The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• De Lolme’s Life and Early Writings
• The Constitution of England
• Later Writings
• Editions of the Constitution of England
• A Note On the Text
• Acknowledgments
• The Constitution of England
• To the King.
• Book I
• Chapter I: Causes of the Liberty of the English Nation.—reasons of the Difference Between the Government of England, and That of France.—in England, the Great Power of the Crown, Under the Norman Kings, Created an Union Between the Nobility and the People
• Chapter II: A Second Advantage England Had Over France:—it Formed One Undivided State.
• Chapter III: The Subject Continued.
• Chapter IV: Of the Legislative Power.
• Chapter V: Of the Executive Power.
• Chapter VI: The Boundaries Which the Constitution Has Set to the Royal Prerogative.
• Chapter VII: The Same Subject Continued.
• Chapter VIII: New Restrictions.
• Chapter IX: Of Private Liberty, Or the Liberty of Individuals.
• Chapter X 1: On the Law In Regard to Civil Matters, That Is Observed In England.
• Chapter Xi 1: The Subject Continued. the Courts of Equity.
• Chapter XII: Of Criminal Justice.
• Chapter XIII: The Subject Continued.
• Chapter XIV: The Subject Concluded.—laws Relative to Imprisonment.
• Book Ii
• Chapter I: Some Advantages Peculiar to the English Constitution. 1. The Unity of the Executive Power.
• Chapter II: The Subject Concluded.—the Executive Power Is More Easily Confined When It Is One.
• Chapter III: A Second Peculiarity.—the Division of the Legislative Power.
• Chapter IV: A Third Advantage Peculiar to the English Government. the Business of Proposing Laws, Lodged In the Hands of the People.
• Chapter V: In Which an Inquiry Is Made, Whether It Would Be an Advantage to Public Liberty, That the Laws Should Be Enacted By the Votes of the People At Large.
• Chapter VI: Advantages That Accrue to the People From Appointing Representatives.
• Chapter VII: The Subject Continued—the Advantages That Accrue to the People From Their Appointing Representatives, Are Very Inconsiderable, Unless They Also Entirely Trust Their Legislative Authority to Them.
• Chapter VIII: The Subject Concluded.—effects That Have Resulted, In the English Government, From the People’s Power Being Completely Delegated to Their Representatives.
• Chapter IX: A Farther Disadvantage of Republican Governments.—the People Are Necessarily Betrayed By Those In Whom They Trust.
• Chapter X: Fundamental Difference Between the English Government, and the Governments Just Described.—in England All Executive Authority Is Placed Out of the Hands of Those In Whom the People Trust. Usefulness of the Power of the Crown.
• Chapter XI: The Powers Which the People Themselves Exercise.—the Election of Members of Parliament.
• Chapter XII: The Subject Continued.—liberty of the Press.
• Chapter XIII: The Subject Continued.
• Chapter XIV: Right of Resistance.
• Chapter Xv 1: Proofs Drawn From Facts, of the Truth of the Principles Laid Down In the Present Work.—1. the Peculiar Manner In Which Revolutions Have Always Been Concluded In England.
• Chapter Xvi 1: Second Difference—the Manner After Which the Laws For the Liberty of the Subject Are Executed In England.
• Chapter Xvii 1: A More Inward View of the English Government Than Has Hitherto Been Offered to the Reader In the Course of This Work.—very Essential Differences Between the English Monarchy, As a Monarchy, and All Those With Which We Are Acquainted.
• Chapter XVIII: How Far the Examples of Nations Who Have Lost Their Liberty, Are Applicable to England.
• Chapter Xix 1: A Few Additional Thoughts On the Attempts That At Particular Times May Be Made to Abridge the Power of the Crown, and On Some of the Dangers By Which Such Attempts May Be Attended.
• Chapter Xx 1: A Few Additional Observations On the Right of Taxation Which Is Lodged In the Hands of the Representatives of the People. What Kind of Danger This Right May Be Exposed To.
• Chapter XXI: Conclusion.—a Few Words On the Nature of the Divisions That Take Place In England.
• Guide to Further Reading
• Bibliography
• De Lolme’s Principal Publications
• Works Cited By De Lolme
• Classical Sources
• Modern Sources

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

Some Advantages peculiar to the English Constitution. 1. The Unity of the Executive Power.

We have seen in former Chapters, the resources allotted to the different parts of the English Government for balancing each other, and how their reciprocal actions and reactions produce the freedom of the Constitution, which is no more than an equilibrium between the ruling Powers of the State. I now propose to shew that the particular nature and functions of these same constituent parts of the Government, which give it so different an appearance from that of other free States, are moreover attended with peculiar and very great advantages, which have not hitherto been sufficiently observed.

The first peculiarity of the English Government, as a free Government, is its having a King,—its having thrown into one place the whole mass, if I may use the expression, of the Executive Power, and having invariably and for ever fixed it there. By this very circumstance also has the depositum of it been rendered sacred and inexpugnable;—by making one great, very great Man, in the State, has an effectual check been put to the pretensions of those who otherwise would strive to become such, and disorders have been prevented, which, in all Republics, ever brought on the ruin of liberty, and before it was lost, obstructed the enjoyment of it.

If we cast our eyes on all the States that ever were free, we shall see that the People ever turning their jealousy, as it was natural, against the Executive Power, but never thinking of the means of limiting it that has so happily taken place in England (a) , never employed any other expedient besides the obvious one, of trusting that Power to Magistrates whom they appointed annually; which was in great measure the same as keeping the management of it to themselves. Whence it resulted that the People, who, whatever may be the frame of the Government, always possess, after all, the reality of power, thus uniting in themselves with this reality of power the actual exercise of it, in form as well as in fact, constituted the whole State. In order therefore legally to disturb the whole State, nothing more was requisite than to put in motion a certain number of individuals.

In a State which is small and poor, an arrangement of this kind is not attended with any great inconveniences, as every individual is taken up with the care of providing for his subsistence, as great objects of ambition are wanting, and as evils cannot, in such a State, ever become much complicated. In a State that strives for aggrandisement, the difficulties and danger attending the pursuit of such a plan, inspire a general spirit of caution, and every individual makes a sober use of his rights as a Citizen.

But when, at length, those exterior motives come to cease, and the passions, and even the virtues, which they excited, thus become reduced to a state of inaction, the People turn their eyes back towards the interior of the Republic, and every individual, in seeking then to concern himself in all affairs, seeks for new objects that may restore him to that state of exertion which habit, he finds, has rendered necessary to him, and to exercise a share of power which, small as it is, yet flatters his vanity.

As the preceding events must needs have given an influence to a certain number of Citizens, they avail themselves of the general disposition of the people, to promote their private views: the legislative power is thenceforth continually in motion; and as it is badly informed and falsely directed, almost every exertion of it is attended with some injury either to the Laws, or the State.

This is not all; as those who compose the general Assemblies cannot, in consequence of their numbers, entertain any hopes of gratifying their own private ambition, or in general their own private passions, they at least seek to gratify their political caprices, and they accumulate the honours and dignities of the State on some favourite whom the public voice happens to raise at that time.

But, as in such a State there can be, from the irregularity of the determinations of the People, no such thing as a settled course of measures, it happens that Men never can exactly tell the present state of public affairs. The power thus given away is already grown very great, before those by whom it was given so much as suspect it; and he himself who enjoys that power, does not know its full extent: but then, on the first opportunity that offers, he suddenly pierces through the cloud which hid the summit from him, and at once seats himself upon it. The People, on the other hand, no sooner recover sight of him, than they see their Favourite now become their Master, and discover the evil, only to find that it is past remedy.

As this power, thus surreptitiously acquired, is destitute of the support both of the law and of the ancient course of things, and is even but indifferently respected by those who have subjected themselves to it, it cannot be maintained but by abusing it. The People at length succeed in forming somewhere a centre of union; they agree in the choice of a Leader; this Leader in his turn rises; in his turn also he betrays his engagements; power produces its wonted effects; and the Protector becomes a Tyrant.

This is not all; the same causes which have given a Master to the State, give it two, give it three. All those rival powers endeavour to swallow up each other; the State becomes a scene of endless quarrels and broils, and is in a continual convulsion.

If amidst such disorders the People retained their freedom, the evil must indeed be very great, to take away all the advantages of it; but they are slaves, and yet have not what in other Countries makes amends for political servitude, I mean tranquillity.

In order to prove all these things, if proofs were deemed necessary, I would only refer the reader to what every one knows of Pisistratus and Megacles, of Marius and Sylla, of Caesar and Pompey.1 However, I cannot avoid translating a part of the speech which a Citizen of Florence addressed once to the Senate: the reader will find in it a kind of abridged story of all Republics; at least of those which, by the share allowed to the People in the Government, deserved that name, and which, besides, have attained a certain degree of extent and power.

“And that nothing human may be perpetual and stable, it is the will of Heaven that in all States whatsoever, there should arise certain destructive families, who are the bane and ruin of them. Of this our own Republic affords as many and more deplorable examples than any other, as it owes its misfortunes not only to one, but to several such families. We had at first the Buondelmonti and Huberti. We had afterwards the Donati and the Cerchi; and at present, (shameful and ridiculous conduct!) we are waging war among ourselves for the Ricci and the Albizzi.

“When in former times the Ghibelins were suppressed, every one expected that the Guelfs, being then satisfied, would have chosen to live in tranquillity; yet, but a little time had elapsed, when they again divided themselves into the factions of the Whites and the Blacks. When the Whites were suppressed, new parties arose, and new troubles followed. Sometimes battles were fought in favour of the Exiles; and at other times, quarrels broke out between the Nobility and the People. And, as if resolved to give away to others what we ourselves neither could, nor would, peaceably enjoy, we committed the care of our liberty sometimes to King Robert, and at other times to his brother, and at length to the Duke of Athens; never settling nor resting in any kind of Government, as not knowing either how to enjoy liberty, or support servitude” (a) .

The English Constitution has prevented the possibility of misfortunes of this kind. Not only by diminishing the power, or rather the actual exercise of the power, of the People (a) , and making them share in the Legislature only by their Representatives, the irresistible violence has been avoided of those numerous and general Assemblies, which, on whatever side they throw their weight, bear down every thing. Besides, as the power of the People, when they have any kind of power, and know how to use it, is at all times really formidable, the Constitution has set a counterpoise to it; and the Royal authority is this counterpoise.

In order to render it equal to such a task, the Constitution has, in the first place, conferred on the King, as we have seen before, the exclusive prerogative of calling and dismissing the legislative Bodies, and of putting a negative on their resolutions.

Secondly, it has also placed on the side of the King the whole Executive Power in the Nation.

Lastly, in order to effect still nearer an equilibrium, the Constitution has invested the Man whom it has made the sole Head of the State, with all the personal privileges, all the pomp, all the majesty, of which human dignities are capable. In the language of the law, the King is Sovereign Lord, and the People are his subjects;—he is universal proprietor of the whole Kingdom;—he bestows all the dignities and places;—and he is not to be addressed but with the expressions and outward ceremony of almost Eastern humility. Besides, his person is sacred and inviolable; and any attempt whatsoever against it, is, in the eye of the law, a crime equal to that of an attack against the whole State.

In a word, since, to have too exactly completed the equilibrium between the power of the People, and that of the Crown, would have been to sacrifice the end to the means, that is, to have endangered liberty with a view to strengthen the Government, the deficiency which ought to remain on the side of the Crown, has at least been in appearance made up, by conferring on the King all that sort of strength that may result from the opinion and reverence of the people; and amidst the agitations which are the unavoidable attendants of liberty, the Royal power, like an anchor that resists both by its weight and the depth of its hold, insures a salutary steadiness to the vessel of the State.

The greatness of the prerogative of the King, by its thus procuring a great degree of stability to the State in general, has much lessened the possibility of the evils we have above described; it has even, we may say, totally prevented them, by rendering it impossible for any Citizen even to rise to any dangerous greatness.

And to begin with an advantage by which the people easily suffer themselves to be influenced, I mean that of birth, it is impossible for it to produce in England effects in any degree dangerous: for though there are Lords who, besides their wealth, may also boast of an illustrious descent, yet that advantage, being exposed to a continual comparison with the splendor of the Throne, dwindles almost to nothing; and in the gradation universally received of dignities and titles, that of Sovereign Prince and King places him who is invested with it, out of all degree of proportion.

The ceremonial of the Court of England is even formed upon that principle. Those persons who are related to the King, have the title of Princes of the blood, and, in that quality, an indisputed pre-eminence over all other persons (a) . Nay, the first Men in the Nation think it an honourable distinction to themselves to hold the different menial offices, or titles, in his Houshold. If we therefore were to set aside the extensive and real power of the King, as well as the numerous means he possesses of gratifying the ambition and hopes of individuals, and were to consider only the Majesty of his title, and that kind of strength founded on public opinion, which results from it, we should find that advantage so considerable, that to attempt to enter into a competition with it, with the bare advantage of high birth, which itself has no other foundation than public opinion, and that too in a very subordinate degree, would be an attempt completely extravagant.

If this difference is so great as to be thoroughly submitted to, even by those persons whose situation might incline them to disown it, much more does it influence the minds of the people. And if, notwithstanding the value which every Englishman ought to set upon himself as a Man, and a free Man, there were any whose eyes were so very tender as to be dazzled by the appearance and the arms of a Lord, they would be totally blinded when they came to turn them towards the Royal Majesty.

The only Man therefore, who, to those who are unacquainted with the Constitution of England, might at first sight appear in a condition to put the Government in danger, would be a Man who, by the greatness of his abilities and public services, might have acquired in a high degree the love of the people, and obtained a great influence in the House of Commons.

But how great soever this enthusiasm of the public may be, barren applause is the only fruit which the Man whom they favour can expect from it. He can hope neither for a Dictatorship, nor a Consulship, nor in general for any power under the shelter of which he may at once safely unmask that ambition with which we might suppose him to be actuated,—or, if we suppose him to have been hitherto free from any, grow insensibly corrupt. The only door which the Constitution leaves open to his ambition, of whatever kind it may be, is a place in the administration, during the pleasure of the King. If, by the continuance of his services, and the preservation of his influence, he becomes able to aim still higher, the only door which again opens to him, is that of the House of Lords.

But this advance of the favourite of the people towards the establishment of his greatness, is at the same time a great step towards the loss of that power which might render him formidable.

In the first place, the People seeing that he is become much less dependent on their favour, begin, from that very moment, to lessen their attachment to him. Seeing him moreover distinguished by privileges which are the object of their jealousy, I mean their political jealousy, and member of a body whose interests are frequently opposite to their’s, they immediately conclude that this great and new dignity cannot have been acquired but through a secret agreement to betray them. Their favourite, thus suddenly transformed, is going, they make no doubt, to adopt a conduct entirely opposite to that which has till then been the cause of his advancement and high reputation, and, in the compass of a few hours, completely renounce those principles which he has so long and so loudly professed. In this certainly the People are mistaken; but yet neither would they be wrong, if they feared that a zeal hitherto so warm, so constant, I will even add, so sincere, when it concurred with their Favourite’s private interest, would, by being thenceforth often in opposition to it, become gradually much abated.

Nor is this all; the favourite of the people does not even find in his new acquired dignity, all the increase of greatness and eclat that might at first be imagined.

Hitherto he was, it is true, only a private individual; but then he was the object in which the whole Nation interested themselves; his actions and words were set forth in the public prints; and he every where met with applause and acclamation.

All these tokens of public favour are, I know, sometimes acquired very lightly; but they never last long, whatever people may say, unless real services are performed; now, the title of Benefactor to the Nation, when deserved, and universally bestowed, is certainly a very handsome title, and which does no-wise require the assistance of outward pomp to set it off. Besides, though he was only a Member of the inferior body of the Legislature, we must observe, he was the first; and the word first is always a word of very great moment.

But now that he is made Lord, all his greatness, which hitherto was indeterminate, becomes defined. By granting him privileges established and fixed by known laws, that uncertainty is taken from his lustre which is of so much importance in those things which depend on imagination; and his value is lowered, just because it is ascertained.

Besides, he is a Lord; but then there are several Men who possess but small abilities and few estimable qualifications, who also are Lords; his lot is, nevertheless, to be seated among them; the law places him exactly on the same level with them; and all that is real in his greatness, is thus lost in a croud of dignities, hereditary and conventional.

Nor are these the only losses which the favourite of the People is to suffer. Independently of those great changes which he descries at a distance, he feels around him alterations no less visible, and still more painful.

Seated formerly in the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, his talents and continual success had soon raised him above the level of his fellow Members; and, being carried on by the vivacity and warmth of the public favour, those who might have been tempted to set up as his competitors, were reduced to silence, or even became his supporters.

Admitted now into an Assembly of persons invested with a perpetual and hereditary title, he finds Men hitherto his superiors,—Men who see with a jealous eye the shining talents of the homo novus,2 and who are firmly resolved, that after having been the leading Man in the House of Commons, he shall not be the first in their’s.

In a word, the success of the favourite of the People was brilliant, and even formidable; but the Constitution, in the very reward it prepares for him, makes him find a kind of Ostracism. His advances were sudden, and his course rapid; he was, if you please, like a torrent ready to bear down every thing before it, but this torrent is compelled, by the general arrangement of things, finally to throw itself into a vast reservoir, where it mingles, and loses its force and direction.

I know it may be said, that, in order to avoid the fatal step which is to deprive him of so many advantages, the favourite of the People ought to refuse the new dignity which is offered to him, and wait for more important successes from his eloquence in the House of Commons, and his influence over the People.

But those who give him this counsel, have not sufficiently examined it. Without doubt there are Men in England, who in their present pursuit of a project which they think essential to the public good, would be capable of refusing for a while a dignity which would deprive their virtue of opportunities of exerting itself, or might more or less endanger it: but woe to him who should persist in such a refusal, with any pernicious design! and who, in a Government where liberty is established on so solid and extensive a basis, should endeavour to make the People believe that their fate depends on the persevering virtue of a single Citizen. His ambitious views being at last discovered (nor could it be long before they were so), his obstinate resolu-lution to move out of the ordinary course of things, would indicate aims, on his part, of such an extraordinary nature, that all Men whatever, who have any regard for their Country, would instantly rise up from all parts to oppose him, and he must fall, overwhelmed with so much ridicule, that it would be better for him to fall from the Tarpeian rock (a) .3

In fine, even though we were to suppose that the new Lord might, after his exaltation, have preserved all his interest with the People, or, what would be no less difficult, that any Lord whatever could, by dint of his wealth and high birth, rival the splendor of the Crown itself, all these advantages, how great soever we may suppose them, as they would not of themselves be able to confer on him the least executive authority, must for ever remain mere showy unsubstantial advantages. Finding all the active powers in the State concentered in that very seat of power which we suppose him inclined to attack, and there secured by formidable provisions, his influence must always evaporate in ineffectual words; and after having advanced himself, as we suppose, to the very foot of the Throne, finding no branch of independent power which he might appropriate to himself, and thus at last give a reality to his political importance, he would soon see it, however great it might have at first appeared, decline and die away.

God forbid, however, that I should mean that the People of England are so fatally tied down to inaction, by the nature of their Government, that they cannot, in times of oppression, find means of appointing a Leader. No; I only meant to say that the laws of England open no door to those accumulations of power, which have been the ruin of so many Republics; that they offer to the ambitious no possible means of taking advantage of the inadvertence, or even the gratitude, of the People, to make themselves their Tyrants; and that the public power, of which the King has been made the exclusive depositary, must remain unshaken in his hands, so long as things continue to keep in the legal order; which, it may be observed, is a strong inducement to him constantly to endeavour to maintain them in it (a) .

CHAPTER II

The Subject concluded.—The Executive Power is more easily confined when it is one.

Another great advantage, and which one would not at first expect, in this unity of the public power in England,—in this union, and, if I may so express myself, in this coacervation, of all the branches of the Executive authority, is the greater facility it affords of restraining it.

In those States where the execution of the laws is intrusted to several different hands, and to each with different titles and prerogatives, such division, and the changeableness of measures which must be the consequence of it, constantly hide the true cause of the evils of the State: in the endless fluctuation of things, no political principles have time to fix among the People: and public mis-fortunes happen, without ever leaving behind them any useful lesson.

At sometimes military Tribunes, and at others, Consuls, bear an absolute sway;—sometimes Patricians usurp every thing, and at other times, those who are called Nobles (a) ;—sometimes the People are oppressed by Decemvirs, and at others by Dictators.1

Tyranny, in such States, does not always beat down the fences that are set around it; but it leaps over them. When men think it confined to one place, it starts up again in another;—it mocks the efforts of the People, not because it is invincible, but because it is unknown;—seized by the arm of a Hercules, it escapes with the changes of a Proteus.2

But the indivisibility of the Public power in England has constantly kept the views and efforts of the People directed to one and the same object; and the permanence of that power has also given a permanence and a regularity to the precautions they have taken to restrain it.

Constantly turned towards that ancient fortress, the Royal power, they have made it, for seven centuries, the object of their fear; with a watchful jealousy they have considered all its parts—they have observed all its outlets—they have even pierced the earth to explore its secret avenues, and subterraneous works.

United in their views by the greatness of the danger, they regularly formed their attacks. They established their works, first at a distance; then brought them successively nearer; and, in short, raised none but what served afterwards as a foundation or defence to others.

After the great Charter was established, forty successive confirmations strengthened it. The Act called the Petition of Right, and that passed in the sixteenth year of Charles the First, then followed: some years after, the Habeas Corpus Act was established; and the Bill of Rights made at length its appearance.3 In fine, whatever the circumstances may have been, they always had, in their efforts, that inestimable advantage of knowing with certainty the general seat of the evils they had to defend themselves against; and each calamity, each particular eruption, by pointing out some weak place, has ever gained a new bulwark to public Liberty.

To say all in three words; the Executive power in England is formidable, but then it is for ever the same; its resources are vast, but their nature is at length known; it has been made the indivisible and inalienable attribute of one person alone, but then all other persons, of whatever rank or degree, become really interested to restrain it within its proper bounds (a) .

CHAPTER III

A second Peculiarity.—The Division of the Legislative Power.

The second peculiarity which England, as an undivided State and a free State, exhibits in its Constitution, is the division of its Legislature. But, in order to make the reader more sensible of the advantages of this division, it is necessary to desire him to attend to the following considerations.

It is, without doubt, absolutely necessary, for securing the Constitution of a State, to restrain the Executive power; but it is still more necessary to restrain the Legislative. What the former can only do by successive steps (I mean subvert the laws) and through a longer or shorter train of enterprizes, the latter does in a moment. As its bare will can give being to the laws; so its bare will can also annihilate them: and, if I may be permitted the expression,—the Legislative power can change the Constitution, as God created the light.

In order therefore to insure stability to the Constitution of a State, it is indispensably necessary to restrain the Legislative authority. But here we must observe a difference between the Legislative and Executive powers. The latter may be confined, and even is the more easily so, when undivided: the Legislative, on the contrary, in order to its being restrained, should absolutely be divided. For, whatever laws it may make to restrain itself, they never can be, relatively to it, any thing more than simple resolutions: as those bars which it might erect to stop its own motions, must then be within it, and rest upon it, they can be no bars. In a word, the same kind of impossibility is found, to fix the Legislative power, when it is one, which Archimedes objected against his moving the Earth (a) .

Nor does such a division of the Legislature only render it possible for it to be restrained, since each of those parts into which it is divided, can then serve as a bar to the motions of the others; but it even makes it to be actually so restrained. If it has been divided into only two parts, it is probable that they will not in all cases unite, either for doing, or undoing:—if it has been divided into three parts, the chance that no changes will be made, is thereby greatly increased.

Nay more; as a kind of point of honour will naturally take place between these different parts of the Legislature, they will therefore be led to offer to each other only such propositions as will at least be plausible; and all very prejudicial changes will thus be prevented, as it were, before their birth.

If the Legislative and Executive powers differ so greatly with regard to the necessity of their being divided, in order to their being restrained, they differ no less with regard to the other consequences arising from such division.

The division of the Executive power necessarily introduces actual oppositions, even violent ones, between the different parts into which it has been divided; and that part which in the issue succeeds so far as to absorb, and unite in itself, all the others, immediately sets itself above the laws. But those oppositions which take place, and which the public good requires should take place, between the different parts of the Legislature, are never any thing more than oppositions between contrary opinions and intentions; all is transacted in the regions of the understanding; and the only contention that arises is wholly carried on with those inoffensive weapons, assents and dissents, ayes and noes.

Besides, when one of these parts of the Legislature is so successful as to engage the others to adopt its proposition, the result is, that a law takes place which has in it a great probability of being good: when it happens to be defeated, and sees its proposition rejected, the worst that can result from it is, that a law is not made at that time; and the loss which the State suffers thereby, reaches no farther than the temporary setting aside of some more or less useful speculation.

In a word, the result of a division of the Executive power, is either a more or less speedy establishment of the right of the strongest, or a continued state of war (a) :—that of a division of the Legislative power, is either truth, or general tranquillity.

The following maxim will therefore be admitted. That the laws of a State may be permanent, it is requisite that the Legislative power should be divided:—that they may have weight, and continue in force, it is necessary that the Executive power should be one.

If the reader conceived any doubt as to the truth of the above observations, he need only cast his eyes on the history of the proceedings of the English Legislature down to our times, to find a proof of them. He would be surprised to see how little variation there has been in the political laws of this Country, especially during the last hundred years, though, it is most important to observe, the Legislature has been as it were in a continual state of action, and, no dispassionate Man will deny, has generally promoted the public good. Nay, if we except the Act passed under William III. by which it had been enacted that Parliaments should sit no longer than three years, and which was repealed by a subsequent Act, under George I. which allowed them to sit for seven years, we shall not find that any law, which may really be called Constitutional, and which has been enacted since the Restoration, has been changed afterwards.1

Now, if we compare this steadiness of the English Government with the continual subversions of the Constitutional laws of some ancient Republics, with the imprudence of some of the laws passed in their assemblies (a) , and with the still greater inconsiderateness with which they sometimes repealed the most salutary regulations, as it were the day after they had been enacted,—if we call to mind the extraordinary means to which the Legislature of those Republics, at times sensible how its very power was prejudicial to itself and to the State, was obliged to have recourse, in order, if possible, to tie its own hands (b) , we shall remain convinced of the great advantages which attend the constitution of the English Legislature (c) .

Nor is this division of the English Legislature accompanied (which is indeed a very fortunate circumstance) by any actual division of the Nation: each constituent part of it possesses strength sufficient to insure respect to its resolutions, yet no real division has been made of the forces of the State. Only, a greater proportional share of all those distinctions which are calculated to gain the reverence of the People, has been allotted to those parts of the Legislature which could not possess their confidence, in so high a degree as the others; and the inequalities in point of real strength between them, have been made up by the magic of dignity.

Thus, the King, who alone forms one part of the Legislature, has on his side the majesty of the kingly title: the two Houses are, in appearance, no more than Councils entirely dependent on him; they are bound to follow his person; they only meet, as it seems, to advise him; and never address him but in the most solemn and respectful manner.

As the Nobles, who form the second order of the Legislature, bear, in point both of real weight and numbers, no proportion to the body of the People (a) , they have received as a compensation, the advantage of personal honours, and of an hereditary title.

Besides, the established ceremonial gives to their Assembly a great pre-eminence over that of the Representatives of the People. They are the upper House, and the others are the lower House. They are in a more special manner considered as the King’s Council, and it is in the place where they assemble that his Throne is placed.

When the King comes to the Parliament, the Commons are sent for, and make their appearance at the bar of the House of Lords. It is moreover before the Lords, as before their Judges, that the Commons bring their impeachments. When, after passing a bill in their own House, they send it to the Lords to desire their concurrence, they always order a number of their own Members to accompany it (b) ; whereas the Lords send down their bills to them, only by some of the Assistants of their House (a) . When the nature of the alterations which one of the two Houses desires to make in a bill sent to it by the other, renders a conference between them necessary, the Deputies of the Commons to the Committee which is then formed of Members of both Houses, are to remain uncovered. Lastly, those bills which (in whichever of the two Houses they have originated) have been agreed to by both, must be deposited in the House of Lords; there to remain till the Royal pleasure is signified.

Besides, the Lords are Members of the Legislature by virtue of a right inherent in their persons, and they are supposed to sit in Parliament on their own account, and for the support of their own interests.2 In consequence of this they have the privilege of giving their votes by proxies(b) ; and, when any of them dissent from the resolutions of their House, they may enter a protest against them, containing the reasons of their particular opinion. In a word, as this part of the Legislature is destined frequently to balance the power of the People, what it could not receive in real strength, it has received in outward splendor and great-ness; so that, when it cannot resist by its weight, it overawes by its apparent magnitude.

In fine, as these various prerogatives by which the component parts of the Legislature are thus made to balance each other, are all intimately connected with the fortune of State, and flourish and decay according to the vicissitudes of public prosperity or adversity, it thence follows, that, though differences of opinions may at some times take place between those parts, there can scarcely arise any, when the general welfare is really in question. And when, to resolve the doubts that may arise in political speculations of this kind, we cast our eyes on the debates of the two Houses for a long succession of years, and see the nature of the laws which have been proposed, of those which have passed, and of those which have been rejected, as well as of the arguments that have been urged on both sides, we shall remain convinced of the goodness of the principles on which the English Legislature is formed.

CHAPTER IV

A third Advantage peculiar to the English Government. The Business of proposing Laws, lodged in the Hands of the People.

A third circumstance which I propose to show to be peculiar to the English Government, is the manner in which the respective offices of the three component parts of the Legislature have been divided, and allotted to each of them.

If the Reader will be pleased to observe, he will find that in most of the ancient free States, the share of the People in the business of Legislation, was to approve, or reject, the propositions which were made to them, and to give the final sanction to the laws. The function of those Persons, or in general those Bodies, who were intrusted with the Executive power, was to prepare and frame the Laws, and then to propose them to the People: and in a word, they possessed that branch of the Legislative power which may be called the initiative, that is, the prerogative of putting that power in action (a) .

This initiative, or exclusive right of proposing, in Legislative assemblies, attributed to the Magistrates, is indeed very useful, and perhaps even necessary, in States of a republican form, for giving a permanence to the laws, as well as for preventing the disorders and struggles for power which have been mentioned before; but upon examination we shall find that this expedient is attended with inconveniences of little less magnitude than the evils it is meant to remedy.

These Magistrates, or Bodies, at first indeed apply frequently to the Legislature for a grant of such branches of power as they dare not of themselves assume, or for the removal of such obstacles to their growing authority as they do not yet think it safe for them peremptorily to set aside. But when their authority has at length gained a sufficient degree of extent and stability, as farther manifestations of the will of the Legislature could then only create obstructions to the exercise of their power, they begin to consider the Legislature as an enemy whom they must take great care never to rouse. They consequently convene the Assembly of the People as seldom as they can. When they do it, they carefully avoid proposing any thing favourable to public liberty. Soon they even entirely cease to convene the Assembly at all; and the People, after thus losing the power of legally asserting their rights, are exposed to that which is the highest degree of political ruin, the loss of even the remembrance of them; unless some indirect means are found, by which they may from time to time give life to their dormant privileges; means which may be found, and succeed pretty well in small States, where provisions can more easily be made to answer their in-tended ends, but in States of considerable extent, have always been found, in the event, to give rise to disorders of the same kind with those which were at first intended to be prevented.

But as the capital principle of the English Constitution totally differs from that which forms the basis of Republican Governments, so is it capable of procuring to the People advantages that are found to be unattainable in the latter. It is the People in England, or at least those who represent them, who possess the initiative in Legislation, that is to say, who perform the office of framing laws, and proposing them. And among the many circumstances in the English Government, which would appear entirely new to the Politicians of antiquity, that of seeing the person intrusted with the Executive power bear that share in Legislation which they looked upon as being necessarily the lot of the People, and the People that which they thought the indispensable office of its Magistrates, would not certainly be the least occasion of their surprize.

I foresee that it will be objected, that, as the King of England has the power of dissolving, and even of not calling Parliaments, he is hereby possessed of a prerogative which in fact is the same with that which I have just now represented as being so dangerous.

To this I answer, that all circumstances ought to be combined together. Doubtless, if the Crown had been under no kind of dependence whatever on the people, it would long since have freed itself from the obligation of calling their Representatives together; and the British Parliament, like the National Assemblies of several other Kingdoms, would most likely have no existence now, except in History.

But, as we have above seen, the necessities of the State, and the wants of the Sovereign himself, put him under a necessity of having frequently recourse to his Parliament; and then the difference may be seen between the prerogative of not calling an Assembly, when powerful causes nevertheless render such a measure necessary, and the exclusive right, when an Assembly is convened, of proposing laws to it.

In the latter case, though a Prince, let us even suppose, in order to save appearances, might condescend to mention any thing besides his own wants, it would be at most to propose the giving up of some branch of his prerogative upon which he set no value, or to reform such abuses as his inclination does not lead him to imitate; but he would be very careful not to touch any points which might materially affect his authority.

Besides, as all his concessions would be made, or appear to be made, of his own motion, and would in some measure seem to spring from the activity of his zeal for the public welfare, all that he might offer, though in fact ever so inconsiderable, would be represented by him as grants of the most important nature, and for which he expects the highest gratitude. Lastly, it would also be his province to make restrictions and exceptions to laws thus proposed by himself; he would also be the person who were to chuse the words to express them, and it would not be reasonable to expect that he would give himself any great trouble to avoid all ambiguity (a) .

