ble his majesty to borrow a fum for the liquidation of a new arrear of three hundred thousand pounds, by a tax on falaries and penfions; for a debt to this amount had been again contracted by the shameful prodigality of the late minifters, notwithstanding the addition of one hundred thousand pounds per annum, fo recently made to the civil lift.

The œconomical abolitions and retrenchments of the reform bill met with a violent oppofition in the upper house, from the lords Thurlow and Loughborough, but it finally paffed by a great majority. A bill fent up from the commons, for disfranchifing certain voters of the borough of Cricklade, who had been proved guilty of the most fhameful and fcandalous acts of bribery, was alfo impeded and embaraffed in all its stages by the fame law lords, with every poffible fubtilty of legal quibble and chicanery, The duke of Richmond was upon this occafion provoked to charge the chancellor with indiscriminately oppofing every measure of regulation and improvement which was laid before the house. And lord Fortescue, with the unguarded warmth of ariftocratic difdain, remarked, "that what he had long feared was at length come to pass ;from the profufion of lawyers introduced into that houfe, it was no longer an house of lords, it was converted into a mere court of law, where all the folid and honorable principles of truth and juftice were facrificed to the low and miserable chicanery used in Westminster hall. That once venerable, dignified, and auguft affembly now refembled more a meeting of pettifoggers than an house of parliament. With refpect to the learned lord on the woolfack, who had now for fome years prefided in that houfe, he seemed to be fraught with nothing but contradictions and diftinctions and law fubtilties. As to himfelf," lord Fortefcue with a noble pride added, " he had not attended a minifter's levee, till very lately, for these forty years; and the prefent miniftry he would fupport

no

no longer than they deserved it. But as they came into office upon the most honorable and laudable of all principles, the approbation of their fovereign, and the esteem and confidence of the nation, it filled his breast with indignation when he beheld their measures day after day thwarted and opposed, by men who refembled more a set of Cornish attornies than members of that right honorable house."

On the 3d of May, after a debate of fome length, it was refolved by the house of commons," that all the declarations, orders, and refolutions of that houfe refpecting the election of John Wilkes, efq. be expunged from the journals of the house, as fubverfive of the rights of the whole body of electors in the kingdom. Mr. Wilkes, in a public letter addreffed to his conftituents, "congratu lated them on the fignal reparation they had now obtained for their violated franchises, and the injuries they had fuftained under the former flagitious adminiftration." But on this point the feelings of the public were no longer in unifon with thofe of Mr. Wilkes. The vote by which thofe refolutions were refcinded, which had thirteen years before, thrown the whole nation into a flame, was fcarcely noticed; and the cafe of the Middlefex election was now regarded with nearly as much indifference as that of any other elective decifion.

In the fame month a fubject of infinitely higher importance, and of a nature truly and permanently interesting, was brought under the immediate cognizance of the houfe, in confequence of a motion made by Mr. Pitt for the appointment of a committee to enquire into the ftate of the reprefentation of the people in parliament. It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the prodigious and glaring inequality of the national fyftem of reprefentation as now conftituted, the idea of a parliamentary reform may be confidered in great measure as a novelty in politics. The patriots of elder days, fenfible of the dangers arifing

from

from the rapid and enormous increase of the regal influence, ftrongly and repeatedly urged the remedial meafures of triennial parliaments, of civil and military reductions, of place and penfion bills; but it was a fpecies of merit referved for the present times to strike at the root of the evil, by an effort to extend and equalize that popular representation, on the purity and integrity of which the national profperity and welfare fo effentially depend.

