kingdom set themselves publickly to sale, and held an open traffick for
votes and places; that whoever engaged in the party of the minister,
declared himself ready to support his cause against truth, and reason,
and conviction, and was no longer under the restraint of shame or
virtue.

These assertions, hardy as they were, they endeavoured to support by
instances of measures, which they described as having no other tendency,
than to advance the court to absolute authority, to enslave the nation,
or to betray it: and more happily would they have propagated their
system, and much sooner would they have obtained a general declaration
of the people in their favour, had they been able to have produced a
motion like this.

Should the influence of these men increase, should they grow secure in
the possession of their power, by any new methods of deluding the
people, what wonderful expedients, what unheard-of methods of government
may not be expected from them? What degrees of violence may they not be
supposed to practise, who have flushed their new authority by a motion
which was never projected since the first existence of our government,
or offered by the most arbitrary minister in all the confidence of an
established majority.

It may, perhaps, be imagined by many of those who are unacquainted with
senatorial affairs, as many of the members of this house may without any
reproach be supposed to be, that I have made use of those arts against
the patriots which they have so long practised against the court; that I
have exaggerated the enormity of the motion by unjust comparisons, or
rhetorical flights; and that there will be neither danger nor
inconvenience in complying with it to any but those who have betrayed