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the king to the allegiance and service of his people; it entitles the people to the protection and justice of the king. It is God alone who subsists by himself; all other things subsist in a mutual dependence and relation. He was a wise man that said that the king subsisted by the field that is tilled: it is the labour of the people that supports the crown. If you take away the protection of the king, the vigour and cheerfulness of allegiance will be taken away, though the obligation remain.

The law is the boundary, the measure, betwixt the king's prerogative and the people's liberty. Whilst these move in their own orbs, they are a support and a security to one another the prerogative a cover and defence to the liberty of the people, and the people by their liberty enabled to be a foundation to the prerogative; but if these bounds be so removed that they enter into contestation and conflict, one of these mischiefs must ensue-if the prerogative of the king' overwhelm the liberty of the people, it will be turned into tyranny; if liberty undermine the prerogative, it will grow into anarchy.

The law is the safeguard, the custody of all private interests. Your honours, your lives, your liberties, and estates, are all in the keeping of the law. Without this, every man hath a like right to any thing; and such is the condition into which the Irish were brought by the Earl of Strafford. But the reason which he gave for it hath even more mischief in it than the thing itself. They were a conquered nation! There cannot be a word more pregnant and fruitful in treason than that word is. There are few nations in the world that have not been conquered, and no doubt but the conqueror may give what law he pleases to those that are conquered; but if the succeeding pacts and agreements do not limit and restrain that right, what people can be secure? England hath been conquered, and Wales hath been conquered, and by this reason will be in little better case than Ireland. If the king, by the right of a conqueror, gives laws to his people, shall not the people, by the same reason, be restored to the right of the conquered to recover their liberty if they can? What can be more hurtful, more pernicious to both, than such propositions as these?

And in these particulars is determined the first consideration.

The second consideration is this-arbitrary power is dangerous to the king's person, and dangerous to his crown. It is apt to cherish ambition, usurpation, and oppression, in great men, and to beget sedition and discontent in the people; and both these have been, and in reason must ever be, causes of great trouble and alteration to princes and states. If the histories of those eastern countries be perused, where princes order their affairs according to the mischievous principles of the Earl of Strafford, loose and absolved from all rules of government, they will be found to be frequent in combustions, full of massacres, and of the tragical ends of princes. If any man shall look into their own stories, in the times when the laws were most neglected, he shall find them full of commotions, of civil distempers, whereby the kings that then reigned were always kept in want and distress; the people consumed with civil wars; and by such wicked counsels as these, some of our princes have been brought to such a miserable end as no honest heart can remember without horror, and an earnest prayer that it may never be so again.

The third consideration is this-the subversion of the laws; and this arbitrary power, as it is dangerous to the king's person and to his crown, so is it in other respects very prejudicial to his majesty, in his honour, profit, and greatness. And yet these are the gildings and paintings that are put upon such counsels, "these are for your honour -for your service;" whereas, in truth, they are contrary to both.

A fourth consideration is-that this arbitrary and tyrannical power which the Earl of Strafford did exercise with his own person, and to which he did advise his majesty, is inconsistent with the peace, the wealth, the prosperity of a nation it is destructive to justice, the mother of peace; to industry, the spring of wealth; to valour, which is the active virtue whereby only the prosperity of a nation can be procured, confirmed, and enlarged.

It is the end of government, that virtue should be cherished, vice supprest; but where this arbitrary and unlimited power

is set up, a way is open not only for the security, but for the advancement and encouragement of evil. Such men as are apt for the execution and maintenance of this power, are only capable of preferment; and others who will not be instruments of any unjust commands, who make a conscience to do nothing against the laws of the kingdom and liberties of the subjects, are not only not passable for employment, but subject to much jealousy and danger. It is the end of government, that all accidents and events, all counsels and designs, should be improved to the public good; but this arbitrary power is apt to dispose all to the maintenance of itself.

The royal power and majesty of kings is only glorious in the prosperity and happiness of the people. The perfection of all things consists in the end for which they were ordained. God only is his own end. All other things have a further end beyond themselves, in attaining whereof their own happiness consists. If the means and the end be set in opposition to one another, it must needs cause an impotency and defect of both.

SPEECH OF LORD CARTERET ON THE REMOVAL OF SIR ROBERT WALPOLE FROM HIS MAJESTY'S COUNCILS.

