the long struggle against the Stuarts, the chief object of the most enlightened statesmen had been to strengthen the House of Commons, The struggle was over; the victory was won; the House of Commons was supreme in the State; and all the vices which had till then been latent in the representative system were rapidly developed by prosperity and power.  Scarcely had the executive government become really responsible to the House of Commons, when it began to appear that the House of Commons was not really responsible to the nation.  Many of the constituent bodies were under the absolute control of individuals; many were notoriously at the command of the highest bidder.  The debates were not published.  It was very seldom known out of doors how a gentleman had voted.  Thus, while the ministry was accountable to the Parliament, the majority of the Parliament was accountable to nobody.  In such circumstances, nothing could be more natural than that the members should insist on being paid for their votes, should form themselves into combinations for the purpose of raising the price of their votes, and should at critical conjunctures extort large wages by threatening a strike.  Thus the Whig ministers of George the First and George the Second were compelled to reduce corruption to a system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale.

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely be wrong as to the remedy.  The remedy was surely not to deprive the House of Commons of its weight in the State.  Such a course would undoubtedly have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to parliamentary factions:  for, when votes cease to be of importance, they will cease to be bought; and, when knaves can get nothing by combining, they will cease to combine.  But to destroy corruption and faction by introducing despotism would have been to cure bad by worse.  The proper remedy evidently was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation; and this was to be effected in two ways; first, by giving publicity to parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on his trial before the tribunal of public opinion; and secondly, by so reforming the constitution of the House that no man should be able to sit in it who had not been returned by a respectable and independent body of constituents.

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke’s disciples recommended a very different mode of treating the diseases of the State.  Their doctrine was that a vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot King would at once break all factious combinations, and supersede the pretended necessity of bribing members of Parliament.  The King had only to resolve that he would be master, that he would not be held in thraldom by any set of men, that he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had confidence, without distinction of party, and that he would restrain his servants from influencing by immoral means either the constituent bodies or the representative body.  This childish