raw in a greater number to a
concurrence in the common defence. This connection, necessary at first,
continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, in
all situations, be a useful instrument of Government. At the same time,
through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, the
people possessed a security for their just proportion of importance in
the State. But as the title to the Crown grew stronger by long
possession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helps
have of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances. The
powerful managers for Government were not sufficiently submissive to the
pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes
from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes
from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the
country, which gave them a consideration independent of the Court. Men
acted as if the Court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation.
The influence of Government, thus divided in appearance between the Court
and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession rather to
the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that influence,
which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of mortmain and
unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from whence it
arose, and circulated among the people. This method therefore of
governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired
consideration, was viewed in a very invidious light by the true lovers of
absolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by
any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all
intermediate situations between boundless strength on its own part, and
total debility on the part of the people.

To get rid of all this intermediate and independent importance, and _to
secure to the Court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast
influence_, _under the sole direction of its own private favour_, has for
some years past been the great object of policy. If this were compassed,
the influence of the Crown must of course produce all the effects which
the most sanguine partisans of the Court could possibly desire.
Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on the part
of the people; without any attention to the dignity of the greater, or to
the affections of the lower sorts. A new project was t