Let me say, with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character, that, if, by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behavior to our representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds and a liberal scope to their understandings, if we do not permit our members to act upon a very enlarged view of things, we shall at length infallibly degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle of local agency.  When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas and rendered timid in his proceedings, the service of the crown will be the sole nursery of statesmen.  Among the frolics of the court, it may at length take that of attending to its business.  Then the monopoly of mental power will be added to the power of all other kinds it possesses.  On the side of the people there will be nothing but impotence:  for ignorance is impotence; narrowness of mind is impotence; timidity is itself impotence, and makes all other qualities that go along with it impotent and useless.

At present it is the plan of the court to make its servants insignificant.  If the people should fall into the same humor, and should choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and flexibility and total vacancy or indifference of opinion in all public matters, then no part of the state will be sound, and it will be in vain to think of saving it.

I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this candid counsel; and with this counsel I would willingly close, if the matters which at various times have been objected to me in this city concerned only myself and my own election.  These charges, I think, are four in number:  my neglect of a due attention to my constituents, the not paying more frequent visits here; my conduct on the affairs of the first Irish Trade Acts; my opinion and mode of proceeding on Lord Beauchamp’s Debtors’ Bills; and my votes on the late affairs of the Roman Catholics.  All of these (except perhaps the first) relate to matters of very considerable public concern; and it is not lest you should censure me improperly, but lest you should form improper opinions on matters of some moment to you, that I trouble you at all upon the subject.  My conduct is of small importance.

With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to ms of it in the style of amicable expostulation,—­not so much blaming the thing as lamenting the effects.  Others, less partial to me, were less kind in assigning the motives.  I admit, there is a decorum and propriety in a member of Parliament’s paying a respectful court to his constituents.  If I were conscious to myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or low, unworthy occupations had detained me from personal attendance on you, I would readily admit my fault, and quietly submit to the penalty.  But, Gentlemen, I live at an hundred miles’ distance from Bristol; and at the end of a session I come to my own house, fatigued in body and in mind, to a little repose, and to a