Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches. Edmund Burke

will be necessary to open a little more at large the nature of that party which was formed for its support.  Without this, the whole would have been no better than a visionary amusement, like the scheme of Harrington’s political club, and not a business in which the nation had a real concern.  As a powerful party, and a party constructed on a new principle, it is a very inviting object of curiosity.

      It must be remembered, that since the Revolution, until the period we are speaking of, the influence of the Crown had been always employed in supporting the Ministers of State, and in carrying on the public business according to their opinions.  But the party now in question is formed upon a very different idea.  It is to intercept the favour, protection, and confidence of the Crown in the passage to its Ministers; it is to come between them and their importance in Parliament; it is to separate them from all their natural and acquired dependencies; it is intended as the control, not the support, of Administration.  The machinery of this system is perplexed in its movements, and false in its principle.  It is formed on a supposition that the King is something external to his government; and that he may be honoured and aggrandised, even by its debility and disgrace.  The plan proceeds expressly on the idea of enfeebling the regular executory power.  It proceeds on the idea of weakening the State in order to strengthen the Court.  The scheme depending entirely on distrust, on disconnection, on mutability by principle, on systematic weakness in every particular member; it is impossible that the total result should be substantial strength of any kind.

      As a foundation of their scheme, the Cabal have established a sort of Rota in the Court.  All sorts of parties, by this means, have been brought into Administration, from whence few have had the good fortune to escape without disgrace; none at all without considerable losses.  In the beginning of each arrangement no professions of confidence and support are wanting, to induce the leading men to engage.  But while the Ministers of the day appear in all the pomp and pride of power, while they have all their canvas spread out to the wind, and every sail filled with the fair and prosperous gale of Royal favour, in a short time they find, they know not how, a current, which sets directly against them; which prevents all progress, and even drives them backwards.  They grow ashamed and mortified in a situation, which, by its vicinity to power, only serves to remind them the more strongly of their insignificance.  They are obliged either to execute the orders of their inferiors, or to see themselves opposed by the natural instruments of their office.  With the loss of their dignity, they lose their temper.  In their turn they grow troublesome to that Cabal, which, whether it supports or opposes, equally disgraces and equally betrays them.  It is soon found necessary to get rid of the heads of Administration; but it is of the heads only.  As there always are many rotten members belonging to the best connections, it is not hard to persuade several to continue in office without their leaders.  By this means the party goes out much thinner than it came in; and is only reduced in strength by its temporary possession of power.  Besides, if by accident, or in course of changes, that power should be recovered, the Junto have thrown up a retrenchment of these carcases, which may serve to cover themselves in a day of danger.  They conclude, not unwisely, that such rotten members will become the first objects of disgust and resentment to their ancient connections.

      They contrive to form in the outward Administration two parties at the least; which, whilst they are tearing one another to pieces, are both competitors for the favour and protection of the Cabal; and, by their emulation, contribute to throw everything more and more into the hands of the interior managers.

      A Minister of State will sometimes keep himself totally estranged from all his colleagues; will differ from them in their counsels, will privately traverse, and publicly oppose, their measures.  He will, however, continue in his employment.  Instead of suffering any mark of displeasure, he will be distinguished by an unbounded profusion of Court rewards and caresses; because he does what is expected, and all that is expected, from men in office.  He helps to keep some form of Administration in being, and keeps it at the same time as weak and divided as possible.

      However, we must take care not to be mistaken, or to imagine that such persons have any weight in their opposition.  When, by them, Administration is convinced of its insignificancy, they are soon to be convinced of their own.  They never are suffered to succeed in their opposition.  They and the world are to be satisfied, that neither office, nor authority, nor property, nor ability, eloquence, counsel, skill, or union, are of the least importance; but that the mere influence of the Court, naked of all support, and destitute of all management, is abundantly sufficient for all its own purposes.

      When any adverse connection is to be destroyed, the Cabal seldom appear in the work themselves.  They find out some person of whom the party entertains a high opinion.  Such a person they endeavour to delude with various pretences.  They teach him first to distrust, and then to quarrel with his friends; among whom, by the same arts, they excite a similar diffidence of him; so that in this mutual fear and distrust, he may suffer himself to be employed as the instrument in the change which is brought about.  Afterwards they are sure to destroy him in his turn; by setting up in his place some person in whom he had himself reposed the greatest confidence, and who serves to carry on a considerable part of his adherents.

      When such a person has broke in this manner with his connections, he is soon compelled to commit some flagrant act of iniquitous personal hostility against some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particular friend of his family estate), by which the Cabal hope to render the parties utterly irreconcilable.  In truth, they have so contrived matters, that people have a greater hatred to the subordinate instruments than to the principal movers.

      As in destroying their enemies they make use of instruments not immediately belonging to their corps, so in advancing their own friends they pursue exactly the same method.  To promote any of them to considerable rank or emolument, they commonly take care that the recommendation shall pass through the hands of the ostensible Ministry: such a recommendation might, however, appear to the world as some proof of the credit of Ministers, and some means of increasing their strength.  To prevent this, the persons so advanced are directed in all companies, industriously to declare, that they are under no obligations whatsoever to Administration; that they have received their office from another quarter; that they are totally free and independent.

      When the Faction has any job of lucre to obtain, or of vengeance to perpetrate, their way is, to select, for the execution, those very persons to whose habits, friendships, principles, and declarations, such proceedings are publicly known to be the most adverse; at once to render the instruments the more odious, and therefore the more dependent, and to prevent the people from ever reposing a confidence in any appearance of private friendship, or public principle.

      If the Administration seem now and then, from remissness, or from fear of making themselves disagreeable, to suffer any popular excesses to go unpunished, the Cabal immediately sets up some creature of theirs to raise a clamour against the Ministers, as having shamefully betrayed the dignity of Government.  Then they compel the Ministry to become active in conferring rewards and honours on the persons who have been the instruments of their disgrace; and, after having first vilified them with the higher orders for suffering the laws to sleep over the licentiousness of the populace, they drive them (in order to make amends for their former inactivity) to some act of atrocious violence, which renders them completely abhorred by the people.  They who remember the riots which attended the Middlesex Election; the opening of the present Parliament; and the transactions relative to Saint George’s Fields, will not be at a loss for an application of these remarks.

      That this body may be enabled to compass all the ends of its institution, its members are scarcely ever to aim at the high and responsible offices of the State.  They are distributed with art and judgment through all the secondary, but efficient, departments of office, and through the households of all the branches of the Royal Family: so as on one hand to occupy all the avenues to the Throne; and on the other to forward or frustrate the execution of any measure, according to their own interests.  For with the credit and support which they are known to have, though for the greater part in places which are only a genteel excuse for salary, they possess all the influence of the highest posts; and they dictate publicly in almost everything, even with a parade of superiority.  Whenever they dissent (as it often happens) from their nominal leaders, the trained part of the Senate, instinctively in the secret, is sure to follow them; provided