form a prayer to
heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or a higher state of
felicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and when
Providence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious
predecessor.

A great prince may be obliged (though such a thing cannot happen very
often) to sacrifice his private inclination to his public interest. A
wise prince will not think that such a restraint implies a condition of
servility; and truly, if such was the condition of the last reign, and
the effects were also such as we have described, we ought, no less for
the sake of the sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to hear
arguments convincing indeed, before we depart from the maxims of that
reign, or fly in the face of this great body of strong and recent
experience.

One of the principal topics which was then, and has been since, much
employed by that political[105] school, is an affected terror of the
growth of an aristocratic power, prejudicial to the rights of the crown,
and the balance of the constitution. Any new powers exercised in the
House of Lords, or in the House of Commons, or by the crown, ought
certainly to excite the vigilant and anxious jealousy of a free people.
Even a new and unprecedented course of action in the whole legislature,
without great and evident reason, may be a subject of just uneasiness. I
will not affirm, that there may not have lately appeared in the House of
Lords, a disposition to some attempts derogatory to the legal rights of
the subject. If any such have really appeared, they have arisen, not
from a power properly aristocratic, but from the same influence which is
charged with having excited attempts of a similar nature in the House of
Commons; which House, if it should have been betrayed into an
unfortunate quarrel with its constituents, and involved in a charge of
the very same nature, could have neither power nor inclination to repel
such attempts in others. Those attempts in the House of Lords can no
more be called aristocratic proceedings, than the proceedings with
regard to the county of Middlesex in the House of Commons can with any
sense be called democratical.

It is true, that the peers have a great influence in the kingdom, and
in every part of the public concerns. While they are men of property, it
is impossible to prevent it, except by such means as must prevent all
property from its natural operation: an event not easily to be
compassed