members to rich, populous, trading towns—­a general policy which was accepted fifty-six years afterwards.  The Constitutional Society desired frequent parliaments, the exclusion of placemen from the House, and the increase of the county representation.  Burke uniformly refused to give his countenance to any proposals such as these, which involved a clearly organic change in the constitution.  He confessed that he had no sort of reliance upon either a triennial parliament or a place-bill, and with that reasonableness which as a rule was fully as remarkable in him as his eloquence, he showed very good grounds for his want of faith in the popular specifics.  In truth, triennial or annual parliaments could have done no good, unless the change had been accompanied by the more important process of amputating, as Chatham called it, the rotten boroughs.  Of these the Crown could at that time reckon some seventy as its own property.  Besides those which belonged to the Crown, there was also the immense number which belonged to the Peerage.  If the king sought to strengthen an administration, the thing needful was not to enlist the services of able and distinguished men, but to conciliate a duke, who brought with him the control of a given quantity of voting power in the Lower House.  All this patrician influence, which may be found at the bottom of most of the intrigues of the period, would not have been touched by curtailing the duration of parliaments.

What then was the remedy, or had Burke no remedy to offer for these grave distempers of Parliament?  Only the remedy of the interposition of the body of the people itself.  We must beware of interpreting this phrase in the modern democratic sense.  In 1766 he had deliberately declared that he thought it would be more conformable to the spirit of the constitution, “by lessening the number, to add to the weight and independency of our voters.”  “Considering the immense and dangerous charge of elections, the prostitute and daring venality, the corruption of manners, the idleness and profligacy of the lower sort of voters, no prudent man would propose to increase such an evil."[1] In another place he denies that the people have either enough of speculation in the closet, or of experience in business, to be competent judges, not of the detail of particular measures only, but of general schemes of policy.[2] On Burke’s theory, the people, as a rule, were no more concerned to interfere with Parliament, than a man is concerned to interfere with somebody whom he has voluntarily and deliberately made his trustee.  But here, he confessed, was a shameful and ruinous breach of trust.  The ordinary rule of government was being every day mischievously contemned and daringly set aside.  Until the confidence thus outraged should be once more restored, then the people ought to be excited to a more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their representatives.  The meetings of counties and corporations ought to settle