'But this must be the Work of Time. Corruption is of so base a Nature, that at first sight it is extremely shocking. Hardly anyone has submitted to it all at once. His Disposition must be previously understood; the particular Bait must be found out with which he is to be allured; and, after all, it is not without many struggles that he surrenders his Virtue. Indeed, there are some who will at once plunge themselves over Head and Ears into any base Action; but the generality of mankind are of a more cautious Nature, and will proceed only by some leisurely Degrees. One or two perhaps have deserted their Colours the first Campaign; some have done it in a second. But a great many who have not that eager Disposition to Vice will wait till a Third.
'For this reason, Short Parliaments have been less Corrupt than Long Ones; they are observed, like Streams of Water, always to grow more impure the greater Distance they run from the Fountain-head.'
The independent speaker finished with this spirited peroration:
'The Power of the Crown is very justly apprehended to be growing to a monstrous—I should have said, too great—a Size, and several Methods have been unsuccessfully proposed for restraining it within due Bounds.
'But our Disease, I fear, is of a complicated Nature, and I think that this Motion is wisely intended to remove the first and Principal Disorder. Give the people their antient Right of frequent new Elections; That will restore the decay'd Authority of Parliament, and will put our Constitution into a natural Condition of working out her Cure. Sir, upon the whole I am of opinion that I can't express a greater Zeal for his Majesty, for the Liberties of the People, or the Honour and Dignity of this House, than in seconding the Motion which the Hon. Gentleman has made you.'
It should be remembered that such sentiments as these were uttered to an audience—not of his constituents, whom he might have felt bound to please, but to a thoroughly corrupted House of Commons, at a period when 'not to be corrupted was the shame;' and in the presence of a powerful Minister, whom few men of the day were either strong or virtuous enough to dare to thwart. The chubby, youthful-faced portrait of the little Sir John hangs in the dining-room at Clowance: childish the face may be; but, as if in apology for his small, juvenile presence, he points with his right hand to the Mount, to indicate that his principles were as firm and unshaken as that 'hoar rock.'[136]
The Quarterly Reviewer (from whom we again quote), after concluding his observations on Sir John's speech in 1734, goes on to say:
'In the same year a curious incident occurred in the neighbourhood of his seat at Clowance, with which Sir John was only indirectly connected in his capacity of Justice of the Peace, but which was ultimately attended with very serious consequences to himself and his family. A certain Henry Rogers, by trade a pewterer, having some fancied claim to an estate called Skewis, seized the manor house, and, surrounding himself with a band of cut-throats, organized a rebellion on his own account, and bade defiance to the country round. Having beaten off from his house, not without bloodshed, first the sheriff, next the constables, and finally the military themselves, the villain succeeded in making good his escape. He was subsequently arrested at Salisbury, and brought to Launceston for trial, where the grand jury found five bills of murder against him, and Lord Chief Justice Hardwicke publicly returned thanks to Sir John "for his steady endeavours to bring him to justice."[137]
'The terror, however, which this ruffian caused in the neighbourhood can scarcely be realized nowadays, and the menacing letters received by Lady St. Aubyn so preyed upon her mind, that they brought on a "sensible decay," or, as we should call it now, a rapid decline, from the effects of which, in 1740, she died.[138]