ouse of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the part
of that intermediate cause. However they may hire out the _usufruct_ of
their voices, they never will part with the _fee and inheritance_.
Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the will
and pleasure of a Court, have at the same time been most forward in
asserting a high authority in the House of Commons. When they knew who
were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought
it never could be carried too far. It must be always the wish of an
unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons who are entirely
dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely
dependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered that the forms of
a free, and the ends of an arbitrary Government, were things not
altogether incompatible.

The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown
up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of
Influence. An influence which operated without noise and without
violence; an influence which converted the very antagonist into the
instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of
growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the
country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a
prerogative that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had
moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and
dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary
system; the interest of active men in the State is a foundation perpetual
and infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must be
confessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of this
influence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable of
exciting any serious apprehensions. Although Government was strong and
flourished exceedingly, the _Court_ had drawn far less advantage than one
would imagine from this great source of power.

* * * * *

At the Revolution, the Crown, deprived, for the ends of the Revolution
itself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against all
the difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a Government. The
Court was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men of
such interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to,
its establishment. Such men were able to d