r of the publication of
parliamentary debates and of the voting lists in divisions. He supported
almost with passion the ending of that iniquitous system by which the
enfranchisement of revenue officers gave government a corrupt reservoir
of electoral support. His _Speech on Economical Reform_ (1780) was the
prelude to a nobly-planned and successful attack upon the waste of the
Civil list.

Yet beyond these measures Burke could never be persuaded to go. He was
against the demand for shorter Parliaments on the excellent ground that
the elections would be more corrupt and the Commons less responsible. He
opposed the remedy of a Place Bill for the good and sufficient reason
that it gave the executive an interest against the legislature. He would
not, as in the great speech at Bristol (1774), accept the doctrine that
a member of Parliament was a mere delegate of his constituents rather
than a representative of his own convictions. "Government and
legislation," he said, "are matters of reason and of judgment"; and once
the private member had honorably arrived at a decision which he thought
was for the interest of the whole community, his duty was done. All
this, in itself, is unexceptionable; and it shows Burke's admirable
grasp of the practical application of attractive theories to the event.
But it is to be read in conjunction with a general hostility to basic
constitutional change which is more dubious. He had no sympathy with the
Radicals. "The bane of the Whigs," he said, "has been the admission
among them of the corps of schemers ... who do us infinite mischief by
persuading many sober and well-meaning people that we have designs
inconsistent with the Constitution left us by our forefathers." "If the
nation at large," he wrote in another letter, "has disposition enough to
oppose all bad principles and all bad men, its form of government is, in
my opinion, fully sufficient for it; but if the general disposition be
against a virtuous and manly line of public conduct, there is no form
into which it can be thrown that will improve its nature or add to its
energy"; and in the same letter he foreshadows a possible retirement
from the House of Commons as a protest against the growth of radical
opinion in his party. He resisted every effort to reduce the suffrage
qualification. He had no sympathy with the effort either to add to the
county representation or to abolish the rotten boroughs. The framework
of the parliamentary sys