, so as to endeavor to ground

his speculations on his experience, must have observed how prodigiously

greater the power of ministry is in the first and last session of a

Parliament, than it is in the intermediate period, when members sit a

little firm on their seats. The persons of the greatest Parliamentary

experience, with whom I have conversed, did constantly, in canvassing

the fate of questions, allow something to the court side, upon account

of the elections depending or imminent. The evil complained of, if it

exists in the present state of things, would hardly be removed by a

triennial Parliament: for, unless the influence of government in

elections can be entirely taken away, the more frequently they return,

the more they will harass private independence; the more generally men

will be compelled to fly to the settled systematic interest of

government, and to the resources of a boundless civil list. Certainly

something may be done, and ought to be done, towards lessening that

influence in elections; and this will be necessary upon a plan either

of longer or shorter duration of Parliament. But nothing can so

perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too

frequently repeated, utterly ruinous, first to independence of fortune,

and then to independence of spirit. As I am only giving an opinion on

this point, and not at all debating it in an adverse line, I hope I may

be excused in another observation. With great truth I may aver, that I

never remember to have talked on this subject with any man much

conversant with public business, who considered short Parliaments as a

real improvement of the constitution. Gentlemen, warm in a popular

cause, are ready enough to attribute all the declarations of such

persons to corrupt motives. But the habit of affairs, if, on one hand,

it tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes it, on the other, with the means

of better information. The authority of such persons will always have

some weight. It may stand upon a par with the speculations of those who

are less practised in business; and who, with perhaps purer intentions,

have not so effectual means of judging. It is besides an effect of

vulgar and puerile malignity to imagine, that every statesman is of

course corrupt; and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point,

is solely formed upon some sinister interest.

The next favorite remedy is a place-bill. The same principle guides in

both; I mean, the opinion which is entertained by many, of the

infallibility of laws and regulations, in the cure of public distempers.

Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are unwisely confident, I

will only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious

and mature reflection. It is not easy to foresee, what the effect would

be, of disconnecting with Parliament the greatest part of those who hold

civil employments, and of such mighty and important bodies as the

military and naval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that they

should have a corrupt interest in the forms of the constitution, than

that they should have none at all. This is a question altogether

different from the disqualification of a particular description of

revenue-officers from seats in Parliament; or, perhaps, of all the lower

sorts of them from votes in elections. In the former case, only the few

are affected; in the latter, only the inconsiderable. But a great

official, a great professional, a great military and naval interest, all

necessarily comprehending many people of the first weight, ability,

wealth, and spirit, has been gradually formed in the kingdom. These new

interests must be let into a share of representation, else possibly they

may be inclined to destroy those institutions of which they are not

permitted to partake. 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

serious considerations occur. I do not open them here, because they are

not directly to my purpose; proposing only to give the reader some taste

of the difficulties that attend all capital changes in the constitution;

just to hint the uncertainty, to say no worse, of being able to prevent

the court, as long as it has the means of influence abundantly in its

power, of applying that influence to Parliament; and perhaps, if the

public method were precluded, of doing it in some worse and more

dangerous method. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The

science of evasion, already tolerably understood, would then be brought

to the greatest perfection. It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to

know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a

degree of purity impracticable in degenerate times and manners, instead

of cutting off the subsisting ill-practices, new corruptions might be

produced for the concealment and security of the old. It were better,

undoubtedly, that no influence at all could affect the mind of a member

of Parliament. But of all modes of influence, in my opinion, a place

under 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 sort

of influence which is open and visible, which is connected with the

dignity and the service of the state, when it is not in my power to

prevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery,

and those innumerable methods of clandestine corruption, which are

abundantly in the hands of the court, and which will be applied as long

as these means of corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, have

existence amongst us. Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with

steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it

from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of

oversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in a

government so complicated as ours, combined at the same time with

external circumstances still more complicated, is a matter full of

difficulties: 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

to promise. They do not respect the public nor themselves, who engage

for more than they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they are

able to perform. These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest and

unbiassed; and submitted entirely to the opinion of grave men,

well-affected to the constitution of their country, and of experience in

what may best promote or hurt it.

Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an immense revenue, an

enormous debt, mighty establishments, government itself a great banker

and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of a

decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but _the

interposition of the body of the people itself_, whenever it shall

appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation,

that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law,

and to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition is a most

unpleasant remedy. But, if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some

occasion to be used; to be used then only, when it is evident that

nothing else can hold the constitution to its true principles.

The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and

redress, in the last century; in this the distempers of Parliament. It

is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parliamentary disorders

can be completed; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence

in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a

more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their

representatives. Standards for judging more systematically upon their

conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and

corporations. Frequent and correct lists of the voters in all important

questions ought to be procured.

By such means something may be done. By such means it may appear who

those are, that, by an indiscriminate support of all administrations,

have totally banished all integrity and confidence out of public

proceedings; have confounded the best men with the worst; and weakened

and dissolved, instead of strengthening and compacting, the general

frame of government. If any person is more concerned for government and

order, than for the liberties of his country; even he is equally

concerned to put an end to this course of indiscriminate support. It is

this blind and undistinguishing support, that feeds the spring of those

very disorders, by which he is frightened into the arms of the faction

which contains in itself the source of all disorders, by enfeebling all

the visible and regular authority of the state. The distemper is

increased by his injudicious and preposterous endeavors, or pretences,

for the cure of it.

An exterior administration, chosen for its impotency, or after it is

chosen purposely rendered impotent, in order to be rendered subservient,

will not be obeyed. The laws themselves will not be respected, when

those who execute them are despised: and they will be despised, when

their power is not immediate from the crown, or natural in the kingdom.

Never were ministers better supported in Parliament. Parliamentary

support comes and goes with office, totally regardless of the man, or

the merit. Is government strengthened? It grows weaker and weaker. The

popular torrent gains upon it every hour. Let us learn from our

experience. It is not support that is wanting to government, but

reformation. When ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeed

built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But when

it stands upon private humor, its structure is of stubble, and its

foundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again,--He that supports every

administration subverts all government. The reason is this: The whole

business in which a court usually takes an interest goes on at present

equally well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise or foolish,

scandalous or reputable; there is nothing therefore to hold it firm to

any one body of men, or to any one consistent scheme of politics.

Nothing interposes, to prevent the full operation of all the caprices

and all the passions of a court upon the servants of the public. The

system of administration is open to continual shocks and changes, upon

the principles of the meanest cabal, and the most contemptible intrigue.

Nothing can be solid and permanent. All good men at length fly with

horror from such a service. Men of rank and ability, with the spirit

which ought to animate such men in a free state, while they decline the

jurisdiction of dark cabal on their actions and their fortunes, will,

for both, cheerfully put themselves upon their country. They will trust

an inquisitive and distinguishing Parliament; because it does inquire,

and does distinguish. If they act well, they know, that, in such a

Parliament they will be supported against any intrigue; if they act ill,

they know that no intrigue can protect them. This situation, however

awful, is honorable. But in one hour, and in the self-same assembly,

without any assigned or assignable cause, to be precipitated from the

highest authority to the most marked neglect, possibly into the greatest

peril of life and reputation, is a situation full of danger, and

destitute of honor. It will be shunned equally by every man of prudence,

and every man of spirit.

Such are the consequences of the division of court from the

administration; and of the division of public men among themselves. By

the former of these, lawful government is undone; by the latter, all

opposition to lawless power is rendered impotent. Government may in a

great measure be restored, if any considerable bodies of men have

honesty and resolution enough never to accept administration, unless

this garrison of _king's men_, which is stationed, as in a citadel, to

control and enslave it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every work

they have thrown up be levelled with the ground. The disposition of

public 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

in future to be tried. There has not been one which has not sufficiently

experienced the utter incompatibility of that faction with the public

peace, and with all the ends of good government: since, if they opposed

it, they soon lost every power of serving the crown; if they submitted

to it, they lost all the esteem of their country. Until ministers give

to the public a full proof of their entire alienation from that system,

however plausible their pretences, we may be sure they are more intent

on the emoluments than the duties of office. If they refuse to give this

proof, we know of what stuff they are made. In this particular, it ought

to be the electors' business to look to their representatives. The

electors ought to esteem it no less culpable in their member to give a

single vote in Parliament to such an administration, than to take an

office under it; to endure it, than to act in it. The notorious

infidelity and versatility of members of Parliament, in their opinions

of men and things, ought in a particular manner to be considered by the

electors in the inquiry which is recommended to them. This is one of

the principal holdings of that destructive system, which has endeavored

to unhinge all the virtuous, honorable, and useful connections in the

kingdom.

