This we lay before his Majesty, with humility and concern, as the inevitable effect of a spirit of intrigue in his executive government:  an evil which we have but too much reason to be persuaded exists and increases.  During the course of the last session it broke out in a manner the most alarming.  This evil was infinitely aggravated by the unauthorized, but not disavowed, use which has been made of his Majesty’s name, for the purpose of the most unconstitutional, corrupt, and dishonorable influence on the minds of the members of Parliament that ever was practised in this kingdom.  No attention even to exterior decorum, in the practice of corruption and intimidation employed on peers, was observed:  several peers were obliged under menaces to retract their declarations and to recall their proxies.

The Commons have the deepest interest in the purity and integrity of the Peerage.  The Peers dispose of all the property in the kingdom, in the last resort; and they dispose of it on their honor, and not on their oaths, as all the members of every other tribunal in the kingdom must do,—­though in them the proceeding is not conclusive.  We have, therefore, a right to demand that no application shall be made to peers of such a nature as may give room to call in question, much less to attaint, our sole security for all that we possess.  This corrupt proceeding appeared to the House of Commons, who are the natural guardians of the purity of Parliament, and of the purity of every branch of judicature, a most reprehensible and dangerous practice, tending to shake the very foundation of the authority of the House of Peers; and they branded it as such by their resolution.

The House had not sufficient evidence to enable them legally to punish this practice, but they had enough to caution them against all confidence in the authors and abettors of it.  They performed their duty in humbly advising his Majesty against the employment of such ministers; but his Majesty was advised to keep those ministers, and to dissolve that Parliament.  The House, aware of the importance and urgency of its duty with regard to the British interests in India, which were and are in the utmost disorder, and in the utmost peril, most humbly requested his Majesty not to dissolve the Parliament during the course of their very critical proceedings on that subject.  His Majesty’s gracious condescension to that request was conveyed in the royal faith, pledged to a House of Parliament, and solemnly delivered from the throne.  It was but a very few days after a committee had been, with the consent and concurrence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed for an inquiry into certain accounts delivered to the House by the Court of Directors, and then actually engaged in that inquiry, that the ministers, regardless of the assurance given from the crown to a House of Commons, did dissolve that Parliament.  We most humbly submit to his Majesty’s consideration the consequences of this their breach of public faith.