The ap plication 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.
Edmund Burke
Never has a subject been more amply and more learnedly han dled, nor upon one side, in my opinion, more satisfac torily ; 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 pur pose here, is only to consider it as a part of the favor
'we
? ? ? ? or run rnnsnsr DISCONTENTS. 497
ite 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
himself strongly in opposition to the court cabal, had become at once an object of their persecu tion, and of the popular favor. The hatred of the court party pursuing, and the countenance of the peo ple 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 Com
mons 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 enthu siasm ; an inquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every corruption and every error of
government ; these are the qualities which recom mend 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 charita bly of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a mutual intercourse of favors with them; an inclina tion 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 VOL. I. 32
setting
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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 ex ecute this trust but very imperfectly ; and, if deviat ing to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead of forwarding the purposes of a control on govern ment. 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 lib erty, 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 ren dered, if not directly penal, at least highly dangerous. The favor of the people might lead even to a disqual ification 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 oil fence in the offending part. Until this time, the
opinion of the people, through the power of an as sembly, 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 quib
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499
bled away. Example, the only argument of effect in
civil life, demonstrates the truth of my proposition.
Nothing can alter my opinion concerning the perni cious 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, irregu larly if you please, asserting popular privileges, has
led to disqualification; the opposite fault never has produced the slightest pi. Ll1lShIIl0nl3. 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 lib erties. 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 sever ity. 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 pre vails of going beyond the law, and superseding this judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed,
into the legislative bodies, who shall establish them selves into courts qf criminal equity (so the Star Cham ber 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 discre
? ? ? ? 500 ruoucnrs on rnn causn
tionary power in punishing them, is the idea of crim inal equity ; which is in truth a monster in jurispru dence. 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
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 believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the in decency 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 pre tended. 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 pun ished, 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 animadver
I must consider this as a shocking and shame less pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything sacred and civil, public and pri vate, 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 0bsciu'c and contemptible impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only generally scanda lous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by their society, their instruction, their example, their
subject
living
? sion ;
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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 fazdum crimen ser vitutis) 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 punislnnents, I must con clude 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 h_e is pursued for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his unconquerable firm ness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous resist ance against oppression.
In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, nor his faults that were to be dis countenanced. Opposition to acts of power was to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The pop ularity 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 pop ular qualities; otherwise he may remember the old maxim, Breves et infaustos populi Romani amorcs. If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to greater dangers than a disposition to servility, the
U
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principle which is the life and soul of popular elec tions 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, emolu ments ; every sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gen tlemen, 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 emol ument, or title; no promotion, ecclesiastical, or civil, or military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kin dred. In vain an expiring interest in a borough calls
for offices, or small livings, for the children of may ors, 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 fa vors, 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 for ever in a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors
? ? ? ? or rnn PRESENT nisconrnsrs. 503
are locked. A body of loquacious placemen go out to tell the world that all he aims at is to get into of fice. 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 e? clat 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 ex cesses committcd 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 dis grace. --If this shall happen, the people of this king dom 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 pre sumption will equal to their folly 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 can not be performed. The House of Commons can never be control on other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by their con stituents and unless these constituents possess some right in the choice of that House, which 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 will not say contrary to law must be so; for the power which
claimed cannot, by any possibi1ity,be legal power in any limited member of government.
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The power which they claim, of declaring incapaci ties, would. not be above the just claims of a final ju dicature, 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 nor the evidence upon which
established. The direct consequence of which is, that the first franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally depend, to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and which
to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence. This so anomalous to our whole con stitution, that will venture to say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor can be, forfeited in such manner.
The whole of their usurpation 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 tribunal both competent and supreme, what we declare to be law becomes law, al though should not have been so before. Thus the circumstance of having no appeal from their jurisdic tion made to imply that they have no rule in the exercise of it: the judgment does not derive its va lidity from its conformity to the law but preposter ously the law made to attend 0n the judgment; and the rule of the judgment no other than the o<. ~ casional will the House. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows which just the very nature and description of legislative act.
This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It
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was pursued into its utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondent prac tice. 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 in capacity, 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 rep resented really and bond 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 substi tute a Titiua or a Jfrevius, a Jahn Doe or Richard
Roe, in the place of a man specially chosen; not a
which was just as well satisfied with one man as with another. It is a right, the efl"ect 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 crea ture of law: nor can those devices, by which any thing else is substituted in the place of such an actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of repre sentation.