This cabal has, with great success, propagated a doctrine which serves

for a color to those acts of treachery; and whilst it receives any

degree of countenance it will be utterly senseless to look for a

vigorous opposition to the court party. The doctrine is this: That all

political connections are in their nature factious, and as such ought to

be dissipated and destroyed; and that the rule for forming

administrations is more personal ability, rated by the judgment of this

cabal upon it, and taken by draughts from every division and

denomination of public men. This decree was solemnly promulgated by the

head of the court corps, the Earl of Bute himself, in a speech which he

made, in the year 1766, against the then administration, the only

administration which he has ever been known directly and publicly to

oppose.

It is indeed in no way wonderful, that such persons should make such

declarations. That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is an

opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by

unconstitutional statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked

together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil

design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose

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 not acquainted

with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's talents,

nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by

joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no

common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that

they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy.

In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of

the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents

are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by

vainglory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single,

unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat

the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men

combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an

unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man

means well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person he

never did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, and

even harangued against every design which he apprehended to be

prejudicial to the interests of his country. This innoxious and

ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology and

disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of public duty. That

duty demands and requires, that what is right should not only be made

known, 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 of doing his duty with effect, it is an omission that

frustrates the purposes 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 always acted right; but has taken special care, to act

in such a manner that his endeavors could not possibly be productive of

any consequence.

I do not wonder that the behavior of many parties should have made

persons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat out of humor with all

sorts of connection in politics. I admit that people frequently acquire

in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and prescriptive spirit; that

they are apt to sink the idea of the general good in this circumscribed

and partial interest. But, where duty renders a critical situation a

necessary one, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendant

upon it; and not to fly from the situation itself. If a fortress is

seated in an unwholesome air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to

be attentive to his health, but he must not desert his station. Every

profession, not excepting the glorious one of a soldier, or the sacred

one of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices; which, however,

form no argument against those ways of life; nor are the vices

themselves inevitable to every individual in those professions. Of such

a nature are connections in politics; essentially necessary for the full

performance of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into

faction. Commonwealths are made of families, free commonwealths of

parties also; and we may as well affirm, that our natural regards and

ties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that the

bonds of our party weaken those by which we are held to our country.

Some legislators went so far as to make neutrality in party a crime

against the state. I do not know whether this might not have been rather

to overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the

greatest commonwealths have always commended and promoted such

connections. _Idem sentire de republica_, was with them a principal

ground of friendship and attachment; nor do I know any other capable of

forming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more honorable, and more virtuous

habitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even the

holding of offices together, the disposition of which arose from chance,

not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was

called _necessitudo sortis_; and it was looked upon with a sacred

reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were

considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people

was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support

of such interests in the state as they severally affected. For it was

then thought no crime to endeavor by every honest means to advance to

superiority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions. This

wise people was far from imagining that those connections had no tie,

and obliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without shame, upon

every call of interest. They believed private honor to be the great

foundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean step towards

patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, showed he

regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in a public

situation, might probably consult some other interest than his own.

Never may we become _plus sages que les sages_, as the French comedian

has happily expressed it, wiser than all the wise and good men who have

lived before us. It was their wish, to see public and private virtues,

not dissonant and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniously

combined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation,

reciprocally supporting and supported. In one of the most fortunate

periods of our history this country was governed by a _connection_; I

mean, the great connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They

were complimented upon the principle of this connection by a poet who

was in high esteem with them. Addison, who knew their sentiments, could

not praise them for what they considered as no proper subject of

commendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could not applaud them

for a thing which in general estimation was not highly reputable.

