[xml/sgml-pkgs] sold for five shillings. In less than twelve

[Nimmons Sapp]

 ought to be given to the pernicious practice of affording a blind and
undistinguishing support to every administration. "Parliamentary support
comes and goes with office, totally regardless of the man or the merit."
For instance, Wilkes's annual motion to expunge the votes upon the
Middlesex election had been uniformly rejected, as often as it was made
while Lord North was in power. Lord North had no sooner given way to the
Rockingham Cabinet than the House of Commons changed its mind, and the
resolutions were expunged by a handsome majority of 115 to 47.
Administration was omnipotent in the House, because it could be a man's
most efficient friend at an election, and could most amply reward his
fidelity afterwards. Against this system Burke called on the nation to
set a stern face. Root it up, he kept crying; settle the general course
in which you desire members to go; insist that they shall not suffer
themselves to be diverted from this by the authority of the government
of the day; let lists of votes be published, so that you may ascertain
for yourselves whether your trustees have been faithful or fraudulent;
do all this, and there will be no need to resort to those organic
changes, those empirical innovations, which may possibly cure, but are
much more likely to destroy. [Footnote 1: "Observations on State of the
Nation," _Works_, i. 105, b.] [Footnote 2: "Speech on Duration of
Parliaments."] It is not surprising that so halting a policy should have
given deep displeasure to very many, perhaps to most, of those whose
only common bond was the loose and negative sentiment of antipathy to
the court, the ministry, and the too servile majority of the House of
Commons. The Constitutional Society was furious. Lord Chatham wrote to
Lord Rockingham that the work in which these doctrines first appeared,
must do much mischief to the common cause. But Burke's view of the
constitution was a part of his belief with which he never paltered, and
on which he surrendered his judgment to no man. "Our constitution," in
his opinion, "stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep
waters upon all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous le
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