I know that no power on earth,
acting as I ought to do, can touch my life, my liberty, or my
property. I have that inward and dignified consciousness of my own
security and independence, which constitutes, and is the only thing
which does constitute, the proud and comfortable sentiment of
freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and I bless God for my
safe mediocrity; I know that if I possessed all the talents of the
gentlemen on the side of the House I sit, and on the other, I
cannot, by royal favour, or by popular delusion, or by oligarchical
cabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point, so as to
endanger my own fall or the ruin of my country. I know there is an
order that keeps things fast in their place; it is made to us, and
we are made to it. Why not ask another wife, other children,
another body, another mind?
The great object of most of these reformers is to prepare the
destruction of the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting the
House of Commons. For they think--prudently, in my opinion--that if
they can persuade the nation that the House of Commons is so
constituted as not to secure the public liberty; not to have a
proper connection with the public interests; so constituted as not,
either actually or virtually, to be the representative of the
people, it will be easy to prove that a government composed of a
monarchy, an oligarchy chosen by the Crown, and such a House of
Commons, whatever good can be in such a system, can by no means be a
system of free government.
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