  An apparent disruption of this sort was always likely to suggest that Burke had profoundly personal motives for narrowing his mind, and when he was not being caricatured as an Irish Jesuit he was being satirized as a corrupt hack  [7].  Yet some sort of procedure of the type pursued by Burke was implied in his sense of practical reasoning. The ‘philosopher in action’ had the function of finding ‘proper means’ to ‘the proper ends of Government’ marked out by ‘the speculative philosopher’ (TCD, W &amp; S, 1981–2015, ii. 45–51). Parliamentary votes, in the situation that Burke found himself, were amongst the proper means.