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twg_000012585300 | to do with the Earl of Bute. It matters little whether he be the friend or the enemy of that particular person. But let him be who or what he will, he abets a faction that is driving hard to the ruin of his country. He is sapping the foundation of its liberty, disturbing the sources of its domestic tranquillity, | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585301 | weakening its government over its dependencies, degrading it from all its importance in the system of Europe. It is this unnatural infusion of a _system of Favouritism_ into a Government which in a great part of its constitution is popular, that has raised the present ferment in the nation. The people, without entering... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585302 | its effects, in much violence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general disorder in all the functions of Government. I keep my eye solely on this system; if I speak of those measures which have arisen from it, it will be so far only as they illustrate the general scheme. This is the fountain of all those bitter | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585303 | waters of which, through a hundred different conducts, we have drunk until we are ready to burst. The discretionary power of the Crown in the formation of Ministry, abused by bad or weak men, has given rise to a system, which, without directly violating the letter of any law, operates against the spirit of the whole co... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585304 | Favouritism for our executory Government is essentially at variance with the plan of our Legislature. One great end undoubtedly of a mixed Government like ours, composed of Monarchy, and of controls, on the part of the higher people and the lower, is that the Prince shall not be able to violate the laws. This is useful... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585305 | this, even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage; an armour merely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal in importance, _that the discretionary powers which are necessarily vested in the Monarch_, _whether for the execution of the laws_, _or for the nomination to magistracy and office_, _or ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585306 | war_, _or for ordering the revenue_, _should all be exercised upon public principles and national grounds_, _and not on the likings or prejudices_, _the intrigues or policies of a Court_. This, I said, is equal in importance to the securing a Government according to law. The laws reach but a very little way. Constitute... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585307 | greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of Ministers of State. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends upon them. Without them, your Commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitutio... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585308 | that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully conducted, Ministers may suffer one part of Government to languish, another to be perverted from its purposes: and every valuable interest of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution ca... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585309 | the active part of the state, far from being foreign to the purposes of a wise Government, ought to be among its very first and dearest objects. When, therefore, the abettors of new system tell us, that between them and their opposers there is nothing but a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no-ways concerne... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585310 | must tell those who have the impudence to insult us in this manner, that, of all things, we ought to be the most concerned, who and what sort of men they are, that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what must either render us | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585311 | totally desperate, or soothe us into the security of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private--some good, some e... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585312 | the one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects of all true policy. But that form of Government, which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agree... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585313 | any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially erroneous in every part of it. In arbitrary Governments, the constitution of the Ministry follows the constitution of the Legislature. Both the Law and the Magistrate are the creatures of Will. It must... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585314 | certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that _every sort of Government ought to have its Administration correspondent to its Legislature_. If it should be otherwise, things must fall into a hideous disorder. The people of a free Commonwealth, who have taken such care that their laws should be the r... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585315 | as to suffer their executory system to be composed of persons on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the public love and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the use of which the very being of the State depends. The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewards and hon... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585316 | first advantages of a free State. Without it, or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good Government. The frame of our Commonwealth did not admit of such an actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585317 | for all the effects of it, than by the method of suffrage in any democratic State whatsoever. It had always, until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament _to refuse to support Government_, _until power was in the hands of persons who were acceptable to the people_, _or while factions predominated in the Court ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585318 | had no confidence_. Thus all the good effects of popular election were supposed to be secured to us, without the mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for every particular office throughout the body of the people. This was the most noble and refined part of our constitution. The people, by t... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585319 | a deliberative power in making laws; the King with the control of his negative. The King was intrusted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the people had the negative in a Parliamentary refusal to support. Formerly this power of control was what kept Ministers in awe of Parliaments, and Parliaments... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585320 | use of this power of control on the system and persons of Administration is gone, everything is lost, Parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strongholds of their country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a pretence of... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585321 | and upon a hope of discovering, whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures will not be better than their morals; such a Parliament will give countenance to their measures also, whatever that Parliament may pretend, and whatever those measures may be. Every good political institution must hav... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585322 | It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men from Government, and not to trust for the safety of the State to subsequent punishment alone--punishment which has ever been tardy and uncertain, and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to fall rather on the injured than the criminal. Before men ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585323 | the great trusts of the State, they ought by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in their country as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a proper use of power, that a man has shown by the general | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585324 | tenor of his actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his fellow-citizens have been among the principal objects of his life, and that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a settled contempt or occasional forfeiture of their esteem. That man who, before he comes into powe... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585325 | who, coming into power, is obliged to desert his friends, or who, losing it, has no friends to sympathise with him, he who has no sway among any part of the landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with his office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to be suffered | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585326 | by a controlling Parliament, to continue in any of those situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public affairs; because such a man _has no connection with the sentiments and opinions of the people_. Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any public principle, in order to... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585327 | the higher rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered to domineer in the State; because they have _no connection with the sentiments and opinions of the people_. These are considerations which, in my opinion, enforce the necessity of having some better reason, in a free country and a free Pa... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585328 | Crown, than that short one, _That the King has thought proper to appoint them_. There is something very courtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts of mischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active men from the country to the Court. Whatever be the road to power, that is the road | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585329 | which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no use as a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will be right, in a State so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave ambition without popular motives, and to trust all... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585330 | the operation of pure virtue in the minds of Kings and Ministers, and public men, must be submitted to the judgment and good sense of the people of England. * * * * * Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty under which the Sovereig... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585331 | distinguish the genuine voice and sentiments of his people from the clamour of a faction, by which it is so easily counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the King should put his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to d... