There is a want in him of sound and sober religion,—­and Sir John agrees with me,—­which would keep him from distressing the clergy, who are very important.  Great orators are very well; but as I said, how is the revenue?  And the point is, not be led away, and to be moderate, and not to go to an extreme.  As soon as it seems very clear, then I begin to doubt.  I have been many years in Parliament, and that is my experience.”  We may laugh at such speeches, but there have been plenty of them in every English Parliament.  A great English divine has been described as always leaving out the principle upon which his arguments rested; even if it was stated to him, he regarded it as far-fetched and extravagant.  Any politician who has this temper of mind will always have many followers; and he may be nearly sure that all great measures will be passed more nearly as he wishes them to be passed than as great orators wish.  Nine-tenths of mankind are more afraid of violence than of anything else; and inconsistent moderation is always popular, because of all qualities it is most opposite to violence,—­most likely to preserve the present safe existence.

CONDITIONS OF CABINET GOVERNMENT

From ‘The English Constitution’

The conditions of fitness are two:  first, you must get a good legislature; and next, you must keep it good.  And these are by no means so nearly connected as might be thought at first sight.  To keep a legislature efficient, it must have a sufficient supply of substantial business:  if you employ the best set of men to do nearly nothing, they will quarrel with each other about that nothing; where great questions end, little parties begin.  And a very happy community, with few new laws to make, few old bad laws to repeal, and but simple foreign relations to adjust, has great difficulty in employing a legislature,—­there is nothing for it to enact and nothing for it to settle.  Accordingly, there is great danger that the legislature, being debarred from all other kinds of business, may take to quarreling about its elective business; that controversies as to ministries may occupy all its time, and yet that time be perniciously employed; that a constant succession of feeble administrations, unable to govern and unfit to govern, may be substituted for the proper result of cabinet government, a sufficient body of men long enough in power to evince their sufficiency.  The exact amount of non-elective business necessary for a parliament which is to elect the executive cannot, of course, be formally stated,—­there are no numbers and no statistics in the theory of constitutions; all we can say is, that a parliament with little business, which is to be as efficient as a parliament with much business, must be in all other respects much better.  An indifferent parliament may be much improved by the steadying effect of grave affairs; but a parliament which has no such affairs must be intrinsically excellent, or it will fail utterly.