to require, not only the good faith, but the favour of the crown. His commons are not always upon a par with his ministers in an application to popular judgment: it is not in the power of the members of this house to go to their election at the moment the moft favourable for them. It is in the power of the crown to choose a time for their diffolution whilst great and arduous matters of state and legislation are depending, which may be eafily misunderstood, and which cannot be fully explained before that misunderstanding may prove fatal to the honour that belongs, and to the confideration that is due, to members of parliament. With his majesty is the gift of all the rewards, the honours, diftinctions, favour, and graces of the state; with his majefty is the mitigation of all the rigours of the law; and we rejoice to fee the crown poffeffed of trufts calculated to obtain goodwill, and charged with duties which are popular and pleafing. Our trufts are of a different kind. Our duties are harsh and invidious in their nature; and juftice and fafety is all we can expect in the exercise of them. We are to offer falutary, which is not always pleafing, counfel: we are to inquire and to accufe: and the objects of our inquiry and charge will be for the most part persons of wealth, power, and extensive connections: we are to make rigid laws for the preservation of revenue, which of neceflity more or lefs confine fome fome action, or reftrain fome function, which be fore was free: what is the moft critical and invidious of all, the whole body of the publick impofitions originate from us, and the hand of the house of commons is feen and felt in every burthen that preffes on the people. Whilft, ultimately, we are ferving them, and in the firft inftance whilft we are ferving his majefty, it will be hard, indeed, if we fhould fee a houfe of commons the victim of its zeal and fidelity, facrificed by his ministers to those very popular discontents which fhall be excited by our dutiful endeavours for the fecurity and greatnefs of his throne. No other confequence can refult from fuch an example, but that, in future, the house of commons, confulting its fafety at the expence of its duties, and fuffering the whole energy of the state to be relaxed, will fhrink from every fervice, which, however neceffary, is of a great and arduous nature; or that, willing to provide for the publick neceffities, and, at the fame time, to secure the means of performing that task, they will exchange independence for protection, and will court a fubfervient existence through the favour of those ministers of state, or those secret advisers, who ought themselves to stand in awe of the commons of this realm. A houfe of commons, refpected by his minifters, is effential to his majefty's fervice: it is fit that they fhould yield to parliament, and not that parliament parliament fhould be new modelled until it is fitted to their purposes. If our authority is only to be held up when we coincide in opinion with his majefty's advifers, but is to be fet at nought the moment it differs from them, the house of commons will fink into a mere appendage of administration; and will lofe that independent character which, infeparably connecting the honour and reputation with the acts of this houfe, enables us to afford a real, effective, and fubftantial fupport to his government. It is the deference fhewn to our opinion, when we diffent from the fervants of the crown, which alone can give authority to the proceedings of this houfe, when it concurs with their meafures. That authority once loft, the credit of his majesty's crown will be impaired in the eyes of all nations. Foreign powers, who may yet wish to revive a friendly intercourse with this nation, will look in vain for that hold which gave a connection with Great Britain the preference to an alliance with any other ftate. other state. A houfe of commons, of which minifters were known to ftand in awe, where every thing was neceffarily difcuffed, on principles fit to be openly and publickly avowed, and which could not be retracted or varied without danger, furnished a ground of confidence in the publick faith, which the engagement of no ftate dependent on the fluctuation of personal fa your, vour, and private advice, can ever pretend to. If faith with the houfe of commons, the grand fecurity for the national faith itself, can be broken with impunity, a wound is given to the political importance of Great Britain, which will not easily be healed. That there was a great variance between the late houfe of commons and certain perfons, whom his majesty has been advised to make and continue as ministers, in defiance of the advice of that house, is notorious to the world. That houfe did not confide in thofe minifters; and they withheld their confidence from them for reafons for which pofterity will honour and respect the names of those who compofed that houfe of commons, dif tinguished for its independence. They could not confide in perfons who have fhewn a difpofition to dark and dangerous intrigues. By these intrigues they have weakened, if not destroyed, the clear affurance which his majefty's people, and which all nations ought to have, of what are, and what are not, the real acts of his government. If it fhould be feen that his minifters may continue in their offices, without any fignification to them of his majefty's difpleafure at any of their measures, whilft perfons confiderable for their rank, and known to have had access to his majefty's facred perfon, can with impunity abuse that advantage, and employ his majesty's name to dif avow avow and counteract the proceedings of his official servants, nothing but distrust, discord, debility, contempt of all authority, and general confufion, can prevail in his government. This we lay before his majefty, with humility and concern, as the inevitable effect of a spirit of intrigue in his executive government; an evil which we have but too much reafon to be perfuaded exifts and increafes. During the courfe of the laft feffion it broke out in a manner the moft alarming. This evil was infinitely aggravated by the unauthorized, but not difavowed ufe which has been made of his majefty's name, for the purpose of the most unconstitutional, corrupt, and difhonourable influence on the minds of the members of parliament, that ever was practifed in this kingdom. No attention, even to the exterior decorum, in the practice of corruption, and intimidation employed on peers, was observed: several peers were obliged under menaces to retract their declarations, and to recall their proxies. The commons have the deepest interest in the purity and integrity of the peerage. The peers dispose of all the property in the kingdom, in the laft refort; and they dispose of it on their honour and not on their oaths, as all the members of every other tribunal in the kingdom muft do; though in them the proceeding is not conclufive. We have, therefore, a right to demand that no application |