prerogative of the crown, have
adopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and
old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the
stronghold of Parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which
there is no ordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into
Parliament. In Parliament the whole is executed from the beginning to
the end. In Parliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute;
and the safety in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no
after-reckonings to terrify. Parliament cannot, with any great
propriety, punish others for things in which they themselves have been
accomplices. Thus the control of Parliament upon the executory power is
lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of
government. _Impeachment, that great guardian of the purity of the
constitution, is in danger of being lost, even to the idea of it._

By this plan several important ends are answered to the cabal. If the
authority of Parliament supports itself, the credit of every act of
government, which they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so very
odious that the whole strength of Parliament is insufficient to
recommend it, then Parliament is itself discredited; and this discredit
increases more and more that indifference to the constitution, which it
is the constant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of Parliamentary
powers, to render general among the people. Whenever Parliament is
persuaded to assume the offices of executive government, it will lose
all the confidence, love, and veneration, which it has ever enjoyed
whilst it was supposed the _corrective and control_ of the acting powers
of the state. This would be the event, though its conduct in such a
perversion of its functions should be tolerably just and moderate; but
if it should be iniquitous, violent, full of passion, and full of
faction, it would be considered as the most intolerable of all the modes
of tyranny.

For a considerable time this separation of the representatives from
their constituents went on with a silent progress; and had those, who
conducted the plan for their total separation, been persons of temper
and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their design, the
success would have been infallible: but by their precipitancy they have
laid it open in all its nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it: and the
event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the scheme. In the last