it did not
belong to him to decide. The King of France might levy troops and exact
taxes without any limit save that which the laws of nature impose on
despotism. But the King of England could do nothing without the support
of the House of Commons; and the House of Commons, though it had
hitherto supported him zealously and liberally, was not a body on
which he could rely. It had indeed got into a state which perplexed
and alarmed all the most sagacious politicians of that age. There
was something appalling in the union of such boundless power and such
boundless caprice. The fate of the whole civilised world depended on
the votes of the representatives of the English people; and there was
no public man who could venture to say with confidence what those
representatives might not be induced to vote within twenty-four hours.
[470] William painfully felt that it was scarcely possible for a prince
dependent on an assembly so violent at one time, so languid at another,
to effect any thing great. Indeed, though no sovereign did so much to
secure and to extend the power of the House of Commons, no sovereign
loved the House of Commons less. Nor is this strange; for he saw that
House at the very worst. He saw it when it had just acquired the power
and had not yet acquired the gravity of a senate. In his letters to
Heinsius he perpetually complains of the endless talking, the factious
squabbling, the inconstancy, the dilatoriness, of the body which
his situation made it necessary for him to treat with deference. His
complaints were by no means unfounded; but he had not discovered either
the cause or the cure of the evil.

The truth was that the change which the Revolution had made in the
situation of the House of Commons had made another change necessary;
and that other change had not yet taken place. There was parliamentary
government; but there was no Ministry; and, without a Ministry, the
working of a parliamentary government, such as ours, must always be
unsteady and unsafe.

It is essential to our liberties that the House of Commons should
exercise a control over all the departments of the executive
administration. And yet it is evident that a crowd of five or six
hundred people, even if they were intellectually much above the average
of the members of the best Parliament, even if every one of them were
a Burleigh, or a Sully, would be unfit for executive functions. It has
been truly said that every large collection of hum