"To be a good member of Parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task,--especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of _servile_ compliance or _wild popularity_. To unite circumspection with vigor is absolutely necessary, but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial _city_; this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial _nation_, the interests of which are _various, multiform, and intricate_. We are members for that great _nation_, which, however, is itself but part of a great _empire_, extended by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest limits of the East and of the West. _All_ these wide-spread interests must be _considered_,--must be _compared_,--must be _reconciled_, if possible. We are members for a _free_ country; and surely we all know that the machine of a free constitution is no _simple_ thing, but as _intricate_ and as _delicate_ as it is valuable. We are members in a _great and ancient_ MONARCHY_; and we must preserve religiously the true, legal rights of the sovereign, which form the key-stone that binds together the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our Constitution_. A constitution made up of _balanced powers_ must ever be a critical thing. As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes within my reach." In this manner Mr. Burke spoke to his constituents seventeen years ago. He spoke, not like a partisan of one particular member of our Constitution, but as a person strongly, and on principle, attached to them all. He thought these great and essential members ought to be preserved, and preserved each in its place,--and that the monarchy ought not only to be secured in its peculiar existence, but in its preeminence too, as the presiding and connecting principle of the whole. Let it be considered whether the language of his book, printed in 1790, differs from his speech at Bristol in 1774.