? principle
I know that the courts of law have made as strained
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constructions in other cases. Such is the construc tion in common recoveries. The method of con struction 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 elec tion 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 peo ple 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 constitu tion, which placed two other co-ordinate powers to control reposed no such confidence in that body. It were a folly well deserving servitude for its pun ishment, to be full of confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to House of Commons,
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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 oiu's,
? 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; be cause all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretion ary power leading to the aggrandizement and profit
of their own body have always abused it: and I see no particular sanctity in oiu' 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 con sider this matter merely as a contest between the House of Commons and the electors. The true con test 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.
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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 appear ance of reserve, to the influence of the court.
Indeed a Parliament unconnected with the
ple 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 eon ceive 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
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 513,00()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
peo
? necessary,
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one of the three following qualifications; sometimes with all of them. Either it was stated, that the rev enue had been diverted from its purposes by Parlia ment; 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 ful filled ; 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 grant ing 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 dis charging it. It does not appear that the duties which were then applied to the ordinary government pro duced elear above 580,000l. a year; because, when they were afterwards granted to George the First, 120,000l. was added to complete the whole to 700,00Ol. 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 550,000l. The queen's extraor dinary charges were besides very considerable ; equal, at least, to any we have known in our time.
The ap plication 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
? AJH1e. 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
Queen
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800,000l. 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 fi1lly for the necessities of the crown. However, the extraordinary charges of gov ernment 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 aver age of the whole reign they never produced 800,000l. 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 establish ment of the court were upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since, there was a consider able sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about 170,000l. applicable to the service of the civil list of his present Majesty. So that, if this reign com menced 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 700,000l. annu ally; if it ever produced so much clear. The prodi gious and dangerous disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and the cause of a pretender then
powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many de
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511
mands 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 with drawn 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 solici tude for every public account, and to have examined into them with the most rigorous accuracy.
The capital use of an account that the reality of the charge, the reason of incurring and the justice and necessity of discharging should all appear ante cedent 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 full and fair one. But, in national business, there an addition al reason for previous production of every account. It check, perhaps the only one, upon corrupt and prodigal use of public money. An account after payment to no rational purpose an account. However, the House of Commons thought all these to
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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 ac counts at some time of greater leisure.
The nation had settled 800,000l. a year on the crown, as sufficient for the support of its dignity, upon the estimate of its own ministers. When min isters came to Parliament, and said that this allow ance had not been sufficient for the purpose, and that they had incurred a debt of 500,000l. , would it not
have been natural for Parliament first to have asked how, and by what means, their appropriated allow ance 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 improp er 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 re fused, or postponed by previous questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying an im proper suspicion of the ministers of the crown.
When every leading account had been refused, many others were granted with sufficient facility.
But with great candor also, the House was in formed, 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 prece
512 THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE
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dent of payment previous to account, and to form it into a settled rule of the House, the god in the ma chine was brought down, nothing less than the won der-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 com mittee 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 re markable 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 pub lic faith and honor; and when the whole year's ac count was stated, in what is called the budget, the min istry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just as if they had discharged 500,000t. 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 provi
dent security against future, than it had been to a vin VOL. I. 33
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dictive retrospect to past mismanagements. I should have thought indeed that a ministerial promise, dur ing their own continuance in office, might have been given, though this would have been but a poor secu rity for the public. Mr. Pelham gave such an assur ance, aud 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 Parlia ment for the relief so liberally granted, the ministers inform the two Houses, that they will endeavor to con fine the expenses of the civil government--within what limits, think you? those which the law had pre scribed? Not in the 1east--" such limits as the hon or 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 man ner 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 dig nity of the crown'at 800,000l. and confining it to that sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of libraries, without any sort of ad vantage to the people.
? After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think that the crown is limited to
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any settled allowance whatsoever. For if the minis try has 800,000l. 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 in come 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 ab solute 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 it self 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. Nei ther is the damage to public credit of very great con sequence, when compared with that which results to public morals and to the safety of the constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption
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 re
wards and terrors as will make Parliament the best
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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. them.
