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Updated: June 1, 2025
In 1716, the famous Septennial Act, which prolonged parliament from three to seven years, was passed. So many evils, practically, resulted from frequent elections, that the Whigs resolved to make a change; and the change contributed greatly to the tranquillity of the country, and the establishment of the House of Brunswick.
This seems very irregular and unusual. If anything should make this a very doubtful measure, what can make it more so than that in the opinion of its advocates it would aggravate all our old inconveniences in such a manner as to require a total alteration in the Constitution of the kingdom? If the remedies are proper in triennial, they will not be less so in septennial elections.
The ministry now insisted upon the increase of papists and Jacobites, which rendered it dangerous to weaken the hands of the government; they challenged the opposition to produce one instance in which the least encroachment had been made on the liberties of the people since the septennial act took place; and they defied the most ingenious malice to prove that his present majesty had ever endeavoured to extend any branch of the prerogative beyond its legal bounds.
The annual procession is far and away the greatest event of the year at Janenne, and the septennial procession would of itself be enough to satisfy any resident in the village that he had lived if he had but seen it once. Nobody dreamed of spoiling the procession for the sake of a cart-load or so of gunpowder, and the hat was soon filled.
But what the powers are, and how their independence is preserved we do not learn, save by an insistence that the safety of Europe is to be found in playing off the ambitions of France and Austria against each other; an analogy the rejection of which has been the secret of English constitutional success. We learn of the evil of standing armies and the danger of Septennial Parliaments.
The present case under King George. Ibid. Burnet. It was moved, that an address should be made to the King for dissolving the Parliament. Swift. Tempora mutantur; for nothing now will do but septennial Parliaments. P. 388 Burnet. Swift. So have all the author's favourites. Burnet. But with these good qualities Compton was a weak man, wilful, and strangely wedded to a party. Swift.
At length, in the session of 1767, "the Septennial Bill," as it was called, was returned from England, changed to octennial, and with this alteration it passed into law, in February, 1768. A new Parliament the same year was elected under the new act, to which all the friends of the measure were triumphantly returned.
Few women are so happy as to meet with five good husbands, and therefore I should be glad to devote the remaining part of my life to the good of my country and family, in a more public and active station than that of a wife, according to your late scheme for a septennial administration of women.
Yet, as may be easily understood, the approach of every Septennial Festival was a time of infinite anxiety to all those who happened to have daughters eligible for the sacrifice, the more so that no family, not even royalty itself, was exempt, while the choice of the maidens rested with the priests, from whose decision there was no appeal.
At length, in the session of 1767, "the Septennial Bill," as it was called, was returned from England, changed to octennial, and with this alteration it passed into law, in February, 1768. A new Parliament the same year was elected under the new act, to which all the friends of the measure were triumphantly returned.
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