Had this plan, with some modifications, been tried at an earlier period, in a more composed state of the public mind, and by a better sovereign, we are by no means certain that it might not have effected the purpose for which it was designed.  The restraint imposed on the King by the Council of thirty, whom he had himself chosen, would have been feeble indeed when compared with the restraint imposed by Parliament.  But it would have been more constant.  It would have acted every year, and all the year round; and before the Revolution the sessions of Parliament were short and the recesses long.  The advice of the Council would probably have prevented any very monstrous and scandalous measures; and would consequently have prevented the discontents which follow such measures, and the salutary laws which are the fruit of such discontents.  We believe, for example, that the second Dutch war would never have been approved by such a Council as that which Temple proposed.  We are quite certain that the shutting up of the Exchequer would never even have been mentioned in such a Council.  The people, pleased to think that Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and Mr. Powle, unplaced and unpensioned, were daily representing their grievances and defending their rights in the Royal presence, would not have pined quite so much for the meeting of Parliaments.  The Parliament, when it met, would have found fewer and less glaring abuses to attack.  There would have been less misgovernment and less reform.  We should not have been cursed with the Cabal, or blessed with the Habeas Corpus Act.  In the mean time the Council, considered as an executive Council, would, unless some at least of its powers had been delegated to a smaller body, have been feeble, dilatory, divided, unfit for everything that requires secrecy and despatch, and peculiarly unfit for the administration of war.

The Revolution put an end, in a very different way, to the long contest between the King and the Parliament.  From that time, the House of Commons has been predominant in the State.  The Cabinet has really been, from that time, a committee nominated by the Crown out of the prevailing party in Parliament.  Though the minority in the Commons are Constantly proposing to condemn executive measures, or to call for papers which may enable the House to sit in judgment on such measures, these propositions are scarcely ever carried; and, if a proposition of this kind is carried against the Government, a change of Ministry almost necessarily follows.  Growing and struggling power always gives more annoyance and is more unmanageable than established power.  The House of Commons gave infinitely more trouble to the Ministers of Charles the Second than to any Ministers of later times; for, in the time of Charles the Second, the House was checking Ministers in whom it did not confide.  Now that its ascendency is fully established, it either confides in Ministers or turns them out.  This is undoubtedly a far better state of things than that which Temple wished to introduce.  The modern Cabinet is a far better Executive Council than his.  The worst House of Commons that has sate since the Revolution was a far more efficient check on misgovernment than his fifteen independent counsellors would have been.  Yet, everything considered, it seems to us that his plan was the work of an observant, ingenious, and fertile mind.