franchises, and favour to an expansive system of traffic, were distinctive
qualities of the English sovereignty, until the House of Commons usurped
the better portion of its prerogatives. A widening of our electoral
scheme, great facilities to commerce, and the rescue of our Roman Catholic
fellow-subjects from the Puritanic yoke, from fetters which have been
fastened on them by English Parliaments in spite of the protests and
exertions of English Sovereigns; these were the three great elements and
fundamental truths of the real Pitt system, a system founded on the
traditions of our monarchy, and caught from the writings, the speeches,
the councils of those who, for the sake of these and analogous benefits,
had ever been anxious that the Sovereign of England should never be
degraded into the position of a Venetian Doge.

It is in the plunder of the Church that we must seek for the primary cause
of our political exclusion, and our commercial restraint. That unhallowed
booty created a factitious aristocracy, ever fearful that they might be
called upon to regorge their sacrilegious spoil. To prevent this they took
refuge in political religionism, and paltering with the disturbed
consciences, or the pious fantasies, of a portion of the people, they
organised them into religious sects. These became the unconscious
Praetorians of their ill-gotten domains. At the head of these
religionists, they have continued ever since to govern, or powerfully to
influence this country. They have in that time pulled down thrones and
churches, changed dynasties, abrogated and remodelled parliaments; they
have disfranchised Scotland and confiscated Ireland. One may admire the
vigour and consistency of the Whig party, and recognise in their career
that unity of purpose that can only spring from a great principle; but the
Whigs introduced sectarian religion, sectarian religion led to political
exclusion, and political exclusion was soon accompanied by commercial
restraint.