Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches

The Constitution of England is never to have a quietus; it is to be continually vilified, attacked, reproached, resisted; instead of being the hope and sure anchor in all storms, instead of being the means of redress to all grievances, itself is the grand grievance of the nation, our shame instead of our glory.  If the only specific plan proposed—individual, personal representation—is directly rejected by the person who is looked on as the great support of this business, then the only way of considering it is as a question of convenience.  An honourable gentleman prefers the individual to the present.  He therefore himself sees no middle term whatsoever, and therefore prefers of what he sees the individual; this is the only thing distinct and sensible that has been advocated.  He has then a scheme, which is the individual representation; he is not at a loss, not inconsistent—which scheme the other right honourable gentleman reprobates.  Now, what does this go to, but to lead directly to anarchy?  For to discredit the only government which he either possesses or can project, what is this but to destroy all government; and this is anarchy.  My right honourable friend, in supporting this motion, disgraces his friends and justifies his enemies, in order to blacken the Constitution of his country, even of that House of Commons which supported him.  There is a difference between a moral or political exposure of a public evil, relative to the administration of government, whether in men or systems, and a declaration of defects, real or supposed, in the fundamental Constitution of your country.  The first may be cured in the individual by the motives of religion, virtue, honour, fear, shame, or interest.  Men may be made to abandon, also, false systems by exposing their absurdity or mischievous tendency to their own better thoughts, or to the contempt or indignation of the public; and after all, if they should exist, and exist uncorrected, they only disgrace individuals as fugitive opinions.  But it is quite otherwise with the frame and Constitution of the State; if that is disgraced, patriotism is destroyed in its very source.  No man has ever willingly obeyed, much less was desirous of defending with his blood, a mischievous and absurd scheme of government.  Our first, our dearest, most comprehensive relation, our country, is gone.

It suggests melancholy reflections, in consequence of the strange course we have long held, that we are now no longer quarrelling about the character, or about the conduct of men, or the tenor of measures; but we are grown out of humour with the English Constitution itself; this is become the object of the animosity of Englishmen.  This Constitution in former days used to be the admiration and the envy of the world; it was the pattern for politicians; the theme of the eloquent; the meditation of the philosopher in every part of the world.  As to Englishmen, it was their pride, their consolation.  By it they lived, for it they were ready to die.  Its defects, if it had any, were partly covered by partiality, and partly borne by prudence.  Now all its excellencies are forgotten, its faults are now forcibly dragged into day, exaggerated by every artifice of representation.  It is despised and rejected of men; and every device and invention of ingenuity, or idleness, set up in opposition or in preference to it.  It is to this humour, and it is to the measures growing out of it, that I set myself (I hope not alone) in the most determined opposition.  Never before did we at any time in this country meet upon the theory of our frame of government, to sit in judgment on the Constitution of our country, to call it as a delinquent before us, and to accuse it of every defect and every vice; to see whether it, an object of our veneration, even our adoration, did or did not accord with a preconceived scheme in the minds of certain gentlemen.  Cast your eyes on the journals of Parliament.  It is for fear of losing the inestimable treasure we have, that I do not venture to game it out of my hands for the vain hope of improving it.  I look with filial reverence on the Constitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces, and put it into the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with the puddle of their compounds, into youth and vigour.  On the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and with lenient arts extend a parent’s breath.