Page:Defence of Shelburne.djvu/59

 wisdom, and virtue, that their integrity should not be questioned, it will be a greater happiness to me to place a confidence in their honesty, than to live in a persuasion that they can equal the profligacy of any of their predecessors.

The bills passed last sessions, for excluding certain members, and for restraining certain ministers, are supposed by some good people to defeat the possibility of corruption. It cannot be denied that these bills render political seduction a more difficult task. But where is the man of truth, and plain sense, who shall affirm that corruption is impracticable? Some of the bills are worded with all imaginable caution, and it must be admitted, that a First Lord of the Treasury cannot, with very great amplitude, practise the old trade of parliamentary corruption, without committing a perjury. But surely even this is a trifling impediment in the great career of so aspiring a minister as the Earl of Shelburne—a political oath at the Treasury should be as much a matter of form as a commercial oath at the Custom-house; a politician has always two consciences. There are ingenious modes of evading the law. It is the glory of English judges (tho' a great foreign writer has reproached them with it as a crime) to attend to the letter, and consider the intent Rh