[In the memorable debate in the House of Lords, in 1740, on the motion for presenting an address to His Majesty, for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole from the situation of prime minister, the following specimens of parliamentary eloquence occur.]

My lords, I have a motion to make to your lordships, which, as a friend to our present happy establishment, as a friend to his most gracious majesty now upon the throne, as a friend to my country, and as a member of this house, I think I am in duty bound to make; but, as it is a motion of an extraordinary, though not an unprecedented nature, I must first beg leave to show you my reasons for making it, and I hope to show such reasons as will induce every lord of this house to think that it is now absolutely necessary to comply with it.

My lords, it is the duty of parliament, and especially of this house, to give our sovereign our most sincere advice, not only when it is asked, but often when it is not desired by the crown. As members of this house, we are in duty

bound to have a watchful eye over the public measures his majesty is advised to pursue, and over the chief ministers he is pleased to employ in the administration of public affairs; and when we are of opinion that the measures he is advised to pursue are wrong, or that the ministers he is pleased to employ are weak or wicked, it is our duty and our business, while we sit here, to warn our sovereign of his danger, and to remove weak or wicked counsellors from about his throne. As to the parliamentary methods of removing a minister, I need not acquaint your lordships that they are of several kinds, and that all but one tend to punish as well as remove. When we proceed by impeachment, by bill of attainder, or by bill of pains and penalties, the design is to punish as well as remove; but there is another way of proceeding in parliament, which tends only to remove the minister from the king's councils, without inflicting any real punishment upon him, and that is by an humble address to our sovereign, that he would be graciously pleased to remove such a one from his councils.

My lords, upon a general view of our conduct with regard to foreign affairs, it appears so unaccountable, and the consequences now show it to have been so destructive, that it is hardly possible to think it altogether owing to weakness; and if the truth were known, which never can as long as the same ministers continue in power, and have the disposal of all public honours and favours, something worse than weakness might, perhaps, be made appear by legal proofs. This, however, I shall not aver nor insist on; but to doubt of the weakness of this conduct, or to desire that this weakness should be made appear by legal proofs, is the same with doubting or desiring proofs of the parts being equal to the whole, or of the sun's shining, when our eyes are dazzled with his beams.

My lords, the errors in our negotiations before the war were so enormous, the faults in our conduct since the war began have been so many and so glaring, that it is almost impossible for me to impute it to weakness alone. I must suspect that our minister's making himself such an obedient slave to the views of France, when they were so contrary to the interest of his country; and his unwillingness to

enter into a war with Spain, when he had so many provocations, and so fair an opportunity of prosecuting it with success: I say, I must suppose, that this unaccountable conduct proceeded from some private motives of his own. These motives I have not discovered: they cannot be discovered whilst he continues minister. If I had discovered them, and could prove them to your lordships, my motion this day should not be for an address to remove him: I should, according to my duty, stand up in my place and impeach him of high treason. In the same manner I must impute our method of beginning the war, our dilatory method of prosecuting it, and particularly the great neglect of our trade, to some private motives of our minister's own: I am afraid he is under the direction of France in the prosecution of the war, as much as he seems to have been in the treaties and negotiations that preceded it. But, my lords, none of these things can be proved by a direct proof, especially as we have been denied all those lights that are necessary for coming at such a proof. The thing is impossible, and, in the present case, it is unnecessary. Upon a general view of our affairs, and the present circumstances we are in, the late conduct of our public affairs both at home and abroad appears to have been most notoriously weak; and if there be any one in the administration who is known, or generally supposed to have been for several years the sole adviser and chief conductor of all our public affairs, this apparent weakness is a sufficient foundation for your lordships to address his majesty, that he would be pleased to remove that minister from his presence and councils.

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That there is in our administration at present, a minister who is generally supposed to have a superiority in all our councils, and that he has enjoyed that superiority for these fifteen or sixteen years, I believe your lordships will not desire me to prove. When I say that there is one man now in the administration, whose advice has prevailed in all our councils for fifteen or sixteen years past; who has had the sole disposal of all the revenues of the crown, and of all the honours, posts, and employments the crown could bestow; who has, in a most arbitrary manner, directed, not only at the board to which he properly belongs, but, by

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