The court faction have at length committed
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 land marks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we can only follow the spirit of their proceed ing 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 discus sion. Let the sagacity of others work upon it. It is not ILIICOIDIIIOII for medical writers to describe histo ries 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 short en 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 prelimina ry indispensable to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made in the consti tution, is a matter of deep and difiicult research.
? If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as little troublesome to me as to an
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other, to extol these remedies, so famous in specula tion, 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 tri ennial Parliament, or a place-bill. With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counter act, 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 fear ful 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 Parlia ment, 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 immi nent. The evil complained of, if it exists in the pres ent 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 system atic 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 up
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on a plan either of longer or shorter duration of Par liament. But nothing can so perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too frequent ly 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 attrib ute all the declarations of such persons to corrupt
? motives. But the habit of affairs, tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes with the means of better information.
on one hand, on the other, The authori
of such persons will always have some weight. It may stand upon 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 besides an effect of vulgar and pu erile malignity to imagine, that every statesman of course corrupt; and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point, solely formed upon some sinis ter interest.
The next favorite remedy place-bill. The same principle guides in both; mean, the opinion which 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, will only say, that this also
matter very well worthy of serious and mature re flection. It not easy to foresee, what the effect
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would be, of disconnecting with Parliament the great est 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 lat ter, 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 grad ually formed in the kingdom. These new interests must be let into a share of representation, else pos sibly they may be inclined to destroy those institu tions 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 preqluded, of doing it in some worse and more dangerous meth od. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The science of evasion, already tolerably m1derstood, would then be brought to the greatest perfection.
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It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how
much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by at
tempting a degree of purity impracticable in degener ate times and manners, instead of cutting off the
subsisting ill-practices, new corruptions might be pro duced 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 and by far the most safe to the country. would not shut out that sort of influence which open and visible, which connected with the dignity and the service of the state, when
not in my power to prevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery, and those innumer able 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 nice equi poise, with steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing from dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be risk of oversetting
on the other. Every project of material change in government so complicated as ours, combined at the same time with external circumstances still more complicated, matter full of difficulties in which
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
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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 estab lishments, government itself a great banker and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preserva tion of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of the
perhaps,
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 occa sion 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 sub
jects of apprehension and redress, in the last cen tury; in this the distempers of Parliament. It is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parlia mentary disorders can be completed ; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence in govern ment 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. Fre
quent 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 indis
? ?
I too have thought on this subject: but my pur pose here, is only to consider it as a part of the favor
'we
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ite 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
himself strongly in opposition to the court cabal, had become at once an object of their persecu tion, and of the popular favor. The hatred of the court party pursuing, and the countenance of the peo ple 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 Com
mons 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 enthu siasm ; an inquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every corruption and every error of
government ; these are the qualities which recom mend 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 charita bly of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a mutual intercourse of favors with them; an inclina tion 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 VOL. I. 32
setting
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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 ex ecute this trust but very imperfectly ; and, if deviat ing to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead of forwarding the purposes of a control on govern ment. 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 lib erty, 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 ren dered, if not directly penal, at least highly dangerous. The favor of the people might lead even to a disqual ification 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 oil fence in the offending part. Until this time, the
opinion of the people, through the power of an as sembly, 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 quib
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bled away. Example, the only argument of effect in
civil life, demonstrates the truth of my proposition.
Nothing can alter my opinion concerning the perni cious 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, irregu larly if you please, asserting popular privileges, has
led to disqualification; the opposite fault never has produced the slightest pi. Ll1lShIIl0nl3. 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 lib erties. 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 sever ity. 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 pre vails of going beyond the law, and superseding this judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed,
into the legislative bodies, who shall establish them selves into courts qf criminal equity (so the Star Cham ber 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 discre
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tionary power in punishing them, is the idea of crim inal equity ; which is in truth a monster in jurispru dence. 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
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 believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the in decency 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 pre tended. 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 pun ished, 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 animadver
I must consider this as a shocking and shame less pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything sacred and civil, public and pri vate, 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 0bsciu'c and contemptible impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only generally scanda lous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by their society, their instruction, their example, their
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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 fazdum crimen ser vitutis) 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 punislnnents, I must con clude 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 h_e is pursued for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his unconquerable firm ness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous resist ance against oppression.