But the Parliament of England is not, as we said before, bound down to wait passively and in silence for such laws as the Executive power may condescend to propose to them. At the opening of every Session, they of themselves take into their hands the great book of the State; they open all the pages, and examine every article.

When they have discovered abuses, they proceed to enquire into their causes:—when these abuses arise from an open disregard of the laws, they endeavour to strengthen them; when they proceed from their insufficiency, they remedy the evil by additional provisions (b) .

Nor do they proceed with less regularity and freedom, in regard to that important object, subsidies. They are to be the sole Judges of the quantity of them, as well as of the ways and means of raising them; and they need not come to any resolution with regard to them, till they see the safety of the Subject completely provided for. In a word, the making of laws, is not, in such an arrangement of things, a gratuitous contract, in which the People are to take just what is given them, and as it is given them:—it is a contract in which they buy and pay, and in which they themselves settle the different conditions, and furnish the words to express them.

The English Parliament have given a still greater extent to their advantages on so important a subject. They have not only secured to themselves a right of proposing laws and remedies, but they have also prevailed on the Executive power to renounce all claim to do the same.1 It is even a constant rule that neither the King, nor his Privy Council, can make any amendments to the bills preferred by the two Houses; but the King is merely to accept or reject them: a provision this, which, if we pay a little attention to the subject, we shall find to have been also necessary for completely securing the freedom and regularity of the parliamentary deliberations (a) .

I indeed confess that it seems very natural, in the modelling of a State, to intrust this very important office of framing laws, to those persons who may be supposed to have before acquired experience and wisdom, in the management of public affairs. But events have unfortunately demonstrated, that public employments and power improve the understanding of Men in a less degree than they pervert their views; and it has been found in the issue, that the effect of a regulation which, at first sight, seems so perfectly consonant with prudence, is to confine the People to a mere passive and defensive share in Legislation, and to deliver them up to the continual enterprizes of those who, at the same time that they are under the greatest temptations to deceive them, possess the most powerful means of effecting it.

If we cast our eyes on the History of the ancient Governments, in those times when the persons entrusted with the Executive power were still in a state of dependence on the Legislature, and consequently frequently obliged to have recourse to it, we shall see almost continual instances of selfish and insidious laws proposed by them to the Assemblies of the people.

And those Men in whose wisdom the law had at first placed so much confidence, became, in the issue, so lost to all sense of shame and duty, that when arguments were found to be no longer sufficient, they had recourse to force; the legislative Assemblies became so many fields of battle, and their power, a real calamity.

I know very well, however, that there are other important circumstances besides those I have just mentioned, which would prevent disorders of this kind from taking place in England (a) . But, on the other hand, let us call to mind that the person who, in England, is invested with the Executive authority, unites in himself the whole public power and majesty. Let us represent to ourselves the great and sole Magistrate of the Nation, pressing the acceptance of those laws which he had proposed, with a vehemence suited to the usual importance of his designs, with the warmth of Monarchical pride, which must meet with no refusal, and exerting for that purpose all his immense resources.

It was therefore a matter of indispensable necessity, that things should be settled in England in the manner they are. As the moving springs of the Executive power are, in the hands of the King a kind of sacred depositum, so are those of the Legislative power, in the hands of the two Houses. The King must abstain from touching them, in the same manner as all the subjects of the kingdom are bound to submit to his prerogatives. When he sits in Parliament, he has left, we may say, his executive power without doors, and can only assent, or dissent. If the Crown had been allowed to take an active part in the business of making laws, it would soon have rendered useless the other branches of the Legislature.

CHAPTER V

In which an Inquiry is made, whether it would be an Advantage to public Liberty, that the Laws should be enacted by the Votes of the People at large.

But it will be said, whatever may be the wisdom of the English Laws, how great soever their precautions may be with regard to the safety of the individual, the People, as they do not themselves expressly enact them, cannot be looked upon as a free People. The Author of the Social Contract carries this opi-nion even farther; he says, that, “though the people of England think they are free, they are much mistaken; they are so only during the election of Members for Parliament: as soon as these are elected, the People are slaves—they are nothing” (a) .

Before I answer this objection, I shall observe that the word Liberty is one of those which have been most misunderstood or misapplied.

Thus, at Rome, where that class of Citizens who were really Masters of the State, were sensible that a lawful regular authority, once trusted to a single Ruler, would put an end to their tyranny, they taught the People to believe, that, provided those who exercised a military power over them, and overwhelmed them with insults, went by the names of Consules, Dictatores, Patricii, Nobiles,1 in a word, by any other appellation than that horrid one of Rex, they were free, and that such a valuable situation must be preserved at the price of every calamity.

In the same manner, certain Writers of the present age, misled by their inconsiderate admiration of the Governments of ancient times, and perhaps also by a desire of presenting lively contrasts to what they call the degenerate manners of our modern times, have cried up the governments of Sparta and Rome, as the only ones fit for us to imitate.2 In their opinions, the only proper employment of a free Citizen is, to be either incessantly assembled in the forum, or preparing for war.—Being valiant, inured to hardships, inflamed with an ardent love of one’s Country, which is, after all, nothing more than an ardent desire of injuring all Mankind for the sake of that Society of which we are Members—and with an ardent love of glory, which is likewise nothing more than an ardent desire of committing slaughter, in order to make afterwards a boast of it, have appeared to these Writers to be the only social qualifications worthy of our esteem, and of the encouragement of law-givers (a) . And while, in order to support such opinions, they have used a profusion of exaggerated expressions without any distinct meaning, and perpetually repeated, though without defining them, the words dastardliness, corruption, greatness ofsoul, and virtue, they have never once thought of telling us the only thing that was worth our knowing, which is, whether men were happy under those Governments which they so much exhorted us to imitate.

Nor, while they thus misapprehended the only rational design of civil Societies, have they better understood the true end of the particular institutions by which they were to be regulated. They were satisfied when they saw the few who really governed every thing in the State, at times perform the illusory ceremony of assembling the body of the People, that they might appear to consult them: and the mere giving of votes, under any disadvantage in the manner of giving them, and how much soever the law might afterwards be neglected that was thus pretended to have been made in common, has appeared to them to be Liberty.

But those Writers are in the right: a Man who contributes by his vote to the passing of a law, has himself made the law; in obeying it, he obeys himself,—he therefore is free. A play on words, and nothing more. The individual who has voted in a popular legislative Assembly, has not made the law that has passed in it; he has only contributed, or seemed to contribute, towards enacting it, for his thousandth, or even ten thousandth share: he has had no opportunity of making his objections to the proposed law, or of canvassing it, or of proposing restrictions to it, and he has only been allowed to express his assent, or dissent. When a law is passed agreeably to his vote, it is not as a consequence of this his vote that his will happens to take place; it is because a number of other Men have accidentally thrown themselves on the same side with him:—when a law contrary to his intentions is enacted, he must nevertheless submit to it.

This is not all; for though we should suppose that to give a vote is the essential constituent of liberty, yet, such liberty could only be said to last for a single moment, after which it becomes necessary to trust entirely to the discretion of other persons, that is, according to this doctrine, to be no longer free. It becomes necessary, for instance, for the Citizen who has given his vote, to rely on the honesty of those who collect the suffrages; and more than once have false declarations been made of them.

The Citizen must also trust to other persons for the execution of those things which have been resolved upon in common: and when the assembly shall have separated, and he shall find himself alone, in the presence of the Men who are invested with the public power, of the Consuls, for instance, or of the Dictator, he will have but little security for the continuance of his liberty, if he has only that of having contributed by his suffrage towards enacting a law which they are determined to neglect.

What then is Liberty? Liberty, I would answer, so far as it is possible for it to exist in a Society of Beings whose interests are almost perpetually opposed to each other, consists in this, that, every Man, while he respects the persons of others, and allows them quietly to enjoy the produce of their industry, be certain himself likewise to enjoy the produce of his own industry, and that his person be also secure. But to contribute by one’s suffrage to procure these advantages to the Community,—to have a share in establishing that order, that general arrangement of things, by means of which an individual, lost as it were in the croud, is effectually protected,—to lay down the rules to be observed by those who, being invested with a considerable power, are charged with the defence of individuals, and provide that they should never transgress them,—these are functions, are acts of Government, but not constituent parts of Liberty.

To express the whole in two words: To concur by one’s suffrage in enacting laws, is to enjoy a share, whatever it may be, of Power: to live in a state where the laws are equal for all, and sure to be executed (whatever may be the means by which these advantages are attained) is to be free.

Be it so; we grant that to give one’s suffrage is not liberty itself, but only a means of procuring it, and a means too which may degenerate to mere form; we grant also, that it is possible that other expedients might be found for that purpose, and that, for a Man to decide that a State with whose Government and interior administration he is unacquainted, is a State in which the People are slaves, are nothing, merely because the Comitia of ancient Rome are no longer to be met with in it, is a somewhat precipitate decision.3 But still we must continue to think, that liberty would be much more complete, if the People at large were expressly called upon to give their opinion concerning the particular provisions by which it is to be secured, and that the English laws, for instance, if they were made by the suffrages of all, would be wiser, more equitable, and, above all, more likely to be executed. To this objection, which is certainly specious, I shall endeavour to give an answer.

If, in the first formation of a civil Society, the only care to be taken was that of establishing, once for all, the several duties which every individual owes to others, and to the State,—if those who are intrusted with the care of procuring the performance of these duties, had neither any ambition, nor any other private passions, which such employment might put in motion, and furnish the means of gratifying; in a word, if looking upon their function as a mere task of duty, they were never tempted to deviate from the intentions of those who had appointed them, I confess that in such a case, there might be no inconvenience in allowing every individual to have a share in the government of the community of which he is a member; or rather I ought to say, in such a Society, and among such Beings, there would be no occasion for any Government.

But experience teaches us that many more precautions, indeed, are necessary to oblige Men to be just towards each other: nay, the very first expedients that may be expected to conduce to such an end, supply the most fruitful source of the evils which are proposed to be prevented. Those laws which were intended to be equal for all, are soon warped to the private convenience of those who have been made the administrators of them:—instituted at first for the protection of all, they soon are made only to defend the usurpations of a few; and as the People continue to respect them, while those to whose guardianship they were intrusted make little account of them, they at length have no other effect than that of supplying the want of real strength in those few who have contrived to place themselves at the head of the community, and of rendering regular and free from danger the tyranny of the smaller number over the greater.

To remedy, therefore, evils which thus have a tendency to result from the very nature of things,—to oblige those who are in a manner Masters of the law, to conform themselves to it,—to render ineffectual the silent, powerful, and ever active conspiracy of those who govern, requires a degree of knowledge and a spirit of perseverance, which are not to be expected from the multitude.

The greater part of those who compose this multitude, taken up with the care of providing for their subsistence, have neither sufficient leisure, nor even, in consequence of their more imperfect education, the degree of information requisite for functions of this kind. Nature, besides, who is sparing of her gifts, has bestowed upon only a few Men an understanding capable of the complicated researches of Legislation; and, as a sick Man trusts to his Physician, a Client to his Lawyer, so the greater number of the Citizens must trust to those who have more abilities than themselves for the execution of things which, at the same time that they so materially concern them, require so many qualifications to perform them with any degree of sufficiency.

To these considerations, of themselves so material, another must be added, which is if possible of still greater weight. This is, that the multitude, in consequence of their very being a multitude, are incapable of coming to any mature resolution.

Those who compose a popular Assembly are not actuated, in the course of their de-liberations, by any clear and precise view of any present or positive personal interest. As they see themselves lost as it were in the croud of those who are called upon to exercise the same function with themselves,—as they know that their individual votes will make no change in the public resolution, and that, to whatever side they may incline, the general result will nevertheless be the same, they do not undertake to enquire how far the things proposed to them agree with the whole of the laws already in being, or with the present circumstances of the State, because Men will not enter upon a laborious task, when they know that it can scarcely answer any purpose.

It is, however, with dispositions of this kind, and each relying on all, that the Assembly of the People meets. But as very few among them have previously considered the subjects on which they are called upon to determine, very few carry along with them any opinion or inclination, or at least any inclination of their own, and to which they are resolved to adhere. As however it is necessary at last to come to some resolution, the major part of them are determined by reasons which they would blush to pay any regard to, on much less se-rious occasions. An unusual sight, a change of the ordinary place of the Assembly, a sudden disturbance, a rumour, are, amidst the general want of a spirit of decision, the sufficiens ratio4 of the determination of the greatest part (a) ; and from this assemblage of separate wills, thus formed hastily and without reflection, a general will results, which is also void of reflection.

If, amidst these disadvantages, the Assembly were left to themselves, and no body had an interest to lead them into error, the evil, though very great, would not however be extreme, because such an assembly never being called upon but to determine upon an affirmative or negative, that is, never having but two cases to choose between, there would be an equal chance for their choosing either; and it might be hoped that at every other turn they would take the right side.

But the combination of those who share either in the actual exercise of the public Power, or in its advantages, do not thus allow themselves to sit down in inaction. They wake, while the People sleep. Entirely taken up with the thoughts of their own power, they live but to increase it. Deeply versed in the management of public business, they see at once all the possible consequences of measures. And as they have the exclusive direction of the springs of Government, they give rise, at their pleasure, to every incident that may influence the minds of a multitude who are not on their guard, and who wait for some event or other that may finally determine them.

It is they who convene the Assembly, and dissolve it; it is they who offer propositions, and make speeches to it. Ever active in turning to their advantage every circumstance that happens, they equally avail themselves of the tractableness of the People during public calamities, and its heedlessness in times of prosperity. When things take a different turn from what they expected, they dismiss the Assembly. By presenting to it many propositions at once, and which are to be voted upon in the lump, they hide what is destined to promote their own private views, or give a colour to it, by joining it with things which they know will take hold of the minds of the People (a) . By presenting in their speeches, arguments, and facts, which Men have no time to examine, they lead the People into gross, and yet decisive errors; and the commonplaces of rhetoric, supported by their personal influence, ever enable them to draw to their side the majority of votes.

On the other hand, the few (for there are, after all, some) who, having meditated on the proposed question, see the consequences of the decisive step which is just going to be taken, being lost in the croud, cannot make their feeble voices to be heard in the midst of the universal noise and confusion. They have it no more in their power to stop the general motion, than a Man in the midst of an army on a march, has it in his power to avoid marching. In the mean time, the People are giving their suffrages; a majority appears in favour of the proposal; it is finally proclaimed as the general will of all; and it is at bottom nothing more than the effect of the artifices of a few designing Men, who are exulting among themselves (a)

In a word, those who are acquainted with Republican Governments, and, in general, who know the manner in which business is transacted in numerous Assemblies, will not scruple to affirm, that the few who are united together, who take an active part in public affairs, and whose station makes them con-spicuous, have such an advantage over the many who turn their eyes towards them, and are without union among themselves, that, even with a middling degree of skill, they can at all times direct, at their pleasure, the general resolutions;—that, as a consequence of the very nature of things, there is no proposal, however absurd, to which a numerous assembly of Men may not, at one time or other, be brought to assent;—and that laws would be wiser, and more likely to procure the advantage of all, if they were to be made by drawing lots, or casting dice, than by the suffrages of a multitude.

CHAPTER VI

Advantages that accrue to the People from appointing Representatives.

How then shall the People remedy the disadvantages that necessarily attend their situation? How shall they resist the phalanx of those who have engrossed to themselves all the honours, dignities, and power, in the State?

It will be by employing for their defence the same means by which their adversaries carry on their attacks: it will be by using the same weapons as they do, the same order, the same kind of discipline.

They are a small number, and consequently easily united;—a small number must therefore be opposed to them, that a like union may also be obtained. It is because they are a small number, that they can deliberate on every occurrence, and never come to any resolutions but such as are maturely weighed—it is because they are few, that they can have forms which continually serve them for general standards to resort to, approved maxims to which they invariably adhere, and plans which they never lose sight of:—here therefore, I repeat it, oppose to them a small number, and you will obtain the like advantages.

Besides, those who govern, as a farther consequence of their being few, have a more considerable share, consequently feel a deeper concern in the success, whatever it may be, of their enterprizes. As they usually profess a contempt for their adversaries, and are at all times acting an offensive part against them, they impose on themselves an obligation of conquering. They, in short, who are all alive from the most powerful incentives, and aim at gaining new advantages, have to do with a multitude, who, wanting only to preserve what they already possess, are unavoidably liable to long intervals of inactivity and supineness. But the People, by appointing Representatives, immediately gain to their cause that advantageous activity which they before stood in need of, to put them on a par with their adversaries; and those passions become excited in their defenders, by which they themselves cannot possibly be actuated.

Exclusively charged with the care of public liberty, the Representatives of the People will be animated by a sense of the greatness of the concerns with which they are intrusted. Distinguished from the bulk of the Nation, and forming among themselves a separate Assembly, they will assert the rights of which they have been made the Guardians, with all that warmth which the esprit de corps is used to inspire (a) . Placed on an elevated theatre, they will endeavour to render themselves still more conspicuous; and the arts and ambitious activity of those who govern, will now be encountered by the vivacity and perseverance of opponents actuated by the love of glory.

Lastly, as the Representatives of the People will naturally be selected from among those Citizens who are most favoured by fortune, and will have consequently much to preserve, they will, even in the midst of quiet times, keep a watchful eye on the motions of Power. As the advantages they possess, will naturally create a kind of rivalship between them and those who govern, the jealousy which they will conceive against the latter, will give them an exquisite degree of sensibility on every increase of their authority. Like those delicate instruments which discover the operations of Nature, while they are yet imperceptible to our senses, they will warn the People of those things which of themselves they never see but when it is too late; and their greater proportional share, whether of real riches, or of those which lie in the opinions of Men, will make them, if I may so express myself, the barometers that will discover, in its first beginning, every tendency to a change in the Constitution (b) .

CHAPTER VII

The Subject continued—The Advantages that accrue to the People from their appointing Representatives, are very inconsiderable, unless they also entirely trust their Legislative Authority to them.

The observations made in the preceding Chapter are so obvious, that the People themselves, in popular Governments, have always been sensible of the truth of them, and never thought it possible to remedy, by themselves alone, the disadvantages necessarily attending their situation. Whenever the oppressions of their Rulers have forced them to resort to some uncommon exertion of their legal powers, they have immediately put themselves under the direction of those few Men who had been instrumental in informing and encouraging them; and when the nature of the circumstances has required any degree of firmness and perseverance in their conduct, they have never been able to attain the ends they proposed to themselves, except by means of the most implicit deference to those Leaders whom they had thus appointed.

But as these Leaders, thus hastily chosen, are easily intimidated by the continual display which is made before them of the terrors of Power, as that unlimited confidence which the People now repose in them, only takes place when public liberty is in the utmost danger, and cannot be kept up otherwise than by an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, and in which those who govern seldom suffer themselves to be caught more than once, the People have constantly sought to avail themselves of the short intervals of superiority which the chance of events had given them, for rendering durable those advantages which they knew would, of themselves, be but transitory, and for getting some persons appointed, whose peculiar office it may be to protect them, and whom the Constitution shall thenceforwards recognize. Thus it was that the People of Lacedaemon obtained their Ephori, and the People of Rome their Tribunes.1

We grant this, will it be said; but the Roman People never allowed their Tribunes to conclude any thing definitively; they, on the contrary, reserved to themselves the right of ratifying(a) any resolutions the latter should take. This, I answer, was the very circum-stance that rendered the institution of Tribunes totally ineffectual in the event. The People thus wanting to interfere with their own opinions, in the resolutions of those on whom they had, in their wisdom, determined entirely to rely, and endeavouring to settle with an hundred thousand votes, things which would have been settled equally well by the votes of their advisers, defeated in the issue every beneficial end of their former provisions; and while they meant to preserve an appearance of their sovereignty, (a chimerical appearance, since it was under the direction of others that they intended to vote) they fell back into all those inconveniences which we have before mentioned.

The Senators, the Consuls, the Dictators, and the other great Men in the Republic, whom the People were prudent enough to fear, and simple enough to believe, continued still to mix with them, and play off their political artifices. They continued to make speeches to them (b) , and still availed them-selves of their privilege of changing at their pleasure the place and form of the public meetings. When they did not find it possible by such means to direct the resolutions of the Assemblies, they pretended that the omens were not favourable, and under this pretext, or others of the same kind, they dissolved them (a) . And the Tribunes, when they had succeeded so far as to effect an union among themselves, thus were obliged to submit to the pungent mortification of seeing those projects which they had pursued with infinite labour, and even through the greatest dangers, irrecoverably defeated by the most despicable artifices.

When, at other times, they saw that a confederacy was carrying on with uncommon warmth against them, and despaired of suc-ceeding by employing expedients of the above kind, or were afraid of diminishing their efficacy by a too frequent use of them, they betook themselves to other stratagems. They then conferred on the Consuls, by the means of a short form of words for the occasion (b) an absolute power over the lives of the Citizens, or even appointed a Dictator. The People, at the sight of the State masquerade which was displayed before them, were sure to sink into a state of consternation; and the Tribunes, however clearly they might see through the artifice, also trembled in their turn, when they thus beheld themselves left without defenders (c) .

At other times, they brought false accusations against the Tribunes before the Assembly itself; or, by privately slandering them with the People, they totally deprived them of their confidence. It was through artifices of this kind, that the People were brought to behold, without concern, the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, the only Roman that was really virtuous,—the only one who truly loved the People. It was also in the same manner that Caius, who was not deterred by his brother’s fate from pursuing the same plan of conduct, was in the end so entirely forsaken by the People, that nobody could be found among them who would even lend him a horse to fly from the fury of the Nobles; and he was at last compelled to lay violent hands upon himself, while he invoked the wrath of the Gods on his inconstant fellow-citizens.2

At other times, they raised divisions among the People. Formidable combinations broke out, on a sudden, on the eve of important transactions; and all moderate Men avoided attending Assemblies, where they saw that all was to be tumult and confusion.

In fine, that nothing might be wanting to the insolence with which they treated the Assemblies of the People, they sometimes falsified the declarations of the number of the votes; they even once went so far as to carry off the urns into which the Citizens were to throw their suffrages (a) .

CHAPTER VIII

The Subject concluded.—Effects that have resulted, in the English Government, from the People’s Power being completely delegated to their Representatives.

But when the People have entirely trusted their power to a moderate number of persons, affairs immediately take a widely different turn. Those who govern are from that moment obliged to leave off all those stratagems which had hitherto ensured their success. Instead of those Assemblies which they affected to despise, and were perpetually comparing to storms, or to the current of the Euripus(a) , and in regard to which they accordingly thought themselves at liberty to pass over the rules of Justice, they now find that they have to deal with Men who are their equals in point of education and knowledge, and their inferiors only in point of rank and form. They, in consequence, soon find it necessary to adopt quite different methods; and, above all, become very careful not to talk to them any more about the sacred chickens, the white or black days, and the Sibylline books.1 —As they see their new adversaries expect to have a proper regard paid to them, that single circumstance inspires them with it:—as they see them act in a regular manner, observe constant rules, in a word proceed with form, they come to look upon them with respect, from the very same reason which makes them themselves to be reverenced by the People.

The Representatives of the People, on the other hand, do not fail soon to procure for themselves every advantage that may enable them effectually to use the powers with which they have been intrusted, and to adopt every rule of proceeding that may make their resolutions to be truly the result of reflection and deliberation. Thus it was that the Representatives of the English Nation, soon after their first establishment, became formed into a separate Assembly: they afterwards obtained the liberty of appointing a President:—soon after, they insisted upon their being consulted on the last form of the Acts to which they had given rise:—lastly, they insisted on thenceforth framing them themselves.

In order to prevent any possibility of surprize in the course of their proceedings, it is a settled rule with them, that every proposition, or bill, must be read three times, at different prefixed days, before it can receive a final sanction: and before each reading of the bill, as well as at its first introduction, an express resolution must be taken to continue it under consideration. If the bill be rejected, in any one of those several operations, it must be dropped, and cannot be proposed again during the same Session (a) .

The Commons have been, above all, jealous of the freedom of speech in their assembly. They have expressly stipulated, as we have above mentioned, that none of their words or speeches should be questioned in any place out of their House. In fine, in order to keep their deliberations free from every kind of influence, they have denied their President the right to give his vote, or even his opinion:—they moreover have settled it as a rule, not only that the King could not send to them any express proposals about laws, or other subjects, but even that his name should never be mentioned in the deliberations (a) .

But that circumstance which, of all others, constitutes the superior excellence of a Government in which the People act only through their Representatives, that is, by means of an assembly formed of a moderate number of persons, and in which it is possible for every Member to propose new subjects, and to argue and to canvass the questions that arise, is that such a Constitution is the only one that is capable of the immense advantage, and of which I do not know if I have been able to convey an adequate idea to the reader when I mentioned it before (b) , I mean that of putting into the hands of the People the moving springs of the Legislative authority.

In a Constitution where the People at large exercise the function of enacting the Laws, as it is only to those persons towards whom the Citizens are accustomed to turn their eyes, that is to the very Men who govern, that the Assembly have either time or inclination to listen, they acquire, at length, as has constantly been the case in all Republics, the exclusive right of proposing, if they please, when they please, in what manner they please. A prerogative this, of such extent, that it would suffice to put an assembly formed of Men of the greatest parts, at the mercy of a few dunces, and renders completely illusory the boasted power of the People. Nay more, as this prerogative is thus placed in the very hands of the adversaries of the People, it forces the People to remain exposed to their attacks, in a condition perpetually passive, and takes from them the only legal means by which they might effectually oppose their usurpations.

To express the whole in a few words. A representative Constitution places the remedy in the hands of those who feel the disorder; but a popular Constitution places the remedy in the hands of those who cause it; and it is necessarily productive, in the event, of the misfortune—of the political calamity, of trusting the care and the means of repressing the invasions of power, to the Men who have the enjoyment of power.

CHAPTER IX

A farther Disadvantage of Republican Governments.—The People are necessarily betrayed by those in whom they trust.

However, those general assemblies of a People who were made to determine upon things which they neither understood nor examined,—that general confusion in which the Ambitious could at all times hide their artifices, and carry on their schemes with safety, were not the only evils attending the ancient Commonwealths. There was a more secret defect, and a defect that struck immediately at the very vitals of it, inherent in that kind of Government.

It was impossible for the People ever to have faithful defenders. Neither those whom they had expresly chosen, nor those whom some personal advantages enabled to govern the Assemblies (for the only use, I must repeat it, which the People ever make of their power, is either to give it away, or allow it to be taken from them) could possibly be united to them by any common feeling of the same concerns. As their influence put them, in a great measure, upon a level with those who were invested with the executive authority, they cared little to restrain oppressions out of the reach of which they saw themselves placed. Nay, they feared they should thereby lessen a power which they knew was one day to be their own; if they had not even already an actual share in it (a) .

Thus, at Rome, the only end which the Tribunes ever pursued with any degree of sin-cerity and perseverance, was to procure to the People, that is to themselves, an admission to all the different dignities in the Republic. After having obtained that a law should be enacted for admitting Plebeians to the Consulship, they procured for them the liberty of intermarrying with the Patricians. They afterwards rendered them admissible to the Dictatorship, to the office of military Tribune, to the Censorship: in a word, the only use they made of the power of the People, was to increase privileges which they called the privileges of all, though they and their friends alone were ever likely to have the enjoyment of them.1

But we do not find that they ever employed the power of the People in things really beneficial to the People. We do not find that they ever set bounds to the terrible power of its Magistrates, that they ever repressed that class of Citizens who knew how to make their crimes pass uncensured,—in a word that they ever endeavoured, on the one hand to regulate, and on the other to strengthen, the judicial power; precautions these, without which men might struggle to the end of time, and never attain true liberty (a) .

And indeed the judicial power, that sure criterion of the goodness of a Government, was always, at Rome, a mere instrument of tyranny. The Consuls were at all times invested with an absolute power over the lives of the Citizens. The Dictators possessed the same right: so did the Praetors, the Tribunes of the People, the judicial Commissioners named by the Senate, and so, of course, did the Senate itself; and the fact of the three hundred and seventy deserters whom it commanded to be thrown down at one time, as Livy relates, from the Tarpeian rock, sufficiently shews that it well knew how to exert its power upon occasion.2

It even may be said, that, at Rome, the power of life and death, or rather the right of killing, was annexed to every kind of authority whatever, even to that which results from mere influence, or wealth; and the only consequence of the murder of the Gracchi, which was accompanied by the slaughter of three hundred, and afterwards of four thousand unarmed Citizens, whom the Nobles knocked on the head, was to engage the Senate to erect a Temple to Concord.3 The Lex Porcia de tergo civium,4 which has been so much celebrated, was attended with no other effect but that of more completely securing against the danger of a retaliation, such Consuls, Praetors, Quaestors, &c. as, like Verres,5 caused the inferior Citizens of Rome to be scourged with rods, and put to death upon crosses, through mere caprice and cruelty (a) .

In fine, nothing can more completely shew to what degree the Tribunes had forsaken the interests of the People, whom they were appointed to defend, than the fact of their having allowed the Senate to invest itself with the power of taxation: they even suffered it to assume to itself the power, not only of dispensing with the laws, but also of abrogating them (a) .

In a word, as the necessary consequence of the communicability of power, a circumstance essentially inherent in the republican form of government, it is impossible for it ever to be restrained within certain rules. Those who are in a condition to control it, from that very circumstance, become its defenders. Though they may have risen, as we may suppose, from the humblest stations, and such as seemed totally to preclude them from all ambitious views, they have no sooner reached a certain degree of eminence, than they begin to aim higher. Their endeavours had at first no other object, as they professed, and perhaps with sincerity, than to see the laws impartially executed: their only view now is to set themselves above them; and seeing themselves raised to the level of a class of Men who pos-sess all the power, and enjoy all the advantages, in the State, they make haste to associate themselves with them (b) .

Personal power and independence on the laws, being, in such States, the immediate consequence of the favour of the People, they are under an unavoidable necessity of being betrayed. Corrupting, as it were, every thing they touch, they cannot show a preference to a Man, but they thereby attack his virtue; they cannot raise him, without immediately losing him and weakening their own cause; nay, they inspire him with views directly opposite to their own, and send him to join and increase the number of their enemies.

Thus, at Rome, after the feeble barrier which excluded the People from offices of power and dignity had been thrown down, the great Plebeians, whom the votes of the People began to raise to those offices, were immediately received into the Senate, as has been just now observed. From that period, their families began to form, in conjunction with the ancient Patrician families, a new combination or political association of persons (a) ; and as this combination was formed of no particular class of Citizens, but of all those in general who had influence enough to gain admittance into it, a single overgrown head was now to be seen in the Republic, which, consisting of all those who had either wealth or power of any kind, and disposing at will of the laws and the power of the People (b) soon lost all regard to moderation and decency.6

Every Constitution, therefore, whatever may be its form, which does not provide for inconveniences of the kind here mentioned, is a Constitution essentially imperfect. It is in Man himself that the source of the evils to be remedied, lies; general precautions therefore can alone prevent them. If it be a fatal error entirely to rely on the justice and equity of those who govern, it is an error no less dangerous to imagine, that, while virtue and moderation are the constant companions of those who oppose the abuses of Power, all ambition, all thirst after dominion, have retired to the other party.

Though wise Men sometimes may, led astray by the power of names and the heat of political contentions, lose sight of what ought to be their real aim, they nevertheless know that it is not against the Appii, the Coruncanii, the Cethegi,7 but against all those who can influence the execution of the laws, that precautions ought to be taken,—that it is not the Consul, the Praetor, the Archon, the Minister, the King, whom we ought to dread, nor the Tribune or the Representative of the People, on whom we ought implicitly to rely; but that all those persons, without distinction, ought to be the objects of our jealousy, who, by any methods, and under any names whatsoever, have acquired the means or turning against each individual the collective strength of all, and have so ordered things around themselves, that whoever attempts to resist them, is sure to find himself engaged alone against a thousand.

CHAPTER X

Fundamental difference between the English Government, and the Governments just described.—In England all Executive Authority is placed out of the hands of those in whom the People trust. Usefulness of the Power of the Crown.

In what manner then, has the English Constitution contrived to find a remedy for evils which, from the very nature of Men and things, seem to be irremediable? How has it found means to oblige those persons to whom the People have given up their power, to make them effectual and lasting returns of gratitude? those who enjoy an exclusive authority, to seek the advantage of all?—those who make the laws, to make only equitable ones?—It has been by subjecting them themselves to those laws, and for that purpose excluding them from all share in the execution of them.

Thus, the Parliament can establish as numerous a standing army as it pleases; but immediately another Power comes forward, which takes the absolute command of it, which fills all the posts in it, and directs its motions at its pleasure. The Parliament may lay new taxes; but immediately another Power seizes upon the produce of them, and alone enjoys the advantages and glory arising from the disposal of it. The Parliament may even, if you please, repeal the laws on which the safety of the Subject is grounded; but it is not their own caprices and arbitrary humours, it is the caprice and passions of other Men, which they will have gratified, when they shall thus have overthrown the columns of public liberty.

