vine
and supernatural afflatus. With all this your lordship knows I am a
modest man. I have never presumed to entrench upon the province of
others. Let the professors of ethics talk their nonsense. I will not
interrupt them. I will not endeavour to set your lordship against them.
It is necessary for me to take politics upon an unlimited scale, and to
suppose that a statesman has no character to preserve but that of
speciousness and plausibility. But it is your lordship's business to
enquire whether this be really the case.

I need not tell you, that I shall not, like the political writers with
which you are acquainted, talk in the air. My instructions will be of a
practical nature, and my rules adapted to the present condition of the
English government. That government is at present considerably, though
imperfectly, a system of liberty. To such a system the most essential
maxim is, that the governors shall be accountable and amenable to the
governed. This principle has sometimes been denominated responsibility.
Responsibility in a republican government is carried as high as
possible. In a limited monarchy it stops at the first ministers, the
immediate servants of the crown. Now to this system nothing can be more
fatal, than for the public measures not really to originate with
administration, but with secret advisers who cannot be traced. This is
to cut all the nerves of government, to loosen all the springs of
liberty, to make the constitution totter to its lowest foundations.

I say this, my lord, not to terrify your lordship. The students and the
imitators of Machiavel must not be frightened with bugbears. Beside,
were cowardice as congenial to the feelings of your lordship as I
confess it has sometimes been to mine, cowardice itself is not so apt to
be terrified with threats hung up _in terrorem_, and menaces of a vague
and general nature. It trembles only at a danger definite and impending.
It is the dagger at the throat, it is the pistol at the breast, that
shakes her nerves. Prudence is alarmed at a distance, and calls up all
her exertion. But cowardice is short-sighted, and was never productive
of any salutary effort. I say not this therefore to intimidate, but to
excite you. I would teach you, that this is a most important step
indeed, is the grand _desideratum_ in order to exalt the English
monarchy to a par with the glorious one of France, or any other absolute
monarchy in Christendom.

In order, my lord, t