ice of their votes, and should at critical conjunctures
extort large wages by threatening a strike. Thus the Whig ministers of
George the First and George the Second were compelled to reduce
corruption to a system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale.

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely be
wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to deprive the House
of Commons of its weight in the state. Such a course would undoubtedly
have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to parliamentary
factions; for, when votes cease to be of importance, they will cease to
be bought; and, when knaves can get nothing by combining, they will
cease to combine. But to destroy corruption and faction by introducing
despotism would have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy
evidently was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation;
and this was to be effected in two ways: first, by giving publicity to
parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on his trial
before the tribunal of public opinion; and secondly, by so reforming the
constitution of the House that no man should be able to sit in it who
had not been returned by a respectable and independent body of
constituents.

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very different
mode of treating the diseases of the state. Their doctrine was that a
vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot King would at once break
all factious combinations, and supersede the pretended necessity of
bribing members of Parliament. The King had only to resolve that he
would be master, that he would not be held in thraldom by any set of
men, that he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had
confidence, without distinction of party, and that he would restrain his
servants from influencing by immoral means either the constituent bodies
or the representative body. This childish scheme proved that those who
proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with which they
pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence of corruption and
faction was that a House of Commons, not accountable to the people, was
more powerful than the King. Bolingbroke's remedy could be applied only
by a King more powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot
Prince to govern in defiance of the body without whose consent he could
not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or
defray even the charges of his ow