at this
juncture, is to endeavour a repeal of the test clause. You know likewise
that the moderate men, both of High and Low Church, profess to be wholly
averse from this design, as thinking it beneath the policy of common
gardeners to cut down the only hedge that shelters from the north.[3]
Now, I will put the case; If the person to whom you have promised your
vote be one of whom you have the least apprehension that he will promote
or assent to the repealing of that clause, whether it be decent or
proper, he should be the mouth of an assembly, whereof a very great
majority pretend to abhor his opinion. Can a body, whose mouth and heart
must go so contrary ways, ever act with sincerity, or hardly with
consistence? Such a man is no proper vehicle to retain or convey the
sense of the House, which, in so many points of the greatest moment,
will be directly contrary to his; 'tis full as absurd, as to prefer a
man to a bishopric who denies revealed religion. But it may possibly be
a great deal worse. What if the person you design to vote into that
important post, should not only be a declared enemy of the sacramental
test, but should prove to be a solicitor, an encourager, or even a
penner of addresses to complain of it? Do you think it so indifferent a
thing, that a promise of course, the effect of compliance, importunity,
shame of refusing, or any the like motive, shall oblige you past the
power of retracting?

Perhaps you will tell me, as some have already had the weakness to do,
that it is of little importance to either party to have a Speaker of
their side, his business being only to take the sense of the House and
report it, that you often, at committees, put an able speaker into the
chair on purpose to prevent him from stopping a bill. Why, if it were no
more than this, I believe I should hardly choose, even among my footmen,
such a one to deliver a message, whose interest and opinions led him to
wish it might miscarry. But I remember to have heard old Colonel
Birch[4] of Herefordshire say, that "he was a very sorry Speaker, whose
single vote was not better than fifty common ones." I am sure it is
reckoned in England the first great test of the prevalency of either
party in the House. Sir Thomas Littleton[5] thought, that a House of
Commons with a stinking breath (supposing the Speaker to be the mouth)
would go near to infect everything within the walls, and a great deal
without. It is the smallest part of an able Sp