In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, nor his faults that were to be dis countenanced. Opposition to acts of power was to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The pop ularity 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 pop ular qualities; otherwise he may remember the old maxim, Breves et infaustos populi Romani amorcs. If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to greater dangers than a disposition to servility, the
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principle which is the life and soul of popular elec tions 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, emolu ments ; every sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gen tlemen, 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 emol ument, or title; no promotion, ecclesiastical, or civil, or military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kin dred. In vain an expiring interest in a borough calls
for offices, or small livings, for the children of may ors, 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 fa vors, 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 for ever in a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors
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are locked. A body of loquacious placemen go out to tell the world that all he aims at is to get into of fice. 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 e? clat 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 ex cesses committcd 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 dis grace. --If this shall happen, the people of this king dom 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 pre sumption will equal to their folly 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 can not be performed. The House of Commons can never be control on other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by their con stituents and unless these constituents possess some right in the choice of that House, which 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 will not say contrary to law must be so; for the power which
claimed cannot, by any possibi1ity,be legal power in any limited member of government.
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The power which they claim, of declaring incapaci ties, would. not be above the just claims of a final ju dicature, 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 nor the evidence upon which
established. The direct consequence of which is, that the first franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally depend, to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and which
to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence. This so anomalous to our whole con stitution, that will venture to say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor can be, forfeited in such manner.
The whole of their usurpation 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 tribunal both competent and supreme, what we declare to be law becomes law, al though should not have been so before. Thus the circumstance of having no appeal from their jurisdic tion made to imply that they have no rule in the exercise of it: the judgment does not derive its va lidity from its conformity to the law but preposter ously the law made to attend 0n the judgment; and the rule of the judgment no other than the o<. ~ casional will the House. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows which just the very nature and description of legislative act.
This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It
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was pursued into its utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondent prac tice. 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 in capacity, 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 rep resented really and bond 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 substi tute a Titiua or a Jfrevius, a Jahn Doe or Richard
Roe, in the place of a man specially chosen; not a
which was just as well satisfied with one man as with another. It is a right, the efl"ect 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 crea ture of law: nor can those devices, by which any thing else is substituted in the place of such an actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of repre sentation.
? principle
I know that the courts of law have made as strained
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constructions in other cases. Such is the construc tion in common recoveries. The method of con struction 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 elec tion 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 peo ple 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 constitu tion, which placed two other co-ordinate powers to control reposed no such confidence in that body. It were a folly well deserving servitude for its pun ishment, to be full of confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to House of Commons,
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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 oiu's,
? 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; be cause all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretion ary power leading to the aggrandizement and profit
of their own body have always abused it: and I see no particular sanctity in oiu' 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 con sider this matter merely as a contest between the House of Commons and the electors. The true con test 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.
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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 appear ance of reserve, to the influence of the court.
Indeed a Parliament unconnected with the
ple 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 eon ceive 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
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 513,00()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
peo
? necessary,
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one of the three following qualifications; sometimes with all of them. Either it was stated, that the rev enue had been diverted from its purposes by Parlia ment; 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 ful filled ; 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 grant ing 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 dis charging it. It does not appear that the duties which were then applied to the ordinary government pro duced elear above 580,000l. a year; because, when they were afterwards granted to George the First, 120,000l. was added to complete the whole to 700,00Ol. 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 550,000l. The queen's extraor dinary charges were besides very considerable ; equal, at least, to any we have known in our time.
The ap plication 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
? AJH1e. 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
Queen
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800,000l. 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 fi1lly for the necessities of the crown. However, the extraordinary charges of gov ernment 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 aver age of the whole reign they never produced 800,000l. 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 establish ment of the court were upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since, there was a consider able sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about 170,000l. applicable to the service of the civil list of his present Majesty. So that, if this reign com menced 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 700,000l. annu ally; if it ever produced so much clear. The prodi gious and dangerous disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and the cause of a pretender then
powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many de
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mands 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 with drawn 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 solici tude for every public account, and to have examined into them with the most rigorous accuracy.
The capital use of an account that the reality of the charge, the reason of incurring and the justice and necessity of discharging should all appear ante cedent 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 full and fair one. But, in national business, there an addition al reason for previous production of every account. It check, perhaps the only one, upon corrupt and prodigal use of public money. An account after payment to no rational purpose an account. However, the House of Commons thought all these to
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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 ac counts at some time of greater leisure.
