authority by which the House of Commons sits.

I know that, since the Revolution, along with many dangerous, many
useful powers of Government have been weakened. It is absolutely
necessary to have frequent recourse to the Legislature. Parliaments
must therefore sit every year, and for great part of the year. The
dreadful disorders of frequent elections have also necessitated a
septennial instead of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I
mean the constant habit of authority, and the infrequency of
elections, have tended very much to draw the House of Commons
towards the character of a standing Senate. It is a disorder which
has arisen from the cure of greater disorders; it has arisen from
the extreme difficulty of reconciling liberty under a monarchical
Government, with external strength and with internal tranquillity.

It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely from this
great inconvenience; but I would not increase an evil, because I was
not able to remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep
the House of Commons religiously true to its first principles, I
would not argue for carrying it to a total oblivion of them. This
has been the great scheme of power in our time. They who will not
conform their conduct to the public good, and cannot support it by
the prerogative of the Crown, have adopted a new plan. They have
totally abandoned the shattered and old-fashioned fortress of
prerogative, and made a lodgment in the stronghold of Parliament
itself. If they have any evil design to which there is no ordinary
legal power commensurate, they bring it into Parliament. In
Parliament the whole is executed from the beginning to the end. In
Parliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute, and the
safety in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no after