his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

"My worthy colleague says his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If Government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But Government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide, and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps 300 miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

"To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions, mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience, these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form a hasty opinion, evi dently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it, but I shall ever use a frankness of communication with you."

These speeches of Burke stand out conspicuously as the first examples of the frank unrestrained use of the election Platform by a really great orator and statesman, and they set to his

contemporaries, and to posterity, an example which is a landmark in the history of the Platform, and which was bound in time to come to produce great results. But with this solitary exception, the Platform was little used for didactic purposes. Few men were in Burke's position for enlightening or instructing the people, others had neither the capacity nor the inclination to do so, whilst many looked upon the instruction of the multitude as the one thing to be most carefully and sedulously guarded against.

The didactic use of the Platform being so extremely limited at this period, it is around the other aspect that interest

centres.

Having once proved its power and won a triumph as the mouthpiece of popular opinion, it was improbable that, with a growing restlessness among the people, and an increasing need to articulate their wants, the newly-discovered weapon would long lie idle. The records of Parliament show that a dropping fire of petitions was kept up. Numerous addresses, too, were constantly being prepared and presented to the King. We find him writing to Lord North on the 10th of September 1775: "It is impossible to draw up a more dutiful and affectionate address than the one from the town of Manchester, which really gives me pleasure, as it comes unsolicited. As you seem desirous that this spirit should be encouraged, I will certainly not object to it, though by fatal experience I am aware that they will occasion counter-petitions."1

His "fatal experience" was once more verified; and while addresses in favour of coercing the American colonies poured in from all quarters, and were hailed with delight by the Ministers, petitions against such a course flowed in from Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and other places, and were consigned to what the opposition called the "Committee of oblivion."

These latter petitions were evidence that the country was by no means unanimously in favour of the war between England and her American colonies. Public feeling at the outset had approved and abetted it, but, after a time, gradually cooled off. Strangely enough, one effect of the war was to give an immense impetus to popular ideas in England.

1 Correspondence between George III. and Lord North, vol. i. p. 267. 2 See The London Gazette, 1775-76.

Many of the greatest statesmen in the country had all along been strongly opposed to the war; and a large portion of the people shared their views. The cause of the quarrel was so flagrantly unjust, and large classes of the people in England had so much in common with the Americans-"violated privileges, infringed rights, petitions contemptuously rejected"—that they sympathised with those who were resisting an attempt to exercise unjust authority. But instead of following such violent methods as the Americans adopted for obtaining redress, they began to work in the more constitutional manner of meeting together, and discussing, and proposing plans for obtaining measures for the reform of abuses, and the removal of grievances.

Towards the end of 1779 the position of the country was so serious as to cause the deepest anxiety. In addition to the revolt in America, England was at war with France, and at war with Spain. Disaster had followed disaster; abroad, one half of the foreign acquisitions of the kingdom, one half of the colonies, were lost; at home, nearly one half of men's income went to support a calamitous war, or, what roused men's feelings to almost greater indignation, went to pay undeserved pensions, infamous sinecures, and unearned salaries to a worthless and contemptible crew of Court sycophants and Government tools and dependents. Taxes weighed heavily on all classes of the people; the high prices of the requisites of life crippled them still further. Circumstances, therefore, were all favourable for a vigorous popular movement, and it was not long before one began-the Platform again being called into requisition as the mouthpiece of the agitators.

This agitation, known afterwards as the Economy Agitation, was a most memorable one, more so than the Middlesex election agitation, and left a greater mark on the history of the country.1

On this occasion the movement had its beginning in the North Riding of Yorkshire, a county celebrated for the independence of its inhabitants. Here a few private gentlemen, totally free from party influence or connection, feeling only a heavy financial pressure on themselves, cast about for a remedy, and finding none, sought in the wider wisdom of their fellows

1 Wyvill's Political Papers, vol. i. p. 9.

help and guidance. And, accordingly, on the last day but one of the year,1 the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of the county met in the Assembly Rooms at York.

The gathering was "such as perhaps never was assembled in the same manner in this nation." Those of "the first consideration and property in the county, if not in the kingdom," were present. "Never was there a more conspicuous display of genuine patriotism, never did the sacred fire kindled by English liberty burn with a purer flame than in that assembly."

The Reverend Mr. Wyvill opened the business in a speech of which the principal part was the proposal of a Petition to the House of Commons. That Petition summarised the evils which these Yorkshire gentlemen had met to protest against.2

It began by stating the following matters as facts:-"That the nation had for several years been engaged in a most expensive and unfortunate war; that many of our valuable colonies, having actually declared themselves independent, had formed a strict confederacy with our most dangerous and inveterate enemies; and that the consequence of these combined misfortunes had been a large addition to the national debt, a heavy accumulation of taxes, with a rapid decline of the trade, manufactures, and land-rents of the kingdom." The petitioners then declared that, "alarmed at the diminished resources, and growing burdens of this country, and convinced that rigid frugality had become indispensably necessary in every department of the State, they observed with grief that, notwithstanding the calamitous and impoverished condition of the nation, much public money had been improvidently squandered, that many individuals enjoyed sinecure places, efficient places with exorbitant emoluments, and pensions unmerited by public service, to a large and still increasing amount, whence the Crown had acquired a great and unconstitutional influence, which, if not checked, might soon prove fatal to the liberties of this country." They further declared, that, conceiving the true end of every legitimate government to be, not the emolument of any individual, but the welfare of the community; and considering that, by the Constitution, the custody of the national purse was entrusted in a peculiar manner to the House of Commons, they begged leave to represent that until

1 1779.

2 Wyvill's Political Papers, vol. i. p. 7.

effectual measures were taken to redress these oppressive grievances, the grant of any additional sum of public money beyond the produce of the then existing taxes would be injurious to the rights and property of the people, and derogatory from the honour and dignity of Parliament. They, therefore, appealing to the justice of the Commons, most earnestly requested that, before any new burdens were laid upon the country, effectual measures might be taken by that House to inquire into and correct the gross abuses in the expenditure of public money, to reduce all exorbitant emoluments, to rescind and abolish all sinecure places and unmerited pensions, and to appropriate the produce to the necessities of the State.

The detailed account of the speeches affords a graphic picture of the "Platform” at this period.1

The first resolution that the Petition be adopted and sent having been proposed, Mr. Cholmeley, M.P., who was evidently not well disposed to the object of the meeting, rose and endeavoured to damp the ardour of those present. He declared that he had sat too long in the House to think that a Petition would be productive of any good effect; that as the Petition stated a misapplication of public money, Parliament would expect some proof of this. For his part, he only had it from common report. A Mr. Drummond seconded this opposition, and said that "the expenditure of public money was subject to the constitutional control of Parliament; that if any men had misapplied it, that control should be made use of. Striking off pensions, etc., was plausible in theory, but difficult in practice. He desired to know who was to be the censor, who was to judge of the merit of pensioners, and to draw the line."

He got an answer from a Mr. Pritchard which must have sounded strange then, but which contained memorable words "The people, the oppressed people, were to be the censors." A long speech was then made by a Mr. Smelt, who reprobated the Petition, and launched into a fulsome panegyric on the Crown, stating that "its power should be increased instead of diminished, that the King was not the servant of the people, but their soul, the life, the soul, the very existence of the Constitution." He said that one of the greatest misfortunes of this country was, that no Minister was found to keep up 1 Wyvill's Political Papers, vol. i. p. 11.