negative in a Parliamentary refusal to support. Formerly
this power of control was what kept Ministers in awe of Parliaments, and
Parliaments in reverence with the people. If the use of this power of
control on the system and persons of Administration is gone, everything
is lost, Parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament
will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strongholds of their
country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a
pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering,
whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures
will not be better than their morals; such a Parliament will give
countenance to their measures also, whatever that Parliament may pretend,
and whatever those measures may be.

Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as well
as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men
from Government, and not to trust for the safety of the State to
subsequent punishment alone--punishment which has ever been tardy and
uncertain, and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to
fall rather on the injured than the criminal.

Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the State, they ought
by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in their
country as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public that
they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a proper
use of power, that a man has shown by the general tenor of his actions,
that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his
fellow-citizens have been among the principal objects of his life, and
that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a
settled contempt or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.

That man who, before he comes into power, has no friends, or who, coming
into power, is obliged to desert his friends, or who, losing it, has no
friends to sympathise with him, he who has no sway among any part of the
landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with
his office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to be
suffered by a controlling Parliament, to continue in any of those
situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public affairs;
because such a man _has no connection with the sentiments and opinions of
the people_.

Those knots or cabals of men who have go