they make fewer demands for the advantages
of patronage in favours and offices, because their member is brought more
under their power? We have not only our own historical experience in
England upon this subject, but we have the experience co-existing with us
in Ireland, where, since their Parliament has been shortened, the expense
of elections has been so far from being lowered that it has been very
near doubled. Formerly they sat for the king's life; the ordinary charge
of a seat in Parliament was then 1,500 pounds. They now sit eight years,
four sessions: it is now 2,500 pounds and upwards. The spirit of
emulation has also been extremely increased, and all who are acquainted
with the tone of that country have no doubt that the spirit is still
growing, that new candidates will take the field, that the contests will
be more violent, and the expenses of elections larger than ever.

It never can be otherwise. A seat in this House, for good purposes, for
bad purposes, for no purpose at all (except the mere consideration
derived from being concerned in the public councils) will ever be a first-
rate object of ambition in England. Ambition is no exact calculator.
Avarice itself does not calculate strictly when it games. One thing is
certain, that in this political game the great lottery of power is that
into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In
Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are so
insecure, that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that the
bowstring is the natural death of Bashaws, yet in no country is power and
distinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with such
boundless avidity, as if the value of place was enhanced by the danger
and insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ever make a seat in this
House not an object of desire to numbers by any means or at any charge,
but the depriving it of all power and all dignity. This would do it.
This is the true and only nostrum for that purpose. But a House of
Commons without power and without dignity, either in itself or its
members, is no House of Commons for the purposes of this Constitution.

But they will be afraid to act ill, if they know that the day of their
account is always near. I wish it were true, but it is not; here again
we have experience, and experience is against us. The distemper of this
age is a poverty of spirit and of genius; it is trifling, it is f