And the English Constitution has not only excluded from any share in the Execution of the laws, those in whom the People trust for the enacting of them, but it has also taken from them what would have had the same pernicious influence on their deliberations—the hope of ever invading that executive authority, and transfering it to themselves.

This authority has been made in England one single, indivisible prerogative; it has been made for ever the unalienable attribute of one person, marked out and ascertained beforehand by solemn laws and long established custom; and all the active forces in the State have been left at his disposal.

In order to secure this prerogative still farther against all possibility of invasions from individuals, it has been heightened and strengthened by every thing that can attract and fix the attention and reverence of the people. The power of conferring, and withdrawing, places and employments has also been added to it, and ambition itself has thus been interested in its defence, and service.

A share in the Legislative power has also been given to the Man to whom this prerogative has been delegated: a passive share indeed, and the only one that can, with safety to the State, be trusted to him, but by means of which he is enabled to defeat every attempt against his constitutional authority.

Lastly, he is the only self-existing and permanent Power in the State. The Generals, the Ministers of State, are so only by the continuance of his pleasure. He would even dismiss the Parliament themselves, if ever he saw them begin to entertain dangerous designs; and he needs only say one word to disperse every power in the State that may threaten his authority. Formidable prerogatives these; but with regard to which we shall be inclined to lay aside our apprehensions, if we reflect, on the one hand, on the great privileges of the People by which they have been counterbalanced, and on the other, on the happy consequences that result from their being thus united together.

From this unity, and, if I may so express myself, this total sequestration of the Executive authority, this advantageous consequence in the first place follows, which has been mentioned in a preceding Chapter, that the attention of the whole Nation is directed to one and the same object. The People, besides, enjoy this most essential advantage, which they would vainly endeavour to obtain under the government of many,—they can give their confidence, without giving power over themselves, and against themselves; they can appoint Trustees, and yet not give themselves Masters.

Those Men to whom the People have delegated the power of framing the Laws, are thereby made sure to feel the whole pressure of them. They can increase the prerogatives of the executive authority, but they cannot invest themselves with it:—they have it not in their power to command its motions, they only can unbind its hands.

They are made to derive their importance, nay they are indebted for their existence, to the need in which that Power stands of their assistance; and they know that they would no sooner have abused the trust of the People, and completed the treacherous work, than they would see themselves dissolved, spurned, like instruments now spent, and become useless.

This same disposition of things also prevents in England, that essential defect, inherent in the Government of many, which has been described in the preceding Chapter.

In that sort of Government, the cause of the People, as has been observed, is continually deserted and betrayed. The arbitrary prerogatives of the governing Powers are at all times either openly or secretly favoured, not only by those in whose possession they are, not only by those who have good reason to hope that they shall at some future time share in the exercise of them, but also by the whole croud of those Men who, in consequence of the natural disposition of Mankind to over-rate their own advantages, fondly imagine, either that they shall one day enjoy some branch of this governing authority, or that they are even already, in some way or other, associated to it.

But as this authority has been made, in England, the indivisible, unalienable attribute of one alone, all other persons in the State are, ipso facto, interested to confine it within its due bounds. Liberty is thus made the common cause of all: the laws that secure it are supported by Men of every rank and order; and the Habeas Corpus Act,1 for instance, is as zealously defended by the first Nobleman in the Kingdom, as by the meanest Subject.

Even the Minister himself, in consequence of this inalienability of the executive authority, is equally interested with his fellow-citizens to maintain the laws on which public liberty is founded. He knows, in the midst of his schemes for enjoying or retaining his authority, that a Court-intrigue, or a caprice, may at every instant confound him with the multitude, and the rancour of a successor long kept out, send him to linger in the same jail which his temporary passions might tempt him to prepare for others.

In consequence of this disposition of things, great Men, therefore, are made to join in a common cause with the People, for restraining the excesses of the governing Power; and, which is no less essential to the public welfare, they are also, from this same cause, compelled to restrain the excess of their own private power or influence, and a general spirit of justice beomes thus diffused through all parts of the State.

The wealthy Commoner, the Representative of the People, the potent Peer, always having before their eyes the view of a formidable Power, of a Power from the attempts of which they have only the shield of the laws to protect them, and which would, in the issue, retaliate an hundred fold upon them their acts of violence, are compelled, both to wish only for equitable laws, and to observe them with scrupulous exactness.

Let then the People dread (it is necessary to the preservation of their liberty), but let them never entirely cease to love, the Throne, that sole and indivisible seat of all the active powers in the State.

Let them know, it is that, which, by lending an immense strength to the arm of Justice, has enabled her to bring to account as well the most powerful, as the meanest offender,—which has suppressed, and if I may so express myself, weeded out all those tyrannies, sometimes confederated with, and sometimes adverse to, each other, which incessantly tend to grow up in the middle of civil societies, and are the more terrible in proportion as they feel themselves to be less firmly established.

Let them know, it is that, which, by making all honours and places depend on the will of one Man, has confined within private walls those projects the pursuit of which, in former times, shook the foundations of whole States,—has changed into intrigues the conflicts, the outrages of ambition,—and that those contentions which, in the present times, afford them only matter of amusement, are the Volcanos which set in flames the ancient Commonwealths.

It is that, which, leaving to the rich no other security for his palace than that which the peasant has for his cottage, has united his cause to that of this latter, the cause of the powerful to that of the helpless, the cause of the Man of extensive influence and connections, to that of him who is without friends.

It is the Throne above all, it is this jealous Power, which makes the People sure that its Representatives never will be any thing more than its Representatives: at the same time it is the ever subsisting Carthage which vouches to it for the duration of their virtue.2

CHAPTER XI

The Powers which the People themselves exercise.—The Election of Members of Parliament.

The English Constitution having essentially connected the fate of the Men to whom the People trust their power, with that of the People themselves, really seems, by that caution alone, to have procured the latter a complete security.

However, as the vicissitude of human affairs may, in process of time, realize events which at first had appeared most improbable, it might happen that the Ministers of the Executive power, notwithstanding the interest they themselves have in the preservation of public liberty, and in spite of the precautions expressly taken in order to prevent the effect of their influence, should, at length employ such efficacious means of corruption as might bring about a surrender of some of the laws upon which this public liberty is founded. And though we should suppose that such a danger would really be chimerical, it might at least happen, that, conniving at a vicious administration, and being over liberal of the produce of the labours of the People, the Representatives of the People might make them suffer many of the evils which attend worse forms of Government.

Lastly, as their duty does not consist only in preserving their constituents against the calamities of an arbitrary Government, but moreover in procuring them the best administration possible, it might happen that they would manifest, in this respect, an indifference which would, in its consequences, amount to a real calamity.

It was therefore necessary that the Constitution should furnish a remedy for all the above cases; now, it is in the right of electing Members of Parliament, that this remedy lies.

When the time is come at which the commission which the People had given to their delegates expires, they again assemble in their several Towns or Counties: on these occasions they have it in their power to elect again those of their Representatives whose former conduct they approve, and to reject those who have contributed to give rise to their complaints. A simple remedy this, and which only requiring in its application, a knowledge of matters of fact, is entirely within the reach of the abilities of the People; but a remedy, at the same time, which is the most effectual that could be applied: for, as the evils complained of, arise merely from the peculiar dispositions of a certain number of individuals, to set aside those individuals, is to pluck up the evil by the roots.

But I perceive, that, in order to make the reader sensible of the advantages that may accrue to the People of England, from their right of election, there is another of their rights, of which it is absolutely necessary that I should first give an account.

CHAPTER XII

The Subject continued.—Liberty of the Press.

As the evils that may be complained of in a State do not always arise merely from the defect of the laws, but also from the non-execution of them, and this non-execution of such a kind, that it is often impossible to subject it to any express punishment, or even to ascertain it by any previous definition, Men, in several States, have been led to seek for an expedient that might supply the unavoidable deficiency of legislative provisions, and begin to operate, as it were, from the point at which the latter begin to fail: I mean here to speak of the Censorial power; a power which may produce excellent effects, but the exercise of which (contrary to that of the legislative power) must be left to the People themselves.

As the proposed end of Legislation is not, according to what has been above observed, to have the particular intentions of individuals, upon every case, known and complied with, but solely to have what is most conducive to the public good on the occasions that arise, found out, and established, it is not an essential requisite in legislative operations, that every individual should be called upon to deliver his opinion; and since this expedient, which at first sight appears so natural, of seeking out by the advice of all that which concerns all, is found liable, when carried into practice, to the greatest inconveniences, we must not hesitate to lay it aside entirely. But as it is the opinion of individuals alone, which constitutes the check of a censorial power, this power cannot possibly produce its intended effect any farther than this public opinion is made known and declared: the sentiments of the People are the only thing in question here: therefore it is necessary that the People should speak for themselves, and manifest those sentiments. A particular Court of Censure therefore essentially frustrates its intended purpose; it is attended, besides, with very great inconveniences.

As the use of such a Court is to determine upon those cases which lie out of the reach of the laws, it cannot be tied down to any precise regulations. As a farther consequence of the arbitrary nature of its functions, it cannot even be subjected to any constitutional check; and it continually presents to the eye the view of a power entirely arbitrary, and which in its different exertions may affect in the most cruel manner, the peace and happiness of individuals. It is attended, besides, with this very pernicious consequence, that, by dictating to the people their judgments of Men or measures, it takes from them that freedom of thinking, which is the noblest privilege, as well as the firmest support of Liberty (a) .

We may therefore look upon it as a farther proof of the soundness of the principles on which the English constitution is founded, that it has allotted to the People themselves the province of openly canvassing and arraigning the conduct of those who are invested with any branch of public authority; and that it has thus delivered into the hands of the People at large, the exercise of the censorial power. Every subject in England has not only a right to present petitions to the King, or to the Houses of Parliament, but he has a right also to lay his complaints and observations before the Public, by means of an open press. A formidable right this, to those who rule mankind; and which, continually dispelling the cloud of majesty by which they are surrounded, brings them to a level with the rest of the people, and strikes at the very being of their authority.

And indeed this privilege is that which has been obtained by the English Nation, with the greatest difficulty, and latest in point of time, at the expence of the Executive power. Freedom was in every other respect already established, when the English were still, with regard to the public expression of their sentiments, under restraints that may be called despotic. History abounds with instances of the severity of the Court of Star-Chamber, against those who presumed to write on political subjects. It had fixed the number of printers and printing-presses, and appointed a Licenser, without whose approbation no book could be published. Besides, as this Tribunal decided matters by its own single authority, without the intervention of a Jury, it was always ready to find those persons guilty, whom the Court was pleased to look upon as such; nor was it indeed without ground that Chief Justice Coke, whose notions of liberty were somewhat tainted with the prejudices of the times in which he lived, concluded the elogiums he has bestowed on this Court, with saying, that “the right institution and orders thereof being observed, it doth keep all England in quiet.”1

After the Court of Star-Chamber had been abolished, the Long Parliament, whose conduct and assumed power were little better qualified to bear a scrutiny, revived the regulations against the freedom of the press. Charles the Second, and after him James the Second, procured farther renewals of them. These latter acts having expired in the year 1692, were at this aera, although posterior to the Revolution, continued for two years longer; so that it was not till the year 1694, that, in consequence of the Parliament’s refusal to continue the prohibitions any longer, the freedom of the press (a privilege which the Executive power could not, it seemed, prevail upon itself to yield up to the people) was finally established.2

In what does then this liberty of the press precisely consist? Is it a liberty left to every one to publish any thing that comes into his head? to calumniate, to blacken, whomsoever he pleases? No; the same laws that protect the person and the property of the individual, do also protect his reputation; and they decree against libels, when really so, punishments of much the same kind as are established in other Countries. But, on the other hand, they do not allow, as in other States, that a Man should be deemed guilty of a crime for merely publishing something in print; and they appoint a punishment only against him who has printed things that are in their nature criminal, and who is declared guilty of so doing by twelve of his equals, appointed to determine upon his case, with the precautions we have before described.

The liberty of the press, as established in England, consists therefore, to define it more precisely, in this, That neither the Courts of Justice, nor any other Judges whatever, are authorised to take any notice of writings intended for the press, but are confined to those which are actually printed, and must, in these cases, proceed by the Trial by Jury.

It is even this latter circumstance which more particularly constitutes the freedom of the press. If the Magistrates, though confined in their proceedings to cases of criminal publications, were to be the sole Judges of the criminal nature of the things published, it might easily happen that, with regard to a point which, like this, so highly excites the jealousy of the governing Powers, they would exert themselves with so much spirit and per severance, that they might, at length, succeed in completely striking off all the heads of the hydra.

But whether the authority of the Judges be exerted at the motion of a private individual, or whether it be at the instance of the Government itself, their sole office is to declare the punishment established by the law:—it is to the Jury alone that it belongs to determine on the matter of law, as well as on the matter of fact; that is, to determine, not only whether the writing which is the subject of the charge has really been composed by the Man charged with having done it, and whether it be really meant of the person named in the indictment,—but also, whether its contents are criminal.3

And though the law in England does not allow a Man, prosecuted for having published a libel, to offer to support by evidence the truth of the facts contained in it, (a mode of proceeding which would be attended with very mischievous consequences, and is every where prohibited), yet (a) as the indictment is to express that the facts are false, malicious, &c. and the Jury, at the same time, are sole masters of their verdict, that is, may ground it upon what considerations they please, it is very probable that they would acquit the accused party, if the facts asserted in the writing before them, were matter of undoubted truth, and of a general evil tendency. They, at least, would certainly have it their power.

And this would still more likely be the case if the conduct of the Government itself was arraigned; because, besides this conviction which we suppose in the Jury, of the certainty of the facts, they would also be influenced by their sense of a principle generally admitted in England, and which, in a late celebrated cause, has been strongly insisted upon, viz. That, “though to speak ill of individuals was deserving of reprehension, yet the public acts of Government ought to lie open to public examination, and that it was a service done to the State, to canvass them freely” (a) .

And indeed this extreme security with which every man in England is enabled to communicate his sentiments to the Public, and the general concern which matters relative to the Government are always sure to create, has wonderfully multiplied all kinds of public papers. Besides those which, being published at the end of every year, month, or week, present to the reader a recapitulation of every thing interesting that may have been done or said during their respective periods, there are several others, which making their appearance every day, or every other day, communicate to the public the several measures taken by the Government, as well as the different causes of any importance, whether civil or criminal, that occur in the Courts of Justice, and sketches from the speeches either of the Advocates or the Judges, concerned in the management and decision of them. During the time the Parliament continues sitting, the votes or resolutions of the House of Commons, are daily published by authority; and the most interesting speeches in both Houses, are taken down in short-hand, and communicated to the Public, in print.4

Lastly, the private anecdotes in the Metropolis, and the Country, concur also towards filling the collection; and as the several public papers circulate, or are transcribed into others, in the different Country Towns, and even find their way into the villages, where every Man, down to the labourer, peruses them with a sort of eagerness, every individual thus becomes acquainted with the State of the Nation, from one end to the other; and by these means the general intercourse is such, that the three Kingdoms seem as if they were one single Town.

And it is this public notoriety of all things, that constitutes the supplemental power, or check, which, we have above said, is so useful to remedy the unavoidable insufficiency of the laws, and keep within their respective bounds all those persons who enjoy any share of public authority.

As they are thereby made sensible that all their actions are exposed to public view, they dare not venture upon those acts of partiality, those secret connivances at the iniquities of particular persons, or those vexatious practices, which the Man in office is but too apt to be guilty of, when, exercising his office at a distance from the public eye, and as it were in a corner, he is satisfied that provided he be cautious, he may dispense with being just. Whatever may be the kind of abuse in which persons in power may, in such a state of things, be tempted to indulge themselves, they are convinced that their irregularities will be immediately divulged. The Juryman, for example, knows that his verdict, the Judge, that his direction to the Jury, will presently be laid before the Public: and there is no Man in office, but who thus finds himself compelled, in almost every instance, to choose between his duty, and the surrender of all his former reputation.

It will, I am aware, be thought that I speak in too high terms, of the effects produced by the public news-papers. I indeed confess that all the pieces contained in them are not patterns of good reasoning, or of the truest Attic wit; but, on the other hand, it scarcely ever happens that a subject in which the laws, or in general the public welfare, are really concerned, fails to call forth some able writer, who, under some form or other, communicates to the public his observations and complaints. I shall add here, that, though an upright Man labouring for a while under a strong popular prejudice, may, supported by the consciousness of his innocence, endure with patience the severest imputations, the guilty Man, hearing nothing in the reproaches of the public but what he knows to be true, and already upbraids himself with, is very far from enjoying any such comfort; and that, when a man’s own conscience takes part against him, the most despicable weapon is sufficient to wound him to the quick (a) .

Even those persons whose greatness seems most to set them above the reach of public censure, are not those who least feel its effects. They have need of the suffrages of that vulgar whom they affect to despise, and who are, after all, the dispensers of that glory, which is the real object of their ambitious cares. Though all have not so much sincerity as Alexander, they have equal reason to exclaim, O People! what toils do we not undergo, in order to gain your applause!

I confess that in a State where the People dare not speak their sentiments, but with a view to please the ears of their rulers, it is possible that either the Prince, or those to whom he has trusted his authority, may sometimes mistake the nature of the public sentiments, or that, for want of that affection of which they are denied all public marks, they may rest contented with inspiring terror, and make themselves amends in beholding the over-awed multitude smother their complaints.

But when the laws give a full scope to the People for the expression of their sentiments, those who govern cannot conceal from themselves the disagreeable truths which resound from all sides. They are obliged to put up even with ridicule; and the coarsest jests are not always those which give them the least uneasiness. Like the lion in the fable, they must bear the blows of those enemies whom they despise the most; and they are, at length, stopped short in their career, and compelled to give up those unjust pursuits which they find to draw upon them, instead of that admiration which is the proposed end and reward of their labours, nothing but mortification and disgust.

In short, whoever considers what it is that constitutes the moving principle of what we call great affairs, and the invincible sensibility of Man to the opinion of his fellow-creatures, will not hesitate to affirm that, if it were possible for the liberty of the press to exist in a despotic government, and (what is not less difficult) for it to exist without changing the constitution, this liberty of the press would alone form a counterpoise to the power of the Prince. If, for example, in an empire of the East, a sanctuary could be found, which, ren-dered respectable by the ancient religion of the people, might ensure safety to those who should bring thither their observations of any kind, and that from thence printed papers should issue, which, under a certain seal, might be equally respected, and which in their daily appearance should examine and freely discuss the conduct of the Cadis, the Bashaws, the Vizir, the Divan, and the Sultan himself,—that would introduce immediately some degree of liberty.

CHAPTER XIII

The Subject continued.

Another effect, and a very considerable one, of the liberty of the press, is, that it enables the People effectually to exert those means which the Constitution has bestowed on them, of influencing the motions of the Government.

It has been observed in a former place, how it came to be a matter of impossibility for any large number of men, when obliged to act in a body, and upon the spot, to take any well-weighed resolution. But this inconvenience, which is the inevitable consequence of their situation, does in no wise argue a personal inferiority in them, with respect to the few who, from some accidental advantages, are enabled to influence their determinations. It is not Fortune, it is Nature, that has made the essential differences between Men: and whatever appellation a small number of persons who speak without sufficient reflection, may affix to the general body of their fellow-creatures, the whole difference between the Statesman, and many a Man from among what they call the dregs of the People, often lies in the rough outside of the latter; a disguise which may fall off on the first opportunity; and more than once has it happened, that from the middle of a multitude in appearance contemptible, there have been seen to rise at once Viriatuses, or Spartacuses.1

Time, and a more favourable situation (to repeat it once more) are therefore the only things wanting to the People; and the freedom of the press affords the remedy to these disadvantages. Through its assistance every individual may, at his leisure and in retirement, inform himself of every thing that relates to the questions on which he is to take a resolution. Through its assistance, a whole Nation as it were holds a Council, and deliberates; slowly indeed (for a Nation cannot be informed like an assembly of Judges), but after a regular manner, and with certainty. Through its assistance, all matters of fact are, at length, made clear; and, through the conflict of the different answers and replies, nothing at last remains, but the sound part of the arguments (a) .

Hence, though all good Men may not think themselves obliged to concur implicitly in the tumultuary resolutions of a People whom their Orators take pains to agitate, yet, on the other hand, when this same People, left to itself, perseveres in opinions which have for a long time been discussed in public writings, and from which (it is essential to add) all errors concerning facts have been removed, such perseverance is certainly a very respectable decision; and then it is, though only then, that we may with safety say,—“the voice of the People is the voice of God.”2

How, therefore, can the people of England act, when, having formed opinions which may really be called their own, they think they have just cause to complain against the Administration? It is, as has been said above, by means of the right they have of electing their Representatives; and the same method of general intercourse that has informed them with regard to the objects of their complaints, will likewise enable them to apply the remedy to them.

Through this means they are acquainted with the nature of the subjects that have been deliberated upon in the Assembly of their Re-presentatives;—they are informed by whom the different motions were made,—by whom they were supported; and the manner in which the suffrages are delivered, is such, that they always can know the names of those who have voted constantly for the advancement of pernicious measures.

And the People not only know the particular dispositions of every Member of the House of Commons; but the general notoriety of all things gives them also a knowledge of the political sentiments of a great number of those whom their situation in life renders fit to fill a place in that House. And availing themselves of the several vacancies that happen, and still more of the opportunity of a general election, they purify either successively, or at once, the Legislative Assembly; and thus, without any commotion or danger to the State, they effect a material reformation in the views of the Government.

I am aware that some persons will doubt these patriotic and systematic views which I am here attributing to the People of England, and will object to me the disorders that sometimes happen at Elections. But this reproach which, by the way, comes with but little propriety from Writers who would have the People transact every thing in their own persons, this reproach, I say, though true to a certain degree, is not however so much so as it is thought by certain persons who have taken only a superficial survey of the state of things.

Without doubt, in a Constitution in which all important causes of uneasiness are so effectually prevented, it is impossible but that the People will have long intervals of inattention. Being then called upon, on a sudden, from this state of inactivity, to elect Representatives, they have not examined, beforehand, the merits of those who ask them their votes; and the latter have not had, amidst the general tranquillity, any opportunity to make themselves known to them.

The Elector, persuaded, at the same time, that the person whom he will elect, will be equally interested with himself in the support of public liberty, does not enter into laborious disquisitions, and from which he sees he may exempt himself. Obliged, however, to give the preference to somebody, he forms his choice on motives which would not be excusable, if it were not that some motives are necessary to make a choice, and that, at this instant, he is not influenced by any other: and indeed it must be confessed, that, in the ordinary course of things, and with Electors of a certain rank in life, that Candidate who gives the best entertainment, has a great chance to get the better of his competitors.

But if the measures of Government, and the reception of those measures in Parliament, by means of a too complying House of Commons, should ever be such as to spread a serious alarm among the People, the same causes which have concurred to establish public liberty, would, no doubt operate again, and likewise concur in its support. A general combination would then be formed, both of those Members of Parliament who have remained true to the public cause, and of persons of every order among the People. Public meetings, in such circumstances, would be appointed, general subscriptions would be entered into, to support the expences whatever they might be, of such a necessary opposition; and all private and unworthy purposes being suppressed by the sense of the National danger, the choice of the electors would then be wholly determined by the consider-ation of the public spirit of the Candidates, and the tokens given by them of such spirit.

Thus were those Parliaments formed, which suppressed arbitrary taxes and imprisonments. Thus was it, that, under Charles the Second, the People, when recovered from that enthusiasm of affection with which they received a King so long persecuted, at last returned to him no Parliaments but such as were composed of a majority of Men attached to public liberty. Thus it was, that, persevering in a conduct which the circumstances of the times rendered necessary, the People baffled the arts of the Government; and Charles dissolved three successive Parliaments, without any other effect but that of having those same Men rechosen, and set again in opposition to him, of whom he hoped he had rid himself for ever.3

Nor was James the Second happier in his attempts than Charles had been. This Prince soon experienced that his Parliament was actuated by the same spirit as those which had opposed the designs of his late brother; and having suffered himself to be led into measures of violence, instead of being better taught by the discovery he made of the real sentiments of the People, his reign was terminated by that catastrophe with which every one is acquainted.4

Indeed, if we combine the right enjoyed by the People of England, of electing their Representatives, with the whole of the English Government, we shall become continually more and more sensible of the excellent effects that may result from that right. All Men in the State are, as has been before observed, really interested in the support of public liberty;—nothing but temporary motives, and such as are quite peculiar to themselves, can possibly induce the Members of any House of Commons to connive at measures destructive of this liberty: the People, therefore, under such circumstances, need only change these Members in order effectually to reform the conduct of that House: and it may fairly be pronounced beforehand, that a House of Commons, composed of a new set of persons, will from this bare circumstance, be in the interests of the People.

Hence, though the complaints of the People do not always meet with a speedy and immediate redress (a celerity which would be the symptom of a fatal unsteadiness in the Constitution, and would sooner or later bring on its ruin) yet, when we attentively consider the nature and the resources of this Constitution, we shall not think it too bold an assertion to say, that it is impossible but that complaints in which the People persevere, that is, to repeat it once more, well-grounded complaints, will sooner or later be redressed.

CHAPTER XIV

Right of Resistance.

But all those privileges of the People, considered in themselves, are but feeble defences against the real strength of those who govern. All those provisions, all those reciprocal Rights, necessarily suppose that things remain in their legal and settled course: what would then be the resource of the People, if ever the Prince, suddenly freeing himself from all restraint, and throwing himself as it were out of the Constitution, should no longer respect either the person or the property of the subject, and either should make no account of his conventions with his Parliament, or attempt to force it implicitly to submit to his will?—It would be resistance.

Without entering here into the discussion of a doctrine which would lead us to enquire into the first principles of Civil Government, consequently engage us in a long disquisition, and with regard to which, besides, persons free from prejudices agree pretty much in their opinions, I shall only observe here (and it will be sufficient for my purpose) that the question has been decided in favour of this doctrine by the Laws of England, and that resistance is looked upon by them as the ultimate and lawful resource against the violences of Power.

It was resistance that gave birth to the Great Charter, that lasting foundation of English Liberty; and the excesses of a Power established by force, were also restrained by force (a) . It has been by the same means that, at different times, the People have procured the confirmation of the same Charter. Lastly, it has also been the resistance to a King who made no account of his own engagements, that has, in the issue, placed on the Throne the family which is now in possession of it.

This is not all; this resource which, till then, had only been an act of force, opposed to other acts of force, was, at that aera, expresly recognized by the Law itself. The Lords and Commons, solemnly assembled, declared, that “King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the Constitution of the Kingdom, by breaking the original contract between King and People, and having violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself, had abdicated the Government; and that the Throne was thereby vacant” (a) .1

And lest those principles to which the Revolution thus gave a sanction, should, in process of time, become mere arcana of State, exclusively appropriated, and only known, to a certain class of Subjects, the same Act, we have just mentioned, expresly insured to in-dividuals the right of publicly preferring complaints against the abuses of Government, and moreover, of being provided with arms for their own defence. Judge Blackstone expresses himself in the following terms, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. (B. I. Ch. i.)

“And lastly, to vindicate those rights, when actually violated or attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the Courts of law; next, to the right of petitioning the King and Parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.”2

Lastly, this right of opposing violence, in whatever shape, and from whatever quarter, it may come, is so generally acknowledged, that the Courts of law have sometimes grounded their judgments upon it. I shall relate on this head a fact which is somewhat remarkable.

A Constable, being out of his precinct, arrested a woman whose name was Anne Dekins; one Tooly took her part, and in the heat of the fray, killed the assistant of the Constable.

Being prosecuted for murder, he alleged, in his defence, that the illegality of the imprisonment was a sufficient provocation to make the homicide excusable, and intitle him to the benefit of Clergy. The Jury having settled the matter of fact, left the criminality of it to be decided by the Judge, by returning a special verdict. The cause was adjourned to the King’s Bench, and thence again to Serjeants Inn, for the opinion of the twelve Judges. Here follows the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Holt, in giving judgment.

“If one be imprisoned upon an unlawful authority, it is a sufficient provocation to all people, out of compassion, much more so when it is done under colour of justice; and when the liberty of the subject is invaded, it is a provocation to all the subjects of England. A Man ought to be concerned for Magna Charta and the laws; and if any one against law imprison a Man, he is an offender against Magna Charta.” After some debate, occasioned chiefly by Tooly’s appearing not to have known that the Constable was out of his precinct, seven of the Judges were of opinion that the prisoner was guilty of Manslaughter, and he was admitted to the benefit of Clergy (a) .

But it is with respect to this right of an ultimate resistance, that the advantage of a free press appears in a most conspicuous light. As the most important rights of the People, without the prospect of a resistance which overawes those who should attempt to violate them, are little more than mere shadows,—so this right of resisting, itself, is but vain, when there exists no means of effecting a general union between the different parts of the People.

Private individuals, unknown to each other, are forced to bear in silence injuries in which they do not see other people take a concern. Left to their own individual strength, they tremble before the formidable and ever-ready power of those who govern; and as these latter well know, nay, are apt to over-rate the advantages of their own situation, they think they may venture upon any thing.

But when they see that all their actions are exposed to public view,—that in consequence of the celerity with which all things become communicated, the whole Nation forms, as it were, one continued irritable body, no part of which can be touched without exciting an universal tremor, they become sensible that the cause of each individual is really the cause of all, and that to attack the lowest among the People, is to attack the whole People.

Here also we must remark the error of those who, as they make the liberty of the people to consist in their power, so make their power consist in their action.

When the People are often called to act in their own persons, it is impossible for them to acquire any exact knowledge of the state of things. The event of one day effaces the notions which they had begun to adopt on the preceding day; and amidst the continual change of things, no settled principle, and above all no plans of union, have time to be established among them.—You wish to have the People love and defend their laws and liberty; leave them, therefore, the necessary time to know what laws and liberty are, and to agree in their opinion concerning them;—you wish an union, a coalition, which cannot be obtained but by a slow and peaceable process, forbear therefore continually to shake the vessel.

Nay farther, it is a contradiction, that the People should act, and at the same time retain any real power. Have they, for instance, been forced by the weight of public oppression to throw off the restraints of the law, from which they no longer received protection, they presently find themselves suddenly become subject to the command of a few Leaders, who are the more absolute in proportion as the nature of their power is less clearly as certained: nay, perhaps they must even submit to the toils of war, and to military discipline.

If it be in the common and legal course of things that the People are called to move, each individual is obliged, for the success of the measures in which he is then made to take a concern, to join himself to some party; nor can this party be without a Head. The Citizens thus grow divided among themselves, and contract the pernicious habit of submitting to Leaders. They are, at length, no more than the clients of a certain number of Patrons; and the latter soon becoming able to command the arms of the Citizens in the same manner as they at first governed their votes, make little account of a People with one part of which they know how to curb the other.

But when the moving springs of Government are placed entirely out of the body of the People, their action is thereby disengaged from all that could render it complicated, or hide it from the eye. As the People thenceforward consider things speculatively, and are, if I may be allowed the expression, only spectators of the game, they acquire just notions of things; and as these notions, amidst the general quiet, get ground and spread themselves far and wide, they at length entertain, on the subject of their liberty, but one opinion.

Forming thus, as it were, one body, the People, at every instant, has it in its power to strike the decisive blow which is to level every thing. Like those mechanical powers the greatest efficiency of which exists at the instant which precedes their entering into action, it has an immense force, just because it does not yet exert any; and in this state of stillness, but of attention, consists its true momentum.3

With regard to those who (whether from personal privileges, or by virtue of a commission from the People) are intrusted with the active part of Government, as they, in the mean while, see themselves exposed to public view, and observed as from a distance by Men free from the spirit of party, and who place in them but a conditional trust, they are afraid of exciting a commotion which, though it might not prove the destruction of all power, yet would surely and immediately be the destruction of their own. And if we might suppose that, through an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, they should resolve among themselves upon the sacrifice of those laws on which public liberty is founded, they would no sooner lift up their eyes towards that extensive Assembly which views them with a watchful attention, than they would find their public virtue return upon them, and would make haste to resume that plan of conduct out of the limits of which they can expect nothing but ruin and perdition.

In short, as the body of the People cannot act without either subjecting themselves to some Power, or effecting a general destruction, the only share they can have in a Government with advantage to themselves, is not to interfere, but to influence,—to be able to act, and not to act.

The Power of the People is not when they strike, but when they keep in awe: it is when they can overthrow every thing, that they never need to move; and Manlius included all in four words, when he said to the People of Rome, Ostendite bellum, pacem habebitis.4

CHAPTER XV1

Proofs drawn from Facts, of the Truth of the Principles laid down in the present Work.—1. The peculiar Manner in which Revolutions have always been concluded in England.

It may not be sufficient to have proved by arguments the advantages of the English Constitution: it will perhaps be asked, whether the effects correspond to the theory? To this question (which I confess is extremely proper) my answer is ready; it is the same which was once made, I believe, by a Lacedemonian, Come and see.

If we peruse the English History, we shall be particularly struck with one circumstance to be observed in it, and which distinguishes most advantageously the English Government from all other free governments; I mean the manner in which Revolutions and public commotions have always been terminated in England.

