The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII

ler proprietors continued, a door was left open for the public sense to enter into that society: since that door has been closed, the proprietary has become, even more than formerly, an aggregate of private interests, which subsist at the expense of the collective body. At the moment of this revolution in the proprietary, as it might naturally be expected, those who had either no very particular interest in their vote or but a petty object to pursue immediately disqualified; but those who were deeply interested in the Company's patronage, those who were concerned in the supply of ships and of the other innumerable objects required for their immense establishments, those who were engaged in contracts with the Treasury, Admiralty, and Ordnance, together with the clerks in public offices, found means of securing qualifications at the enlarged standard. All these composed a much greater proportion than formerly they had done of the proprietary body.

Against the great, predominant, radical corruption of the