A House of Commons respected by his ministers is essential to his Majesty’s service:  it is fit that they should yield to Parliament, and not that Parliament should be new-modelled until it is fitted to their purposes.  If our authority is only to be held up when we coincide in opinion with his Majesty’s advisers, but is to be set at nought the moment it differs from them, the House of Commons will sink into a mere appendage of administration, and will lose that independent character which, inseparably connecting the honor and reputation with the acts of this House, enables us to afford a real, effective, and substantial support to his government.  It is the deference shown to our opinion, when we dissent from the servants of the crown, which alone can give authority to the proceedings of this House, when it concurs with their measures.

That authority once lost, the credit of his Majesty’s crown will be impaired in the eyes of all nations.  Foreign powers, who may yet wish to revive a friendly intercourse with this nation, will look in vain for that hold which gave a connection with Great Britain the preference to an affiance with any other state.  A House of Commons of which ministers were known to stand in awe, where everything was necessarily discussed on principles fit to be openly and publicly avowed, and which could not be retracted or varied without danger, furnished a ground of confidence in the public faith which the engagement of no state dependent on the fluctuation of personal favor and private advice can ever pretend to.  If faith with the House of Commons, the grand security for the national faith itself, can be broken with impunity, a wound is given to the political importance of Great Britain which will not easily be healed.

That there was a great variance between the late House of Commons and certain persons, whom his Majesty has been advised to make and continue as ministers, in defiance of the advice of that House, is notorious to the world.  That House did not confide in those ministers; and they withheld their confidence from them for reasons for which posterity will honor and respect the names of those who composed that House of Commons, distinguished for its independence.  They could not confide in persons who have shown a disposition to dark and dangerous intrigues.  By these intrigues they have weakened, if not destroyed, the clear assurance which his Majesty’s people, and which all nations, ought to have of what are and what are not the real acts of his government.

If it should be seen that his ministers may continue in their offices without any signification to them of his Majesty’s displeasure at any of their measures, whilst persons considerable for their rank, and known to have had access to his Majesty’s sacred person, can with impunity abuse that advantage, and employ his Majesty’s name to disavow and counteract the proceedings of his official servants, nothing but distrust, discord, debility, contempt of all authority, and general confusion, can prevail in his government.