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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow SECTION V.: MEANS, &C. CONTINUED.—II. PLACEMEN SEATED BY THE KING, WITH SPEECH AND MOTION, WITHOUT VOTE. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3

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SECTION V.: MEANS, &C. CONTINUED.—II. PLACEMEN SEATED BY THE KING, WITH SPEECH AND MOTION, WITHOUT VOTE. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION V.

MEANS, &C. CONTINUED.—II. PLACEMEN SEATED BY THE KING, WITH SPEECH AND MOTION, WITHOUT VOTE.

Question 14. Seating official persons, from the official departments, without votes, but with the right of speech and motion, subject to restriction or interdiction by the House,—to which of the ends does this arrangement promise to be conducive?

Answer. To intellectual aptitude—appropriate intellectual aptitude.

Question 15. In what way?

Answer. In this way. On the part of the King and his Ministers, it being all along matter of necessity to secure for their measures, either the co-operation, or at least the acquiescence of the House, it will be all along their interest, and therefore naturally their endeavour, to find out and station in the House such persons, as, being furnished with the requisite degree of obsequiousness as towards his will, are in an eminent degree distinguished by the talent of persuasion, including that sort and degree of appropriate intellectual aptitude which is necessary to it. This intelligence, be it what it may, the House may at all times be thus made to have the full benefit of, and at the same time, without having its decisions perpetually exposed to be turned aside into a sinister course, by the weight of so many dependent votes, expressive—not of any will of the voters, guided by any opinion of their own concerning the general interest, but of the will, guided by the particular and thence sinister interest, of the king, or of some minister, or of some private and unknown favourite of the king’s.

By this means the King and his Ministers would possess at all times what, at least in their own view of the matter, is the best chance for obtaining, and maintaining, in the House, the only honest kind of influence, viz. the influence of understanding on understanding: and that purified, viz. by the preceding and following proposed arrangements taken together, from that dishonest kind of influence,—the exercise of which is on both sides, in the relative situations in question, inconsistent with appropriate probity,—viz. the influence of will over will.

Question 16. But, is it not necessary, that every man, who proposes a law or measure in the House, should have a vote to give in support of it?

Answer. No more than that every advocate who makes a motion in the court of King’s Bench should have a vote to give in support of it on the bench.

In the business of judicature, to the giving to the justice of the case the benefit of such appropriate intelligence and active talent as may be afforded by the advocates on both sides, it has never yet been thought necessary, or so much as conducive, that the advocates on either side should take their seats on the bench, each of them with a vote equal in its effect to that of any of the judges.