e 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 infrequency 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 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