If we read with some attention the History of other free States, we shall see that the public dissensions that have taken place in them, have constantly been terminated by settlements in which the interests only of a few were really provided for; while the grievances of the many were hardly, if at all, attended to. In England the very reverse has happened, and we find Revolutions always to have been terminated by extensive and accurate provisions for securing the general liberty.

The History of the ancient Grecian Commonwealths, but above all of the Roman Republic, of which more complete accounts have been left us, afford striking proof of the former part of this observation.

What was, for instance, the consequence of that great Revolution by which the Kings were driven from Rome, and in which the Senate and Patricians acted as the advisers and leaders of the People? The consequence was, as we find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus,2 and Livy, that the Senators immediately assumed all those powers, lately so much complained of by themselves, which the Kings had exercised. The execution of their future decrees was intrusted to two Magistrates taken from their own body, and entirely dependent on them, whom they called Consuls, and who were made to bear about them all the ensigns of power which had formerly attended the Kings. Only, care was taken that the axes and fasces,3 the symbols of the power of life and death over the Citizens, which the Senate now claimed to itself, should not be carried before both Consuls at once, but only before one at a time, for fear, says Livy, of doubling the terror of the People (a) .

Nor was this all: the Senators drew over to their party those Men who had the most interest at that time among the People, and admitted them as Members into their own body (b) ; which indeed was a precaution they could not prudently avoid taking. But the interests of the great Men in the Republic being thus provided for, the Revolution ended. The new Senators, as well as the old, took care not to lessen, by making provisions for the liberty of the People, a power which was now become their own. Nay, they presently stretched this power beyond its former tone; and the punishments which the Consul inflicted in a military manner on a number of those who still adhered to the former mode of Government, and even upon his own children, taught the People what they had to expect for the future, if they presumed to oppose the power of those whom they had thus unwarily made their Masters.

Among the oppressive laws, or usages, which the Senate, after the expulsion of the Kings, had permitted to continue, those which were most complained of by the People, were those by which those Citizens who could not pay their debts with the interest (which at Rome was enormous) at the appointed time, became slaves to their Creditors, and were delivered over to them bound with cords: hence the word Nexi,4 by which that kind of Slaves were denominated. The cruelties exercised by Creditors on those unfortunate Men, whom the private calamities caused by the frequent wars in which Rome was engaged, rendered very numerous, at last roused the body of the People: they abandoned both the City, and their inhuman fellow-citizens, and retreated to the other side of the River Anio.

But this second Revolution, like the former, only procured the advancement of particular persons. A new office was created, called the Tribuneship. Those whom the People had placed at their head when they left the City, were raised to it. Their duty, it was agreed, was for the future to protect the Citizens; and they were invested with a certain number of prerogatives for that purpose. This Institution, it must however be confessed, would have, in the issue, proved very beneficial to the People, at least for a long course of time, if certain precautions had been taken with respect to it, which would have much lessened the future personal importance of the new Tribunes (a) : but these precautions the latter did not think proper to suggest; and in regard to those abuses themselves which had at first given rise to the complaints of the People, no farther mention was made of them (a) .

As the Senate and Patricians, in the early ages of the Commonwealth, kept closely united together, the Tribunes, for all their personal privileges, were not able, however, during the first times after their creation, to gain an admittance either to the Consulship, or into the Senate, and thereby to separate their condition any farther from that of the People. This situation of their’s, in which it was to be wished they might always have been kept, produced at first excellent effects, and caused their conduct to answer in a great measure the expectations of the People. The Tribunes complained loudly of the exorbitancy of the powers possessed by the Senate and Consuls; and here we must observe, that the power exercised by these latter over the lives of the Citizens, had never been yet subjected (which will probably surprise the Reader), to any known laws, though sixty years had already elapsed since the expulsion of the Kings. The Tribunes therefore insisted, that laws should be made in that respect, which the Consuls should thenceforwards be bound to follow; and that they should no longer be left, in the exercise of their power over the lives of the Citizens, to their own caprice and wantonness (b) .

Equitable as these demands were, the Senate and Patricians opposed them with great warmth, and either by naming Dictators, or calling in the assistance of the Priests, or other means, they defeated for nine years together, all the endeavours of the Tribunes. However, as the latter were at that time in earnest, the Senate was at length obliged to comply; and the Lex Terentilla was passed, by which it was enacted that a general Code of Laws should be made.5

These beginnings seemed to promise great success to the cause of the People. But, unfortunately for them, the Senate found means to have it agreed, that the office of Tribune should be set aside during the whole time that the Code should be framing. They moreover obtained, that the ten Men, called Decemvirs, to whom the charge of composing this Code was to be given, should be taken from the body of the Patricians.6 The same causes, therefore, produced again the same effects; and the power of the Senate and Consul was left in the new Code, or laws of the Twelve Tables, as undefined as before. As to the laws above mentioned, concerning debtors, which never had ceased to be bitterly complained of by the People, and in regard to which some satisfaction ought in com-mon justice, to have been given them, they were confirmed, and a new terror added to them from the manner in which they were worded.

The true motive of the Senate, when they thus trusted the framing of the new laws to a new kind of Magistrates, called Decemvirs, was that, by suspending the ancient office of Consul, they might have a fair pretence for suspending also the office of Tribune, and thereby rid themselves of the People, during the time that the important business of framing the Code should be carrying on: they even, in order the better to secure that point, placed the whole power in the Republic, in the hands of these new Magistrates. But the Senate and Patricians experienced then, in their turn, the danger of entrusting Men with an uncontrolled authority. As they themselves had formerly betrayed the trust which the People had placed in them, so did the Decemvirs, on this occasion, likewise deceive them. They retained, by their own private authority, the unlimited power that had been conferred on them, and at last exercised it on the Patricians as well as the Plebeians. Both parties therefore united against them, and the Decemvirs were expelled from the City.

The former dignities of the Republic were restored, and with them the office of Tribune. Those from among the People who had been most instrumental in destroying the power of the Decemvirs, were, as it was natural, raised to the Tribuneship; and they entered upon their offices possessed of a prodigious degree of popularity. The Senate and the Patricians were, at the same time, sunk extremely low in consequence of the long tyranny which had just expired; and those two circumstances united, afforded the Tribunes but too easy an opportunity of making the present Revolution end as the former ones had done, and converting it to the advancement of their own power. They got new personal privileges to be added to those which they already possessed, and moreover procured a law to be enacted, by which it was ordained, that the resolutions taken by the Comitia Tributa7 (an Assembly in which the Tribunes were admitted to propose new laws) should be binding upon the whole Commonwealth:—by which they at once raised to themselves an imperium in imperio,8 and acquired, as Livy expresses it, a most active weapon (a) .

From that time great commotions arose in the Republic, which, like all those before them, ended in promoting the power of a few.—Proposals for easing the People of their debts, for dividing with some equality amongst the Citizens the lands which were taken from the enemy, and for lowering the rate of the interest of money, were frequently made by the Tribunes. And indeed all these were excellent regulations to propose; but, unfortunately for the People, the proposals of them were only pretences made use of by the Tribunes for promoting schemes of a fatal though somewhat remote, tendency, to public liberty. Their real aims were at the Consulship, the Praetorship, the Priesthood, and other offices of Executive power, which they were intended to control, and not to share. To these views they constantly made the cause of the People subservient:—I shall relate among other instances, the manner in which they procured to themselves an admittance to the office of Consul.

Having during several years, seized every opportunity of making speeches to the People on that subject, and even excited seditions in order to overcome the opposition of the Senate, they at last availed themselves of the circumstance of an interregnum (a time, during which there happened to be no other Magistrates in the Republic besides themselves) and proposed to the Tribes, whom they had assembled, to enact the three following laws:—the first for settling the rate of interest of money; the second for ordaining that no Citizen should be possessed of more than five hundred acres of land; and the third, for providing that one of the two Consuls should be taken from the body of the Plebeians. But on this occasion it evidently appeared, says Livy, which of the laws in agitation were most agreeable to the People, and which, to those who proposed them; for the Tribes accepted the laws concerning the interest of money, and the lands; but as to that concerning the Plebeian Consulship, they rejected it: and both the former articles would from that moment have been settled, if the Tribunes had not declared, that the Tribes were called upon, either to accept, or reject, all their three proposals at once (a) . Great commotions ensued thereupon, for a whole year; but at last the Tribunes, by their perseverance in insisting that the Tribes should vote on their three rogations, jointly, obtained their ends, and overcame both the opposition of the Senate, and the reluctance of the People.

In the same manner did the Tribunes get themselves made capable of filling all other places of executive power, and public trust, in the Republic. But when all their views of that kind were accomplished, the Republic did not for all this enjoy more quiet, nor was the interest of the People better attended to, than before. New struggles then arose for actual admission to those places; for procuring them to relations, or friends; for governments of provinces, and commands of armies. A few Tribunes, indeed, did at times apply themselves seriously, out of real virtue and love of their duty, to remedy the grievances of the People; but both their fellow Tribunes, as we may see in History, and the whole body of those Men upon whom the People had, at different times, bestowed Consulships, Aedileships, Censorships, and other dignities without number, united together with the utmost ve-hemence against them; and the real Patriots, such as Tiberius Gracchus, Caius Gracchus, and Fulvius, constantly perished in the attempt.9

I have been somewhat explicit on the effects produced by the different Revolutions that have happened in the Roman Republic, because its History is much known to us, and we have either in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, or Livy, considerable monuments of the more ancient part of it. But the History of the Grecian Commonwealths would also have supplied us with a number of facts to the same purpose. That Revolution, for instance, by which the Pisistratidae were driven out of Athens—that by which the Four hundred, and afterwards the Thirty, were established, as well as that by which the latter were in their turn expelled, all ended in securing the power of a few.—The Republic of Syracuse, that of Corcyra, of which Thucydides has left us a pretty full account, and that of Florence, of which Machiavel has written the History, also present us a series of public commotions ended by treaties, in which, as in the Roman Republic, the grievances of the People, though ever so loudly complained of in the beginning by those who acted as their defenders, were, in the issue, most carelessly attended to, or even totally disregarded (a) .10

But if we turn our eyes towards the English History, scenes of a quite different kind will offer to our view; and we shall find, on the contrary, that Revolutions in England have always been terminated by making such provisions, and only such, as all orders of the People were really and indiscriminately to enjoy.11

Most extraordinary facts, these! and which, from all the other circumstances that accompanied them, we see, all along, to have been owing to the impossibility (a point that has been so much insisted upon in former Chapters) in which those who possessed the confidence of the People, were, of transferring to themselves any branch of the Executive authority, and thus separating their own condition from that of the rest of the People.

Without mentioning the compacts which were made with the first Kings of the Norman line, let us only cast our eyes on Magna Charta, which is still the foundation of English liberty. A number of circumstances which have been described in the former part of this work, concurred at that time to strengthen the Regal power to such a degree that no Men in the State could entertain a hope of succeeding in any other design than that of setting bounds to it. How great was the union which thence arose among all orders of the People!—what extent, what caution, do we see in the provisions made by the Great Charter! All the objects for which men naturally wish to live in a state of Society, were settled in its thirty-eight Articles. The judicial authority was regulated. The person and property of the individual were secured. The safety of the Merchant and stranger was provided for. The higher class of Citizens gave up a number of oppressive privileges which they had long since accustomed themselves to look upon as their undoubted rights (a) . Nay, the imple-ments of tillage of the Bondman, or Slave, were also secured to him; and for the first time perhaps in the annals of the World, a civil war was terminated by making stipulations in favour of those unfortunate Men to whom the avarice and lust of dominion inherent in human Nature, continued, over the greatest part of the Earth, to deny the common rights of Mankind.

Under Henry the Third great disturbances arose; and they were all terminated by solemn confirmations given to the Great Charter. Under Edward I. Edward II. Edward III. and Richard II. those who were intrusted with the care of the interests of the People, lost no opportunity that offered, of strengthening still farther that foundation of public liberty, of taking all such precautions as might render the Great Charter still more effectual in the event.—They had not ceased to be convinced that their cause was the same with that of all the rest of the People.

Henry of Lancaster having laid claim to the Crown, the Commons received the law from the victorious party. They settled the Crown upon Henry, by the name of Henry the Fourth; and added to the Act of Settlement, provisions which the Reader may see in the second Volume of the Parliamentary History of England. Struck with the wisdom of the conditions demanded by the Commons, the Authors of the Book just mentioned, observe (perhaps with some simplicity) that the Commons of England were no fools at that time. They ought rather to have said,—The Commons of England were happy enough to form among themselves an Assembly in which every one could propose what matters he pleased, and freely discuss them;—they had no possibility left of converting either these advantages, or in general the confidence which the People had placed in them, to any private views of their own: they, therefore, without loss of time endeavoured to stipulate useful conditions with that Power by which they saw themselves at every instant exposed to be dissolved and dispersed, and applied their industry to insure the safety of the whole People, as it was the only means they had of procuring their own.

In the long contentions which took place between the Houses of York and Lancaster, the Commons remained spectators of disorders which, in those times, it was not in their power to prevent: they successively acknowledged the title of the victorious parties; but whether under Edward the Fourth, under Richard the Third, or Henry the Seventh, by whom those quarrels were terminated, they continually availed themselves of the importance of the services which they were able to perform to the new established Sovereign, for obtaining effectual conditions in favour of the whole body of the People.

At the accession of James the First, which as it placed a new Family on the Throne of England, may be considered as a kind of Revolution, no demands were made by the Men who were at the head of the Nation, but in favour of general liberty.

After the accession of Charles the First, discontents of a very serious nature began to take place, and they were terminated in the first instance, by the Act called the Petition of Right, which is still looked upon as a most precise and accurate delineation of the rights of the People (a) .

At the Restoration of Charles the Second, the Constitution being re-established upon its former principles, the former consequences produced by it, began again to take place; and we see at that aera, and indeed during the whole course of that Reign, a continued series of precautions taken for securing the general liberty.

Lastly, the great event which took place in the year 1689, affords a striking confirmation of the truth of the observation made in this Chapter. At this aera the political wonder again appeared—of a Revolution terminated by a series of public Acts in which no interests but those of the People at large were considered and provided for;—no clause, even the most indirect, was inserted, either to gratify the present ambition, or favour the future views, of those who were personally concerned in bringing those Acts to a conclusion. Indeed, if any thing is capable of conveying to us an adequate idea of the soundness, as well as peculiarity, of the principles on which the English Government is founded, it is the attentive perusal of the System of public Compacts to which the Revolution of the year 1689 gave rise,—of the Bill of Rights with all its different clauses, and of the several Acts which under two subsequent Reigns, till the accession of the House of Hanover, were made in order to strengthen it.

CHAPTER XVI1

Second Difference—The Manner after which the Laws for the Liberty of the Subject are executed in England.

The second difference I mean to speak of, between the English Government and that of other free States, concerns the important object of the execution of the Laws. On this article, also, we shall find the advantage to lie on the side of the English Government; and, if we make a comparison between the History of those States and that of England, it will lead us to the following observation, viz. that, though in other free States the laws concerning the liberty of the Citizens were imperfect, yet the execution of them was still more defective. In England, on the contrary, the laws for the security of the Subject, are not only very extensive in their provisions, but the manner in which they are executed, carries these advantages still farther; and English Subjects enjoy no less liberty from the spirit both of justice and mildness, by which all branches of the Government are influenced, than from the accuracy of the laws themselves.

The Roman Commonwealth will here again supply us with examples to prove the former part of the above assertion. When I said, in the foregoing Chapter, that, in times of public commotion, no provisions were made for the body of the People, I meant no provisions that were likely to prove effectual in the event. When the People were roused to a certain degree, or when their concurrence was necessary to carry into effect certain resolutions, or measures, that were particularly interesting to the Men in power, the latter could not, with any prudence, openly profess a contempt for the political wishes of the People; and some declarations expressed in general words, in favour of public liberty, were indeed added to the laws that were enacted on those occasions. But these declarations, and the principles which they tended to establish, were afterwards even openly disregarded in practice.

Thus, when the People were made to vote, about a year after the expulsion of the Kings, that the Regal Government never should be again established in Rome, and that those who should endeavour to restore it, should be devoted to the Gods, an article was added which, in general terms, confirmed to the Citizens the right they had before enjoyed under the Kings, of appealing to the People from the sentences of death passed upon them. No punishment (which will surprise the Reader) was decreed against those who should violate this law; and indeed the Consuls, as we may see in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy,2 concerned themselves but little about the appeals of the Citizens, and in the more than military exercise of their functions, continued to sport with rights which they ought to have respected, however imperfectly and loosely they had been secured.

An article to the same purport with the above, was afterwards also added to the laws of the Twelve Tables; but the Decemvirs,3 to whom the execution of those laws was at first committed, behaved exactly in the same manner, and even worse than the Consuls had done before them; and after they were expelled (a) the Magistrates who succeeded them, appear to have been as little tender of the lives of the Citizens. I shall, among many instances, relate one which will shew upon what slight grounds the Citizens were exposed to have their lives taken away.—Spurius Maelius being accused of endeavouring to make himself King, was summoned by the Master of the Horse, to appear before the Dictator, in order to clear himself of this somewhat extraordinary imputation. Spurius took refuge among the People; the Master of the Horse pursued him, and killed him on the spot. The multitude having thereupon expressed a great indignation, the Dictator had them called to his Tribunal, and declared that Spurius had been lawfully put to death, even though he might be innocent of the crime laid to his charge, for having refused to appear before the Dictator, when summoned to do so by the Master of the Horse (a) .

About one hundred and forty years after the times we mention, the law concerning the appeals to the People, was enacted for the third time. But we do not see that it was better observed afterwards than it had been before: we find it frequently violated, since that period, by the different Magistrates of the Republic, and the Senate itself, notwithstanding this same law, at times made formidable examples of the Citizens. Of this we have an instance in the three hundred soldiers who had pillaged the Town of Rhegium. The Senate, of its own authority, ordered them all to be put to death. In vain did the Tribune Flaccus remonstrate against so severe an exertion of public justice on Roman Citizens; the Senate, says Valerius Maximus, nevertheless persisted in its resolution (b) .

All these laws for securing the lives of the Citizens, had hitherto been enacted without any mention being made of a punishment against those who should violate them. At last the celebrated Lex Porcia was passed, which subjected to banishment those who should cause a Roman Citizen to be scourged and put to death. From a number of instances posterior to this law, it appears that it was not better observed than those before it had been: Caius Gracchus, therefore, caused the Lex Sempronia to be enacted, by which a new sanction was given to it.4 But this second law did not secure his own life, and that of his friends, better than the Lex Porcia had done that of his brother, and those who had sup-ported him: indeed, all the events which took place about those times, rendered it manifest that the evil was such as was beyond the power of any laws to cure.—I shall here mention a fact which affords a remarkable instance of the wantonness with which the Roman Magistrates had accustomed themselves to take away the lives of the Citizens. A Citizen, named Memmius, having put up for the Consulship, and publicly canvassing for the same, in opposition to a Man whom the Tribune Saturninus supported, the latter caused him to be apprehended, and made him expire under blows in the public Forum. The Tribune even carried his insolence so far, as Cicero informs us, as to give to this act of cruelty, transacted in the presence of the whole People assembled, the outward form of a lawful act of public Justice (a) .

Nor were the Roman Magistrates satisfied with committing acts of injustice in their political capacity, and for the support of the power of that Body of which they made a part. Avarice and private rapine were at last added to political ambition. The Provinces were first oppressed and plundered. The calamity, in process of time, reached Italy itself, and the centre of the Republic; till at last the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis was enacted to put a stop to it. By this law an action was given to the Citizens and Allies for the recovery of the money extorted from them by Magistrates, or Men in power; and the Lex Junia afterwards added the penalty of banishment to the obligation of making restitution.5

But here another kind of disorder arose. The Judges proved as corrupt, as the Magistrates had been oppressive. They equally betrayed, in their own province, the cause of the Republic with which they had been intrusted; and rather chose to share in the plunder of the Consuls, the Praetors, and the Proconsuls, than put the laws in force against them.

New expedients were, therefore, resorted to, in order to remedy this new evil. Laws were made for judging and punishing the Judges themselves; and above all, continual changes were made in the manner of composing their Assemblies. But the malady lay too deep for common legal provisions to remedy. The guilty Judges employed the same resources in order to avoid conviction, as the guilty Magistrates had done; and those continual changes at which we are amazed, were made in the constitution of the judiciary Bodies (a) , instead of obviating the cor-ruption of the Judges, only transferred to other Men the profit arising from becoming guilty of it. It was grown to be a general complaint, so early as the times of the Gracchi, that no Man who had money to give, could be brought to punishment (a) . Cicero says that in his time, the same opinion was become settled and universally received (b) ; and his Speeches are full of his lamentations on what he calls the levity, and the infamy, of the public Judgments.

Nor was the impunity of corrupt Judges, the only evil under which the Republic laboured. Commotions of the whole Empire at last took place. The horrid vexations, and afterwards the acquittal, of Aquilius, Proconsul of Syria, and of some others who had been guilty of the same crimes, drove the Provinces of Asia to desperation: and then it was that that terrible war of Mithri-dates arose, which was ushered in by the death of eighty thousand Romans, massacred in one day, in all the Cities of Asia (c) .6

The Laws and public Judgments not only thus failed of the end for which they had been established: they even became, at length, new means of oppression added to those which already existed. Citizens possessed of wealth, persons obnoxious to particular Bodies, or the few Magistrates who attempted to stem the torrent of the general corruption, were accused and condemned; while Piso, of whom Cicero in his speech against him relates facts which make the Reader shudder with horror, and Verres, who had been guilty of enormities of the same kind, escaped unpunished.7

Hence a war arose still more formidable than the former, and the dangers of which we wonder that Rome was able to surmount. The greatest part of the Italians revolted at once, exasperated by the tyranny of the public Judgments; and we find in Cicero, who informs us of the cause of this revolt, which was called the Social war, a very expressive account both of the unfortunate condition of the Republic, and of the perversion that had been made of the methods taken to remedy it. “—An hundred and ten years are not yet elapsed (says he) since the law for the recovery of money extorted by Magistrates was first propounded by the Tribune Calpurnius Piso. A number of other laws to the same effect, continually more and more severe, have followed: but so many persons have been accused, so many condemned, so formidable a war has been excited in Italy by the terror of the public Judgments, and when the laws and Judgments have been suspended, such an oppression and plunder of our Allies have prevailed, that we may truly say that it is not by our own strength, but by the weakness of others, that we continue to exist” (a) .

I have entered into these particulars with regard to the Roman Commonwealth, because the facts on which they are grounded, are remarkable of themselves, and yet no just conclusion could be drawn from them, unless a series of them were presented to the Reader. Nor are we to account for these facts, by the luxury which prevailed in the latter ages of the Republic, by the corruption of the manners of the Citizens, their degeneracy from their ancient principles, and such like loose general phrases, which may perhaps be useful to express the manner itself in which the evil became manifested, but by no means set forth the causes of it.

The above disorders arose from the very nature of the Government of the Republic,—of a Government in which the Executive and Supreme Power being made to centre in the Body of those in whom the People had once placed their confidence, there remained no other effectual Power in the State that might render it necessary for them to keep within the bounds of justice and decency. And in the mean time, as the People, who were intended as a check over that Body, continually gave a share in this Executive authority to those whom they intrusted with the care of their interests, they increased the evils they complained of, as it were at every attempt they made to remedy them, and instead of raising up Opponents to those who were become the enemies of their liberty, as it was their intention to do, they continually supplied them with new Associates.

From this situation of affairs, flowed as an unavoidable consequence, that continual desertion of the cause of the People, which, even in time of Revolutions, when the passions of the People themselves were roused, and they were in a great degree united, manifested itself in so remarkable a manner. We may trace the symptoms of the great political defect here mentioned, in the earliest ages of the Commonwealth, as well as in the last stage of its duration. In Rome, while small and poor, it rendered vain whatever rights or power the People possessed, and blasted all their endeavours to defend their liberty, in the same manner as, in the more splendid ages of the Commonwealth, it rendered the most salutary regulations utterly fruitless, and even instrumental to the ambition and avarice of a few. The prodigious fortune of the Republic, in short, did not create the disorder, it only gave full scope to it.

But if we turn our view towards the History of the English Nation, we shall see how, from a Government in which the above defects did not exist, different consequences have followed:—how cordially all ranks of Men have always united together to lay under proper re-straints this Executive power, which they knew could never be their own. In times of public Revolutions, the greatest care, as we have before observed, was taken to ascertain the limits of that Power; and after peace had been restored to the State, those who remained at the head of the Nation, continued to manifest an unwearied jealousy in maintaining those advantages which the united efforts of all had obtained.

Thus it was made one of the Articles of Magna Charta,8 that the Executive Power should not touch the person of the Subject but in consequence of a judgment passed upon him by his peers; and so great was afterwards the general union in maintaining this law, that the Trial by Jury, that admirable mode of proceeding which so effectually secures the Subject against all the attempts of Power, even (which seemed so difficult to obtain) against such as might be made under the sanction of the Judicial authority, hath been preserved to this day. It has even been preserved in all its original purity, though the same has been successively suffered to decay, and then to be lost, in the other Countries of Europe, where it had been formerly known (a) . Nay, though this privilege of being tried by one’s peers, was at first a privilege of Conquerors and Masters, exclusively appropriated to those parts of Nations which had originally invaded and subdued the rest by arms, it has in England been successively extended to every Order of the People.

And not only the person, but also the property, of the individual, has been secured against all arbitrary attempts from the Executive power, and the latter has been success-ively restrained from touching any part of the property of the Subject, even under pretence of the necessities of the State, any otherwise than by the free grant of the Representatives of the People. Nay, so true and persevering has been the zeal of these Representatives, in asserting on that account the interests of the Nation, from which they could not separate their own, that this privilege of taxing themselves, which was in the beginning grounded on a most precarious tenure, and only a mode of governing adopted by the Sovereign for the sake of his own convenience, has become, in time, a settled right of the People, which the Sovereign has found it at length necessarily solemnly and repeatedly to acknowledge.

Nay more, the Representatives of the People have applied this right of Taxation to a still nobler use than the mere preservation of property; they have in process of time, succeeded in converting it into a regular and constitutional means of influencing the motions of the Executive Power. By means of this Right, they have gained the advantage of being constantly called to concur in the measures of the Sovereign,—of having the greatest attention shewn by him to their requests, as well as the highest regard paid to any engagements that he enters into with them. Thus has it become at last the peculiar happiness of English Subjects, to whatever other People either ancient or modern we compare them, to enjoy a share in the Government of their Country, by electing Representatives, who, by reason of the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed, and of the extensive rights they possess, are both willing faithfully to serve those who have appointed them, and able to do so.

And indeed the Commons have not rested satisfied with establishing, once for all, the provisions for the liberty of the People which have been just mentioned: they have afterwards made the preservation of them, the first object of their care (a) , and taken every opportunity of giving them new vigour and life.

Thus, under Charles the First, when attacks of a most alarming nature were made on the privilege of the People to grant free supplies to the Crown, the Commons vindicated, without loss of time, that great right of the Nation, which is the Constitutional bulwark of all others, and hastened to oppugn, in their beginning, every precedent of a practice that must in the end have produced the ruin of public liberty.

They even extended their care to abuses of every kind. The judicial authority, for instance, which the Executive Power had imperceptibly assumed to itself, both with respect to the person and property of the individual, was abrogated by the Act which abolished the Court of Star Chamber; and the Crown was thus brought back to its true Constitutional office, viz. the countenancing, and supporting with its strength, the execution of the Laws.9

The subsequent endeavours of the Legislature have carried even to a still greater extent the above privileges of the People. They have moreover succeeded in restraining the Crown from any attempt to seize and confine, even for the shortest time, the person of the Subject, unless it be in the cases ascertained by the Law, of which the Judges of it are to decide.

Nor has this extensive unexampled freedom at the expence of the Executive Power, been made, as we might be inclinable to think, the exclusive appropriated privilege of the great and powerful. It is to be enjoyed alike by all ranks of Subjects. Nay, it was the injury done to a common Citizen that gave existence to the Act which has completed the security of this interesting branch of public liberty.—The oppression of an obscure individual, says Judge Blackstone, gave rise to the famous Habeas Corpus Act: Junius has quoted this observation of the Judge; and the same is well worth repeating a third time, for the just idea it conveys of that readiness of all Orders of Men, to unite in defence of common liberty, which is a characteristic circumstance in the English Government (a) .10

And this general union in favour of public liberty, has not been confined to the framing of laws for its security: it has operated with no less vigour in bringing to punishment such as have ventured to infringe them; and the Sovereign has constantly found it necessary to give up the violators of those laws, even when his own Servants, to the Justice of their Country.

Thus we find, so early as the reign of Edward the First, Judges who were convicted of having committed exactions in the exercise of their offices, to have been condemned by a sentence of Parliament (b) . From the immense fines which were laid upon them, and which it seems they were in a condition to pay, we may indeed conclude that, in those early ages of the Constitution, the remedy was applied rather late to the disorder; but yet it was at last applied.

Under Richard the Second, examples of the same kind were renewed. Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who had been Lord Chancellor of the kingdom, the Duke of Ireland, and the Archbishop of York, having abused their power by carrying on designs that were subversive of public liberty, were declared guilty of High-treason; and a number of Judges who, in their judicial capacity, had acted as their instruments, were involved in the same condemnation (a) .

Under the reign of Henry the Eighth, Sir Thomas Empson, and Edmund Dudley, who had been the promoters of the exactions committed under the preceding reign, fell victims to the zeal of the Commons for vindicating the cause of the People.11 Under King James the First, Lord Chancellor Bacon experienced that neither his high dignity, nor great personal qualifications, could screen him from having the severest censure passed upon him, for the corrupt practices of which he had suffered himself to become guilty. And under Charles the First, the Judges having attempted to imitate the example of the Judges under Richard the Second, by delivering opinions subversive of the rights of the People, found the same spirit of watchfulness in the Commons, as had proved the ruin of the former. Lord Finch, keeper of the Great Seal, was obliged to fly beyond sea. The Judges Davenport and Crawley were imprisoned: and Judge Berkeley was seized while sitting upon the Bench, as we find in Rushworth.12

In the reign of Charles the Second, we again find fresh instances of the vigilance of the Commons. Sir William Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s-Bench, Sir Francis North, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Thomas Jones, one of the Judges of the King’s-Bench, and Sir Richard Weston, one of the Barons of the Exchequer, were impeached by the Commons, for partialities shewn by them in the administration of justice; and Chief Justice Scroggs, against whom some positive charges were well proved, was removed from his employments.13

The several examples offered here to the Reader, have been taken from several different periods of the English History, in order to shew that neither the influence, nor the dignity, of the infractors of the laws, even when they have been the nearest Servants of the Crown, have ever been able to check the zeal of the Commons in asserting the rights of the People. Other examples might perhaps be related to the same purpose; though the whole number of those to be met with, will, upon enquiry, be found the smaller, in proportion as the danger of infringing the laws has always been indubitable.

So much regularity has even (from all the circumstances above mentioned) been introduced into the operations of the Executive Power in England,—such an exact Justice have the People been accustomed, as a consequence, to expect from that quarter, that even the Sovereign, for his having once suf-fered himself personally to violate the safety of the Subject, did not escape severe censure. The attack made by order of Charles the Second, on the person of Sir John Coventry, filled the Nation with astonishment; and this violent gratification of private passion, on the part of the Sovereign (a piece of self-indulgence with regard to inferiors, which whole classes of individuals in certain Countries almost think that they have a right to) excited a general ferment. “This event (says Bishop Burnet) put the House of Commons in a furious uproar. . . . It gave great advantages to all those who opposed the Court; and the names of the Court and Country party, which till now had seemed to be forgotten, were again revived” (a) .

There are the limitations that have been set, in the English Government, on the operations of the Executive Power: limitations to which we find nothing comparable in any other free States, ancient or modern; and which are owing, as we have seen, to that very circumstance which seemed at first sight to prevent the possibility of them, I mean the greatness and unity of that Power; the effect of which has been, in the event, to unite upon the same object, the views and efforts of all Orders of the People.

From this circumstance, that is, the unity and peculiar stability of the Executive Power in England, another most advantageous consequence has followed, that has been before noticed, and which it is not improper to mention again here, as this Chapter is intended to confirm the principles laid down in the former ones,—I mean the unremitted continuance of the same general union among all ranks of Men, and the spirit of mutual justice which thereby continues to be diffused through all orders of Subjects.

Though surrounded by the many boundaries that have just now been described, the Crown, we must observe, has preserved its Prerogative undivided: it still possesses its whole effective strength, and is only tied by its own engagements, and the consideration of what it owes to its dearest interests.

The great, or wealthy Men in the Nation, who, assisted by the body of the People, have succeeded in reducing the exercise, of its au-thority within such well defined limits, can have no expectation that it will continue to confine itself to them, any longer than they themselves continue, by the justice of their own conduct, to deserve that support of the People which alone can make them appear of consequence in the eye of the Sovereign,—no probable hopes that the Crown will continue to observe those laws by which their wealth, dignity, liberty, are protected, any longer than they themselves also continue to observe them.

