ing is evidently necessary for the preservation of the state." "We clearly take it to be a very strong objection to this mode of proceeding, that rules of law made for the security of the subject, are of no use to him in it, and that the conclusion from hence is very strong; that, therefore, it ought not to be taken up, but where clearly necessary, as before affirmed; and we do desire to explain ourselves so far, upon the cases of necessity excepted, as to say we do not intend to include a necessity, arising purely from an impossibility of convicting any other way." CHAP. XVIII. GEORGE THE FIRST, AND GEORGE THE SECOND. I shall continue, during the short remainder of my life, most steadily attached to the ancient freedom of my country, (as it was practically enjoyed under those honest old gentlemen, George the First and Second), and your grateful servant, JOHN HORNE TOOKE. Mr. HORNE TOOKE's Address to the Electors of Westminster, June 26. 1802. THE accession of George I. was the era when government by party was fully established in England. During the reign of William, Whigs and Tories had been employed together by the King; and although the distinctions of a Whig ministry and a Tory ministry were more decidedly marked during the reign of Anne, yet Marlborough and Godolphin, who formed great part of the strength of the Whig ministry, were Tories; and Harley and St. John, who put themselves at the head of the Tory administration, had held, a short time before, subordinate offices under the Whigs. But the complete downfal of the Tory Administration, who had signed the peace of Utrecht, and the suspicion which attached to the whole party, that they favoured the claim of James II.'s son, against that of the House of Hanover, placed George I. entirely in the hands of the Whigs. At the same period, the financial difficulties which followed the winding up of the war, and the great practical talents of Walpole as a statesman, contributed to give a greater importance to the House of Commons than ever, and to place within that House, if I may so express myself, the centre of gravity of the state. Besides these causes, Speaker Onslow was of opinion, that much weight and authority were added to the House of Commons by the Septennial Act. We now find, therefore, a party ruling the country through the House of Commons; a species of government which has been assailed with vehemence, with plausibility, eloquence, and wit, by Swift, and Bolingbroke, and the whole party of Tories in the reigns of George 1. and II.; by Lord Bute and the King's friends in the commencement of the late reign, and by a party of parliamentary reformers in our own time. The sum of their objection to it is this,That it mixes and confounds the functions of the King with those of the House of Commons; that the King hereby loses his prerogative of choosing his own servants, and becomes a slave to his powerful subjects, whilst the House of Commons, by interfering in the executive government, open their door to corruption; and, instead of being the vigilant guardians of the public purse, become the accomplices of an ambitious oligarchy. Now this objection, if good, is fatal to our whole constitution; for we have seen, in reviewing the reign of Charles I., that a King whose servants are quite independent of Parliament, and a Parliament which is adverse to all abuses of power, cannot exist together submission from one or other of the parties, or civil war, must ensue. The question, then, for us to consider, is not whether the government of the two first Princes of the House of Brunswick was a corruption of the English constitution, but whether it was upon the whole a good or an evil. The first consideration that must strike us is, that, upon the whole, the liberty of the subject The chief exceptions to this re was secure. mark are, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act on Layer's plot, and the attainder of Bishop Atterbury. Of the latter I have already spoken. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act on Layer's plot has always seemed to me unnecessary; but it must not be forgotten that all the chief Jacobites of England were at that time intriguing at Rome to bring in the Pretender. Another remark nearly allied to the former is, that the triumph of party was not marked in England as it has been in nearly every republic that ever existed, ancient or modern, by a cruel and unsparing persecution of their adversaries. The history of the divisions of the parties of aristocracy and democracy in the minor states of Greece, of the parties of Marius and Sylla, at Rome, of the Guelfs and the Ghibelines, the Bianchi and the Neri, in Italy, - of |