I have never presumed to entrench upon the province of others.  Let the professors of ethics talk their nonsense.  I will not interrupt them.  I will not endeavour to set your lordship against them.  It is necessary for me to take politics upon an unlimited scale, and to suppose that a statesman has no character to preserve but that of speciousness and plausibility.  But it is your lordship’s business to enquire whether this be really the case.

I need not tell you, that I shall not, like the political writers with which you are acquainted, talk in the air.  My instructions will be of a practical nature, and my rules adapted to the present condition of the English government.  That government is at present considerably, though imperfectly, a system of liberty.  To such a system the most essential maxim is, that the governors shall be accountable and amenable to the governed.  This principle has sometimes been denominated responsibility.  Responsibility in a republican government is carried as high as possible.  In a limited monarchy it stops at the first ministers, the immediate servants of the crown.  Now to this system nothing can be more fatal, than for the public measures not really to originate with administration, but with secret advisers who cannot be traced.  This is to cut all the nerves of government, to loosen all the springs of liberty, to make the constitution totter to its lowest foundations.

I say this, my lord, not to terrify your lordship.  The students and the imitators of Machiavel must not be frightened with bugbears.  Beside, were cowardice as congenial to the feelings of your lordship as I confess it has sometimes been to mine, cowardice itself is not so apt to be terrified with threats hung up in terrorem, and menaces of a vague and general nature.  It trembles only at a danger definite and impending.  It is the dagger at the throat, it is the pistol at the breast, that shakes her nerves.  Prudence is alarmed at a distance, and calls up all her exertion.  But cowardice is short-sighted, and was never productive of any salutary effort.  I say not this therefore to intimidate, but to excite you.  I would teach you, that this is a most important step indeed, is the grand desideratum in order to exalt the English monarchy to a par with the glorious one of France, or any other absolute monarchy in Christendom.

In order, my lord, to annihilate responsibility, nothing more is necessary than that every individual should be as free, and as much in the habit of advising the king upon the measures of government, as his ministers.  Let every discarded, and let every would-be statesman, sow dissension in the royal councils, and pour the poison of his discontent into the royal ear.  Let the cabinet ring with a thousand jarring sentiments; and let the subtlest courtier, let him that is the most perfect master of wheedling arts and pathetic tones, carry it from every rival.  This, my lord, will probably create some confusion at first.