Page:An address to the thinking independent part of the community.djvu/15

( 15 ) election? What are its extraordinary merits? It may boast, perhaps, of some measures gratifying to the general wish, which within these few years past have had the form of its sanction. But is it to the public spirit of that House? Is it not rather to the alarm of the English government, awed into concession by the frowns of an indignant people, that we owe any such measures? Seldom has the voice of the nation spoken in the resolutions of the House of Commons, 'till it has made its way there circuitously through the fears of the minister. In all countries, whatever be their form of government, the natural strength of the great mass of the people must induce their rulers to pay some attention to their remonstrates, when they become loud and threatening: And little does it avail a nation to have the name of a representative legislature, unless care be taken that it become not the servile expensive instrument of the Executive Power.

Whence then does it happen, that all that numerous class of persons who have the peace and prosperity of themselves and their country sincerely at heart, do not step forward at this critical moment, and loudly and urgently call for the adoption of a measure on which the continuance of both depends? Their backwardness, I should suppose, is owing to the very excess of their anxiety—to that scrupulous and trembling caution, which in times like the present