Nay more, all those claims of their rights which they continue to make against the Crown, are encouragements which they give to the rest of the People to assert their own rights against them. Their constant opposition to all arbitrary proceedings of that Power, is a continual declaration they make against any acts of oppression which the superior advantages they enjoy, might entice them to commit on their inferior fellow-subjects. Nor was that severe censure, for instance, which they concurred in passing on an unguarded violent action of their Sovereign, only a restraint put on the personal actions of future English Kings: no, it was a much more extensive provision for the securing of public liberty;—it was a solemn engagement entered into by all the powerful Men in the State to the whole body of the People, scrupulously to respect the person of the lowest among them.

And indeed the constant tenor of the conduct even of the two Houses of Parliament shews us, that the above observations are not matters of mere speculation. From the earliest times we see the Members of the House of Commons to have been very cautious not to assume any distinction that might alienate from them the affections of the rest of the People (a) . Whenever those privileges which were necessary to them for the discharge of their trust have proved burdensome to the Community, they have retrenched them. And those of their Members who have applied either these privileges, or in general that influence which they derived from their situation, to any oppressive purposes, they themselves have endeavoured to bring to punishment.

Thus, we see, that in the reign of James the First, Sir Giles Mompesson, a Member of the House of Commons, having been guilty of monopolies and other acts of great oppression on the People, was not only expelled, but impeached and prosecuted with the greatest warmth by the House, and finally condemned by the Lords to be publicly degraded from his rank of a Knight, held for ever an infamous person, and imprisoned during life.

In the same reign, Sir John Bennet, who was also a Member of the House of Commons, having been found to have been guilty of several corrupt practices, in his capacity of Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, such as taking exorbitant fees, and the like, was expelled the House, and prosecuted for these offences.14

In the year 1641, Mr. Henry Benson, Member for Knaresborough, having been detected in selling protections, experienced likewise the indignation of the House, and was expelled.15

In fine, in order as it were to make it completely notorious, that neither the condition of Representative of the People, nor even any degree of influence in their House, could excuse any one of them from strictly observing the rules of justice, the Commons did on one occasion pass the most severe censure they had power to inflict, upon their Speaker himself, for having, in a single instance, attempted to convert the discharge of his duty as Speaker into a means of private emolument.—Sir John Trevor, Speaker of the House of Commons, having, in the sixth year of the reign of King William, received a thousand guineas from the City of London, “as a gratuity for the trouble he had taken with regard to the passing of the Orphan Bill,” was voted guilty of a High crime and misdemeanour, and expelled the House. Even the inconsiderable sum of twenty guineas which Mr. Hungerford, another Member, had been weak enough to accept on the same score, was looked upon as deserving the notice of the House; and he was likewise expelled (a) .16

If we turn our view towards the House of Lords, we shall find that they have also constantly taken care that their peculiar privileges should not prove impediments to the common justice which is due to the rest of the People (b) . They have constantly agreed to every just proposal that has been made to them on that subject by the Commons: and indeed, if we consider the numerous and oppressive privileges claimed by the Nobles in most other Countries, and the vehement spirit with which they are commonly asserted, we shall think it no small praise to the body of the Nobility in England (and also to the nature of that Government of which they make a part) that it has been by their free consent that their privileges have been confined to what they now are; that is to say, to no more, in general, than what is necessary to the accomplishment of the end and constitutional design of that House.

In the exercise of their Judicial authority with regard to civil matters, the Lords have manifested a spirit of equity nowise inferior to that which they have shewn in their Legislative capacity. They have, in the discharge of that function, (which of all others is so liable to create temptations) shewn an uncorruptness really superior to what any judicial Assembly in any other Nation can boast. Nor do I think that I run any risk of being contradicted, when I say that the conduct of the House of Lords, in their civil judicial capacity, has constantly been such as has kept them above the reach of even suspicion or slander.

Even that privilege which they enjoy, of exclusively trying their own Members, in case of any accusation that may affect their life (a privilege which we might at first sight think repugnant to the idea of a regular Government, and even alarming to the rest of the People) has constantly been made use of by the Lords to do justice to their fellow-subjects; and if we cast our eyes either on the collection of the State Trials, or on the History of England, we shall find very few examples, if any, of a Peer, really guilty of the offence laid to his charge, that has derived any advantage from his not being tried by a Jury of Commoners.

Nor has this just and moderate conduct of the two Houses of Parliament in the exercise of their powers (a moderation so unlike what has been related of the conduct of the powerful Men in the Roman Republic) been the only happy consequence of that salutary jealousy which those two Bodies entertain of the power of the Crown. The same motive has also engaged them to exert their utmost endeavours to put the Courts of Justice under proper restraints: a point of the highest importance to public liberty.

They have, from the earliest times, preferred complaints against the influence of the Crown over these Courts, and at last procured Laws to be enacted by which such influence has been intirely prevented: all which measures, we must observe, were at the same time strong declarations that no Subjects, however exalted their rank might be, were to think themselves exempt from submitting to the uniform course of the Law, or hope to influence or over-awe it. The severe examples which they have united to make on those Judges who had rendered themselves the instruments of the passions of the Sovereign, or of the designs of the Ministers of the Crown, are also awful warnings to the Judges who have succeeded them, never to attempt to deviate in favour of any, the most powerful individuals, from that strait line of Justice which the joint Wisdom of the Legislature has once marked out to them.

This singular situation of the English Judges relatively to the three Constituent Powers of the State, (and also the formidable support which they are certain to receive from them as long as they continue to be the faithful Ministers of Justice) has at last created such an impartiality in the distribution of public Justice in England, has introduced into the Courts of Law the practice of such a thorough disregard of either the influence or wealth of the contending Parties, and procured to every individual, both such an easy access to these Courts, and such a certainty of redress, as are not to be paralleled in any other Government.—Philip de Comines, so long as three hundred years ago, commended in strong terms the exactness with which Justice is done in England to all ranks of Subjects (a) ; and the impartiality with which the same is administered in these days, will with still more reason create the surprize of every Stranger who has an opportunity of observing the customs of this Country (b) .

Indeed, to such a degree of impartiality has the administration of public Justice been brought in England, that it is saying nothing beyond the exact truth, to affirm that any violation of the laws, though perpetrated by Men of the most extensive influence, nay, though committed by the special direction of the very first Servants of the Crown, will be publicly and completely redressed. And the very lowest of subjects will obtain such redress, if he has but spirit enough to stand forth, and appeal to the laws of his Country.—Most extraordinary circumstances these! which those who know the difficulty that there is in establishing just laws among Mankind, and in providing afterwards for their due execution, only find credible because they are matters of fact, and can begin to account for, only when they look up to the constitution of the Government itself; that is to say, when they consider the circumstances in which the Executive Power, or the Crown, is placed in relation to the two Bodies that concur with it to form the Legislature,—the circumstances in which those two Assemblies are placed in relation to the Crown, and to each other, and the situation in which all the Three find themselves with respect to the whole Body of the People (a) .

In fine, a very remarkable circumstance in the English Government (and which alone evinces something peculiar and excellent in its Nature), is that spirit of extreme mildness with which Justice in criminal cases, is administered in England; a point with regard to which England differs from all other Countries in the World.

When we consider the punishments in use in the other States in Europe, we wonder how Men can be brought to treat their fellow-creatures with so much cruelty; and the bare consideration of those punishments would sufficiently convince us (supposing we did not know the fact from other circumstances) that the Men in those States who frame the laws, and preside over their execution, have little apprehension that either they, or their friends, will ever fall victims to those laws which they thus rashly establish.

In the Roman Republic, circumstances of the same nature with those just mentioned, were also productive of the greatest defects in the kind of criminal Justice which took place in it. That class of Citizens who were at the head of the Republic, and who knew how mutually to exempt each other from the operation of any too severe laws or practice, not only allowed themselves great liberties, as we have seen, in disposing of the lives of the inferior Citizens, but had also introduced into the exercise of the illegal powers they assumed to themselves in that respect, a great degree of cruelty (a) .

Nor were things more happily conducted in the Grecian Republics. From their Democratical nature, and the frequent Revolutions to which they were subject, we naturally expect to see that authority to have been used with mildness, which those who enjoyed it must have known to have been but precarious; yet, such were the effects of the violence attending those very Revolutions, that a spirit both of great irregularity and cruelty had taken place among the Greeks, in the exercise of the power of inflicting punishments. The very harsh laws of Draco are well known, of which it was said that they were not written with ink, but with blood.17 The severe laws of the Twelve Tables among the Romans, were in great part brought over from Greece. And it was an opinion commonly received in Rome, that the cruelties practised by the Magistrates on the Citizens, were only imitations of the examples which the Greeks had given them (b) .

In fine, the use of Torture, that method of administering Justice in which folly may be said to be added to cruelty, had been adopted by the Greeks, in consequence of the same causes which had concurred to produce the irregularity of their criminal Justice. And the same practice continues, in these days, to prevail on the continent of Europe, in consequence of that general arrangement of things which creates there such a carelessness about remedying the abuses of public Authority.

But the nature of that same Government which has procured to the People of England all the advantages we have before described, has, with still more reason, freed them from the most oppressive abuses which prevail in other countries.

That wantonness in disposing of the dearest rights of Mankind, those insults upon human Nature, of which the frame of the Governments established in other States, unavoidably becomes more or less productive, are entirely banished from a Nation which has the happiness of having its interests taken care of by Men who continue to be themselves ex-posed to the pressure of those laws which they concur in making, and of every tyrannic practice which they suffer to be introduced,—by Men whom the advantages which they possess above the rest of the People, render only more exposed to the abuses they are appointed to prevent, only more alive to the dangers against which it is their duty to defend the Community (a) .

Hence we see that the use of Torture has, from the earliest times, been utterly unknown in England. And all attempts to introduce it, whatever might be the power of those who made them, or the circumstances in which they renewed their endeavours, have been strenuously opposed and defeated (b) .

From the same cause also arose that remarkable forbearance of the English Laws, to use any cruel severity in the punishments which experience shewed it was necessary for the preservation of Society to establish: and the utmost vengeance of those laws, even against the most enormous Offenders, never extends beyond the simple deprivation of life (a) .18

Nay, so anxious has the English Legislature been to establish mercy, even to convicted Offenders, as a fundamental principle of the Government of England, that they made it an express article of that great public Compact which was framed at the important aera of the Revolution, that “no cruel and unusual punishments should be used” (b) .—They even endeavoured, by adding a clause for that purpose to the Oath which Kings were thenceforward to take at their Coronation, as it were to render it an everlasting obligation of English Kings, to make Justice to be “executed with mercy” (c) .19

CHAPTER XVII1

A more inward View of the English Government than has hitherto been offered to the Reader in the course of this Work.—Very essential differences between the English Monarchy, as a Monarchy, and all those with which we are acquainted.

The Doctrine constantly maintained in this Work, and which has, I think, been sufficiently supported by facts and comparisons drawn from the History of other Countries, is, that the remarkable liberty enjoyed by the English Nation, is essentially owing to the impossibility under which their Leaders, or in general all Men of power among them, are placed, of invading and transferring to themselves any branch of the Governing Executive authority; which authority is exclusively vested, and firmly secured, in the Crown. Hence the anxious care with which those Men continue to watch the exercise of that authority. Hence their perseverance in observing every kind of engagement which themselves may have entered into with the rest of the People.

But here a consideration of a most important kind presents itself.—How comes the Crown in England, thus constantly to preserve to itself (as we see it does) the Executive authority in the State, and moreover to preserve it so completely as to inspire the great Men in the Nation with that conduct so advantageous to public Liberty, which has just been mentioned? All these are effects which we do not find, upon examination, that the power of Crowns has hitherto been able to produce in other Countries.

In all States of a Monarchical form, we indeed see that those Men whom their rank and wealth, or their personal power of any kind, have raised above the rest of the people, have formed combinations among themselves to oppose the power of the Monarch. But their views, we must observe, in forming these combinations, were not by any means to set general and impartial limitations on the Sovereign authority. They endeavoured to render themselves entirely independent of that authority; or even utterly to annihilate it, according to circumstances.

Thus we see that in all the States of ancient Greece, the Kings were at last destroyed and exterminated. The same event happened in Italy, where in remote times there existed for a while several kingdoms, as we learn both from the ancient Historians, and the Poets. And in Rome, we even know the manner and circumstances in which such a revolution was brought about.

In more modern times, we see the numerous Monarchical Sovereignties which had been raised in Italy on the ruins of the Roman Empire, to have been successively destroyed by powerful factions; and events of much the same nature have at different times taken place in the Kingdoms established in the other parts of Europe.

In Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, for instance, we find that the Nobles have commonly reduced their Sovereigns to the condition of simple Presidents over their Assemblies,—of mere ostensible Heads of the Government.

In Germany, and in France, Countries where the Monarchs being possessed of considerable demesnes, were better able to maintain their independence than the Princes just mentioned, the Nobles waged war against them, sometimes singly, and sometimes jointly; and events similar to these have successively happened in Scotland, Spain, and the modern Kingdoms of Italy.

In fine, it has only been by means of standing armed forces that the Sovereigns of most of the Kingdoms we have mentioned, have been able in a course of time to assert the prerogatives of their Crown. And it is only by continuing to keep up such forces, that, like the Eastern Monarchs, and indeed like all the Monarchs that ever existed, they continue to be able to support their authority.

How therefore can the Crown of England, without the assistance of any armed force, maintain, as it does, its numerous prerogatives? How can it, under such circumstances, preserve to itself the whole Executive power in the State? For here we must observe, the Crown in England does not derive any support from what regular forces it has at its disposal; and if we doubted this fact, we need only look to the astonishing subordination in which the military is kept to the civil power, to become convinced that an English King is not indebted to his army for the preservation of his authority (a) .

If we could suppose that the armies of the Kings of Spain or of France, for instance, were, through some very extraordinary circumstance, all to vanish in one night, the power of those Sovereigns, we must not doubt, would, ere six months, be reduced to a mere shadow. They would immediately behold their prerogatives, however formidable they may be at present, invaded and dismembered (b) : and supposing that regular Governments continued to exist, they would be reduced to have little more influence in them, than the Doges of Venice, or of Genoa, possess in the Governments of those Republics (c) .

How, therefore, to repeat the question once more, which is one of the most interesting that can occur in politics, how can the Crown in England, without the assistance of any armed force, avoid those dangers to which all other Sovereigns are exposed?

How can it, without any such force, accomplish even incomparably greater works than those Sovereigns, with their powerful armies, are, we find, in a condition to perform?—How can it bear that universal effort (unknown in other Monarchies) which, we have seen, is continually and openly exerted against it? How can it even continue to resist it so powerfully as to preclude all individuals whatever, from ever entertaining any views besides those of setting just and general limitations to the exercise of its authority? How can it enforce the laws upon all Subjects, indiscriminately, without injury or danger to itself? How can it, in fine, impress the minds of all the great Men in the State with so lasting a jealousy of its power, as to necessitate them, even in the exercise of their undoubted rights and privileges, to continue to court and deserve the affection of the rest of the People?

Those great Men, I shall answer, who even in quiet times prove so formidable to other Monarchs, are in England divided into two Assemblies; and such, it is necessary to add, are the principles upon which this division is made, that from it results, as a necessary consequence, the solidity and indivisibility of the power of the Crown (a) .

The Reader may perceive that I have led him, in the course of this Work, much beyond the line within which Writers on the subject of Government have confined themselves, or rather, that I have followed a track entirely different from that which those Writers have pursued. But as the observation just made on the stability of the power of the Crown in England, and the cause of it, is new in its kind, so do the principles from which its truth is to be demonstrated, totally differ from what is commonly looked upon as the foundation of the science of Politics. To lay these principles here before the Reader, in a manner completely satisfactory to him, would lead us into philosophical discussions on what really constitutes the basis of Governments and Power amongst Mankind, both extremely long, and in a great measure foreign to the subject of this book. I shall therefore content myself with proving the above observations by facts; which is more, after all, than political Writers usually undertake to do with regard to their speculations.

As I chiefly proposed to shew how the extensive liberty the English enjoy, is the result of the peculiar frame of their Government, and occasionally to compare the same with the Republican form, I even had at first intended to confine myself to that circumstance, which both constitutes the essential difference between those two forms of Government, and is the immediate cause of English liberty; I mean the having placed all the executive authority in the State out of the hands of those in whom the People trust. With regard to the remote cause of that same liberty, that is to say, the stability of the power of the Crown, this singular solidity without the assistance of any armed force, by which this executive authority is so secured, I should perhaps have been silent, had I not found it absolutely necessary to mention the fact in this place, in order to obviate the objections which the more reflecting part of Readers might otherwise have made, both to several of the observations before offered to them, and to a few others which are soon to follow.

Besides, I shall confess here, I have been several times under apprehensions, in the course of this Work, lest the generality of Readers, misled by the similarity of names, should put too extensive a construction upon what I said with regard to the usefulness of the power of the Crown in England;—lest they should think, for instance, that I attributed the superior advantages of the English mode of Government over the Republican form, merely to its approaching nearer to the nature of the Monarchies established in the other parts of Europe, and that I looked upon every kind of Monarchy, as being in itself preferable to a Republican Government: an opinion, which I do not by any means or in any degree entertain; I have too much affection, or if you please, prepossession, in favour of that form of Government under which I was born; and as I am sensible of its defects, so do I know how to set a value upon the advantages by which it compensates for them.

I therefore have, as it were, made haste to avail myself of the first opportunity of explaining my meaning on this subject,—of indicating that the power of the Crown in England stands upon foundations entirely different from those on which the same Power rests in other Countries,—and of engaging the Reader to observe (which for the present will suffice) that as the English Monarchy differs in its nature and main foundations, from every other, so all that is said here of its advantages, is peculiar and confined to it.

But, to come to the proofs (derived from facts) of the solidity accruing to the power of the Crown in England, from the co-existence of the two Assemblies which concur to form the English Parliament, I shall first point out to the Reader several open acts of these two Houses, by which they have by turns effectually defeated the attacks of each other upon its prerogative.

Without looking farther back for examples than the reign of Charles the Second, we see that the House of Commons had, in that reign, begun to adopt the method of adding (or tacking, as it is commonly expressed) such bills as they wanted more particularly to have passed, to their money bills. This forcible use they made of their undoubted privilege of granting money, if suffered to have grown into common practice, would have totally destroyed the aequilibrium that ought to subsist between them and the Crown. But the Lords took upon themselves the task of maintaining that aequilibrium: they complained with great warmth of the several precedents that were made by the Commons, of the practice we mention: they insisted that Bills should be framed “in the old and decent way of Parliament”; and at last have made it a standing order of their House, to reject, upon the sight of them, all bills that are tacked to money bills.2

Again, about the thirty-first year of the same reign, a strong party prevailed in the House of Commons; and their efforts were not entirely confined, if we may credit the Historians of those times, to serving their Constituents faithfully, and providing for the welfare of the State. Among other bills which they proposed in their House, they carried one to exclude from the Crown the immediate Heir to it; an affair this, of a very high nature, and with regard to which it may well be questioned whether the legislative Assem-blies have a right to form a resolution, without the express and declared concurrence of the body of the People. But both the Crown and the Nation were delivered from the danger of establishing such a precedent, by the interposition of the Lords, who threw out the bill on the first reading.3

In the reign of King William the Third, a few years after the Revolution, attacks were made upon the Crown from another quarter. A strong party was formed in the House of Lords; and, as we may see in Bishop Burnet’s History of his Own Times, they entertained very deep designs. One of their views, among others, was to abridge the prerogative of the Crown of calling Parliaments, and judging of the proper times of doing it (a) . They accordingly framed and carried in their House a bill for ascertaining the sitting of Parliament every year: but the bill, after it had passed in their House, was rejected by the Commons (b) .

Again, we find, a little after the accession of King George the First, an attempt was also made by a party in the House of Lords, to wrest from the Crown a prerogative which is one of its finest flowers; and is, besides, the only check it has on the dangerous views which that House (which may stop both money bills and all other bills) might be brought to entertain; I mean the right of adding new members to it, and judging of the times when it may be necessary to do so. A bill was accordingly presented, and carried, in the House of Lords, for limiting the members of that House to a fixed number, beyond which it should not be increased; but after great pains taken to insure the success of this bill, it was at last rejected by the House of Commons.4

In fine, the several attempts which a majority in the House of Commons have in their turn made to restrain, farther than it now is, the influence of the Crown arising from the distribution of preferments and other advantages, have been checked by the House of Lords; and all place-bills have, from the beginning of this Century, constantly miscarried in that House.5

Nor have these two powerful Assemblies only succeeded in thus warding off the open attacks of each other, on the power of the Crown. Their co-existence, and the principles upon which they are severally framed, have been productive of another effect much more extensive, though at first less attended to, I mean the preventing even the making of such attacks; and in times too, when the Crown was of itself incapable of defending its authority: the views of each of these two Houses, destroying, upon these occasions, the opposite views of the other, like those positive and negative equal quantities (if I may be allowed the comparison) which destroy each other on the opposite sides of an equation.

Of this we have several remarkable examples; as for instance, when the Sovereign has been a minor. If we examine the History of other Nations, especially before the invention of standing armies, we shall find that the event we mention never failed to be attended with open invasions of the Royal authority, or even sometimes with complete and settled divisions of it. In England, on the contrary, whether we look at the reign of Richard II. or that of Henry VI. or of Edward VI. we shall see that the Royal authority has been quietly exer-cised by the Councils that were appointed to assist those Princes; and when they came of age, the same has been delivered over to them undiminished.

But nothing so remarkable can be alledged on this subject, as the manner in which these two Houses have acted upon those occasions when the Crown being without any present possessor, they had it in their power, both to settle it on what Person they pleased, and to divide and distribute its effectual prerogatives, in what manner, and to what set of Men, they might think proper. Circumstances like those we mention, have never failed in other Kingdoms, to bring on a division of the effectual authority of the Crown, or even of the State itself. In Sweden, for instance, (to speak of that kingdom which has borne the greatest outward resemblance to that of England) when Queen Christina was put under a necessity of abdicating the Crown, and it was transferred to the Prince who stood next to her in the line of Succession, the Executive authority in the State was immediately divided, and either distributed among the Nobles, or assigned to the Senate, into which the Nobles alone could be admitted; and the new King was only to be a President over it.6

After the death of Charles the Twelfth, who died without male heirs, the disposal of the Crown (the power of which Charles the Eleventh had found means to render again absolute) returned to the States, and was settled on the Princess Ulrica, and the Prince her Husband. But the Senate, at the same time it thus settled the possession of the Crown, again assumed to itself the effectual authority which had formerly belonged to it. The privilege of assembling the States was vested in that Body. They also secured to themselves the power of making war and peace, and treaties with foreign powers,—the disposal of places,—the command of the army and of the fleet,—and the administration of the public revenue. Their number was to consist of sixteen Members. The majority of votes was to be decisive upon every occasion. The only privilege of the new King, was to have his vote reckoned for two: and if at any time he should refuse to attend their meetings, the business was nevertheless to be done as effectually and definitively without him (a) .7

But in England, the revolution of the year 1689 was terminated in a manner totally dif-ferent. Those who at that interesting epoch had the guardianship of the Crown,—those in whose hands it lay vacant, did not manifest so much as a thought to split and parcel out its prerogative. They tendered it to a single indivisible possessor, impelled as it were by some secret power that was, unseen, operating upon them, without any salvo, without any article, to establish the greatness of themselves, or of their families. It is true, those prerogatives destructive of public liberty which the late King had assumed, were retrenched from the Crown; and thus far the two Houses agreed. But as to any attempt to transfer to other hands any part of the authority of the Crown, no proposal was even made about it. Those branches of prerogative which were taken from the kingly office, were annihilated and made to cease to exist in the State; and all the Executive authority that was thought necessary to be continued in the Government, was, as before, left undivided in the Crown.

In the very same manner was the whole authority of the Crown transferred afterwards to the Princess who succeeded King William the Third, and who had no other claim to it but what was conferred on her by the Parliament. And in the same manner again was it settled, a long time beforehand, on the Princes of Hanover who have since succeeded her (a) .8

Nay, one more extraordinary fact, and to which I desire the Reader to give attention—Notwithstanding all the Revolutions we mention, and although Parliament hath sat every year since the beginning of this century, and though they have constantly enjoyed the most unlimited freedom both as to the subjects and the manner of their deliberations, and numberless proposals have in consequence been made,—yet, such has been the efficiency of each House, in destroying, preventing, or qualifying, the views of the other, that the Crown has not been obliged during all that time to make use, even once, of its negative voice; and the last Bill rejected by a King of England, has been that rejected by King William the Third in the year 1692 for Triennial Parliaments (a) .9

There is another instance yet more remarkable of this forbearing conduct of the Parliament in regard to the Crown, to whatever open or latent cause it may be owing, and how little their esprit de corps in reality leads them, amidst the apparent heat sometimes of their struggles, to invade its governing executive authority; I mean, the facility with which they have been prevailed upon to give up any essential branch of that authority, even after a conjunction of preceding circumstances had caused them to be actually in possession of it; a case this, however, that has not frequently happened in the English History. After the Restoration of Charles the Second, for instance, we find the Parliament to have of their own accord passed an Act, in the first year that followed that event, by which they annihilated, at one stroke, both the independent legislative authority, and all claims to such authority, which they had assumed during the preceding disturbances:—By the Stat. 13 Car. II. c. 1. it was forbidden, under the penalty of a praemunire (see p. 194)10 to affirm that either of the two Houses of Parliament, or both jointly, possess, without the concurrence of the King, the Legislative authority. In the fourth year after the Restoration, another capital branch of the governing authority of the Crown was also restored to it, without any manner of struggle:—by the Stat. 16 Car. II. c. 1. the Act was repealed by which it had been enacted, that, in case the King should neglect to call a Parliament once at least in three years, the Peers should issue the writs for an election; and that should they neglect to issue the same, the Constituents should of themselves assemble to elect a Parliament.

It is here to be observed, that, in the same reign we mention, the Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, as well as the other Acts that prepared the same, and in general shewed a jealousy in watching over the liberty of the subject, superior perhaps to what has taken place at any other period of the English History: this is another striking confirmation of what has been remarked in a preceding Chapter, concerning the manner in which public disturbances have always been terminated in England. Here we find a series of Parliaments to have been tenaciously and perseverantly jealous of those kinds of popular universal provisions, which great Men in other States ever disdained seriously to think of, or give a place to, in those treaties by which internal peace was restored to the Nation; and at the same time these Parliaments cordially and sincerely gave up those high and splendid branches of Governing authority, which the Senates or Assemblies of great Men who surrounded the Monarchs in other limited Monarchies, never ceased anxiously to strive to assume to themselves,—and which the Monarchs, after having lost them, never were able to recover but by military violence aided by surprize, or through National com-motions. All these are political singularities, certainly remarkable enough. It is a circumstance in no small degree conducive to the solidity of the executive authority of the English Crown (which is the subject of this Chapter) that those persons who seem to have it in their power to wrest the same from it, are, somehow, prevented from entertaining thoughts of doing so (a) .

As another proof of the peculiar solidity of the power of the Crown, in England, may be mentioned the facility, and safety to itself and to the State, with which it has at all times been able to deprive any particular Subjects of their different offices, however overgrown, and even dangerous, their private power may seem to be. A very remarkable instance of this kind occurred when the great Duke of Marlborough was suddenly removed from all his employments: the following is the account given by Dean Swift, in his “History of the Four last Years of the Reign of Queen Anne.”

“So that the Queen found herself under a necessity, by removing one person from so great a trust, to get clear of all her difficulties at once: her Majesty determined upon the latter expedient, as the shorter and safer course; and during the recess at Christmas, sent the Duke a letter to tell him she had no farther occasion for his service.

“There has not perhaps in the present age been a clearer instance to shew the instability of power which is not founded on virtue; and it may be an instruction to Princes who are well in the hearts of their People, that the overgrown power of any particular person, although supported by exorbitant wealth, can, by a little resolution, be reduced in a moment, without any dangerous consequences. This Lord, who was, beyond all comparison, the greatest subject in Christendom, found his power, credit and influence crumble away on a sudden; and, except a few friends and followers, the rest dropped off in course, &c.” (B. I. near the end.)11

The ease with which such a Man as the Duke was suddenly removed, Dean Swift has explained by the necessary advantages of Princes who possess the affection of their People, and the natural weakness of power which is not founded on virtue. However, these are very unsatisfactory explanations. The History of Europe, in former times, offers us a continued series of examples to the contrary. We see in it numberless instances of Princes incessantly engaged in resisting in the field the competition of Subjects invested with the eminent dignities of the Realm, who were not by any means superior to them in point of virtue,—or at other times, living in a continued state of vassalage under some powerful Man whom they durst not resist, and whose power, credit, and influence they would have found it far from possible to reduce in a moment, or crumble on a sudden, by the sending of a single letter, even though assisted by a little resolution, to use Dean Swift’s expressions, and without any dangerous consequences.

Nay, certain Kings, such as Henry the Third, of France, in regard to the Duke of Guise, and James the Second, of Scotland, in regard to the two Earls of Douglas successively, had at last recourse to plot and assassination; and expedients of a similar sudden violent kind, are the settled methods adopted by the Eastern Monarchs; nor is it very sure they can always easily do otherwise (a) .

Even in the present Monarchies of Europe, notwithstanding the awful force by which they are outwardly supported, a discarded Minister is the cause of more or less anxiety to the governing Authority; especially if, through the length of time he has been in office, he happens to have acquired a considerable degree of influence. He is generally sent and confined to one of his estates in the country, which the Crown names to him: he is not allowed to appear at Court, nor even in the Metropolis; much less is he suffered to appeal to the People in loud complaints, to make public speeches to the great Men in the State and intrigue among them, and in short to vent his resentment by those bitter, and sometimes desperate, methods, which, in the Constitution of this Country, prove in great measure harmless.

But a Dissolution of the Parliament, that is, the dismission of the whole body of the great Men in the Nation, assembled in a Legislative capacity, is a circumstance, in the English Government, in a much higher degree remarkable and deserving our notice, than the depriving any single individual, however powerful, from his public employments. When we consider in what easy and complete manner such a dissolution is effected in England, we must needs become convinced that the power of the Crown bears upon foundations of very uncommon, though perhaps hidden, strength; especially, if we attend to the several facts that take place in other Countries.

In France, for example, we find the Crown, notwithstanding the immense outward force by which it is surrounded, to use the utmost caution in its proceedings towards the Parliament of Paris: an Assembly only of a judiciary nature, without any Legislative authority or avowed claim, and which, in short, is very far from having the same weight in the kingdom of France, as the English Parliament has in England. The King never repairs to that Assembly, to signify his intentions, or hold a Lit de Justice, without the most over-awing circumstances of military apparatus and preparation, constantly choosing to make his appearance among them rather as a military General, than as a King.

And when the late King, having taken a serious alarm at the proceedings of this Parliament, at length resolved upon their dismission, he fenced himself, as it were, with his army; and military Messengers were sent with every circumstance of secrecy and dispatch, who, at an early part of the day and at the same hour, surprised each Member in his own house, causing them severally to depart for distant parts of the country which were prescribed to them, without allowing them time to consider, much less to meet, and hold any consultation together.12

But the Person who is invested with the kingly office, in England, has need of no other weapon, no other artillery, than the Civil Insignia of his dignity, to effect a dissolution of the Parliament. He steps into the middle of them, telling them they are dissolved; and they are dissolved:—he tells them, they are no longer a Parliament; and they are no longer so. Like Popilius’s wand (a) , a dissolution instantly puts a stop to their warmest debates and most vio-lent proceedings. The wonderful words by which it is expressed have no sooner met their ears, than all their legislative faculties are benumbed: though they may still be sitting on the same benches, they look no longer upon themselves as forming an Assembly; they no longer consider each other in the light of Associates or of Colleagues. As if some strange kind of weapon, or a sudden magical effort, had been exerted in the midst of them, all the bonds of their union are cut off; and they hasten away, without having so much as the thought of continuing for a single minute the duration of their Assembly (a) .

To all these observations concerning the peculiar solidity of the authority of the Crown, in England, I shall add another that is supplied by the whole series of the English History; which is, that, though bloody broils and disturbances have often taken place in England, and war often made against the King, yet, it has scarcely ever been done but by persons who positively and expressly laid claim to the Crown. Even while Cromwell contended with an armed force against Charles the First, it was, as every one knows who has read that part of the English history, in the King’s own name he waged war against him.

The same objection might be expressed in a more general manner and with strict truth, by saying, that no war has been waged, in England, against the governing authority, except upon national grounds; that is to say, either when the title to the Crown has been doubtful, or when general complaints, either of a political or religious kind, have arisen from every part of the Nation: as instances of such complaints may be mentioned those which gave rise to the war against King John, which ended in the passing of the Great Charter,—the civil wars in the reign of Charles the First,—and the Revolution of the year 1689. From the facts just mentioned it may also be observed as a conclusion, that the Crown cannot depend on the great security we have been describing any longer than it continues to fulfil its engagements to the Nation, and to respect those laws which form the compact between it and the People. And the imminent dangers, or at least the alarms and perplexities, in which the Kings of England have constantly involved themselves, whenever they have attempted to struggle against the general sense of the Nation, manifestly shew that all that has been above observed concerning the security and remarkable stability some how annexed to their Office, is to be understood, not of the capricious power of the Man, but of the lawful authority of the Head of the State (a) .

Second Part of the same Chapter.

