7 Aug. 1809

Parl. Ref.

Ch. Necessity Hume

4

4

But to insist any further on this topic {not to speak of the invidiousness of it -} would be to take too wide a range. His antecedent - the position, that, but for the dependence, and its efficient cause the corrupt influence, the House of Commons would conquer the King and the Lords appears to me altogether untenable, having no grounds that approach to the character of sufficient ones, either in particular history, or general reason operating on general experience. That it is altogether without grounds would be too much to say. Grounds he may be said to have had, though extremely slight ones: slight even in his own time, and rendered still more so by the experience of succeeding times.

The House of Commons could, and therefore would, (and thus far he must be admitted to be right - viz that it would if it could) the House of Commons if not kept in a state of dependence on /under/ the Crown by withdrawable bribes would conquer the Crown and the Lords along with it. Why so? Because it has done so already. And how often? Once and once only, viz in the time of Charles the 1 st. And what enabled it so to do? Its perpetuity, so weakly and improvidently conferred on it by the Crown: its perpetuity, by which it was converted into a pure aristocracy, taken altogether out of its dependence on the people.

This dependence of the House upon the people, of the elected upon the electors - this dependence which constitutes the essential character of the House of commons - and this not only in point of utility and right but in point of fact and experience - this dependence is the very circumstance which he overlooks, for /and/ his argument turns upon the non-existence of it.