It is the undoubted prerogative of the crown to dissolve Parliament; but we beg leave to lay before his Majesty, that it is, of all the trusts vested in his Majesty, the most critical and delicate, and that in which this House has the most reason to require, not only the good faith, but the favor of the crown.  His Commons are not always upon a par with his ministers in an application to popular judgment; it is not in the power of the members of this House to go to their election at the moment the most favorable for them.  It is in the power of the crown to choose a time for their dissolution whilst great and arduous matters of state and legislation are depending, which may be easily misunderstood, and which cannot be fully explained before that misunderstanding may prove fatal to the honor that belongs and to the consideration that is due to members of Parliament.

With his Majesty is the gift of all the rewards, the honors, distinctions, favors, and graces of the state; with his Majesty is the mitigation of all the rigors of the law:  and we rejoice to see the crown possessed of trusts calculated to obtain good-will, and charged with duties which are popular and pleasing.  Our trusts are of a different kind.  Our duties are harsh and invidious in their nature; and justice and safety is all we can expect in the exercise of them.  We are to offer salutary, which is not always pleasing counsel:  we are to inquire and to accuse; and the objects of our inquiry and charge will be for the most part persons of wealth, power, and extensive connections:  we are to make rigid laws for the preservation of revenue, which of necessity more or less confine some action or restrain some function which before was free:  what is the most critical and invidious of all, the whole body of the public impositions originate from us, and the hand of the House of Commons is seen and felt in every burden that presses on the people.  Whilst ultimately we are serving them, and in the first instance whilst we are serving his Majesty, it will be hard indeed, if we should see a House of Commons the victim of its zeal and fidelity, sacrificed by his ministers to those very popular discontents which shall be excited by our dutiful endeavors for the security and greatness of his throne.  No other consequence can result from such an example, but that, in future, the House of Commons, consulting its safety at the expense of its duties, and suffering the whole energy of the state to be relaxed, will shrink from every service which, however necessary, is of a great and arduous nature,—­or that, willing to provide for the public necessities, and at the same time to secure the means of performing that task, they will exchange independence for protection, and will court a subservient existence through the favor of those ministers of state or those secret advisers who ought themselves to stand in awe of the Commons of this realm.