Addressing himself to Britain,--

"Thy favorites 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 rising

into power was through hard essays of practised friendship and

experimented fidelity. At that time it was not imagined, that patriotism

was a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of children and parents,

or dearest connections in private life, and of all the virtues that rise

from those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical

morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown in

patiently bearing the sufferings of your friends; or that

disinterestedness was clearly manifested at the expense of other

people's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who

did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert, who did not

act with confidence; that no men could act with confidence, who were not

bound together 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 these

maxims upon which the whole fabric of public strength is built, to be

blown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker. They were

not afraid that they should be called an ambitious junto; or that their

resolution to stand or fall together should, by placemen, be interpreted

into a scuffle for places.

Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the

national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all

agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive, that any one

believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who

refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is

the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of

government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher

in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ

them with effect. Therefore every honorable connection will avow it is

their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold

their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their

common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the

state. As this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty

to contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, they

are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and

by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power

in which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer themselves to be

led, or to be controlled, or to be overbalanced, in office or in

council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on

which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair

connection must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such

manly and honorable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean

and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such

persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostors,

who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human

practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level

of vulgar rectitude.

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their

maxims have a plausible air: and, on a cursory view, appear equal to

first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as

copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first

capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the

worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of _Not men, but

measures_; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every

honorable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and

disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as

prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is

right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I respect virtue in

all its situations; even when it is found in the unsuitable company of

weakness. I lament to see qualities, rare and valuable, squandered away

without any public utility. But when a gentleman with great visible

emoluments abandons the party in which he has long acted, and tells you,

it is because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he acts on the

merits of the several measures as they arise; and that he is obliged to

follow his own conscience, and not that of others; he gives reasons

which it is impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it

is impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed

from a certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and

who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not

such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it

not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connections

should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when

they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their

connections, the desertion is a manifest _fact_, upon which a direct

simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a _measure_ of

government be right or wrong, is _no matter of fact_, but a mere affair

of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without

end. But whether the individual _thinks_ the measure right or wrong, is

a point at still a greater distance from the reach of all human

decision. It is therefore very convenient to politicians, not to put the

judgment of their conduct on overt acts, cognizable in any ordinary

court, but upon such matter as can be triable only in that secret

tribunal, where they are sure of being heard with favor, or where at

worst the sentence will be only private whipping.

I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doctrine which

has a tendency to destroy all test of character as deduced from conduct.

He will therefore excuse my adding something more, towards the further

clearing up a point, which the great convenience of obscurity to

dishonesty has been able to cover with some degree of darkness and

doubt.

In order to throw an odium on political connection, those politicians

suppose it a necessary incident to it, that you are blindly to follow

the opinions of your party, when in direct opposition to your own clear

ideas; a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought

of submitting to; and such as, I believe, no connections (except some

court factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose.

Men thinking freely, will, in particular instances, think differently.

But still as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course

of public business are related to, or dependent on, some great,

_leading_, _general principles in government_, a man must be peculiarly

unfortunate in the choice of his political company, if he does not agree

with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these

general principles upon which the party is founded, and which

necessarily draw on a concurrence in their application, he ought from

the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his

opinions. When the question is in its nature doubtful, or not very

material, the modesty which becomes an individual, and, (in spite of our

court moralists) that partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship,

will frequently bring on an acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus

the disagreement will naturally be rare; it will be only enough to

indulge freedom, without violating concord, or disturbing arrangement.

And this is all that ever was required for a character of the greatest

uniformity and steadiness in connection. How men can proceed without any

connection at all, is to me utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of

materials must that man be made, how must he be tempered and put

together, who can sit whole years in Parliament, with five hundred and

fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst the storm of such tempestuous

passions, in the sharp conflict of so many wits, and tempers, and

characters, in the agitation of such mighty questions, in the discussion

of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort of

men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would lead him to

associate himself with them, to aid and be aided, in any one system of

public utility?

I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says, "that the man who

lives wholly detached from others, must be either an angel or a devil."

When I see in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic

purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them to be angels. In the

mean time we are born only to be men. We shall do enough if we form

ourselves to be good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to

cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigor and maturity,

every sort of generous and honest feeling, that belongs to our nature.

