which was framing a government
of despotic power for Charles II., was doubtless selfish and tyrannical;
but Algernon Sidney, and the whole patriots who opposed them, except Lord
Russell, were quietly taking, the whole time, bribes from Louis XIV.
Severity was doubtless exercised in the punishment of the leaders, some of
whom were noble and high-minded men, of the Rye-House Plot; but that was
only in retaliation of the still greater atrocities consequent on the
fictitious Popish plots, and the perjury of Titus Oates. The Revolution of
1688 was, doubtless, brought about, as a whole, by necessity and patriotic
intentions; but Churchill proved a traitor to his benefactor and king, and
betrayed his trust to promote that revolution--a crime as deep as that for
which Ney justly suffered in the gardens of the Luxembourg--and the
blackness of which all the glories of Marlborough have not been able to
efface. The government of Lord Bute and Lord North was doubtless mainly
based on the influence of official or parliamentary patronage, and the
evils of that corruption clearly appeared in the disasters of the American
war; but these Tory noblemen only carried on the system invented and
brought to perfection, during the seventy years that the Whigs had enjoyed
a monopoly of power.

It is a first principle, says Sismondi, in politics, that all classes
which have not constitutionally the means of resistance, will be
oppressed. There can be no doubt that this is true; and it is not less
true, that all power which is not systematically watched, will become
corrupt. It is these principles which explain the universal and
wide-spread corruption which overran the country for a century after the
Revolution; and they point to a conclusion of the very highest importance
in political science. Direct or tyrannical power, by means of the
prerogative, or the simple will, of the sovereign, having become
impossible, in consequence of the safeguards established by the Great
Rebellion and the Revolution, and the disposition to tyranny and abuse
remaining the same, from the corrupt tendency of the human heart, the
system of gaining a majority, both in Parliament and in the
constituencies, by means of government influence and official corruption,
became the acknowledged, and probably unavoidable, basis of government.
During the seventy years that the Whigs were in power, they brought this
system to perfection, and extended its ramifications into the remo