cal and delicate, and that in which
this House has the most reason to require, not only the good faith, but
the favor of the crown. His Commons are not always upon a par with his
ministers in an application to popular judgment; it is not in the power
of the members of this House to go to their election at the moment the
most favorable for them. It is in the power of the crown to choose a
time for their dissolution whilst great and arduous matters of state and
legislation are depending, which may be easily misunderstood, and which
cannot be fully explained before that misunderstanding may prove fatal
to the honor that belongs and to the consideration that is due to
members of Parliament.

With his Majesty is the gift of all the rewards, the honors,
distinctions, favors, and graces of the state; with his Majesty is the
mitigation of all the rigors of the law: and we rejoice to see the crown
possessed of trusts calculated to obtain good-will, and charged with
duties which are popular and pleasing. Our trusts are of a different
kind. Our duties are harsh and invidious in their nature; and justice
and safety is all we can expect in the exercise of them. We are to offer
salutary, which is not always pleasing counsel: we are to inquire and to
accuse; and the objects of our inquiry and charge will be for the most
part persons of wealth, power, and extensive connections: we are to make
rigid laws for the preservation of revenue, which of necessity more or
less confine some action or restrain some function which before was
free: what is the most critical and invidious of all, the whole body of
the public impositions originate from us, and the hand of the House of
Commons is seen and felt in every burden that presses on the people.
Whilst ultimately we are serving them, and in the first instance whilst
we are serving his Majesty, it will be hard indeed, if we should see a
House of Commons the victim of its zeal and fidelity, sacrificed by his
ministers to those very popular discontents which shall be excited by
our dutiful endeavors for the security and greatness of his throne. No
other consequence can result from such an example, but that, in future,
the House of Commons, consulting its safety at the expense of its
duties, and suffering the whole energy of the state to be relaxed, will
shrink from every service which, however necessary, is of a great and
arduous nature,--or that, willing to provide for the public necessities,
and