utional monarchy and the cause of
freedom from the history of England from 1688 to 1793, we should have said
the same. But the subsequent history of the British empire has revealed
the real cause of these general and wide-spread abuses. It has shown that
they arose not necessarily from the triumph of freedom, but accidentally
from government, in consequence of that triumph, having for a long period
been established on a wrong basis. The contending powers, whose opposition
produces equilibrium, had been brought to draw in the same direction, and
thence the spring-tide of corruption. A constitutional monarchy is not
necessarily based on patronage; it is so only when the popular party are
in power. That party, having, as a whole, little or no interest in the
property of the state, can be retained in obedience, and hindered from
urging on the revolutionary movement, only by being well supplied with
offices. It is like a beast of prey, which must be constantly gorged to be
kept quiet. But the holders of property need no such degrading motive to
keep them steady to the cause of order. They are retained there by their
own private interest; by their deep stake in the maintenance of
tranquillity; by their desire to transmit their estates unimpaired to
their descendants. They are as certain, in the general case, of supporting
the cause of order, and its guardians at the helm of a state, as the
passengers in a ship are of standing by the pilot and crew who are to save
them from the waves. The true, the legitimate, the honourable support of a
Conservative government, is to be found in that numerous class of men who
have no favours to ask, who would disdain to accept any gratification, who
adhere to the cause of order, because it is that of peace, of religion, of
themselves, and of their children. It is a sense of the strength of these
bonds, a knowledge of the independent and disinterested support which
they are certain of receiving, which enables a Conservative administration
so often to neglect its supporters in the distribution of the public
patronage, and seek for merit and worth in the ranks of its opponents. A
democratic government can never do this, because the passions and
interests of the great bulk of its supporters are adverse to the
preservation of property; and therefore they can be kept to their colours,
and hindered from clamouring for those measures which its leaders feel to
be destructive, only by the exclusive enjoym