The evils attending this defective and corrupt state of the representation had at no former period of our history been so flagrantly apparent as in the present reign; and it was with grief and indignation that the intelligent and independent part of the public faw the house of commons degenerate into an affembly apparently poffeffing neither will, nor power, nor wifdom, but what they derived from the permiffion and fiat of the minifter, who alfo frequently appeared himself the sport of fome capricious and invifible agent. The affair of the Middlefex election, otherwife comparatively unimportant, wore in this view a most alarming afpect, as it fhewed how far the house would venture to carry their complaifance to the crown, in oppofition to the decided, unanimous, and perfevering refistance of the people. "The virtue, fpirit, and effence of an house of commons," fays Mr. Burke in his famous political tract published at that periodt, "confifts in its being the exprefs image of the feelings of the nation. An addreffing house of commons, and a petitioning nationan houfe of commons full of confidence when the nation is plunged in defpair, who vote thanks when the nation calls upon them for impeachments, who are eager to grant when the general voice demands account, who in all difputes between the people and administration prefume against the people, who punish their disorders, but refufe to enquire into the provocations to them:-this is

an

Thoughts on the causes of the prefent difcontents.

an unnatural, a monftrous ftate of things in this confti tution. Such an affembly is not to any popular purpose an houfe of COMMONS."

The obftinate profecution of the American war, and the contemptuous difmiffion of the petitions for a reform in the public expenditure, afforded ftill more recent and ftriking inftances of obfequious and unlimited devotion on the part of the national reprefentatives to the executive power, and their total difregard of the fentiments of their conftituents. So ftruck was the late earl of Chatham with the obvious and manifold mischiefs arifing from the prefent incongruous fyftem, that he fcrupled not to hazard a peremptory prediction, that the rotten boroughs would not furvive the present century—and that if parlia ment did not reform itself from WITHIN, it would be reformed with a VENGEANCE from WITHOUT." Neverthelefs it must be acknowledged there were not wanting many wife and excellent perfons, true and firm friends to liberty, whofe minds forcibly revolted at the novelty and boldnefs of the idea of new-modelling the reprefentation of the country. They conceived the actual advantages resulting from the constitution, when rightly administered, under the prefent form, too great to rifque any experiment, however plaufible in theory, of fuch magnitude as to draw after it confequences which no human fagacity could pretend to trace or fathom,

Totally to annihilate the influence of the crown in the house of commons, would give fuch an ascendency to the republican part of the conftitution, that the prerogative of the monarch would in a fhort time be reduced to as low an ebb as the authority of a king of Poland or a doge of Venice; the executive power would lofe its weight and energy, and the ftate would be torn with the oppofite and equal claims of hoftile and contending factions. To afcertain the precife degree of influence which the momarch ought to poffefs, was indeed confeffed to be a diff

cult

cult problem to folve. It is the radical and remedilefs defect of the British form of government, in other respects fo admirable, that too much depends on the perfonal character of the fovereign; and under the reign of a weak, obftinate and bigoted prince, intoxicated with the pomp and pride of royalty, fuch as imagination can easily feign, the excellence of that celebrated conftitution may be put to a very fevere teft indeed-particularly if, by an accidental concurrence of circumftances, fuch a monarch, thus palpably unfit to govern, fhould rise to high and undeferved popularity.

On the other hand, it may doubtlefs happen that the executive power may poffefs jufter and more enlightened views of policy than the nation at large; and a more popular fyftem of representation would in fuch circumftances be a real and serious evil. This was remarkably the cafe in the reigns of king William and king George I. who exerted with very incomplete fuccefs their utmost influence to extend and enlarge the general fyftem of liberty. The grand object of every conftitution of government which aspires on rational grounds to political perfection is not, as the wild and vifionary fpeculatifts of modern times abfurdly fuppofe, to carry the will of the majority at all events into effect, but to concentrate the wifdom, the knowledge, and the virtue of the community; to endow them with influence, and arm them with power. Above all, it excited the alarm of the moderate, the judicious, and truly enlightened, that a great proportion, perhaps a majority, of the advocates for a parliamentary reform maintained the exiftence of certain abftract rights independent of utility, which is in truth the bafis both of right and obligation-in conformity to which the people had a clear original, and imprescriptible claim to the privilege of UNI.. VERSAL SUFFRAGE, without the exercife of which it was pretended that no liberty could exift.

The