When they knew who were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought it never could be carried too far. These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast towards an acquittal by prescription. But, where duty renders a critical situation a necessary pne, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendant upon it; and not to fly from the situation itself. It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all intermediate situations between boundless strength on its own part, and total debility on the part of the people. Though, in truth, their payment, from the Sinking Fund, of debt which was never contracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to all intents and purposes, so much debt incurred. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. ​Not one of their abettors has ever undertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species or degree of delinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the mode of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is established. Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (eBook) : Burke, Edmund : The immediate cause of this 1770 tract was the violent controversy surrounding a radical member of parliament, John Wilkes, but Burke's commentary transcended this subject to grapple with more enduring questions of the proper apportionment of power, under the spirit of the British constitution, between king and parliament. But we must purposely shut our eyes, if we con sider this matter merely as a contest between the House of Commons and the Electors. Men acted as if the Court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation. The double Cabinet has, in both the parts of it, shewn the most malignant dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest mischief. The frame of our Commonwealth did not admit of such an actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the constitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the method of suffrage in any democratic State whatsoever. Nothing can be solid and permanent. Oblivion begins to spread her cob webs over all our spirited remonstrances. 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 agreeable? Nothing can alter my opinion concerning the pernicious tendency of this example, until I see some man for his indiscretion in the support of power, for his violent and intemperate servility, rendered incapable of sitting in Parliament. The whole people was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support of such interests in the State as they severally affected. By Edmund Burke. He may, while he betrays every valuable interest of the kingdom, be a benefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel, to his borough. We do not make laws. To put their hands upon such articles of expenditure as they thought improper or excessive, and to secure, in future, against such misapplication or exceeding? Every age has its own manners, and its politicks dependent upon them; and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to resist its growth during its infancy. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strong-holds of their country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a pretence of giving them a fair trial, 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. This situation, however aweful, is honourable. The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man. ​Upon a supposition, therefore, that in the opening of the cause the presumptions stand equally balanced between the parties, there seems sufficient ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing, who attempts some other scheme beside that easy one which is fashionable in some fashionable companies, to account for the present discontents. It is not to be argued that we endure no grievance, because our grievances are not of the same sort with those under which we laboured formerly; riot precisely those which we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on the Stuarts; A great change has taken place in the affairs of this country. This is felt. The electors ought to esteem it no less culpable in their Member to give a single vote in Parliament to such an Administration, than to take an office under it; to endure it, than to act in it. To cultivate friendships, and to incur enmities. With the loss of their dignity, they lose their temper. His Majesty came to the throne of these kingdoms with more advantages than any of his predecessors since the Revolution. 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. This is not a thing to be trifled with; nor is it every well-meaning man, that is fit to put his hands to it. I lament to see qualities, rare and valuable, squandered away without any public utility. They are light and portable. Parliamentary support comes and goes with office, totally regardless of the man, or the merit. But, before Parliament could be made subservient to a system, by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council, into a mere member of the Court, it must be greatly changed from its original character. The distempers of Monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and redress, in the last century; in this, the distempers of Parliament. Try. He is sapping the foundation of its liberty, disturbing the sources of its domestic tranquillity, weakening its government over its dependencies, degrading it from all its importance in the system of Europe. This want of natural importance was to be their very title to delegated power. For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a King has some sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects: that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course ​disagreeable to him: that as soon as the persons who are odious at Court are known to be odious to the people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honours. But the throne of no Prince has stood upon more unshaken foundations than that of his present Majesty. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavour to raise divisions amongst them. If he does not concur in these general principles upon which the party is founded, and which necessarily draw on a concurrence in their application, he ought from the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his opinions. Some of the most valuable branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same cause. If therefore this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence of saving the King from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable to him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty's private hours?