nment had been full as arbitrary, though not so
unwise, as his grandson's; but this is the strongest argument that
nothing less than an extraordinary remedy could preserve the still
unstable liberties of England.

The best plea that could be made for Richard was his inexperience, and
the misguided suggestions of favourites. This, however, made it more
necessary to remove those false advisers, and to supply that
inexperience. Unquestionably the choice of ministers is reposed in the
sovereign; a trust, like every other attribute of legitimate power, for
the public good; not, what no legitimate power can ever be, the
instrument of selfishness or caprice. There is something more sacred
than the prerogative, or even than the constitution; the public weal,
for which all powers are granted, and to which they must all be
referred. For this public weal it is confessed to be sometimes necessary
to shake the possessor of the throne out of his seat; could it never be
permitted to suspend, though but indirectly and for a time, the positive
exercise of misapplied prerogatives? He has learned in a very different
school from myself, who denies to parliament at the present day a
preventive as well as vindictive control over the administration of
affairs; a right of resisting, by those means which lie within its
sphere, the appointment of unfit ministers. These means are now
indirect; they need not to be the less effectual, and they are certainly
more salutary on that account. But we must not make our notions of the
constitution in its perfect symmetry of manhood the measure of its
infantine proportions, nor expect from a parliament just struggling into
life, and "pawing to get free its hinder parts," the regularity of
definite and habitual power.

It is assumed rather too lightly by some of those historians to whom I
have alluded that these commissioners, though but appointed for a
twelvemonth, designed to retain longer, or would not in fact have
surrendered, their authority. There is certainly a danger in these
delegations of pre-eminent trust; but I think it more formidable in a
republican form than under such a government as our own. The spirit of
the people, the letter of the law, were both so decidedly monarchical,
that no glaring attempt of the commissioners to keep the helm
continually in their hands, though it had been in the king's name, would
have had a fair probability of success. And an oligarchy of fourteen
persons, diffe