A TORY ON GRIEVANCES.

113

constituents." The instructions sent to Sir W. Courtenay and Mr. Theophilus Fortescue, the members for Devonshire, have been preserved as a pattern of the rest. A prominent article in these instructions reads as follows:-" Restore triennial Parliaments, the best security of British liberty; use your utmost endeavours to limit the number of placemen in, and exclude pensioners from, the House of Commons." In one of the first debates in that session of Parliament, a greatly esteemed member of Parliament and eminent Tory of those days, Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, declared the Septennial Act to be a grievance. He granted that what the nation complained of as grievances were not declared to be such by Parliament, but this difference of opinion between Parliament and people was their greatest grievance. He attributed this to corruption, and maintained the necessity for a Triennial Bill.

The instructions from constituents were in

I

deed a vehement protest against the prevalent corruption. But great as was that corruption, it could not prevail against the determination to make the protest. It is to be learned, from an allusion in a debate four years afterwards, that many attempts had been made, with the most trifling success, to get the people to sign different instructions to their members. In Parliament, however, the administration always continued too strong for the Reformers. The Lord Mayor of London in 1742 (Sir R. Godschall) responded to the feeling of his constituents by bringing in a bill to repeal the obnoxious Septennial Act, but the House of Commons decided against this proposal to curtail its own existence by 204 votes against 184. Pulteney is said to have opposed this motion on the plea that whereas the bill would restore triennial Parliaments, he was inclined to go further and to have annual elections; as between a seven years' Parliament and a three years' one, he preferred the former.

ANNUAL ELECTIONS PROPOSED.

115

This plea must have been convenient for many members in the House of Commons of that day, who were committed by previous votes on the subject, and for some who had actually joined in the repeal of the Triennial Act. To deprive the ministerialists of this plea, Mr. Carew, in 1745, brought forward a proposition in favour of annual Parliaments. Sir W. Yonge, who was secretary for war in the coalition ministry of the day-the Pelham, alias the Broadbottom, administration-stated the standing objection's to the measure. It is noticeable that he admitted the inconvenience of a system under which people often had cause to repent of their choice before the term of seven years was at an end. This drawback, however, he urged, should be submitted to in order to avoid what he described as the more serious inconveniences of frequent elections and the fluctuation of public A curious testimony to the corrup

measures.

tion of the times is afforded by one argument

used by this minister. He was endeavouring to account for what was then the new custom of country gentlemen leaving their seats and taking up residence in London, and his object was to show that the Septennial Act was not responsible for that. By too much hospitality in the country they might have run themselves into

debt, and were seeking to retirement in London! increase in chancery suits.

retrench by living in There was a great Perhaps gentlemen,

once embarked in this tardy litigation, might as well bring their families up to town at once. But the principal reason assigned was that, as there was hardly any gentleman who was not a solicitor of place for himself and his friends or his relatives, a residence within easy reach of ministers was found convenient and desirable.*

Speaker Onslow, who was a contemporary of Sir W. Yonge's, in one of his notes to Burnet's History, recommends to members of Parliament "closer attendance and shorter sessions; a greater attention to the proper business of Parliament; less haunting of courts and levees of

MR. CAREW'S MOTION..

117

Notwithstanding that he was in office at this time, Sir John Philips gave his support to Mr. Carew's motion; and, dealing with one of the current objections to the proposed measure, declared himself indifferent to the threatened consequence of frequent changes both of men and measures. The great point to him was that, "the measures would then be not the measures of this or that administration, but the measures of Great Britain." Considering the avowed

ministers; not coming into Parliament as the introduction to preferments; not bringing up their families, and having great houses in town, and villas near it, but returning to their home in the country as soon as the Parliament breaks up, and employing their fortunes in hospitality there; and not ruining their estates in the luxury of all sorts of living in London, which is false grandeur for a country gentleman, and gives him no credit ; and so most of their ancestors thought even in times not far back, who, with as great property and character, did not disdain to come up to Parliament with few attendants, to live in lodgings, and eat at frugal ordinaries in company with one another. Their great tables were in the country and for the country."