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 session, the corps
called the _King's friends_ made a hardy attempt all at once, _to alter
the right of election itself_; to put it into the power of the House of
Commons to disable any person disagreeable to them from sitting in
Parliament, without any other rule than their own pleasure; to make
incapacities, either general for descriptions of men, or particular for
individuals; and to take into their body, persons who avowedly had never
been chosen by the majority of legal electors, nor agreeably to any known
rule of law.

The argumen