the true characteristics of a House of Commons. But an addressing
House of Commons, and a petitioning nation; a House of Commons full
of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost
harmony with Ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost
abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them
for impeachments; who are eager to grant, when the general voice
demands account; who, in all disputes between the people and
Administration, presume against the people; who punish their
disorder, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them;
this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this
constitution. Such an Assembly may be a great, wise, awful senate;
but it is not, to any popular purpose, a House of Commons. This
change from an immediate state of procuration and delegation to a
course of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the
popular magistracies in the world have been perverted from their
purposes. It is indeed their greatest and sometimes their incurable
corruption. For there is a material distinction between that
corruption by which particular points are carried against reason
(this is a thing which cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is
of less consequence), and the corruption of the principle itself.
For then the evil is not accidental, but settled. The distemper
becomes the natural habit.

For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the principle of
Parliament to be totally corrupted, and therefore its ends entirely
defeated, when I see two symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate
support to all Ministers; because this destroys the very end of
Parliament as a control, and is a general previous sanction to
misgovernment; and secondly, the setting up any claims adverse to
the right of free election; for this tends to subvert the legal