I will now suppose you, my lord, by all these artifices, arrived at the very threshold of power. I will suppose that you have just defeated the grandest and the wisest measure of your political antagonists. I think there is nothing more natural, though the rule will admit of many exceptions, than for people who act uniformly in opposition to each other, upon public grounds, to be of opposite characters and dispositions. I will therefore imagine, that, shocked with the boundless extortions and the relentless cruelties that have been practised in some distant part of the empire, they came forward with a measure full of generous oblivion for the part, providing with circumspect and collected humanity for the future. I will suppose, that they were desirous of taking an impotent government out of the hands of Jews and pedlars, old women and minors, and to render it a part of the great system. I will suppose, that they were desirous of transferring political power from a company of rapacious and interested merchants, into the hands of statesmen, men distinguished among a thousand parties for clear integrity, disinterested virtue, and spotless fame. This, my lord, would be a field worthy of your lordship's prowess. Could you but gain the interested, could you eternize rapacity, and preserve inviolate the blot of the English name, what laurels would not your lordship deserve? I will therefore suppose, that your gracious master meets you with a _carte blanche_, that he is disposed to listen to all your advices, and to adopt all your counsels. Your lordship is aware that the road of secret influence, and that of popular favour, are not exactly the same. No ministry can long preserve their seats unless they possess the confidence of a majority of the house of commons. The ministry therefore against which your lordship acts, we will take it for granted are in this predicament. In this situation then an important question naturally arises. Either a majority in the house of commons must be purchased at any rate, or the government must be conducted in defiance of that house, or thirdly, the parliament must be dissolved. Exclusive of these three, I can conceive of no alternative. We will therefore examine each in its turn.