act in
concert who did not act with confidence; and that no men could act
with confidence who were not bound together by common opinions,
common affections, and common interests." In reading these energetic
passages, we have to remember two things: first, that the writer
assumes the direct object of party combination to be generous, great,
and liberal causes; and second, that when the time came, and when he
believed that his friends were espousing a wrong and pernicious cause,
Burke, like Samson bursting asunder the seven green withes, broke away
from the friendships of a life, and deliberately broke his party in
pieces.[1]

[Footnote 1: See on the same subject, _Correspondence_, ii. 276, 277.]

When Burke came to discuss the cure for the disorders of 1770, he
insisted on contenting himself with what he ought to have known to be
obviously inadequate prescriptions. And we cannot help feeling that he
never speaks of the constitution of the government of this country,
without gliding into a fallacy identical with that which he himself
described and denounced, as thinking better of the wisdom and power
of human legislation than in truth it deserved. He was uniformly
consistent in his view of the remedies which the various sections of
Opposition proposed against the existing debasement and servility of
the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond wanted universal suffrage,
equal electoral districts, and annual parliaments. Wilkes proposed
to disfranchise the rotten boroughs, to increase the county
constituencies, and to give members to rich, populous, trading
towns--a general policy which was accepted fifty-six years afterwards.
The Constitutional Society desired frequent parliaments, the
exclusion of placemen from the House, and the increase of the county
representation. Burke uniformly refused to give his countenance to any
proposals such as these, which involved a clearly organic change in
the constitution. He confessed that he had no sort of reliance
upon either a triennial parliament or a place-bill, and with that
reasonableness which as a rule was fully as remarkable in him as his
eloquence, he showed very good grounds for his want of faith in the
popular specifics. In truth, triennial or annual parliaments could
have done no good, unless the change had been accompanied by the more
important process of amputating, as Chatham called it, the rotten
boroughs. Of these the Crown could at that time reckon some seventy as
its o