The second principle assumed by Mr. Hastings for his justification,
namely, that factious opposition and a divided government might create
exigencies requiring such supplies, is full as dangerous as the first;
for, if, in the divisions which must arise in all councils, one member
of government, when he thinks others factiously disposed, shall be
entitled to take money privately from the subject for the purposes of
his politics, and thereby to dispense with an act of Parliament,
pretences for that end cannot be wanting. A dispute may always be raised
in council in order to cover oppression and peculation elsewhere. But
these principles of Mr. Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character
and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient
members. The law has placed the sense of the whole in the majority; and
it is not a thing to be suffered, that any of the members should
privately raise money for the avowed purpose of defeating that sense, or
for promoting designs that are contrary to it: a more alarming
assumption of power in an individual member of any deliberative or
executive body cannot be imagined.
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