awful
senate; but it is not, to any popular purpose, a House of Commons. This
change from an immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course
of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular
magistracies in the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is
indeed their greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For
there is a material distinction between that corruption by which
particular points are carried against reason, (this is a thing which
cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is of loss consequence,) and
the corruption of the principle itself For then the evil is not
accidental, but settled. The distemper becomes the natural habit.

For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the principle of
Parliament to be totally corrupted, and therefore its ends entirely
defeated, when I see two symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate
support to all ministers; because this destroys the very end of
Parliament as a control, and is a general, previous sanction to
misgovernment: and secondly, the setting up any claims adverse to the
right of free election; for this tends to subvert the legal authority by
which the House of Commons sits.

I know that, since the Revolution, along with many dangerous, many
useful powers of government have been weakened. It is absolutely
necessary to have frequent recourse to the legislature. Parliaments must
therefore sit every year, and for great part of the year. The dreadful
disorders of frequent elections have also necessitated a septennial
instead of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I mean the
constant habit of authority, and the unfrequency of elections, have
tended very much to draw the House of Commons towards the character of a
standing senate. It is a disorder which has arisen from the cure of
greater disorders; it has arisen from the extreme difficulty of
reconciling liberty under a monarchical government, with external
strength and with internal tranquillity.

It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely from this great
inconvenience; but I would not increase an evil, because I was not able
to remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep the House of
Commons religiously true to its first principles, I would not argue for
carrying it to a total oblivion of them. This has been the great scheme
of power in our time. They, who will not conform their conduct to the
public good, and cannot support it by the