There is certainly a very great degree of singularity in all the circumstances we have been describing here: those persons who are acquainted with the history of other Countries, cannot but remark with surprise, that stability of the power of the English Crown,—that mysterious solidity,—that inward binding strength with which it is able to carry on with certainty its legal operations, amidst the clamorous struggle and uproar with which it is commonly surrounded, and without the medium of any armed threatening force. To give a demonstration of the manner in which all these things are brought to bear and operated, is not, as I said before, my design to attempt here: the principles from which such demonstration is to be derived, suppose an enquiry into the nature of Man, and of human affairs, which rather belongs to Philosophy (though to a branch hitherto unexplored) than to Politics: at least such an enquiry certainly lies out of the sphere of the common Science of Politics (a) . However, I had a very material reason in introducing all the above mentioned facts concerning the peculiar stability of the governing authority in England, in that they lead to an observation of a most important political nature; which is, that this stability allows several essential branches of English liberty to take place which without it could not exist. For there is a very essential consideration to be made in every Science, though speculators are sometimes apt to lose sight of it, which is, that in order that things may have existence, they must be possible; in order that political regulations of any kind may obtain their effect, they must imply no direct contradiction, either open or hidden, to the nature of things, or to the other circumstances of the Government. In reasoning from this principle, we shall find that the stability of the Governing executive authority in England, and the weight it gives to the whole machine of the State, has actually enabled the English Nation, considered as a free Nation, to enjoy several advantages which would really have been totally unattainable in the other States we have mentioned in former Chapters, whatever degree of public virtue we might even suppose to have belonged to those who acted in those States as the Advisers of the People, or in general who were trusted with the business of framing the Laws (a) .

One of these advantages resulting from the Solidity of the Government, is, the extraordinary personal freedom which all ranks of individuals in England, enjoy at the expence of the governing authority.13 In the Roman Commonwealth, for instance, we see the Senate to have been vested with a number of powers totally destructive of the liberty of the Citizens; and the continuance of these powers was, no doubt, in a great measure owing to the treacherous remissness of those Men in whom the People trusted for repressing them, or even to their determined resolution not to abridge those prerogatives. Yet, if we attentively consider the constant situation of affairs in that Republic, we shall find that, though we might suppose those persons to have been ever so truly attached to the cause of the People, it would not really have been possible for them to procure to the People an entire security. The right enjoyed by the Senate, of suddenly naming a Dictator with a power unrestrained by any law, or of investing the Consuls with an authority of much the same kind, and the power it at times assumed of making formidable examples of arbitrary Justice, were resour-ces of which the Republic could not, perhaps, with safety have been totally deprived; and though these expedients frequently were used to destroy the just liberty of the People, yet they were also very often the means of preserving the Commonwealth.

Upon the same principle we should possibly find that the Ostracism, that arbitrary method of banishing Citizens, was a necessary resource in the Republic of Athens. A Venetian Noble would perhaps also confess, that however terrible the State Inquisition established in his Republic, may be even to the Nobles themselves, yet it would not be prudent entirely to abolish it. And we do not know but a Minister of State in France, though we might suppose him ever so virtuous and moderate a Man, would say the same with regard to the secret imprisonments, the lettres de cachet, and other arbitrary deviations from the settled course of law which often take place in that Kingdom, and in the other Monarchies of Europe. No doubt, if he was the Man we suppose, he would confess the expedients we mention have in numberless instances been villainously prostituted to gratify the wantonness and private revenge of Ministers, or of those who had any interest with them; but still perhaps he would continue to give it as his opinion, that the Crown, notwithstanding its apparently immense strength, cannot avoid recurring at times to expedients of this kind; much less could it publicly and absolutely renounce them for ever.

It is therefore a most advantageous circumstance in the English Government, that its security renders all such expedients unnecessary, and that the Representatives of the People have not only been constantly willing to promote the public liberty, but that the general situation of affairs has also enabled them to carry their precautions so far as they have done. And indeed, when we consider what prerogatives the Crown, in England, has sincerely renounced,—that in consequence of the independence conferred on the Judges and of the method of Trial by Jury, it is deprived of all means of influencing the settled course of the law both in civil and criminal matters,—that it has renounced all power of seizing the property of individuals, and even of restraining in any manner whatsoever, and for the shortest time, the liberty of their persons, we do not know what we ought most to admire, whether the public virtue of those who have deprived the supreme Executive Power of all those dangerous prerogatives, or the nature of that same Power, which has enabled it to give them up without ruin to itself—whether the happy frame of the English Government, which makes those in whom the People trust, continue so faith-ful in the discharge of their duty, or the solidity of that same Government, which really can afford to leave to the People so extensive a degree of freedom (a) .

Again, the Liberty of the press, that great advantage enjoyed by the English Nation, does not exist in any of the other Monarchies of Europe, however well established their power may at first seem to be; and it might even be demonstrated that it cannot exist in them.14 The most watchful eye, we see, is constantly kept in those Monarchies upon every kind of publication; and a jealous attention is paid even to the loose and idle speeches of individuals. Much unnecessary trouble (we may be apt at first to think) is taken upon this subject; but yet if we consider how uniform the conduct of all those Governments is, how constant and unremitted their cares in those respects, we shall become convinced, without looking farther, that there must be some sort of necessity for their precautions.

In Republican States, for reasons which are at bottom the same as in the before mentioned Governments, the People are also kept under the greatest restraints by those who are at the head of the State. In the Roman Commonwealth, for instance, the liberty of writing was curbed by the severest laws (a) : with regard to the freedom of speech, things were but little better, as we may conclude from several facts; and many instances may even be produced of the dread with which the private Citizens, upon certain occasions, communicated their political opinions to the Consuls, or to the Senate. In the Venetian Republic, the press is most strictly watched: nay, to forbear to speak in any manner whatsoever on the conduct of the Government, is the fundamental maxim which they inculcate on the minds of the People throughout their dominions (a) .

With respect therefore to this point, it may again be looked upon as a most advantageous circumstance in the English Government, that those who have been at the head of the People, have not only been constantly disposed to procure the public liberty, but also that they have found it possible for them to do so; and that the remarkable strength and steadiness of the Government has admitted of that extensive freedom of speaking and writing which the People of England enjoy. A most advantageous privilege, this; which affording to every Man a means of laying his complaints before the Public, procures him almost a certainty of redress against any act of oppression that he may have been exposed to: and which leaving, moreover, to every Subject a right to give his opinion on all public matters, and by thus influencing the sentiments of the Nation, to influence those of the Legislature itself (which is sooner or later obliged to pay a deference to them), procures to him a sort of Legislative authority of a much more efficacious and bene-ficial nature than any formal right he might enjoy of voting by a mere yea or nay, upon general propositions suddenly offered to him, and which he could have neither a share in framing, nor any opportunity of objecting to, and modifying.

A privilege which, by raising in the People a continual sense of their security, and affording them undoubted proofs that the Government, whatever may be its form, is ultimately destined to insure the happiness of those who live under it, is both one of the greatest advantages of Freedom, and its surest characteristic. The kind of security as to their persons and possessions which Subjects who are totally deprived of that privilege, enjoy at particular times, under other Governments, perhaps may intitle them to look upon themselves as the well administered property of Masters who rightly understand their own interests; but it is the right of canvassing without fear the conduct of those who are placed at their head, which constitutes a free Nation (a) .

The unbounded freedom of debate possessed by the English Parliament, is also a consequence of the peculiar stability of the Government. All Sovereigns have agreed in their jealousy of Assemblies of this kind, in their dread of the privileges of Assemblies who attract in so high a degree the attention of the rest of the People, who in a course of time become connected by so many essential ties with the bulk of the Nation, and acquire so much real influence by the essential share they must needs have in the management of public affairs, and by the eminent services, in short, which they are able to perform to the Community (b) . Hence it has happened that Monarchs, or single Rulers, in all Countries, have endeavoured to dispense with the assistance of Assemblies like those we mention, notwithstanding the capital advantages they might have derived from their services towards the good government of the State; or if the circumstances of the times have rendered it expedient for them to call such Assemblies together, they have used the utmost endeavours in abridging those privileges and legislative claims which they soon found to prove so hostile to their security: in short, they have ever found it impracticable to place any unreserved trust in public Meetings of this kind.15

We may here name Cromwell, as he was supported by a numerous army, and possessed more power than any foreign Monarch who has not been secured by an armed force. Even after he had purged, by the agency of Colonel Pride and two regiments, the Parliament that was sitting when his power became settled, thereby thrusting out all his opponents to the amount of about two hundred, he soon found his whole authority endangered by their proceedings, and was at last under a necessity of turning them out in the military manner with which every one is acquainted. Finding still a Meeting of this kind highly expedient to legalize his military authority, he called together that Assembly which was called Barebone’s Parliament. He had himself chosen the Members of this Parliament to the number of about an hundred and twenty, and they had severally received their summons from him; yet, notwithstanding this circumstance, and the total want of personal weight in most of the Members, he began in a very few months, and in the midst of his powerful victorious army, to feel a serious alarm at their proceedings; he soon heard them talk of their own divine commission, and of the authority they had received from the Lord; and in short, finding he could not trust them, he employed the offices of a second Colonel, to effect their dismission. Being now dignified with the legal appellation of Protector, he ventured to call a Parliament elected by considerable parts of the people; but though the existence of this Parliament was grounded, we might say grafted, upon his own; and though bands of Soldiers were even posted in the avenues to keep out all such Members as refused to take certain personal engagements to him, he made such haste in the issue, to rid himself of their presence, as to contrive a mean quibble or device to shorten the time of their sitting by ten or twelve days (a) . To a fourth As-sembly he again applied; but, though the elections had been so managed as to procure him a formal tender of the Crown during the first sitting, he put a final end to the second with resentment and precipitation (a) .

The example of the Roman Emperors, whose power was outwardly so prodigious, may also be introduced here. They used to shew the utmost jealousy in their conduct with respect to the Roman Senate; and that Assembly which the prepossession of the People, who looked upon it as the ancient remains of the Republic, had made it expedient to continue, were not suffered to assemble but under the drawn scymitars of the Pretorian guards.

Even the Kings of France, though their authority is so unquestioned, so universally respected, as well as strongly supported, have felt frequent anxiety from the claims and proceedings of the Parliament of Paris; an Assembly of so much less weight than the English Parliament. The alarm has been mentioned which the late King at last expressed concerning their measures, as well as the expedient to which he resorted, to free himself from their presence. And when the present King thought proper to call again this Parliament together, a measure highly prudent in the beginning of his reign, every jealous precaution was at the same time taken to abridge those privileges of deliberating and remonstrating upon which any distant claim to, or struggle for, a share in the Supreme authority might be grounded.16

It may be objected that the pride of Kings, or single Rulers, makes them averse to the existence of Assemblies like those we mention, and despise the capital services which they might derive from them for the good government of their Kingdoms. I grant it may in some measure be so. But if we examine into the general situation of affairs in different States, and into the examples with which their History supplies us, we shall also find that the pride of those Kings agrees in the main with the interest and quiet of their Subjects, and that their preventing the Assemblies we speak of from meeting, or, when met, from assuming too large a share in the management of public affairs, is in a great measure, matter of necessity.

We may therefore reckon it as a very great advantage, that, in England, no such necessity exists. Such is the frame of the Government, that the Supreme executive authority can, both give leave to assemble, and shew the most unreserved trust, when assembled, to those two Houses which concur together to form the Legislature.

These two Houses, we see, enjoy the most complete freedom in their debates, whether the subject be grievances, or regulations concerning government matters of any kind: no restriction whatever is laid upon them; they may start any subject they please. The Crown is not to take any notice of their deliberations: its wishes, or even its name, are not to be introduced in the debates. And in short, what makes the freedom of deliberating, exercised by the two Houses, really to be unlimited, unbounded, is the privilege, or sovereignty we may say, enjoyed by each within its own walls, in consequence of which nothing done or said in Parliament, is to be questioned in any place out of Parliament. Nor will it be pretended by those persons who are acquainted with the English History, that those privileges of Parliament we mention are nominal privileges, only privileges upon paper, which the Crown has disregarded whenever it has thought proper, and to the violations of which the Parliament have used very tamely to submit. That these remarkable advantages,—that this total freedom from any compulsion or even fear, and in short this unlimited liberty of debate, so strictly claimed by the Parliament, and so scrupulously allowed by the Crown, should be exercised year after year during a long course of time, without producing the least relaxation in the execution of the laws, the smallest degree of anarchy, are certainly very singular political phenomena.

It may be said that the remarkable Solidity of the governing Executive authority, in England, operates to the advantage of the People with respect to the objects we mention, in a twofold manner. In the first place, it takes from the great Men in the Nation all serious ambition to invade this authority, thereby preventing those anarchical and more or less bloody struggles to result from their debates, which have so constantly disturbed other Countries. In the second place, it inspires those Great Men with that salutary jealousy of the same authority which leads them to frame such effectual provi-sions for laying it under proper restraints. On which I shall observe, by way of a short digression, that this distinguished stability of the executive authority of the English Crown, affords an explanation for the peculiar manner in which public commotions have constantly been terminated in England, compared with the manner in which the same events have been concluded in other Kingdoms. When I mentioned, in a former Chapter,17 this peculiarity in the English Government, I mean the accuracy, impartiality, and universality, of the provisions by which peace, after internal disturbances, has been restored to the Nation, I confined my comparisons to instances drawn from Republican Governments, purposely postponing to say any thing of Governments of a Monarchical form, till I had introduced the very essential observation contained in this Chapter, which is, that the power of Crowns, in other Monarchies, has not been able, by itself, to produce the same effects it has in England, that is, has not been able to inspire the Great Men in the State with any thing like that salutary jealousy we mention, nor of course to induce them to unite in a real common cause with the rest of the People. In other Monar-chies (a) , those Men who, during the continuation of the public disturbances, were at the head of the People, finding it in their power, in the issue, to parcel out, more or less, the Supreme governing authority, (or even the State itself) and to transfer the same to themselves, constantly did so, in the same manner, and from the very same reasons, as it constantly happened in the ancient Commonwealths; those Monarchical Governments being in reality, so far as that, of a Republican nature: and the governing authority was left, at the conclusion, in the same undefined extent it had before (a) . But in England, the great Men in the Nation finding themselves in a situation essentially different, lost no time in pursuits like those in which the great Men of other Countries used to indulge themselves on the occasion we mention. Every Member of the Legislature plainly perceived, from the general aspect of affairs and his feelings, that the Supreme executive authority in the State must in the issue fall some where undivided, and continue so; and being moreover sensible, that neither personal advantages of any kind, nor the power of any faction, but the law alone, could afterwards be an effectual restraint upon its motions, they had no thought or aim left, except the framing with care those laws on which their own liberty was to continue to depend, and to restrain a power which they, somehow, judged it so impracticable to transfer to themselves or their party, or to render themselves independent of. These observations I thought necessary to be added to those in the xv. Chapter, to which I now refer the Reader.

Nor has the great freedom of canvassing political subjects we have described, been limited to the Members of the Legislature, or confined to the walls of Westminster, that is, to that exclusive spot on which the two Houses meet: the like privilege is allowed to the other orders of the People; and a full scope is given to that spirit of party, and a complete security insured to those numerous and irregular meetings, which, especially when directed to matters of government, create so much uneasiness in the Sovereigns of other Countries. Individuals even may, in such meetings, take an active part for procuring the success of those public steps which they wish to see pursued: they may frame petitions to be delivered to the Crown, or to both Houses, either to procure the repeal of measures already entered upon by Government, or to prevent the passing of such as are under consideration, or to obtain the enacting of new regulations of any kind: they may severally subscribe their names to such petitions: the law sets no restriction on their numbers; nor has it, we may say, taken any precaution to prevent even the abuse that might be made of such freedom.

That mighty political engine, the press, is also at their service: they may avail themselves of it to advertise the time and place, as well as the intent, of the meetings, and moreover to set off and inculcate the advantages of those notions which the wish is to see adopted.

Such meetings may be repeated; and every individual may deliver what opinion he pleases on the proposed subjects, though ever so directly opposite to the views or avowed designs of the Government. The Member of the Legislature may, if he chooses, have admittance among them, and again enforce those topics which have not obtained the success he expected, in that House to which he belongs. The disappointed Statesman, the Minister turned out, also find the door open to them: they may bring in the whole weight of their influence and of their connections: they may exert every nerve to enlist the Assembly in the number of their supporters: they are bid to do their worst: they fly through the Country from one place of meeting to another: the clamour increases: the Constitution, one may think, is going to be shaken to its very foundations:—but these mighty struggles, by some means or other, always find a proportionate degree of re-action: new difficulties, and at last insuperable impediments, grow up in the way of those who would take advantage of the general ferment to raise themselves on the wreck of the governing Authority: a secret force exerts itself, which gradually brings things back to a state of moderation and calm; and that sea so stormy, to appearance so deeply agitated, constantly stops at certain limits which it seems as if it wanted the power to pass.

The impartiality with which justice is dealt to all orders of Men in England, is also in great measure owing to the peculiar stability of the Government: the very remarkable, high degree, to which this impartiality is carried, is one of those things which, being impossible in other Countries, are possible under the Government of this Country. In the ancient Commonwealths, from the instances that have been introduced in a former place, and from others that might be quoted, it is evident that no redress was to be obtained for the acts of injustice or oppression committed by the Men possessed of influence or wealth upon the inferior Citizens. In the Monarchies of Europe, in former times, abuses of a like kind prevailed to a most enormous degree. In our days, notwithstanding the great degrees of strength acquired by the different Governments, it is matter of the utmost difficulty for subjects of the inferior classes to obtain the remedies of the law against certain individuals: in some Countries it is impossible, let the abuse be ever so flagrant; an open attempt to pursue such remedies being moreover attended with danger. Even in those Monarchies of Europe in which the Government is supported both by real strength, and by civil Institutions of a very advantageous nature, great differences prevail between individuals in regard to the facility of obtaining the remedies of the law; and to seek for redress is at best in many cases, so arduous and precarious an attempt as to take from injured individuals all thoughts of encountering the difficulty. Nor are these abuses we mention, in the former or present Governments of Europe, to be attributed only to the want of resolution in the Heads of these Governments. In some Countries, the Sovereign by an open design to suppress these abuses, would have endangered at once his whole authority; and in others, he would find obstructions multiply so in his way as to compel him, and perhaps soon enough too, to drop the undertaking.—How can a Monarch make, alone, a persevering stand against the avowed expectations of all the great Men by whom he is surrounded, and against the loud claims of powerful classes of individuals? In a Commonwealth, what is a Senate to do when they find that their refusing to protect a powerful Offender of their own class, or to indulge some great Citizen with the impunity of his friends, is likely to be productive of serious divisions among themselves, or perhaps of disturbances among the People?

If we cast our eyes on the strict and universal impartiality with which justice is administered in England, we shall soon become convinced that some inward essential difference exists between the English Government, and those of other Countries, and that its power is founded on causes of a distinct nature. Individuals of the most exalted rank do not entertain so much as the thought to raise the smallest direct opposition to the operation of the law. The complaint of the meanest Subject, if preferred and supported in the usual way, immediately meets with a serious regard. The Oppressor of the most extensive influence, though in the midst of a train of retainers, nay, though in the fullest flight of his career and pride, and surrounded by thousands of applauders and partisans, is stopped short at the sight of the legal paper which is delivered into his hands, and a Tipstaff is sufficient to bring him away, and produce him before the Bench.

Such is the greatness and uninterrupted prevalence of the law (a) , such is in short the continuity of omnipotence, of resistless superiority, it exhibits, that the extent of its effects at length ceases to be a subject of observation to the Public.

Nor are great or wealthy Men to seek for redress or satisfaction of any kind, by any other means than such as are open to all: even the Sovereign has bound himself to resort to no other: and experience has shewn that he may without danger, trust the protection of his per-son, and of the places of his residence, to the slow and litigious assistance of the law (b) .

Another very great advantage attending this remarkable stability of the English Government we are describing, is, that the same is operated without the assistance of an armed standing force: the constant expedient this, of all other Governments. On this occasion I shall introduce a passage of Doctor Adam Smith (c) , in a Work published since the present Chapter was first written, in which passage an opinion certainly erroneous is contained: the mistakes of persons of his very great abilities deserve attention. This Gentleman, struck with the necessity of a sufficient power of re-action, of a sufficient strength, on the side of Government, to resist the agitations attending on liberty, has looked round, and judged the English Government derived the singular stability it manifests from the standing force it has at its disposal: the following are his expressions. “To a Sovereign who feels himself supported, not only by the natural Aristocracy of the Country, but by a well regulated standing army, the rudest, the most groundless, and the most licentious remonstrances can give little disturbance. He can safely pardon or neglect them, and his consciousness of his superiority naturally disposes him to do so. That degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness, can be tolerated only in Countries where the Sovereign is secured by a well regulated standing army”(a) .

The above positions are grounded on the notion that an army places in the hand of the Sovereign an united irresistible strength, a strength liable to no accident, difficulties, or exceptions; a supposition this, which is not conformable to experience. If a Sovereign was endued with a kind of extraordinary power attending on his person, at once to lay under water whole legions of insurgents, or to repulse and sweep them away by slashes and shocks of the electrical fluid, then indeed he might use the great forbearance above described:—though it is not perhaps very likely he would put up with the rude and groundless remonstrances of his subjects, and with their licentious freedom, yet, he might, with safety, do or not do so, at his own choice. But an army is not that simple weapon which is here supposed. It is formed of Officers and Soldiers who feel the same passions with the rest of the People, the same disposition to promote their own interest and importance, when they find out their strength, and proper opportunities offer. What will therefore be the resource of the Sovereign, if, into that army on the assistance of which he relies, the same party spirit creeps by which his other Subjects are actuated? whereto will he take his refuge, if the same political caprices, abetted by the serious ambition of a few leading Men, the same restlessness, and at last perhaps the same disaffection, begin to pervade the smaller kingdom of the army, by which the main Kingdom or Nation are agitated?

The prevention of dangers like those just mentioned, constitutes the most essential part of the precautions and state craft of Rulers, in those Governments which are secured by standing armed forces. Mixing the troops formed of natives with foreign auxiliaries, dispersing them in numerous bodies over the country, and continually shifting their quarters, are among the methods that are used; which it does not belong to our subject to enumerate, any more than the extraordinary expedients employed by the Eastern Monarchs for the same purposes. But one caution very essential to be mentioned here, and which the Governments we allude to, never fail to take before every other, is to retrench from their unarmed Subjects, a freedom which, transmitted to the Soldiery, would be attended with so fatal consequences: hindering so bad examples from being communicated to those in whose hands their power and life are trusted, is what every notion of self-preservation suggests to them: every weapon is accordingly exerted to suppress the rising and spreading of so awful a contagion.

In general, it may be laid down as a maxim, that, where the Sovereign looks to his army for the security of his person and authority, the same military laws by which this army is kept together, must be extended over the whole Nation: not in regard to military duties and exercises; but certainly in regard to all that relates to the respect due to the Sovereign and to his orders. The martial law, concerning these tender points, must be universal. The jealous regulations concerning mutiny and contempt of orders, cannot be severely enforced on that part of the Nation which secures the subjection of the rest, and enforced too through the whole scale of military subordination, from the Soldier to the Officer, up to the very Head of the military System,—while the more numerous and inferior part of the People are left to enjoy an unrestrained freedom:—that secret disposition which prompts Mankind to resist and counteract their Superiors, cannot be surrounded by such formidable checks on the one side, and be left to be indulged to a degree of licentiousness and wantonness, on the other.

In a Country where an army is kept, capable of commanding the obedience of the Nation, this army will, both imitate for themselves the licentiousness above mentioned, and check it in the People. Every Officer and Soldier, in such a Country, claim a superiority in regard to other individuals; and in proportion as their assistance is relied upon by the Government, expect a greater or less degree of submission from the rest of the People (a) .

The same Author concludes his above quoted observations concerning the security of the power of an armed Sovereign, by immediately adding: “It is in such Countries only that it is unnecessary that the Sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary power for suppressing even the wantonness of this licentious liberty.”18 The idea here expressed coinciding with those already discussed, I shall say nothing farther on the subject. My reason for introducing the above expressions, has been, that they lead me to take notice of a remarkable circumstance in the English Government. From the expressions, it is unnecessary the Sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary power, the Author appears to think that a Sovereign at the head of an army, and whose power is secured by this army, uses to wait to set himself in motion, till he has received leave for that purpose, that is, till he has been trusted with a power for so doing. This notion in the Author we quote, is borrowed from the steady and thoroughly legal Government of this Country; but the like law doctrine, or principle, obtains under no other Government. In all Monarchies, (and it is the same in Republics) the Executive power in the State is supposed to possess, originally and by itself, all manner of lawful authority: every one of its exertions is deemed to be legal; and they do not cease to be so, till they are stopped by some express and positive regulation. The Sovereign, and also the civil Magistrate, till so stopped by some positive law, may come upon the Subject when they choose; they may question any of his actions; they may construe them into unlawful acts; and inflict a penalty, as they please: in these respects they may be thought to abuse, but not to exceed, their power. The authority of the Government, in short, is supposed to be unlimited so far as there are no visible boundaries set up against it: behind and within these boundaries, lies whatever degree of liberty the Subject may possess.

In England, the very reverse obtains. It is not the authority of the Government, it is the liberty of the Subject, which is supposed to be unbounded. All the Individual’s actions are supposed to be lawful, till that law is pointed out which makes them to be otherwise. The onus probandi19 is here transferred from the Subject to the Prince. The Subject is not at any time to shew the grounds of his conduct. When the Sovereign or Magistrate think proper to exert themselves, it is their business to find out and produce the law in their own favour, and the prohibition against the Subject (a) .

This kind of law principle, owing to the general spirit by which all parts of the Government are influenced, is even carried so far, that any quibble, or trifling circumstance, by which an Offender may be enabled to step aside and escape, though ever so narrowly, the reach of the law, are sufficient to screen him from punishment, let the immorality or intrinsic guilt of his conduct be ever so openly admitted (a) .

Such a narrow circumscription of the exertions of the Government, is very extraordinary: it does not exist in any Country but this; nor could it. The situation of other Governments is such that they cannot thus allow themselves to be shut out of the unbounded space unoccupied by any law, in order to have their motions confined to that spot which express and previously declared provisions have chalked out. The power of these Governments being constantly attended with more or less precariousness, there must be a degree of discretion answerable to it (a) .

The foundation of that law principle, or doctrine, which confines the exertion of the power of the Government to such cases only as are expressed by a law in being, was laid when the great Charter was passed: this restriction was implied in one of those general impartial articles which the Barons united with the People to obtain from the Sovereign. The Crown, at that time, derived from its foreign dominions, that stability and inward strength in regard to the English Nation, which is now in a secret hidden manner annexed to the Civil branch of its Office, and which, though operating by different means, continues to maintain that kind of confederacy against it, and union between the different Orders of the People. By the article in Magna Charta here alluded to, the Sovereign bound itself neither to go, nor send, upon the Subject, otherwise than by the Trial of Peers, and the Law of the land (b) . This Article was however afterwards disregarded in practice, in consequence of the lawful efficiency which the King claimed for his Proclamations, and especially by the institution of the Court of Star Chamber, which grounded its proceedings not only upon these Proclamations, but also upon the particular rules it chose to frame within itself. By the abolition of this Court (and also of the Court of High Commission) in the reign of Charles the First, the above provision of the Great Charter was put in actual force; and it has appeared by the event, that the very extraordinary restriction upon the governing authority we are alluding to, and its execution, are no more than what the intrinsic situation of things, and the strength of the Constitution, can bear (a) .

The law doctrine we have above described, and its being strictly regarded by the High governing authority, I take to be the most characteristic circumstance in the English Government, and the most pointed proof that can be given of the true freedom which is the consequence of its frame. The practice of the Executive authority thus to square its motions upon such laws, and such only, as are ascertained and declared beforehand, cannot be the result of that kind of stability which the Crown might derive from being supported by an armed force, or as the above mentioned Author has expressed it, from the Sovereign being the General of an army: such a rule of acting is even contradictory to the office of a General: the operations of a General eminently depend for their success, on their being sudden, unforeseen, attended by surprize.

In general, that stability of the power of the English Crown we have described, cannot be the result of that kind of strength which arises from an armed force: the kind of strength which is conferred by such a weapon as an army, is too uncertain, too complicate, too liable to accidents; in a word, it falls infinitely short of that degree of steadiness which is necessary to counterbalance, and at last quiet, those extensive agitations in the People which sometimes seem to threaten the destruction of order and Government. An army, if its support be well directed, may be useful to prevent this restlessness in the People from beginning to exist; but it cannot keep it within bounds, when it has once taken place.

If from general arguments and considerations, we pass to particular facts, we shall actually find that the Crown, in England, does not rely for its support, nor ever has relied, upon the army of which it has the command. From the earliest times, that is, long before the invention of standing armies among European Princes, the Kings of England possessed an authority certainly as full and extensive as that which they do now enjoy. After the weight they derived from their possessions beyond sea had been lost, a certain arrangement of things began to be formed at home which supplied them with a strength of another kind, though not less solid: and they began to derive from the Civil branch of their regal Office that secure power which no other Monarchs had ever possessed, except through the assistance of Legions and Praetorian guards, or of armies of Janissaries, or of Strelitzes.20

The Princes of the House of Tudor, to speak of a very remarkable period in the English History,21 though they had no other visible present force than inconsiderable retinues of servants, were able to exert a power equal to that of the most absolute Monarchs who ever did reign, equal to that of the Domitians or Commoduses, or of the Amuraths or Bajazets: nay, it even was superior, if we consider the slow steadiness and outward show of legality with which it was attended throughout.22

The stand which the Kings of the House of Stuart were able to make, though unarmed, and only supported by the civil authority of their Office, during a long course of years, against the restless spirit which began to actuate the Nation, and the vehement political and religious notions that broke out in their time, is still more remarkable than even the exorbibitant power of the Princes of the House of Tudor, during whose reign prepossessions of quite a contrary nature were universal.

The struggle opened with the reign of James the First: yet, he peaceably weathered the beginning storm, and transmitted his authority undiminished to his Son. Charles the First was indeed at last crushed under the ruins of the Constitution; but if we consider that, after making the important national concessions contained in the Petition of right, he was able, single and unarmed, to maintain his ground without loss or real danger during a space of eleven years, that is, till the year 1640 and those that followed, we shall be inclined to think that, had he been better advised, he might have avoided the misfortunes that befell him at length.

Even the events of the reign of James the Second afford a proof of that solidity which is annexed to the authority of the English Crown. Notwithstanding the whole Nation, not excepting the army, were in a manner unanimous against him, he was able to reign full four years, standing single against all, without meeting with any open resistance. Nor was such justifiable and necessary resistance easily brought about at length (a) . Though it is not to be doubted that the dethroning of James the Second would have been effected in the issue, and perhaps in a very tragical manner, yet, if it had not been for the assistance of the Prince of Orange, the event would certainly have been postponed till a few years later. That authority on which James relied with so much con-fidence, was not annihilated at the time it was, otherwise than by a ready and considerable armed force being brought against it from the other side of the Sea, like a solid Fortress, which, though without any visible out-works, requires, in order to be compelled to surrender, to be battered with cannon.

If we look into the manner in which this Country has been governed since the Revolution, we shall evidently see that it has not been by means of the army the Crown has under its command, that it has been able to preserve and exert its authority. It is not by means of their Soldiers that the Kings of Great Britain prevent the manner in which elections are carried on, from being hurtful to them; for, these Soldiers must move from the places of election one day before such elections are begun, and not return till one day after they are finished. It is not by means of their military force that they prevent the several kinds of civil Magistracies in the Kingdom from invading and lessening their prerogative; for this military force is not to act till called for by these latter, and under their direction. It is not by means of their army that they lead the two Branches of the Legislature into that respect of their regal authority we have before described; since each of these two Branches, severally, is possessed with an annual power of disbanding this army (a) .

There is another circumstance, which abstractedly of all others, makes it evident that the executive authority of the Crown is not supported by the army: I mean the very singular subjection in which the military is kept in regard to the civil power in this Country.

In a Country where the governing authority in the State is supported by the army, the military profession, who, in regard to the other professions, have on their side the advantage of present force, being now moreover countenanced by the law, immediately acquire, or rather assume, a general ascendency; and the Sovereign, far from wishing to discourage their claims, feels an inward happiness in seeing that instrument on which he rests his authority, additionally strengthened by the respect of the People, and receiving a kind of legal sanction from the general outward consent.

And not only the military profession at large, but the individuals belonging to it, also claim personally a pre-eminence: chief Commanders, Officers, Soldiers or Janissaries, all claim in their own spheres, some sort of exclusive privilege: and these privileges, whether of an honorific, or of a more substantial kind, are violently asserted, and rendered grievous to the rest of the Community, in proportion as the assistance of the military force is more evidently necessary to, and more frequently employed by, the Government. These things cannot be otherwise.

Now, if we look into the facts that take place in England, we shall find that a quite different order prevails from what is above described. All Courts of a military kind are under a constant subordination to the ordinary Courts of Law. Officers who have abused their private power, though only in regard to their own Soldiers, may be called to account before a Court of Common Law, and compelled to make proper satisfaction. Even any flagrant abuse of authority committed by Members of Courts Martial, when sitting to judge their own people, and determine upon cases of a bare mi-litary kind, makes them liable to the animadversion of the civil Judge (a) .

