[52]
—Perhaps a final thrust—The report of a dissolution was then current. It is probable the administration of that day imagined the nation would not be the worse if a certain class of senators returned to their counting-houses, and mansion-seats near the capital. But I will venture to affirm that the Earl of Shelburne had no such design. The genius of the present Parliament is well known. Characters more capable are not easily found. Much address is necessary to seduce a virgin—the strumpet yields to every libertine that pays for her prostitution. The Earl of Shelburne is convinced, it is not every good man in the Lower House, who can twice in two years afford the sum of four thousand pounds for a seat in parliament, especially when contractors bills, &c. do apparently preclude him from serving his country in the way most suitable to his own wishes. From you at least I shall not hear, 'that the parliament will not dare to betray the interest of the nation,' I have your own words publicly delivered in the senate, how far it is possible for a parliament to go to the very excess of political infamy. In the year 1770 you asserted, 'that the majority of the House of Commons were traitors'—and when I am convinced that the present parliament have given so many proofs of superior consistency,
