ABSTRACT
As the King in a Government must bribe a majority in the National Assembly, to obtain their concurrence with his schemes, it is therefore his interest to increase the number of offices, and to allow the officers to increase their own emoluments. To preserve seine appearance of being, agents, and not sovereigns, and at the same time to extend their power and to increase their emoluments, the rulers in the Governments are obliged to use every art to deceive the people. This chapter discusses universal suffrage and annual parliaments, and the conduct of the radical reformers, and of the ministerial and opposition parties in parliament. Sessional Parliaments would not only have been the law of the land, but also the practice of the land, as they were before the 5th of Edward II., when a statute was made to compel the King not to suffer a year to pass without calling one.
