the principal objects of his life; and
that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a
settled contempt, or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.

That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming
into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who losing it has no
friends to sympathize with him; he who has no sway among any part of the
landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with
his office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to
be suffered by a controlling Parliament to continue in any of those
situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public
affairs; because such a man _has no connection with the interest of the
people_.

Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any
public principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higher
rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered
to domineer in the state; because they have _no connection with the
sentiments and opinions of the people_.

These are considerations which in my opinion enforce the necessity of
having some better reason, in a free country, and a free Parliament, for
supporting the ministers of the crown, than that short one, _That the
king has thought proper to appoint them_. There is something very
courtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts of
mischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active men
from the country to the court. Whatever be the road to power, that is
the road which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no use
as a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually
procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will
be right, in a state so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave
ambition without popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of
pure virtue in the minds of kings, and ministers, and public men, must
be submitted to the judgment and good sense of the people of England.

Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly
controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty
under which the sovereign labors, to distinguish the genuine voice and
sentiments of his people, from the clamor of a faction, by which it is
so easily counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into
parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the king
s