Walpole by John Morley ~ Full Audiobook [biography]
Classic Audiobook Collection
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The Politics of Impeachment
The proceedings against Oxford and Balingbrook are the last instance in our history of a political impeachment. Warren Hastings was impeached, 1788, and so was Lord Melville, 1804. To impeach or to pass an act either of a tinder or of pains and penalties against the whole cabinet would be practically absurd and impossible. A refinement in men's sense of equity gradually disclosed the hardship of punishing ministers for acts that Parliament and the Sovereign had approved. The remarkable growth of the cabinet system tended slowly but decisively to substitute the joint responsibility of the whole body of ministers for the personal responsibility of an individual minister.
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