of consolation for the loss of their solid privileges." But the system which it was then being attempted to impose tended to produce "neither the security of a free government nor the energy of a monarchy that is absolute." 1 Political force was not drawn either from the concentrated vigour of a single indomitable and unfettered will, nor from the tidal impulses and passions of a whole nation. Everything that was done was done in an indirect, underhand, and complex way. The King had to manage the ministers. The ministers and the King together had to manage the House. The House thus managed was indifferent alike to the wishes and welfare of those for whom it was the appointed guardian and trustee. Well might Chatham declare, Before the end of this century either the Parliament will reform itself from within, or be reformed with a vengeance from without.

Burke was uniformly consistent in his view of the remedies which the various sections of Opposition proposed against the existing debasement and servility of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond wanted universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual parliaments. Wilkes-perhaps I ought to add, in the conventional manner, with his usual effrontery1 Ibid. 136, b.

proposed to disfranchise the rotten boroughs, to increase the county constituencies, and to give members to rich, populous, trading towns, a general policy which was accepted fifty-six years afterwards. The Constitutional Society desired frequent parliaments, the exclusion of placemen from the House, and the increase of the county representation.1 Burke uniformly refused to give his countenance to any proposals, such as these, which involved a clearly organic change in the constitution. He confessed that he had no sort of reliance upon either a triennial parliament or a place-bill, and with that reasonableness which as a rule was fully as remarkable in him as his eloquence, he showed very good grounds for his want of faith in the popular specifics.2 An election, he argued, is a contest between independent gentlemen and the Treasury. The more often the election comes, the greater the strain upon the resources of the candidate. It is easy to see which of the contending parties would be

1 The Constitutional Society was founded after the Society for the Support of the Bill of Rights had been destroyed by the rupture between Horne and Wilkes. The Wilkites were excluded from the composition of the Constitutional Society.

2 Junius was for triennial parliaments, and this of itself would be enough to overthrow the hypothesis that Burke and Junius were one. See Cooke's Hist. of Party, iii. 133.

ruined first. Everybody, he said, must have noticed how prodigiously greater the power of ministry is in the first and last session of a parliament than it is in the intermediate periods, when members sit a little firm in their seats. The thing to be desired, then, was the diminution of the Government influence in elections; and how was this end furthered by the mere multiplication of elections? "About the close of the last Parliament and the beginning of this, several agents for boroughs went about, and I remember well that it was in every one of their mouths, 'Sir, your election will cost you £3,000, if you are independent; but if the Ministry supports you, it may be done for two, and perhaps for less;' and indeed the thing spoke for itself. When a living was to be got for one, a commission in the army for another, a lift in the navy for a third, and Custom-house offices scattered about without measure or number, who doubts but money may be saved? A gentlemen of £2,000 a year, who meets another of the same fortune, fights with equal arms; but if to one of the candidates you add a thousand a year in places for himself, and a power of giving away as much among others, one must, or there is no truth in arithmetical demonstration, ruin his adversary if he is to meet him and to fight with him every third year." Besides tear

ing to pieces the fortunes of independent men, frequency of election would make the whole body of the people "more lawless, more idle, more debauched; it would utterly destroy the sobriety, the industry, the integrity, the simplicity of all the people." "Their heads will never cool; the temptations of elections will be for ever glittering before their eyes. They will all grow politicians; every one, quitting his business, will choose to enrich himself by his vote; they will take the gauging rod; new places will be made for them; they will run to the Custom-house quay; their looms and ploughs will be deserted." And at length, "I do not seriously think this constitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive five triennial elections." 1

The wildness of this sudden exaggeration in the midst of such solid and reasonable argument is intensely Burkian. There can, however, be no doubt that the frequent recurrence of elections in America has been attended by some of the disadvantages which Burke apprehended. And triennial or annual parliaments could have done no good, unless it had been accompanied by the more important process of "amputating," as Chatham called it, the rotten boroughs, of

1 Speech on a Bill for Shortening the Duration of Parliaments, Works, ii. 483, b; Appeal from New to Old Whigs, Works, i. 502.

which it is calculated that at this time the Crown could reckon some seventy as its own property. Besides those which belonged to the Crown, there was also the immense number which belonged more or less directly to the Peerage. If the King wanted to strengthen an administration the thing needful was not to enlist the services of able and distinguished men, but to conciliate a duke. The support of the duke and of his major and minor satellites in the Upper House brought with it the control of a given quantity of voting power in the Lower House. If the administration had only dukes enough, a majority in the Commons was assured. The only possible way, for example, of enabling the youthful Pitt to keep his head above water was to give him a cabinet in which he was the solitary commoner.1 All this patrician influence, which may be found at the bottom of most of the intrigues of the reign, operated with the pocket boroughs for instruments. The rottenness of the rotten boroughs would not have been touched by curtailing the duration of Parliaments. Nothing, again, can be more rational and well-con

1 In the Cabinet which Pitt formed on his second accession to office, in 1804, he and Castlereagh were the only two Commoners out of twelve persons. His first Cabinet only contained seven persons, so that the proportion of peers was not much altered.