utile,
worse than ignorant, superficially taught, with the politics and morals
of girls at a boarding-school, rather than of men and statesmen; but it
is not yet desperately wicked, or so scandalously venal as in former
times. Did not a triennial parliament give up the national dignity,
approve the Peace of Utrecht, and almost give up everything else in
taking every step to defeat the Protestant succession? Was not the
Constitution saved by those who had no election at all to go to, the
Lords, because the Court applied to electors, and by various means
carried them from their true interests; so that the Tory Ministry had a
majority without an application to a single member? Now, as to the
conduct of the members, it was then far from pure and independent.
Bribery was infinitely more flagrant. A predecessor of yours, Mr.
Speaker, put the question of his own expulsion for bribery. Sir William
Musgrave was a wise man, a grave man, an independent man, a man of good
fortune and good family; however, he carried on while in opposition a
traffic, a shameful traffic with the Ministry. Bishop Burnet knew of
6,000 pounds which he had received at one payment. I believe the payment
of sums in hard money--plain, naked bribery--is rare amongst us. It was
then far from uncommon.

A triennial was near ruining, a septennial parliament saved, your
Constitution; nor perhaps have you ever known a more flourishing period
for the union of national prosperity, dignity, and liberty, than the
sixty years you have passed under that Constitution of parliament.

The shortness of time, in which they are to reap the profits of iniquity,
is far from checking the avidity of corrupt men; it renders them
infinitely more ravenous. They rush violently and precipitately on their
object, they lose all regard to decorum. The moments of profit are
precious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It was
so in the great plague at Athens, every symptom of which (and this its
worst amongst the rest) is so finely related by a great historian of
antiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. It appears in
soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render the life of man
much shorter than it is, would, I am satisfied, find the surest recipe
for increasing the wickedness of our nature.

Thus, in my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have the
following ill effects:--It would make the member more shamelessly a