To the above facts concerning the pre-eminence of the Civil over the Military Power at large, it is needless to add that all offences com-mitted by persons of the military profession, in regard to individuals belonging to the other classes of the People, are to be determined upon by the Civil Judge. Any use they may make of their force, unless expressly applied to, and directed by, the Civil Magistrate, let the occasion be what it may, makes them liable to be convicted of murder for any life that may have been lost. Pleading the duties or customs of their profession in extenuation of any offence, is a plea which the Judge will not so much as understand. Whenever claimed by the Civil power, they must be delivered up immediately. Nor can it, in general, be said, that the countenance shewn to the military profession by the Ruling power in the State, has constantly been such as to inspire the bulk of the People with a disposition tamely to bear their acts of oppression, or to raise in Magistrates and Juries any degree of pre-possession sufficient to lead them always to determine with partiality in their favour (a) .

The subjection of the Military to the Civil power, carried to that extent it is in England, is another characteristic and distinctive circumstance in the English Government.

It is sufficiently evident that a King does not look to his army for his support, who takes so little pains to bribe and unite it to his interest.

In general, if we consider all the different circumstances in the English Government, we shall find that the army cannot possibly procure to the Sovereign any permanent strength, any strength upon which he can rely, and from it expect the success of any future and distant measures.

The public notoriety of the Debates in Parliament, induces all individuals, Soldiers as well as others, to pay some attention to political subjects; and the liberty of speaking, printing, and intriguing, being extended to every order of the Nation by whom they are surrounded, makes them liable to imbibe every notion that may be directly contrary to the views of that Power which keeps them.

The case would be still worse if the Sovereign was engaged in a contest with a very numerous part of the Nation. The general concern would increase in proportion to the vehemence of the Parliamentary Debates: Individuals, in all the different classes of the Public, would try their eloquence on the same subjects; and this eloquence would be in great measure exerted, during such interesting times, in making converts of the Soldiery: these evils the Sovereign could not obviate, nor even know, till it should be in every respect too late. A Prince engaged in the contest we suppose, would scarcely have completed his first preparations,—his project would scarcely be half ripe for execution, before his army would be taken from him. And the more powerful this army might be, the more adequate, seemingly, from its numbers, to the task it is intended for, the more open it would be to the danger we mention.

Of this, James the Second made a very remarkable experiment. He had augmented his army to the number of thirty thousand. But when the day finally came in which their support was to have been useful to him, some deserted to the enemy; others threw their arms; and those who continued to stand together, shewed more inclination to be spectators of, than agents in, the contest. In short, he gave all over for lost, without making any manner of trial of their assistance (a) .

From all the facts before introduced, it is evident that the power of the Crown, in England, bears upon foundations that are quite peculiar to it, and that its security and strength are obtained by means totally different from those by which the same advantages are so incompletely procured, and so deeply paid for, in other Countries.

It is without the assistance of an armed force that the Crown, in England, is able to manifest that fearlessness of particular individuals, or whole classes of them, with which it discharges its legal functions and duties. It is without the assistance of an armed force, it is able to counterbalance the extensive and unrestrained freedom of the People, it is able to exert that resisting strength which constantly keeps increasing in a superior proportion to the force by which it is opposed, that ballasting power by which, in the midst of boisterous winds and gales, it recovers and rights again the Vessel of the State (a) .

It is from the Civil branch of its Office, the Crown derives that strength by which it subdues even the Military power, and keeps it in a state of subjection to the Laws unexampled in any other Country. It is from an happy arrangement of things, it derives that uninterrupted steadiness, that invisible solidity, which procures to the Subject both so certain a protection, and so extensive a freedom. It is from the Nation, it receives the force with which it governs the Nation. Its resources are, accord, and not compulsion,—free action, and not fear,—and it continues to reign through the play, the struggle, of the voluntary passions of those who pay obedience to it (b) .

CHAPTER XVIII

How far the examples of Nations who have lost their liberty, are applicable to England.

Every Government, those Writers observe who have treated these subjects, containing within itself the efficient cause of its ruin, a cause which is essentially connected with those very circumstances that had produced its prosperity, the advantages attending the English Government cannot therefore, according to these Writers, exempt it from that hidden defect which is secretly working its ruin; and M. de Montesquieu, giving his opinion both on the effect and the cause, says, “the English Constitution will lose its liberty, will perish: Have not Rome, Lacedaemon, and Carthage, perished? It will perish when the Legislative power shall have become more corrupt than the Executive.”1

Though I do by no means pretend that any human establishment can escape the fate to which we see every thing in Nature is subject, nor am so far prejudiced by the sense I entertain of the great advantages of the English Government, as to reckon among them that of eternity, I will however observe in general, that, as it differs by its structure and resources from all those with which History makes us acquainted, so it cannot be said to be liable to the same dangers. To judge of the one from the other, is to judge by analogy where no analogy is to be found; and my respect for the author I have quoted will not hinder me from saying, that his opinion has not the same weight with me on this occasion, that it has on many others.

Having neglected, as indeed all systematic Writers upon Politics have done, very attentively to enquire into the real foundations of Power, and of Government, among Mankind, the principles he lays down are not always so clear, or even so just, as we might have expected from a Man of so true a genius. When he speaks of England, for instance, his observations are much too general: and though he had frequent opportunities of conversing with Men who had been personally concerned in the public affairs of this Country, and he had been himself an eye-witness of the operations of the English Government, yet, when he attempts to describe it, he rather tells us what he conjectured than what he saw.

The examples he quotes, and the causes of dissolution which he assigns, particularly confirm this observation. The Government of Rome, to speak of the one which, having gradually, and as it were of itself, fallen to ruin, may afford matter for exact reasoning, had no relation to that of England. The Roman People were not, in the latter ages of the Commonwealth, a People of Citizens, but of Conquerors. Rome was not a State, but the head of a State. By the immensity of its conquests, it came in time to be in a manner only an accessory part of its own Empire. Its power became so great, that, after having conferred it, it was at length no longer able to resume it: and from that moment it became itself subjected to it, from the same reason that the Provinces themselves were so.

The fall of Rome, therefore, was an event peculiar to its situation; and the change of manners which accelerated this fall, had also an effect which it could not have had but in that same situation. Men who had drawn to themselves all the riches of the World, could no longer content themselves with the supper of Fabricius, and the cottage of Cincinnatus.2 The People, who were masters of all the corn of Sicily and Africa, were no longer obliged to plunder their neighbours for their’s. All possible Enemies, besides, being exterminated, Rome, whose power was military, became to be no longer an army; and that was the aera of her corruption: if, indeed, we ought to give that name to what was the inevitable consequence of the nature of things.

In a word, Rome was destined to lose her Liberty when she lost her Empire; and she was destined to lose her Empire, whenever she should begin to enjoy it.

But England forms a Society founded upon principles absolutely different. All liberty, and power, are not accumulated as it were on one point, so as to leave, every where else, only slavery and misery, consequently only seeds of division and secret animosity. From the one end of the Island to the other the same laws take place, and the same interests prevail: the whole Nation, besides, equally concurs in the formation of the Government: no part, therefore, has cause to fear that the other parts will suddenly supply the necessary forces to destroy its liberty; and the whole have, of course, no occasion for those ferocious kinds of virtue which are indispensably necessary to those who, from the situation in which they have brought themselves, are continually exposed to such dangers, and after having invaded every thing, must abstain from every thing.

The situation of the People of England, therefore, essentially differs from that of the People of Rome. The form of the English Government does not differ less from that of the Roman Republic; and the great advantages it has over the latter for preserving the liberty of the People from ruin, have been described at length in the course of this Work.

Thus, for instance, the total ruin of the Roman Republic was principally brought about by the exorbitant power to which several of its Citizens were successively enabled to rise. In the latter age of the Commonwealth, those Citizens went so far as to divide among themselves the dominions of the Republic, in much the same manner as they might have done lands of their own. And to them, others in a short time succeeded, who not only did the same, but who even proceeded to that degree of tyrannical insolence, as to make cessions to each other, by express and formal compacts, of the lives of thousands of their Fellow-citizens. But the great and constant authority and weight of the Crown, in England, prevent, in their very beginning, as we have seen, all misfortunes of this kind; and the reader may recollect what has been said before on that subject.

At last the ruin of the Republic, as every one knows, was completed. One of those powerful Citizens we mention, in process of time found means to exterminate all his competitors: he immediately assumed to himself the whole power of the State; and established for ever after an arbitrary Monarchy.3 But such a sudden and violent establishment of a Monarchical power, with all the fatal consequences that would result from such an event, are calamities which cannot take place in England: that same kind of power we see, is already in being; it is ascertained by fixed laws, and established upon regular and well-known foundations.

Nor is there any great danger that that power may, by means of those legal prero-gatives it already possesses, suddenly assume others, and at last openly make itself absolute. The important privilege of granting to the Crown its necessary supplies, we have before observed, is vested in the Nation: and how extensive soever the prerogatives of a King of England may be, it constantly lies in the power of his People either to grant, or deny him, the means of exercising them.

This right possessed by the People of England, constitutes the great difference between them, and all the other Nations that live under Monarchical Governments. It likewise gives them a great advantage over such as are formed into Republican States, and confers on them a means of influencing the conduct of the Government, not only more effectual, but also (which is more in point to the subject of this Chapter) incomparably more lasting and secure than those reserved to the People, in the States we mention.

In those States, the political rights which usually fall to the share of the People, are those of voting in general Assemblies, either when laws are to be enacted, or Magistrates to be elected. But as the advantages arising from these general rights of giving votes, are never very clearly ascertained by the generality of the People, so neither are the consequences attending particular forms or modes of giving these votes, generally and completely understood. They accordingly never entertain any strong and constant preference for one method rather than another; and it hence always proves but too easy a thing in Republican States, either by insidious proposals made at particular times to the People, or by well-contrived precedents, or other means, first to reduce their political privileges to mere ceremonies and forms, and at last, entirely to abolish them.

Thus, in the Roman Republic, the mode which was constantly in use for about one hundred and fifty years, of dividing the Citizens into Centuriae when they gave their votes, reduced the right of the greater part of them, during that time, to little more than a shadow. After the mode of dividing them by Tribes had been introduced by the Tribunes, the bulk of the Citizens indeed were not, when it was used, under so great a disadvantage as before; but yet the great privileges exercised by the Magistrates in all the public assemblies, the power they assumed of moving the Citizens out of one Tribe into another, and a number of other circumstances, continued to render the rights of the Citizens more and more ineffectual; and in fact we do not find that when those rights were at last entirely taken from them, they expressed any very great degree of discontent.4

In Sweden (the former Government of which partook much of the Republican form)5 the right allotted to the People in the Government, was that of sending Deputies to the General States of the Kingdom, who were to give their votes on the resolutions that were to be taken in that Assembly. But the privilege of the People of sending such Deputies was, in the first place, greatly diminished by several essential disadvantages under which these Deputies were placed with respect to the Body, or Order, of the Nobles. The same privilege of the People was farther lessened by their Deputies being deprived of the right of freely laying their different proposals before the States, for their assent or dissent, and attributing the exclusive right of framing such proposals, to a private Assembly which was called the Secret Committee. Again, the right allowed to the Order of the Nobles, of having a number of Members in this Secret Committee double to that of all the other Or-ders taken together, rendered the rights of the People still more ineffectual. At the last Revolution those rights we mention have been in a manner taken from the People; and they do not seem to have made any great efforts to preserve them (a) .

But the situation of affairs in England is totally different from that which we have just described. The political rights of the People are inseparably connected with the right of Property—with a right which it is as difficult to invalidate by artifice, as it is dangerous to attack it by force, and which we see that the most arbitrary Kings, in the full career of their power, have never offered to violate without the greatest precautions. A King of England who would enslave his People, must begin with doing, for his first act, what all other Kings reserve for the last; and he cannot attempt to deprive his Subjects of their political privileges, without declaring war against the whole Nation at the same time, and attacking every individual at once in his most permanent and best understood interest.

And that means possessed by the People of England, of influencing the conduct of the Government, is not only in a manner secure against any danger of being taken from them: it is moreover attended with another advantage of the greatest importance; which is that of conferring naturally, and as it were necessarily, on those to whom they trust the care of their interests, the great privilege we have before described, of debating among themselves whatever questions they think conducive to the good of their Constituents, and of framing whatever bills they think proper, and in what terms they choose.

This privilege of starting new subjects of deliberation, and, in short, of propounding in the business of legislation, which, in England, is allotted to the Representatives of the People, sets another capital difference between the English Constitution, and the government of other free States, whether limited Monarchies or Commonwealths, and prevents that which, in those States, proves a most effectual means of subverting the laws favourable to public liberty: I mean the undermining of these laws by the precedents and artful practices of those who are invested with the Executive Power in the Government.

In the States we mention, the active share, or the business of propounding, in legislation, being ever alloted to those persons who are invested with the Executive authority, they not only possess a general power, by means of insidious and well timed proposals made to the People, of getting those laws repealed which set bounds to their authority; but when they do not choose openly to discover their wishes in that respect, or perhaps even fear to fail in the attempt, they have another resource, which, though slower in its operation, is not less effectual in the issue. They neglect to execute those laws which they dislike, or deny the benefit of them to the separate straggling individuals who claim them, and in short introduce practices that are directly derogatory to them. These practices in a course of time become respectable Uses, and at length obtain the force of Laws.

The People, even where they are allowed a share in legislation, being ever passive in the exercise of it, have no opportunities of framing new provisions by which to remove these spurious practices or regulations, and declare what the law in reality is. The only resource of the Citizens, in such a state of things, is either to be perpetually cavilling, or openly to oppose: and always exerting themselves, either too soon, or too late, they cannot come forth to defend their liberty, without incurring the charge, either of disaffection, or of rebellion.

And while the whole class of Politicians, who are constantly alluding to the usual forms of limited Governments, agree in deciding that freedom, when once lost, cannot be recovered (a) , it happens that the maxim principiis obsta,6 which they look upon as the safeguard of liberty, and which they accordingly never cease to recommend, besides its requiring a degree of watchfulness incompatible with the situation of the People, is in a manner impracticable.

But the operation of preferring grievances, which in other Governments is a constant forerunner of public commotions, that of framing new law remedies, which is so jealously secured to the Ruling power in the State, are, in England, the constitutional and appropriated offices of the Representatives of the People.

How long soever the People may have remained in a state of supineness as to their most valuable interests, whatever may have been the neglect and even the errors of their Representatives, the instant the latter come either to see these errors, or to have a sense of their duty, they proceed, by means of the privilege we mention, to set aside those abuses or practices which, during the preceding years, had become to hold the place of the laws. To how low soever a state public liberty may happen to be reduced, they take it where they find it, lead it back through the same path, and to the same point, from which it had been compelled to retreat; and the Ruling power, whatever its usurpations may have been, how far soever it may have overflowed its banks, is ever brought back to its old limits.

To the exertions of the privilege we mention, were owing the frequent confirmations and elucidations of the Great Charter that took place in different reigns. By means of the same privilege the Act was repealed, without public commotion, which had enacted that the King’s proclamations should have the force of law: by this Act public liberty seemed to be irretrievably lost; and the Parliament who passed it, seemed to have done what the Danish Nation did about a century afterwards. The same privilege procured the peaceable abolition of the Court of Star Chamber: a Court which, though in itself illegal, had grown to be so respected through the length of time it had been suffered to exist, that it seemed to have for ever fixed and rivetted the unlawful authority it conferred on the Crown. By the same means the power was set aside which the Privy Council had assumed of imprisoning the Subject without admitting to bail, and even mentioning any cause: this power was in the first instance declared illegal by the Petition of Right; and the attempts of both the Crown and the Judges to invalidate this declaration by introducing, or maintaining, practices that were derogatory to it, were as often obviated, in a peaceable manner, by fresh declarations, and, in the end, by the celebrated Habeas Corpus Act (a) .

And I shall take this opportunity to make the Reader observe, in general, how the different parts of the English Government mutually assist and support each other. It is because the whole Executive authority in the State is vested in the Crown, that the People may without danger delegate the care of their liberty to Representatives:—it is because they share in the Government only through these Representatives, that they are enabled to possess the great advantage arising from framing and proposing new laws: but for this purpose, it is again absolutely necessary that the Crown, that is to say, a Veto of extraordinary power, should exist in the State.

It is, on the other hand, because the balance of the People is placed in the right of granting to the Crown its necessary supplies, that the latter may, without danger, be intrusted with the great authority we mention; and that the right, for instance, which is vested in it of judging of the proper time for calling and dissolving Parliaments (a right absolutely necessary to its preservation) may exist without producing ipso facto, the ruin of public Liberty. The most singular Government upon Earth, and which has carried farthest the liberty of the in-dividual, was in danger of total destruction, when Bartholomew Columbus7 was on his passage to England, to teach Henry the Seventh the way to Mexico and Peru (a) .

As a conclusion of this subject (which might open a field for speculations without end) I shall take notice of an advantage peculiar to the English Government, and which, more than any other we could mention, must contribute to its duration. All the political passions of Mankind, if we attend to it, are satisfied and provided for in the English Government; and whether we look at the Monarchical, or the Aristocratical, or the Democratical part of it, we find all those powers already settled in it in a regular manner, which have an unavoidable tendency to arise at one time or other, in all human Societies.

If we could for an instant suppose that the English form of Government, instead of having been the effect of a lucky concurrence of fortunate circumstances, had been established from a settled plan by a Man who had discovered, beforehand and by reasoning, all those advantages resulting from it which we now perceive from experience, and had undertaken to point them out to other Men capable of judging of what he said to them, the following is, most likely, the manner in which he would have expressed himself.

“Nothing is more chimerical,” he would have said, “than a state either of total equality, or total liberty, amongst Mankind. In all societies of Men, some Power will necessarily arise. This Power, after gradually becoming confined to a smaller number of persons, will, by a like necessity, at last fall into the hands of a single Leader; and these two effects (of which you may see constant examples in History) arising from the ambition of the one part of Mankind, and from the various affections and passions of the other, are absolutely unavoidable.

“Let us, therefore, admit this evil at once, since it is impossible to avoid it. Let us, of ourselves, establish a Chief among us, since we must, some time or other, submit to one: we shall by this means effectually prevent the conflicts that would arise among the competitors for that station. But let us, above all, establish him single; lest, after successively raising himself on the ruins of his Rivals, he should finally establish himself whether we will or not, and through a train of the most disadvantageous incidents.

“Let us even give him every thing we can possibly give without endangering our security. Let us call him our Sovereign; let us make him consider the State as being his own patrimony; let us grant him, in short, such personal privileges as none of us can ever hope to rival him in, and we shall find those things which we were at first inclined to consider as a great evil, will be in reality a source of advantages to the Community. We shall be the better able to set bounds to that Power which we shall have thus ascertained and fixed in one place. We shall have the more interested the Man whom we shall have put in possession of so many advantages, in the faithful discharge of his duty. And we shall have thus procured for each of us, a powerful protector at home, and for the whole Community, a defender against foreign enemies, superior to all possible temptation of betraying his Country.

“You may also have observed, (he would continue) that in all States, there naturally arises around the person, or persons, who are invested with the public power, a class of Men, who, without having any actual share in that power, yet partake of its lustre: who, pretending to be distinguished from the rest of the Community, do, from that very circumstance, become distinguished from it: and this distinction, though only matter of opinion, and at first thus surreptitiously obtained, yet may become in time the source of very grievous effects.

“Let us therefore regulate this evil which we cannot entirely prevent. Let us establish this class of Men who would otherwise grow up among us without our knowledge, and gradually acquire the most pernicious privileges. Let us grant them distinctions that are visible and clearly ascertained: their nature will, by this means, be the better understood, and they will of course, be much less likely to become dangerous. By this means also, we shall preclude all other persons from the hopes of usurping them. As, to pretend to distinctions can thenceforward be no longer a title to obtain them, every one who shall not be expressly included in their number, must continue to confess himself one of the People; and just as we said before, let us chuse ourselves one Master that we may not have fifty, so let us again say here, let us establish three hundred Lords, that we may not have ten thousand Nobles.

“Besides, our pride will better reconcile itself to a superiority which it will no longer think of disputing. Nay, as they will themselves see us to be before-hand in acknowledging it, they will think themselves under no necessity of being insolent to furnish us a proof of it. Secure as to their privileges, all violent measures on their part for maintaining, and at last perhaps extending them, will be prevented: they will never combine together with any degree of vehemence, but when they really have cause to think themselves in danger; and by having made them indisputably great Men, we shall have a chance of often seeing them behave like modest and virtuous Citizens.

“In fine, by being united in a regular Assembly, they will form an intermediate Body in the State, that is to say, a very useful part of the Government.

“It is also necessary, our Lawgiver would farther add, that We, the People, should have an influence upon the Government: it is necessary for our own security; it is no less necessary for the security of the Government itself. But experience must have taught you, at the same time, that a great body of Men cannot act, without being, though they are not aware of it, the instruments of the designs of a small number of persons; and that the power of the People is never any thing but the power of a few Leaders, who (though it may be impossible to tell when, or how) have found means to secure to themselves the direction of its exercise.

“Let us, therefore, be also beforehand with this other inconvenience. Let us effect openly what would, otherwise, take place in secret. Let us intrust our power, before it be taken from us by address. Those whom we shall have expressly made the depositaries of it, being freed from any anxious care about supporting themselves, will have no object but to render it useful. They will stand in awe of us the more, because they will know that they have not imposed upon us: and instead of a small number of Leaders, who would imagine they derive their whole importance from their own dexterity, we shall have express and acknowledged Representatives, who will be accountable to us for the evils of the State.

“But above all, by forming our Government with a small number of persons, we shall prevent any disorder that may take place in it, from ever becoming dangerously extensive. Nay more, we shall render it capable of inestimable combinations and resources, which would be utterly impossible in that Government of all, which never can be any thing but uproar and confusion.

“In short, by expressly divesting ourselves of a power of which we should, at best, have only an apparent enjoyment, we shall be intitled to make conditions for ourselves: we will insist that our liberty be augmented; we will, above all, reserve to ourselves the right of watching and censuring that administration which will have been established by our own consent. We shall the better see its faults, because we shall be only Spectators of it; we shall correct them the better, because we shall not have personally concurred in its operations” (a) .

The English Constitution being founded upon such principles as those we have just described, no true comparison can be made between it, and the Governments of any other States; and since it evidently insures, not only the liberty, but the general satisfaction in all respects, of those who are subject to it, in a much greater degree than any other Government ever did, this consideration alone affords sufficient ground to conclude, without looking farther, that it is also more likely to be preserved from ruin.

And indeed we may observe the remarkable manner in which it has been maintained in the midst of such general commotions as seemed unavoidably to prepare its destruction. It rose again, we see, after the wars between Henry the Third and his Barons; after the usurpation of Henry the Fourth; and after the long and bloody contentions between the Houses of York and Lancaster. Nay, though totally destroyed in appearance after the fall of Charles the First, and though the greatest efforts had been made to establish another form of government in its stead, yet, no sooner was Charles the Second called over, than the Constitution was re-established upon all its ancient foundations.

However, as what has not happened at one time, may happen at another, future Revolutions (events which no form of Government can totally prevent) may perhaps end in a different manner from that in which past ones have been terminated. New combinations may possibly take place among the then ruling Powers of the State, of such a nature as to prevent the Constitution, when peace shall be restored to the Nation, from settling again upon its ancient and genuine foundations; and it would certainly be a very bold assertion to decide, that both the outward form, and the true spirit of the English Government, would again be preserved from destruction, if the same dangers to which they have in former times been exposed, should again happen to take place.

Nay, such fatal changes as those we mention, may be introduced even in quiet times, or at least, by means in appearance peaceable and constitutional. Advantages, for instance, may be taken by particular factions, either of the feeble temper, or of the misconduct, of some future King. Temporary prepossessions of the People may be made use of, to make them concur in doing what will prove afterwards the ruin of their own liberty. Plans of apparent improvement in the Constitution, forwarded by Men who, though with good intentions, shall proceed without a due knowledge of the true principles and foundations of Government, may produce effects quite contrary to those which were designed, and in reality prepare its ruin (a) . The Crown, on the other hand, may, by the acquisition of foreign dominions, acquire a fatal independency on the People: and if, without entering into any farther particulars on this subject, I were re-quired to point out the principal events which would, if they were ever to happen, prove immediately the ruin of the English Government, I would say,—The English Government will be no more, either when the Crown shall become independent on the Nation for its supplies, or when the Representatives of the People shall begin to share in the Executive authority (a) .

CHAPTER XIX1

A few additional thoughts on the attempts that at particular times may be made to abridge the power of the Crown, and on some of the dangers by which such attempts may be attended.

The power of the Crown is supported by deeper, and more numerous, roots, than the generality of people are aware of, as has been observed in a former Chapter; and there is no cause anxiously to fear that the wresting any capital branch of its prerogative, may be effected, in common peaceable times, by the mere theoretical speculations of Politicians. However, it is not equally impracticable that some event of the kind we mention, may be brought about through a conjunction of several circumstances. Advantage may, in the first place, be taken of the minority, or even also the inexperience or the errors, of the person invested with the kingly authority. Of this a remarkable instance happened under the reign of King George the First, while that Bill, by which the number of Peers was in future to be limited to a certain number, was under consideration in the House of Commons, to whom it had been sent from that of the Lords, where it had been passed. So unacquainted was the King at that time with his own interest, and with the constitution of that Government over which he was come to preside, that having been persuaded by that party who wished success to the Bill, that the objection made against it by the House of Commons, was only owing to an opinion they entertained of the Bill being dis-agreeable to him, that he was prevailed upon to send a message to them, to let them know that such an opinion was ill-grounded, and that should the Bill pass in their House, it would meet with his assent (a) . Considering the prodigious importance of the consequences of such a Bill, the fact is certainly very remarkable (b) .

With those personal disadvantages under which the Sovereign may lie for defending his authority, other causes of difficulty may concur:—such as popular discontents of long continuance in regard to certain particular abuses of influence or authority. The generality of the Public bent, at that time, both upon remedying the abuses that are complained of, and preventing the like from taking place in future, will perhaps wish to see that branch of the prerogative which gave rise to them, taken from the Crown: a general disposition to applaud such a measure, if effected, will be manifested from all quarters; and at the same time Men may not be aware that the only material consequence that may arise from depriving the Crown of that branch of power which has caused the public complaints, will perhaps be the having transposed that branch of power from its former seat to another, and having trusted it to new hands, which will be still more likely to abuse it than those in which it was formerly lodged.

In general, it may be laid down as a maxim, that Power, under any form of Government, must exist, and be trusted somewhere. If the Constitution does not admit of a King, the governing authority is lodged in the hands of Magistrates. If the Government, at the same time it is a limited one, bears a Monarchical form, those shares of power that are retrenched from the King’s prerogative, most likely continue to subsist, and are vested in a Senate, or Assembly of great Men under some other name of the like kind.

Thus, in the Kingdom of Sweden, which, having been a limited Monarchy, may supply examples very applicable to the Government of this Country, we find that the power of convoking the General States (or Parliament) of that Kingdom, had been taken from the Crown; but at the same time we also find that the Swedish Senators had invested themselves with that essential branch of power which the Crown had lost.—I mean here to speak of the Govern-ment of Sweden, as it stood before the last revolution.2

The power of the Swedish King, to confer offices and employments, had been also very much abridged. But what was wanting to the power of the King, the Senate enjoyed: it had the nomination of three persons for every vacant office, out of whom the king was to choose one.

The king of Sweden had but a limited power in regard to pardoning offenders; but the Senate likewise possessed what was wanting to that branch of his prerogative; and it appointed two persons without the consent of whom the King could not remit the punishment of any offence.

The King of England has an exclusive power in regard to foreign affairs, war, peace, treaties;—in all that relates to military affairs; he has the disposal of the existing army, of the fleet, &c. The King of Sweden had no such extensive powers; but they nevertheless existed: every thing relating to the above mentioned objects was transacted in the Assembly of the Senate; the majority decided; the King was obliged to submit to it; and his only privilege consisted in his vote being accounted two (a) .

If we pursue farther our enquiry on the subject, we shall find that the King of Sweden could not raise whom he pleased to the office of Senator, as the King of England can, in regard to the office of member of the Privy Council; but the Swedish States, in the Assembly of whom the Nobility enjoyed most capital advantages, possessed a share of the power we mention, in conjunction with the King; and in cases of vacancies in the Senate, they elected three persons, out of whom the King was to return one.

The King of England may, at all times, deprive his Ministers of their employments. The King of Sweden could remove no Man from his office; but the States enjoyed the power that had been denied to the King; and they might deprive of their places both the Senators, and those persons in general who had a share in the Administration.

The King of England has the power of dissolving, or keeping assembled as long as he pleases, his Parliament. The King of Sweden had not that power; but the States might, of themselves, prolong their duration as they thought proper.

Those persons who think that the prerogative of a King cannot be too much abridged, and that Power loses all its influence on the dispositions and views of those who possess it, according to the kind of name used to express those offices by which it is conferred, may be satisfied, no doubt, to behold those branches of power that were taken from a King, distributed to several Bodies, and shared in by the Representatives of the People: but those who think that Power, when parcelled and diffused, is never so well repressed and regulated as when it is confined to a sole indivisible seat, that keeps the Nation united and awake,—those who know that, names by no means altering the intrinsic nature of things, the Representatives of the People, as soon as they are vested with independent authority, become ipso facto its Masters,—those persons, I say, will not think it a very happy regulation in the former Constitution of Sweden, to have deprived the King of prerogatives formerly attached to his office, in order to vest the same either in a Senate, or in the Deputies of the People, and thus to have trusted with a share in the exercise of the public power, those very Men whose Constitutional office should have been to watch and restrain it.

To the indivisibility of the governing authority in England, the community of interest which takes place among all orders of Men, is owing; and from this community of interest rises as a necessary consequence, the liberty enjoyed by all ranks of subjects. This observation has been insisted upon at length in the course of this Work. The shortest reflection on the frame of the human heart, suffices to convince us of its truth, and at the same time manifests the danger that would result from making any changes in the form of the existing Go-vernment by which this general community of interest might be lessened,—unless we are at the same time also determined to believe, that partial Nature forms Men in this Island, of quite other stuff than the selfish and ambitious one of which she ever made them in other Countries (a) .

But past experience does not by any means allow us to entertain so pleasing an opinion. The perusal of the History of this Country will shew us, that the care of its Legislators for the welfare of the subject, always kept pace with the exigencies of their own situation. When, thro’ the minority, or easy temper of the reigning Prince, or other circumstances, the dread of a superior Power began to be overlooked, the public cause was immediately deserted in a greater or less degree, and pursuit after private influence and lucrative offices took the place of patriotism. When, under the reign of Charles the First, the authority of the Crown was for a while utterly annihilated, those very Men who, till then, had talked of nothing but Magna Charta and Liberty, instantly endeavoured openly to trample both under foot.

Since the time we mention, the former Constitution of the Government having been restored, the great outlines of public liberty have indeed been warmly and seriously defended: but if any partial unjust laws or regulations have been made, especially since the Revolution of the year 1689, if any abuses injurious to particular classes of individuals have been suffered to continue (facts into the truth of which I do not propose to examine here), it will certainly be found upon enquiry, that those laws and those abuses were such as that from them the Members of the Legislature well knew, that neither they, nor their friends, would ever be likely to suffer.

If through the unforeseen operation of some new regulation made to restrain the royal prerogative, or through some sudden public revolution, any particular bodies or classes of individuals were ever to acquire a personal independent share in the exercise of the governing authority, we should behold the public virtue and patriotism of the Legislators and Great Men immediately cease with its cause, and Aristocracy, as it were watchful of the opportunity, burst out at once, and spread itself over the Kingdom.

The Men who are now the Ministers, then the Partners of the Crown, would instantly set themselves above the reach of the law, and soon after ensure the same privilege to their several supporters or dependants.

Personal and independent power being become the only kind of security of which Men would now shew themselves ambitious, the Habeas Corpus Act, and in general all those laws which Subjects of every rank mention with love, and to which they look up for protection and safety, would be spoken of with contempt, and mentioned as remedies fit only for Countrymen and Cits:3 —it even would not be long before they were set aside, as obstructing the wise and salutary steps of the Senate.

The pretension of an equality of right in all Subjects, of whatever rank and order to their property and to personal safety, would soon be looked upon as an old fashioned doctrine, which the Judge himself would ridicule from the Bench. And the liberty of the press, now so universally and warmly vindicated, would, without loss of time, be cried down and suppressed, as only serving to keep up the insolence and pride of a refractory people.

And let us not believe that the mistaken People, whose Representatives we now behold making such a firm stand against the indivisible power of the Crown, would, amidst the general devastation of every thing they hold dear, easily find Men equally disposed to repress the encroaching, while attainable, power of a Senate and Body of Nobles.

The time would be no more when the People, upon whatever Men they let their choice fall, are sure to find them ready sincerely to join in the support of every important branch of public liberty.

