Root it up, he kept crying; settle the general course in which you desire members to go; insist that they shall not suffer themselves to be diverted from this by the authority of the government of the day; let lists of votes be published, so that you may ascertain for yourselves whether your trustees have been faithful or fraudulent; do all this, and there will be no need to resort to those organic changes, those empirical innovations, which may possibly cure, but are much more likely to destroy.
[Footnote 1: "Observations on State of the Nation," _Works_, i.

105, b.] [Footnote 2: "Speech on Duration of Parliaments."] It is not surprising that so halting a policy should have given deep displeasure to very many, perhaps to most, of those whose only common bond was the loose and negative sentiment of antipathy to the court, the ministry, and the too servile majority of the House of Commons.
The Constitutional Society was furious.

Lord Chatham wrote to Lord Rockingham that the work in which these doctrines first appeared, must do much mischief to the common cause.

But Burke's view of the constitution was a part of his belief with which he never paltered, and on which he surrendered his judgment to no man.

"Our constitution," in his opinion, "stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it.