ched the new men, might have checked them when they were wrong, might
have come to their help when, by doing right, they had raised a mutiny
in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague and
Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more powerful than
they could be while they filled the highest posts in the executive
government and were outvoted every day in the House of Commons. Their
retirement would have mitigated envy; their abilities would have been
missed and regretted; their unpopularity would have passed to their
successors, who would have grievously disappointed vulgar expectation,
and would have been under the necessity of eating their own words in
every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented Whigs
would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session or
two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of the best
Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of the Treasury,
the oldest man living could remember.

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five generations, had
never been taught to the politicians of the seventeenth century. Notions
imbibed before the Revolution still kept possession of the public mind.
Not even Somers, the foremost man of his age in civil wisdom, thought
it strange that one party should be in possession of the executive
administration while the other predominated in the legislature. Thus, at
the beginning of 1699, there ceased to be a ministry; and years elapsed
before the servants of the Crown and the representatives of the people
were again joined in an union as harmonious as that which had existed
from the general election of 1695 to the general election of 1698. The
anarchy lasted, with some short intervals of composedness, till the
general election of 1765. No portion of our parliamentary history is
less pleasing or more instructive. It will be seen that the House of
Commons became altogether ungovernable, abused its gigantic power with
unjust and insolent caprice, browbeat King and Lords, the Courts of
Common Law and the Constituent bodies, violated rights guaranteed by the
Great Charter, and at length made itself so odious that the people were
glad to take shelter, under the protection of the throne and of the
hereditary aristocracy, from the tyranny of the assembly which had been
chosen by themselves.

The evil which had brought on so much discredit on representative
institutions was of