To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the

service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, as not to

forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships, and to incur

enmities. To have both strong, but both selected: in the one, to be

placable; in the other immovable. To model our principles to our duties

and our situation. To be fully persuaded, that all virtue which is

impracticable is spurious; and rather to run the risk of falling into

faults in a course which leads us to act with effect and energy, than to

loiter out our days without blame, 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 he that goes over to the enemy.

There is, however, a time for all things. It is not every conjuncture

which calls with equal force upon the activity of honest men; but

critical exigencies now and then arise; and I am mistaken, if this be

not one of them. Men will see the necessity of honest combination; but

they may see it when it is too late. They may embody, when it will be

ruinous to themselves, and of no advantage to the country; when, for

want of such a timely union as may enable them to oppose in favor of the

laws, with the laws on their side, they may at length find themselves

under the necessity of conspiring, instead of consulting. The law, for

which they stand, may become a weapon in the hands of its bitterest

enemies; and they will be cast, at length, into that miserable

alternative between slavery and civil confusion, which no good man can

look upon without horror; an alternative in which it is impossible he

should take either part, with a conscience perfectly at repose. To keep

that situation of guilt and remorse at the utmost distance is,

therefore, our first obligation. Early activity may prevent late and

fruitless violence. As yet we work in the light. The scheme of the

enemies of public tranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us.

If the reader believes that there really exists such a faction as I have

described; a faction ruling by the private inclinations of a court,

against the general sense of the people; and that this faction, whilst

it pursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations of our freedom,

weakens (for the present at least) all the powers of executory

government, rendering us abroad contemptible, and at home distracted; he

will believe also, that nothing but a firm combination of public men

against this body, and that, too, supported by the hearty concurrence of

the people at large, can possibly get the better of it. The people will

see the necessity of restoring public men to an attention to the public

opinion, and of restoring the constitution to its original principles.

Above all, they will endeavor to keep the House of Commons from assuming

a character which does not belong to it. They will endeavor to keep that

House, for its existence, for its powers, and its privileges, as

independent of every other, and as dependent upon themselves, as

possible. This servitude is to a House of Commons (like obedience to the

Divine law) "perfect freedom." For if they once quit this natural,

rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted the only proper

foundation of their power, they must seek a support in an abject and

unnatural dependence somewhere else. When, through the medium of this

just connection with their constituents, the genuine dignity of the

House of Commons is restored, it will begin to think of casting from it,

with scorn, as badges of servility, all the false ornaments of illegal

power, with which it has been, for some time, disgraced. It will begin

to think of its old office of CONTROL. It will not suffer that last of

evils to predominate in the country: men without popular confidence,

public opinion, natural connection, or mutual trust, invested with all

the powers of government.

When they have learned this lesson themselves, they will be willing and

able to teach the court, that it is the true interest of the prince to

have but one administration; and that one composed of those who

recommend themselves to their sovereign through the opinion of their

country, and not by their obsequiousness to a favorite. Such men will

serve their sovereign with affection and fidelity; because his choice of

them, upon such principles, is a compliment to their virtue. They will

be able to serve him effectually; because they will add the weight of

the country to the force of the executory power. They will be able to

serve their king with dignity; because they will never abuse his name to

the gratification of their private spleen or avarice. This, with

allowances for human frailty, may probably be the general character of a

ministry, which thinks itself accountable to the House of Commons; when

the House of Commons thinks itself accountable to its constituents. If

other ideas should prevail, things must remain in their present

confusion, until they are hurried into all the rage of civil violence,

or until they sink into the dead repose of despotism.

END OF VOL. I.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] Mém. de Sully, tom. i. p. 133.

[103] "Uxor Hugonis de Nevill dat Domino Regi ducentas Gallinas, eo quod

possit jacere una nocte cum Domino suo Hugone de Nevill."--Maddox, Hist.

Exch. c. xiii. p. 326.

[104] Sentiments of an Honest Man.

[105] See the political writings of the late Dr. Brown, and many others.

*** Transcriber's notes, corrections ***

p329 behindhand : was "behind-hand", inconsistent with p442

p403 pernicious : was "prenicious"

(see HTML version for pagenumbers)

*** End Transcriber's notes ***