 Burke’s pamphlet was prompted by two proposed pieces of legislation, which he argued would, if passed, have undermined the independence of Parliament. One, a consequence of the controversy concerning Wilkes, would have allowed Parliament to expel any of its members at its pleasure. The other committed the Parliament to paying the debts accumulated in the Civil List. These bills, he suggested “must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man” (Burke 1770, 94). He looks back with some nostalgia to the time of Queen Anne, when the Whig party had control of the parliament, and argues that it is only through the power of parties, grounded in aristocratic influence, that the parliament can exercise an effective control over the executive (Burke 1770, 109). Macaulay does not disagree with Burkes’ analysis of the contemporary situation, nor that the increasing dominance of the court was in effect making parliament a tool of court policy, but she rounds on Burke for his inadequate analysis of the causes of the contemporary state of affairs. It was in fact the aristocratic factions, jostling for power, which had enabled the court to deprive the parliament of effective means of controlling the monarch. The Whigs had played a more destructive role in this process than the Tories, because they had concealed their desire for power under the rhetoric of liberty.