The House of Commons can never be a
control on other parts of government, unless they are controlled
themselves by their constituents; and unless these constituents possess
some right in the choice of that house, which it is not in the power of
that house to take away. If they suffer this power of arbitrary
incapacitation to stand, they have utterly perverted every other power
of the House of Commons. The late proceeding I will not say IS contrary
to law, it MUST be so; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any
possibility, be a legal power in any limited member of government.
INFLUENCE OF PLACE IN GOVERNMENT.
It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how much of an evil
ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a degree of purity
impracticable in degenerate times and manners, instead of cutting off
the subsisting ill practices, new corruptions might be produced for the
concealment and security of the old. It were better, undoubtedly, that
no influence at all could affect the mind of a member of Parliament. But
of all modes of influence, in my opinion, a place under the government
is the least disgraceful to the man who holds it, and by far the most
safe to the country. I would not shut out that sort of influence which
is open and visible, which is connected with the dignity and the service
of the state, when it is not in my power to prevent the influence of
contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery, and those innumerable
methods of clandestine corruption, which are abundantly in the hands of
the court, and which will be applied as long as these means of
corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, have existence among
us.
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