[75]
ber that constitutes the infallibility. If one or two hundred additional members are added to the present House of Commons, it will be then impossible that body can be guilty of ignorance or prostituted to any act of baseness. The House of Lords has always emerged from servitude in proportion to the accession of new peers. All the administrations of this reign have been lovers of constitutional liberty, and to secure it, his present Majesty has exceeded even James the First in ennobling his subjects. I will not say that the Earl of Shelburne may not appear friendly to a change in the representation, but I must rescue his character from the disgrace of being supposed amicable to that measure, in mere compliance with the spirit of a letter to the Wiltshire committee, or any declaration in the House of Lords. The noble Earl is bound by no declaration. He is above all these infirmities. I doubt not he may be as much a public friend, as he will be a private enemy to the plan of equalising the representation. He would do anything rather than lose his station. This is not an hour to hazard insurrection, otherwise I should credit the report of his calling in the old ministry. That he would gladly join 'that beast, that thing[1], which he could not call man,' I can well imagine. But there
- ↑ Epithets applied to Lord North, by Lord Shelburne in the House of Peers.