The nation had settled 800,000l. a year on the crown, as sufficient for the support of its dignity, upon the estimate of its own ministers. When min isters came to Parliament, and said that this allow ance had not been sufficient for the purpose, and that they had incurred a debt of 500,000l. , would it not
have been natural for Parliament first to have asked how, and by what means, their appropriated allow ance 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 improp er 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 re fused, or postponed by previous questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying an im proper suspicion of the ministers of the crown.
When every leading account had been refused, many others were granted with sufficient facility.
But with great candor also, the House was in formed, 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 prece
512 THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE
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dent of payment previous to account, and to form it into a settled rule of the House, the god in the ma chine was brought down, nothing less than the won der-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 com mittee 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 re markable 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 pub lic faith and honor; and when the whole year's ac count was stated, in what is called the budget, the min istry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just as if they had discharged 500,000t. 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 provi
dent security against future, than it had been to a vin VOL. I. 33
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dictive retrospect to past mismanagements. I should have thought indeed that a ministerial promise, dur ing their own continuance in office, might have been given, though this would have been but a poor secu rity for the public. Mr. Pelham gave such an assur ance, aud 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 Parlia ment for the relief so liberally granted, the ministers inform the two Houses, that they will endeavor to con fine the expenses of the civil government--within what limits, think you? those which the law had pre scribed? Not in the 1east--" such limits as the hon or 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 man ner 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 dig nity of the crown'at 800,000l. and confining it to that sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of libraries, without any sort of ad vantage to the people.
? After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think that the crown is limited to
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any settled allowance whatsoever. For if the minis try has 800,000l. 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 in come 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 ab solute 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 it self 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. Nei ther is the damage to public credit of very great con sequence, when compared with that which results to public morals and to the safety of the constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption
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 re
wards and terrors as will make Parliament the best
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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. them.
The court faction have at length committed
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 land marks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we can only follow the spirit of their proceed ing 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 discus sion. Let the sagacity of others work upon it. It is not ILIICOIDIIIOII for medical writers to describe histo ries 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 short en 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 prelimina ry indispensable to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made in the consti tution, is a matter of deep and difiicult research.
? If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as little troublesome to me as to an
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517
other, to extol these remedies, so famous in specula tion, 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 tri ennial Parliament, or a place-bill. With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counter act, 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 fear ful 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 Parlia ment, 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 immi nent. The evil complained of, if it exists in the pres ent 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 system atic 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 up
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on a plan either of longer or shorter duration of Par liament. But nothing can so perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too frequent ly 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 attrib ute all the declarations of such persons to corrupt
? motives. But the habit of affairs, tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes with the means of better information.
on one hand, on the other, The authori
of such persons will always have some weight. It may stand upon 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 besides an effect of vulgar and pu erile malignity to imagine, that every statesman of course corrupt; and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point, solely formed upon some sinis ter interest.
The next favorite remedy place-bill. The same principle guides in both; mean, the opinion which 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, will only say, that this also
matter very well worthy of serious and mature re flection. It not easy to foresee, what the effect
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would be, of disconnecting with Parliament the great est 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 lat ter, 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 grad ually formed in the kingdom. These new interests must be let into a share of representation, else pos sibly they may be inclined to destroy those institu tions 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 preqluded, of doing it in some worse and more dangerous meth od. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The science of evasion, already tolerably m1derstood, would then be brought to the greatest perfection.
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It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how
much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by at
tempting a degree of purity impracticable in degener ate times and manners, instead of cutting off the
subsisting ill-practices, new corruptions might be pro duced 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 and by far the most safe to the country. would not shut out that sort of influence which open and visible, which connected with the dignity and the service of the state, when
not in my power to prevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery, and those innumer able 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 nice equi poise, with steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing from dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be risk of oversetting
on the other. Every project of material change in government so complicated as ours, combined at the same time with external circumstances still more complicated, matter full of difficulties in which
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
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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 estab lishments, government itself a great banker and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preserva tion of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of the
perhaps,
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 occa sion 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 sub
jects of apprehension and redress, in the last cen tury; in this the distempers of Parliament. It is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parlia mentary disorders can be completed ; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence in govern ment 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. Fre
quent 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 indis
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