nce between a true and severe friend to the monarchy, and a
slippery sycophant of the court! _Quantum infido scurrae distabit
amicus._

So far I have considered the effect of the court system, chiefly as it
operates upon the executive government, on the temper of the people, and
on the happiness of the sovereign. It remains that we should consider,
with a little attention, its operation upon Parliament.

Parliament was indeed the great object of all these politics, the end
at which they aimed, as well as the instrument by which they were to
operate. But, before Parliament could be made subservient to a system,
by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council
into a mere member of the court, it must be greatly changed from its
original character.

In speaking of this body, I have my eye chiefly on the House of Commons.
I hope I shall be indulged in a few observations on the nature and
character of that assembly; not with regard to its _legal form and
power_, but to its _spirit_, and to the purposes it is meant to answer
in the constitution.

The House of Commons was supposed originally to be _no part of the
standing government of this country_. It was considered as a _control_
issuing _immediately_ from the people, and speedily to be resolved into
the mass from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the higher part
of government what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistrate
being transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity
it was hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not only
between the people and the standing authority of the crown, but between
the people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. It
was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and government,
they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything that
concerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts of
legislature.

Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business
may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the
House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual
disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes)
be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should
be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would
indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their
constituents, than t