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585332 | he select particular men from among them all, it is a hazard that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however divided before, will soon run into a body of opposition, which, being a collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585333 | as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and much the better part, will seem for awhile, as it were, annihilated by the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the blessings of Government. Besides that, the opinion of the mere vulgar is a miserable rule even with regard to t... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585334 | on account of their violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their humour to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal uncertainty as to the... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585335 | can a King of England do than to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most conformable to his own, who are least infected with pride and self-will, and who are least moved by such popular humours as are perpetually traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that when he means no ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585336 | people he will be supported in his appointments, whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment or his pleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight and influence of the Crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrument in the hands of a faction. I will not pretend to | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585337 | say that there is nothing at all in this mode of reasoning, because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in the art of government. Undoubtedly the very best Administration must encounter a great deal of opposition, and the very worst will find more support than it deserves. Sufficient appearances will never be... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585338 | a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy in constant use with those who would level all things, and confound right with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are attached to every choice, without taking into consideration the different weight and consequence of those inconveniences. The question is not co... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585339 | of which can be pure and unmixed at any time or upon any system. The controversy is about that degree of good-humour in the people, which may possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for. While some politicians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individual be against them, accurately distin... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585340 | better sort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a faction and the efforts of a people, they may chance to see the Government, which they are so nicely weighing, and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the ground in the midst of their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great an object as the security of G... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585341 | is at stake, will not run the risk of a decision which may be fatal to it. They who can read the political sky will seen a hurricane in a cloud no bigger than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first harbour. No lines can be laid down for civil or political | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585342 | wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible for a Prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons to administer it, as wi... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585343 | great degree of content to his people, without any curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal, perfect harmony, which, while he is seeking, he abandons those means of ordinary tranquillity which are in his power without any research at all. It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a Prince to a... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585344 | to his Government. If those who advise him may have an interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people is against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no prevalence. Here it is that the people must on their part show themselves sensible of their own value. Their whole importance, in the f... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585345 | afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their freedom cannot long survive their importance. Here it is that the natural strength of the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, the substantial yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue their Prince, themselves, and ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585346 | in the great crisis of this contention, and the part which men take, one way or other, will serve to discriminate their characters and their principles. Until the matter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion. For while a system of Administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to the genius of t... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585347 | plan of their Government, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, until this system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets the better of this system. There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this political distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former lines th... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585348 | the liberties of their country, a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a mind of the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavourable to freedom may be so formed as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the State, and men may find in the pride and splendour of that prosperity some sort of consolation for t... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585349 | solid privileges. Indeed, the increase of the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies th... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585350 | rendering Government in all its grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics. It tends to produce neither the security of a free Government, nor the energy of a Monarchy that is absol... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585351 | and turgid growth of this excrescence on the Court. The interior Ministry are sensible that war is a situation which sets in its full light the value of the hearts of a people, and they well know that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasio... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585352 | the utmost fear of everything which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Such a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is regulated, by reason, frequen... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585353 | itself in a seasonable boldness, which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear betrays to the first glance of the eye its true cause and its real object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character, have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance of the... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585354 | the midst of a general peace, and in the heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same powers--rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us, a... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585355 | they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the double Cabinet. These demands (one of them, at leas... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585356 | fast towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread her cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuable branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same cause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the vine-dresser; I mean those which t... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585357 | formerly secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the loss of which, and the power of the Cabal, have one and the same era. If, by any chance, the Ministers who stand before the curtain possess or affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign Courts and Ministers, who were amo... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585358 | first to discover and to profit by this invention of the _double Cabinet_, attended very little to their remonstrances. They know that those shadows of Ministers have nothing to do in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are sedulously nourished in the outward Administration, and have been even c... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585359 | thence foreign Courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in this nation. If one of those Ministers officially takes up a business with spirit, it serves only the better to signalise the meanness of the rest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in haste to shake him off, a... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585360 | disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of this nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our Ambassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, in consequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne. This remonstrance the French Minister treated with the contempt that was natur... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585361 | that these orders of Lord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to have said British) Administration. Lord Rochford, a man of spirit, could not endure this situation. The consequences were, however, curious. He returns from Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord Shelburne, who gave the orders, ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585362 | seals. Lord Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives them. He goes, however, into another department of the same office, that he might not be obliged officially to acquiesce in one situation, under what he had officially remonstrated against in another. At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul considered this office arrangeme... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585363 | as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By this transaction the condition of our Court lay exposed in all its nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to authenticity; British policy is brought into derision in th... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585364 | ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candour, which shone in all our negotiations. I represent this matter exactly in the light in which it has been universally received. * * * * * Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics under the influence o... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585365 | _double Cabinet_. With such an arrangement at Court, it is impossible it should have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this scheme should have a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the first, the dearest, and most delicate objects of the interior policy of this empire. The Colonies know that Ad... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585366 | within itself, and detested by the nation. The double Cabinet has, in both the parts of it, shown the most malignant dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest mischief. They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either of lenity or rigour, can be pursued with uniformity and ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585367 | from Great Britain, where they have neither dependence on friendship nor apprehension from enmity. They look to themselves, and their own arrangements. They grow every day into alienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming disconnected with our Government, we have not the consolation to find that they are ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585368 | futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual contradiction, in the management of our affairs in that part of the world. A volume might be written on this melancholy subject; but it were better to leave it entirely to the reflections of the reader himself, than not to treat it in the extent it deser... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585369 | domestic economy is affected by this system, it is needless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their own complaints. The Court party resolve the whole into faction. Having said something before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they give this account of the prevalence of faction, they pre... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585370 | confidence of the people in their own Government. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of that great and only foundation of Government, the confidence of the people, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When men ima... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585371 | for poison, and when they neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef of Old England that will persuade them to sit down to the table that is spread for them. When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585372 | institution, they find in those names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort; when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom, and furious... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585373 | relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585374 | sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parents of all their consequence. Superficial observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indi... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585375 | They are despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the strength of Government with the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585376 | Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of t... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585377 | solely to the military power, because they are cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavour to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness o... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585378 | their discontent. Men become pensioners of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress. Everything par... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585379 | servitude without submission or subordination. These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the scheme of rendering the executory Government at once odious and feeble; of freeing Administration from the constitutional and salutary control of Parliament, and inventing for it a new control, unknown to ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585380 | confusion and contempt. * * * * * After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this system on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our Government with regard to our dependencies, and on the interior economy of the Commonwealth; there remains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the gran... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585381 | principle which first recommended this system at Court. The pretence was to prevent the King from being enslaved by a faction, and made a prisoner in his closet. This scheme might have been expected to answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the King, in his personal capacity, for all the confusion into which it ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585382 | Government. But has it in reality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience all the evils which attend it. In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to consider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the King, and | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585383 | not of the Crown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent of that greatness which a King possesses merely by being a representative of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual interest seem to be these: wealth accumulated; wealth spent in magnificence, pleasure, or benefic... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585384 | ease and repose of mind. These compose the inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a Prince or a subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they are formed. Suppose then we were to ask, whether the King has been richer than his predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the estab... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585385 | it will be found that the picture of royal indigence which our Court has presented until this year, has been truly humiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken their confidence in Parliament. If the public treasures had been ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585386 | distress would have been accounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be more unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete out the splendour of the Crown. Indeed, I have found very few persons disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, it must be confes... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585387 | deal mortified, when they compare the wants of the Court with its expenses. They do not behold the cause of this distress in any part of the apparatus of Royal magnificence. In all this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with all the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved. T... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585388 | that besides the revenue settled on his Majesty's Civil List to the amount of , pounds a year, he has a farther aid, from a large pension list, near , pounds a year, in Ireland; from the produce of the Duchy of Lancaster (which we are told has been greatly improved); from the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall; from | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585389 | the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per cent. duty in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more than , pounds a year. The whole is certainly not much short of a million annually. These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national Councils. We have no direct righ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585390 | the receipts from his Majesty's German Dominions, and the Bishopric of Osnaburg. This is unquestionably true. But that which is not within the province of Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man's own reflection. If a foreign Prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not fail of becoming the ... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585391 | an anxious concern for whatever regards the welfare of our Sovereign, it is impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over. There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not inconsiderable, clear of all... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585392 | be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent. It is accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn away, for the support of that Court faction, which, whilst it distresses the nation, impoverishes the Prince in every one of his resources. I once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this considera... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585393 | the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the purpose of showing how little this system of Favouritism has been advantageous to the Monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the sam... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585394 | possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this country and in other parts of his dominions. Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and sacred character, and secured the King from those disgusts attached to the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeabl... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585395 | reasons I could wish to be silent; but the pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the corner- stone of the Court party. It has however so happened, that if I were to fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more particularly and shamefully blameable, the effects which it has produced wo... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585396 | in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the personal dignity of the Sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand contradictions and mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner these projectors of Royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstance... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585397 | a melancholy proof of the truth of what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the Court but a few years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external Administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings of the Sovereign, could possibly contrive a keener instrument of mortification... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585398 | than almost every part and member of the present arrangement? Nor, in the whole course of our history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known to extort from any Prince a greater contradiction to all his own declared affections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in direct opposition to... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
twg_000012585399 | approve and desire. An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised to submit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been denied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependent instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence may depend up... | 60 | gutenberg | unknown |
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