At popular elections the most rigorous casuists will remit a little of their severity.  They will allow to a candidate some unqualified effusions in favor of freedom, without binding him to adhere to them in their utmost extent.  But Mr. Burke put a more strict rule upon himself than most moralists would put upon others.  At his first offering himself to Bristol, where he was almost sure he should not obtain, on that or any occasion, a single Tory vote, (in fact, he did obtain but one,) and rested wholly on the Whig interest, he thought himself bound to tell to the electors, both before and after his election, exactly what a representative they had to expect in him.

“The distinguishing part of our Constitution,” he said, “is its liberty.  To preserve that liberty inviolate is the peculiar duty and proper trust of a member of the House of Commons.  But the liberty, the only liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with order; and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them.  It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.”

The liberty to which Mr. Burke declared himself attached is not French liberty.  That liberty is nothing but the rein given to vice and confusion.  Mr. Burke was then, as he was at the writing of his Reflections, awfully impressed with the difficulties arising from the complex state of our Constitution and our empire, and that it might require in different emergencies different sorts of exertions, and the successive call upon all the various principles which uphold and justify it.  This will appear from what he said at the close of the poll.

“To be a good member of Parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task,—­especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of servile compliance or wild popularity.  To unite circumspection with vigor is absolutely necessary, but it is extremely difficult.  We are now members for a rich commercial city; this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial nation, the interests of which are various, multiform, and intricate.  We are members for that great nation, which, however, is itself but part of a great empire, extended by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest limits of the East and of the West. All these wide-spread interests must be considered,—­must be compared,—­must be reconciled, if possible.  We are members for a free country; and surely we all know that the machine of a free constitution is no simple thing, but as intricate and as delicate as it is valuable.  We are members in a great and ancient MONARCHY_; and we must preserve religiously the true, legal rights of the sovereign, which form the key-stone that binds together the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our Constitution_.  A constitution made up of balanced powers must ever be a critical thing.  As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes within my reach.”