Present, or expected, personal power and in-dependence on the laws, being now the consequence of the trust of the People, wherever they should apply for servants, they would only meet with betrayers. Corrupting as it were every thing they should touch, they could confer no favour upon an individual but to destroy his public virtue; and to repeat the words used in a former Chapter, “their raising a Man would only be immediately inspiring him with views directly opposite to their own, and sending him to increase the number of their enemives.”4

All these considerations strongly point out the very great caution which is necessary to be used in the difficult business of laying new restraints on the governing authority. Let therefore the less informed part of the People, whose zeal requires to be kept up by visible objects, look if they choose upon the Crown as the only seat of the evils they are exposed to; mistaken notions on their part are less dangerous than political indifference, and they are more easily directed than roused,—but at the same time, let the more enlightened part of the Nation constantly remember, that the Constitution only subsists by virtue of a proper equilibrium,—by a line being drawn between Power and Liberty.

Made wise by the examples of several other Nations, by those which the History of this very Country affords, let the People in the heat of their struggles in the defence of liberty, always take heed, only to reach, never to overshoot, the mark,—only to repress, never to transfer and diffuse Power.

Amidst the alarms that may, at particular times, arise from the really awful authority of the Crown, let it, on the one hand, be remembered, that even the power of the Tudors was opposed and subdued,—and on the other let it be looked upon as a fundamental maxim, that, whenever the prospect of personal power and independence on the governing authority, shall offer to the view of the Members of the Legislature, or in general of those Men to whom the People must trust, even Hope itself is destroyed. The Hollander, in the midst of a storm, though trusting to the experienced strength of the mounds that protect him, shudders no doubt at the sight of the foaming Element that surrounds him; but they all gave themselves over for lost, when they thought the worm had got into their dykes (a) .5

CHAPTER XX1

A few additional Observations on the right of Taxation which is lodged in the hands of the Representatives of the People. What kind of danger this Right may be exposed to.

The generality of Men, or at least of Politicians, seem to consider the right of taxing themselves, enjoyed by the English Nation, as being no more than a means of securing their property against the attempts of the Crown; while they overlook the nobler and more extensive efficiency of that privilege.

The right to grant subsidies to the Crown, possessed by the People of England, is the safe-guard of all their other liberties, religious and civil: it is a regular means conferred on them by the Constitution, of influencing the motion of the Executive power; and it forms the tie by which the latter is bound to them. In short, this privilege is a sure pledge in their hands, that their Sovereign, who can dismiss their Representatives at his pleasure, will never entertain thoughts of ruling without the assistance of these.

If, through unforeseen events, the Crown could attain to be independent on the People in regard to its supplies, such is the extent of its Prerogative, that, from that moment, all the means the People possess to vindicate their liberty, would be annihilated. They would have no resource left,—except indeed that uncertain and calamitous one, of an appeal to the sword; which is no more, after all, than what the most enslaved Nations enjoy.

Let us suppose, for instance, that abuses of power should be committed, which, either by their immediate operation, or by the precedents they might establish, should undermine the liberty of the subject. The People, it will be said, would then have their remedy in the Legislative power possessed by their Representatives. The latter would, at the first opportunity, interfere, and frame such Bills as would prevent the like abuses for the future. But here we must observe, that the Assent of the Sovereign is necessary to make those Bills become Laws; and if, as we have just now supposed, he had no need of the support of the Commons, how could they obtain his assent to laws thus purposely framed to abridge his authority?

Again, let us suppose that, instead of contenting itself with making slow advances to despotism, the Executive power, or its Ministers, should at once openly invade the liberty of the subject. Obnoxious men, Printers for instance, or political Writers, are destroyed, either by military violence, or, to do things with more security, with the forms of law. Then, it will be said, the Representatives of the People would impeach the persons concerned in those measures. Though unable to reach a King who personally can do no wrong, they at least would lay hold of those Men who were the immediate instruments of his tyrannical proceedings, and endeavour, by bringing them to condign punishment, to deter future Judges or Ministers from imitating them. All this I grant; and I will even add, that, circumstanced as the Representatives of the People now are, and having to do with a Sovereign who can enjoy no dignity without their assistance, it is most likely that their endeavours in the pursuits of such laudable objects would prove successful. But if, on the contrary, the King, as we have supposed, stood in no need of their assistance, and moreover knew that he should never want it, it is impossible to think that he would then suffer himself to remain a tame spectator of their proceedings. The impeachments thus brought by them would immediately prove the signal of their dismission; and the King would make haste, by dissolving them, both to revenge what would then be called the insolence of the Commons, and to secure his Ministers.

But even those are vain suppositions: the evil would reach much farther; and we may be assured that if ever the Crown was to be in a condition to govern without the assistance of the Representatives of the People, it would dismiss them for ever, and thus rid itself of an Assembly which, while it continued to be a clog on its power, could no longer be of any service to it. This Charles the First attempted to do when he found his Parliaments grew refractory, and the Kings of France really have done, with respect to the General Estates of their Kingdom.

And indeed if we consider the extent of the Prerogative of the King of England, and especially the circumstance of his completely uniting in himself all the executive and active powers in the State, we shall find that it is no exaggeration to say, that he has power sufficient to be as arbitrary as the Kings of France, were it not for the right of taxation, which, in England, is possessed by the People; and the only constitutional difference between the French and English Nations is, that the former can neither confer benefits on their Sovereign, nor hinder his measures; while the latter, how extensive soever the Prerogative of their King may be, can deny him the means of exerting it.

But here a most important observation is to be made; and I entreat the reader’s attention to the subject. This right of granting subsidies to the Crown, can only be effectual when it is exercised by one Assembly alone. When several distinct Assemblies have it equally in their power to supply the wants of the Prince, the case becomes totally altered. The competition which so easily takes place between those different Bodies, and even the bare consciousness which each entertains of its inability to hinder the measures of the Sovereign, render it impossible for them to make any effectual constitutional use of their privilege. “Those different Parliaments or Estates” (to repeat the observation introduced in the former part of this Work) “having no means of recommending themselves to their Sovereign, but their superior readiness in complying with his demands, vie with each other in grant-ing what it would not only be fruitless, but even dangerous to refuse. And the King, in the mean time, soon comes to demand as a tribute, a gift which he is confident to obtain.”2 In short, it may be laid down as a maxim, that when a Sovereign is made to depend, in regard to his supplies, on more Assemblies than one, he, in fact, depends upon none. And indeed the King of France is not independent on his People for his necessary supplies, any otherwise than by drawing the same from several different Assemblies of their Representatives: the latter have in appearance a right to refuse all his demands: and as the English call the grants they make to their Kings, Aids or Subsidies, so do the Estates of the French provinces call their’s Dons gratuits, or free gifts.

What is it, therefore, that constitutes the difference between the political situation of the French and English Nations, since their rights thus seem outwardly to be the same? The difference lies in this, that there has never been in England more than one Assembly that could supply the wants of the Sovereign. This has always kept him in a state, not of a seeming, but of a real dependence on the Representatives of the People for his necessary supplies; and how low soever the liberty of the Subject may, at particular times, have sunk, they have always found themselves possessed of a most effectual means of restoring it, whenever they have thought proper so to do. Under Henry the Eighth, for instance, we find the Despotism of the Crown to have been carried to an astonishing height; it was even enacted that the Proclamations of the King should have the force of law;3 a thing which even in France, never was so expressly declared: yet, no sooner did the Nation recover from its long state of supineness, than the exorbitant power of the Crown was reduced within its constitutional bounds.

To no other cause than the disadvantage of their situation, are we to ascribe the low condition in which the Deputies of the People in the Assembly called the General Estates of France, were always forced to remain.

Surrounded as they were by the particular Estates of those Provinces into which the Kingdom had been formerly divided, they never were able to stipulate conditions with their Sovereign; and instead of making their right of granting subsidies to the Crown serve to gain them in the end a share in Legislation, they ever remained confined to the naked pri-vilege of “humble Supplication and Remonstrance.”

Those Estates, however, as all the great Lords in France were admitted into them, began at length to appear dangerous; and as the King could in the mean time do without their assistance, they were set aside. But several of the particular Estates of the Provinces are preserved to this day: some, which for temporary reasons had been abolished, have been restored: nay, so manageable have popular Assemblies been found by the Crown, when it has to do with many, that the kind of Government we mention is that which it has been found most convenient to assign to Corsica; and Corsica has been made un pays d’ Etats(a) .4

That the Crown in England should, on a sudden, render itself independent on the Commons for its supplies, that is, should on a sudden successfully assume to itself a right to lay taxes on the Subject, by its own authority, is not certainly an event in any degree likely to take place, nor indeed that should, at this present time, raise any kind of political fear. But it is not equally impracticable that the right of the Representatives of the People might be-come invalidated, by being divided in the manner that has been just described.

Such a division of the right of the People might be effected several different ways. National calamities for instance, unfortunate foreign wars attended with loss of public credit, might suggest methods for raising the necessary supplies, different from those which have hitherto been used. Dividing the Kingdom into a certain number of parts, which should severally vote subsidies to the Crown, or even distinct assessments to be made by the different Counties into which England is now divided, might, in the circumstances we suppose, be looked upon as adviseable expedients; and these, being once introduced, might be continued afterwards.

Another division of the right of the People, much more likely to take place than those just mentioned, might be such as might arise from acquisitions of foreign dominions, the inhabitants of which should in time claim and obtain a right to treat directly with the Crown, and grant supplies to it, without the interference of the British Legislature.

Should any Colonies acquire the right we mention—should, for instance, the American Colonies have acquired it, as they claimed it, it is not to be doubted that the consequences that have resulted from a division like that we mention in most of the Kingdoms of Europe, would also have taken place in the British dominions, and that that spirit of competition which has been above described, would in time have manifested itself between the different Colonies. This desire of ingratiating themselves with the Crown, by means of the privilege of granting supplies to it, has even been openly confessed by an Agent of the American Provinces (a) , when, on his being examined by the House of Commons, in the year 1766, he said, “the granting Aids to the Crown, is the only means the Americans have of recommending themselves to their Sovereign.” And the events that have of late years taken place in America, render it evident that the Colonies would not have scrupled going any lengths to obtain favourable conditions at the expence of Britain and the British Legislature.

That a similar spirit of competition might be raised in Ireland, is also sufficiently plain from certain late events. And should the American Colonies have obtained their demands, and at the same time should Ireland and America have increased in wealth to a cer-tain degree, the time might have come at which the Crown might have governed England with the supplies of Ireland and America—Ireland with the supplies of England and of the American Colonies—and the American Colonies with the money of each other, and of England and Ireland.

To this it may be objected, that the supplies granted by the Colonies, even though joined with those of Ireland, never could have risen to such a height as to have counterbalanced the importance of the English Commons.—I answer, in the first place, that there would have been no necessity that the aids granted by Ireland and America should have risen to an equality with those granted by the British Parliament: it would have been sufficient, to produce the effects we mention, that they had only borne a certain proportion with these latter, so far as to have conferred on the Crown a certain degree of independence, and at the same time have raised in the English Commons a correspondent sense of self-diffidence in the exercise of their undoubted privilege of granting, or rather refusing, subsidies to the Crown.—Here it must be remembered, that the right of granting, or refusing, supplies to the Crown, is the only ultimate, forcible, privilege the British Parliament possess: by the Constitution they have no other, as hath been observed in the beginning of this Chapter: this circumstance ought to be combined with the absolute exclusiveness of the executive powers lodged in the Crown—with its prerogative of dissenting from the Bills framed by Parliament, and even of dissolving it (a) .

I shall mention in the second place, a remarkable fact in regard to the subject we are treating (which may serve to shew that Politicians are not always consistent, or even sagacious, in their arguments), which is, that the same persons who were the most strenuous advocates for granting to the American Colonies their demands, were at the same time the most sanguine in their predictions of the future wealth and greatness of America, and at the same time also, used to make frequent complaints on the undue influence which the Crown derives from the scanty supplies granted to it by the kingdom of Ireland (a) .5

Had the American Colonies fully obtained their demands, both the essence of the present English Government, and the condition of the English People, would certainly have been altered thereby: nor would such a change have been inconsiderable, but in proportion as the Colonies should have remained in a state of national poverty (b) .

CHAPTER XXI

Conclusion.—A few words on the nature of the Divisions that take place in England.

I shall conclude this Work with a few observations on the total freedom from violence with which the political disputes and contentions in England are conducted and terminated, in order both to give a farther proof of the soundness of the principles on which the English Government is founded, and to confute in general the opinion of foreign Writers or Politicians, who, misled by the apparent heat with which those disputes are sometimes carried on, and the clamour to which they give occasion, look upon England as a perpetual scene of civil broils and dissensions.1

In fact if we consider, in the first place, the constant tenor of the conduct of the Parliament, we shall see that whatever different views the several Branches that compose it may at times pursue, and whatever use they may accordingly make of their privileges, they never go, in regard to each other, beyond the terms, not only of decency, but even of that general good understanding which ought to prevail among them.

Thus the King, though he preserves the style of his Dignity, never addresses the two Houses but in terms of regard and affection; and if at any time he chuses to refuse their Bills, he only says that he will consider of them (le Roy s’advisera); which is certainly a gentler expression than the word Veto.

The two Houses on their part, though very jealous, each within their own walls, of the freedom of speech, are, on the other hand, careful that that liberty shall never break out into unguarded expressions with regard to the person of the King. It is even a constant rule amongst them never to mention him, when they mean to blame the administration; and those things which they may choose to censure, even in the Speeches made by the King in person, and which are plainly his own acts, are never considered but as the deed of his Ministers, or in general of those who have advised him.

The two Houses are also equally attentive to prevent every step that may be inconsistent with that respect which they mutually owe to one another. The examples of their differences with each other are very rare, and were for the most part mere misunderstandings. Nay, in order to prevent all subject of altercation, the custom is, that when one of the two Houses refuses to consent to a Bill presented by the other, no formal declaration is made of such refusal; and that House whose Bill is rejected, learns its fate only from their hearing no more of it, or by what the Members may be told as private persons.

In each House, the Members take care, even in the heat of debate, never to go be-yond certain bounds in their manner of speaking of each other: if they were to offend in that respect, they would certainly incur the censure of the House. And as reason has taught Mankind to refrain, in their wars, from all injuries to each other that have no tendency to promote the main object of their contentions, so a kind of Law of Nations (if I may so express myself) has been introduced among the persons who form the Parliament and take a part in the debates: they have discovered that they may very well be of opposite parties, and yet not hate and persecute one another. Coming fresh from debates carried on even with considerable warmth, they meet without reluctance in the ordinary intercourse of life; and, suspending all hostilities, they hold every place out of Parliament to be neutral ground.

In regard to the generality of the People, as they never are called upon to come to a final decision with respect to any public measures, or expressly to concur in supporting them, they preserve themselves still more free from party spirit than their Representatives themselves sometimes are. Considering, as we have observed, the affairs of Government as only matter of speculation, they ne-ver have occasion to engage in any vehement contests among themselves on that account. Much less do they think of taking an active and violent part in the differences of particular factions, or the quarrels of private individuals. And those family feuds, those party animosities, those victories and consequent outrages of factions alternately successful, in short, all those inconveniencies which in so many other States have constantly been the attendants of liberty, and which Authors tell us we must submit to, as the price of it, are things in very great measure unknown in England.

But are not the English perpetually making complaints against the Administration? and do they not speak and write as if they were continually exposed to grievances of every kind?

Undoubtedly, I shall answer, in a Society of Beings subject to error, dissatisfactions will necessarily arise from some quarter or other; and in a free Society, they will be openly manifested by complaints. Besides, as every Man in England is permitted to give his opinion upon all subjects, and as, to watch over the Administration, and to complain of grievances, is the proper duty of the Representatives of the People, complaints must neces-sarily be heard in such a Government, and even more frequently, and upon more subjects, than in any other.

But those complaints, it should be remembered, are not, in England, the cries of oppression forced at last to break its silence. They do not suppose hearts deeply wounded. Nay, I will go farther, they do not even suppose very determinate sentiments; and they are often nothing more than the first vent which Men give to their new, and yet unsettled conceptions.

The agitation of men’s minds is not therefore in England what it would be in other States: it is not the symptom of a profound and general discontent, and the forerunner of violent commotions. Foreseen, regulated, even hoped for by the Constitution, this agitation animates all the different parts of the State, and is to be considered only as the beneficial vicissitude of the seasons. The governing Power being dependant on the Nation, is often thwarted, but so long as it continues to deserve the affection of the People, can never be endangered. Like a vigorous Tree which stretches its branches far and wide, the slightest breath can put it in motion; but it acquires and exerts at every minute a new degree of force, and resists the Winds, by the strength and elasticity of its fibres, and the depth of its roots.

In a word, whatever Revolutions may at times happen among the persons who conduct the public affairs in England, they never occasion the shortest cessation of the power of the Laws, nor the smallest diminution of the security of individuals. A Man who should have incurred the enmity of the most powerful Men in the State—what do I say!—though he had, like another Vatinius, drawn upon himself the united detestation of all parties, might, under the protection of the Laws, and by keeping within the bounds required by them, continue to set both his enemies and the whole Nation at defiance.2

The limits prescribed to this book do not admit of entering into any farther particulars on the subject we are treating here; but if we were to pursue this enquiry, and examine into the influence which the English Government has on the manners and customs of the People, perhaps we should find that, instead of inspiring them with any disposition to disorder or anarchy, it produces in them a quite contrary effect. As they see the highest Powers in the State, constantly submit to the Laws, and they receive, themselves, such a certain protection from those laws, whenever they appeal to them, it is impossible but they must insensibly contract a deep-rooted reverence for them, which can at no time cease to have some influence on their actions. And, in fact, we see that even the lower class of the People, in England, notwithstanding the apparent excesses into which they are sometimes hurried, possess a spirit of justice and order, superior to what is to be observed in the same rank of Men in other Countries. The extraordinary indulgence which is shewn to accused persons of every degree, is not attended with any of those pernicious consequences which we might at first be apt to fear from it. And it is perhaps to the nature of the English Constitution itself (however remote the cause may perhaps seem) and to the spirit of Justice it continually and insensibly diffuses throughout all orders of the People, that we are to attribute the singular advantage possessed by the English Nation, of employing an incomparably milder mode of administering Justice in criminal matters than any other Nation, and at the same time of affording perhaps fewer instances of violence or cruelty.

Another consequence which we might observe here, as flowing also from the principles of the English Government, is the moderate behaviour of all those who are invested with any branch of public authority. And if we look at the conduct of all public Officers in England, from the Minister of State, or the Judge, down to the lowest officers of Justice, we find a spirit of forbearance and lenity prevailing in England, among all persons in power, which cannot but create some surprize in those who have visited other Countries.

One circumstance more I shall observe here, as peculiar to England, which is the constant attention of the Legislature in providing for the interests and welfare of the People, and the indulgences shewn by them to their very prejudices. Advantages these, which are no doubt the consequence of the general spirit which animates the whole English Government, but are also particularly owing to that circumstance peculiar to it, of having lodged the active part of Legislation in the hands of the Representatives of the Nation, and committed the care of alleviating the grievances of the People to persons who either feel them, or see them nearly, and whose surest path to advancement and glory is to be active in finding remedies for them.

Not that I mean, however, that no abuses take place in the English Government, and that all possible good laws are made in it, but that there is a constant tendency in it, both to correct the one, and improve the other. And that all the laws that are in being, are certainly executed, whenever appealed to, is what I look upon as the characteristic and undisputed advantage of the English Constitution. A Constitution the more likely to produce all the effects we have mentioned, and to procure in general the happiness of the People, in that it has taken Mankind as they are, and has not endeavoured to prevent every thing, but to regulate every thing: I shall add, the more difficult to discover, because its form was complicated, while its principles were natural and simple. Hence it is that the Politicians of Antiquity, sensible of the inconveniences of the Governments they had opportunities of knowing, wished for the establishment of such a Government, without much hopes of ever seeing it effected (a) : nay, Tacitus, the best Judge of them all, considered it as a project entirely chimerical (a) . Nor was it because he had not thought of it, had not reflected on it, that he was of this opinion: he had sought for such a government, had had a glimpse of it, and yet continued to pronounce it impracticable.

Let us not therefore ascribe to the confined views of Man, to his imperfect sagacity, the discovery of this important secret. The world might have grown old, generations might have succeeded generations, still seeking it in vain. It has been by a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, I shall add, by the assistance of a favourable situation, that Liberty has at last been able to erect herself a Temple.

Invoked by every Nation, but of too delicate a nature, as it should seem, to subsist in Societies formed of such imperfect beings as Mankind, she shewed, and but just shewed herself, to the ingenious Nations of antiquity who inhabited the south of Europe. They were constantly mistaken in the form of the worship they paid to her. As they continually aimed at extending dominion and conquest over other Nations, they were no less mistaken in the spirit of that wor-ship; and though they continued for ages to pay their devotions to her, she still continued, with regard to them, to be the unknown Goddess.

Excluded, since that time, from those places to which she had seemed to give a preference, driven to the extremity of the Western World, banished even out of the Continent, she has taken refuge in the Atlantic Ocean. There it is, that, freed from the danger of external disturbance, and assisted by a happy pre-arrangement of things, she has been able fully to display the form that suited her; and she has found six centuries to have been necessary to the completion of her Work.

Being sheltered, as it were, within a Citadel, she there reigns over a Nation which is the better entitled to her favours as it endeavours to extend her Empire, and carries with it, to every part of its dominions, the blessings of industry and equality. Fenced in on every side, to use the expressions of Chamberlayne, with a wide and deep ditch, the sea, guarded with strong outworks, its ships of war, and defended by the courage of her Seamen, she preserves that important secret, that sacred fire, so difficult to be kindled, and which, if it were once extinguished, would perhaps never be lighted again.3 When the World shall have again been laid waste by Conquerors, she will still continue to shew Mankind, not only the principle that ought to unite them, but what is of no less importance, the form under which they ought to be united. And the Philosopher, when he considers the constant fate of civil Societies amongst Men, and observes the numerous and powerful causes which seem as it were unavoidably to conduct them all to a state of incurable political Slavery, takes comfort in seeing that Liberty has at length disclosed her secret to Mankind, and secured an Asylum to herself.

[(a) ]The rendering that power dependent on the People for its supplies.—See on this subject Chapter vi. Book I.

[1. ]De Lolme invokes famous examples from antiquity of paired political leaders, first allies and then rivals, who undermined republican systems by exercising autocratic power: Meglaces and Pisastratus, tyrants of Athens, in the mid-sixth century b.c.e.; Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (or Sylla), popular generals who served as consuls and tyrants of Rome in the early first century b.c.e.; and Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great), Roman generals who opposed each other in the civil war of 49–45 b.c.e. that preceded Caesar’s final consolidation of power over the Roman Senate.

[(a) ]See the History of Florence, by Machiavel, lib. iii. [[De Lolme quotes the discussion in book 3, chapter 5, of Machiavelli’s 1525 History of Florence, which treated at length the destructive power of factions to undermine republican liberty and the public good. De Lolme earlier referred to this material in book 1, chapter 8, p. 78.

[(a) ]We shall see in the sequel, that this diminution of the exercise of the power of the People has been attended with a great increase of their liberty.

[(a) ]This, by Stat. of the 31st of Hen. VIII. extends to the sons, grandsons, brothers, uncles, and nephews, of the reigning King. [[The 1539 legislation, “for the precedence of the lords in the Parliament chamber,” specified the order of precedence for royal officials and blood relations who sat in the House of Lords.

[2. ]“New man.”

[(a) ]The Reader will perhaps object, that no Man in England can possibly entertain such views as those I have suggested here: this is precisely what I intended to prove. The essential advantage of the English Government above all those that have been called free, and which in many respects were but apparently so, is, that no person in England can entertain so much as a thought of his ever rising to the level of the Power charged with the execution of the Laws. All Men in the State, whatever may be their rank, wealth, or influence, are thoroughly convinced that they must in reality as well as in name, continue to be Subjects; and are thus compelled really to love, to defend, and to promote, those laws which secure the liberty of the Subject. This latter observation will be again introduced in the sequel.

[3. ]The Tarpeian Rock, an elevated cliff overlooking the Roman Forum, was used during the Roman Republic as the execution site for traitors, who were thrown to their death from it.

[(a) ]There are several events, in the English History, which put in a very strong light this idea of the stability which the power of the Crown gives to the State.

One, is the facility with which the great Duke of Marlborough, and his party at home, were removed from their several employments. Hannibal, in circumstances nearly similar, had continued the war against the will of the Senate of Carthage: Caesar had done the same in Gaul; and when at last he was expressly required to deliver up his commission, he marched his army to Rome, and established a military despotism. But the Duke, though surrounded, as well as the above named Generals, by a victorious army, and by Allies in conjunction with whom he had carried on such a successful war, did not even hesitate to surrender his commission. [[The British general John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, became a national hero through a series of important victories over the French during the War of the Spanish Succession (1704–11). Notwithstanding his popularity and military successes, a change of government ministry led to his abrupt dismissal from office in 1711. He knew that all his soldiers were inseparably prepossessed in favour of that Power against which he must have revolted: he knew that the same prepossessions were deeply rooted in the minds of the whole Nation, and that every thing among them concurred to support the same Power: he knew that the very nature of the claims he must have set up, would instantly have made all his Officers and Captains turn themselves against him, and, in short, that in an enterprize of that nature, the arm of the sea he had to repass, was the smallest of the obstacles he would have to encounter.

The other event I shall mention here, is that of the Revolution of 1689. If the long established power of the Crown had not beforehand prevented the people from accustoming themselves to fix their eyes on some particular Citizens, and in general had not prevented all Men in the State from attaining any too considerable degree of power and greatness, the expulsion of James II. might have been followed by events similar to those which took place at Rome after the death of Caesar.

[(a) ]The capacity of being admitted to all places of public trust, at length gained by the Plebeians, having rendered useless the old distinction between them and the Patricians, a coalition was then effected between the great Plebeians, or Commoners, who got into these places, and the ancient Patricians: hence a new Class of Men arose, who were called Nobiles and Nobilitas. These are the words by which Livy, after that period, constantly distinguishes those Men and families who were at the head of the State. [[Titus Livius (Livy) (59 b.c.e.–17 c.e.), whose classic history of the early Roman Republic, Ab urbe condita (From the founding of the city) served for De Lolme, as for many early modern writers, as a major source of information and insight concerning republican political systems as well as Roman history. The political effects of the competition between Rome’s patrician and plebeian ranks formed one of Livy’s central themes, examined at length in books 3–4 and 6–7.

[1. ]De Lolme invokes several institutions of republican Rome to which he refers routinely in later discussion. Two consuls were elected annually by a citizen assembly (comitia centuriata) and served as the chief civil and military magistrates. In later political theory, the office was commonly treated as a monarchic element of Rome’s constitution. Military tribunes were appointed for each of Rome’s military legions and exercised general command of the army. (De Lolme elsewhere refers to the office of plebeian tribunes [tribuni plebis], who protected the property and interests of Rome’s plebeian citizens and had authority to veto any act or decree of the Senate or other magistrates.) The nobles (nobiles) were an elite group of plebeian families whose descendants came to dominate important political offices including, especially, the office of consul. Decemvirs occupied the ten-person board (decemvirate) of the mid-fifth century b.c.e., which produced and authorized the law of the Twelve Tables. During their period in office, the other established Roman magistracies were suspended. Dictators were Roman magistrates who were invested with extraordinary powers and appointed in times of emergency to command the army or perform other specific tasks. The authority of the dictator was limited to a brief period of time and (in theory) ended with the emergency that led to the appointment.

[2. ]In Greek mythology, Proteus was a sea god who could change form at will. Two of his sons, Polygonos and Telegonos, were killed by Hercules.

[3. ]De Lolme refers to parliamentary measures adopted in 1215 (Magna Carta), 1628 (Petition of Right), 1679 (Habeas Corpus Act), and 1688/89 (Bill of Rights), whose significance he discussed above, book 1, especially chapters 2–3.

[(a) ]This last advantage of the greatness and indivisibility of the Executive power, viz. the obligation it lays upon the greatest Men in the State, sincerely to unite in a common cause with the people, will be more amply discussed hereafter, when a more particular comparison between the English Government and the Republican form, shall be offered to the Reader.

[(a) ]He wanted a spot whereupon to fix his instruments. [[There are several classical sources for the statement attributed to the mathematician of Syracuse, Archimedes (ca. 287–212 b.c.e.), that he could transport the earth if only he could find a fixed point to locate his instruments. Descartes invoked the statement in his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, meditation II.1.

[(a) ]Every one knows the frequent hostilities that took place between the Roman Senate and the Tribunes. In Sweden there have been continual contentions between the King and the Senate, in which they have overpowered each other by turns. And in England, when the Executive power became double, by the King allowing the Parliament to have a perpetual and independent existence, a civil war almost immediately followed. [[De Lolme cites examples of unstable competition between political institutions that shared executive powers. In the case of England, he connects the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 with the enactment of the 1641 Triennial Act, which curtailed the crown’s control over the summoning and dissolution of Parliament.

[1. ]The 1694 Triennial Act limited the duration of a parliament to three years before holding new parliamentary elections. The 1716 Septennial Act extended this maximum to seven years.

[(a) ]The Athenians, among other laws, had enacted one to forbid applying a certain part of the public revenues to any other use than the expences of the Theatres and public Shews. [[De Lolme likely refers to the law, as described by Montesquieu, “to punish by death anyone who might propose that the silver destined for the theaters be converted to the uses of war.” See The Spirit of the Laws, book 3, chapter 3, note 6.

[(b) ]In some ancient Republics, when the Legislature wished to render a certain law permanent, and at the same time mistrusted their own future wisdom, they added a clause to it, which made it death to propose the revocation of it. Those who afterwards thought such revocation necessary to the public welfare, relying on the mercy of the People, appeared in the public Assembly with a halter about their necks. [[The Greek orator Demosthenes (384–322 b.c.e.), in his speech “Against Timocrates,” refers to the practice of the Locrian lawmakers who wore ropes around their necks when they repealed previous legislation.

[(c) ]We shall perhaps have occasion to observe, hereafter, that the true cause of the equability of the operations of the English Legislature, is the opposition that happily takes places between the different views and interests of the several bodies that compose it: a consideration this, without which all political inquiries are no more than airy speculations, and is the only one that can lead to useful practical conclusions.

[(a) ]It is for want of having duly considered this subject, that Mr. Rousseau exclaims, somewhere, against those who, when they speak of General Estates of France, “dare to call the people, the third Estate.” At Rome, where all the order we mention was inverted,—where the fasces were laid down at the feet of the People,—and where the Tribunes, whose function, like that of the King of England, was to oppose the establishment of new laws, were only a subordinate kind of Magistracy, many disorders followed. In Sweden, and in Scotland (before the union), faults of another kind prevailed: in the former kingdom, for instance, an overgrown body of two thousand Nobles frequently over-ruled both King and People. [[De Lolme likely refers to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s passing comment on the third estate in book 3, chapter 15, of the 1762 Du contrat social (The social contract). In Rome, the fasces (literally, “bundle”)—a tied bundle of wooden rods surrounding an axe—was an ancient symbol of political authority. For tribunes (tribuni plebis), see above, book 2, chapter 2, p. 151, note 1.

[(b) ]The Speaker of the House of Lords must come down from his woolpack to receive the bills which the Members of the Commons bring to their House.

[(a) ]The twelve Judges and the Masters in Chancery. There is also a ceremonial established with regard to the manner, and marks of respect, with which those two of them, who are sent with a bill to the Commons, are to deliver it.

[2. ]This applies to the English peers, but not to the sixteen Scottish peers who served in the House of Lords as representatives under the terms of the 1707 Act of Union.

[(b) ]The Commons have not that privilege, because they are themselves proxies for the People.—See Coke’s Inst. iv. p. 41. [[Edward Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England, pt. 4, p. 12. (De Lolme’s note mistakes the page.)

[(a) ]This power of previously considering and approving such laws as were afterwards to be propounded to the People, was, in the first times of the Roman Republic, constantly exercised by the Senate: laws were made, Populi jussu, ex auctoritate Senatûs. Even in cases of elections, the previous approbation and auctoritas of the Senate, with regard to those persons who were offered to the suffrages of the People, was required. Tum enim non gerebat is magistratum qui ceperat, si Patres auctores non erant facti. Cic. pro Plancio, 3. [[De Lolme cites Cicero’s 54 b.c.e. speech, Pro Plancio (On behalf of Plancius). The quoted passages read: “In accordance with the decree of the Senate and the will of the people” and “For in the old days, the man who had been elected to an office did not enter upon it if the patricians withheld their assent.”

At Venice the Senate also exercises powers of the same kind, with regard to the Grand Council or Assembly of the Nobles. In the Canton of Bern, all propositions must be discussed in the Little Council, which is composed of twenty-seven Members, before they are laid before the Council of the Two hundred, in whom resides the sovereignty of the whole Canton. And in Geneva, the law is, “that nothing shall be treated in the General Council, or Assembly of the Citizens, which has not been previously treated and approved in the Council of the Two hundred; and that nothing shall be treated in the Two hundred, which has not been previously treated and approved in the Council of the Twenty-five.” Geneva’s General Council (Conseil General), an institution dating from the medieval period, was an assembly comprising the entire Genevan citizenry. During the course of the sixteenth century, its power was eclipsed by the small Council of the Twenty-Five (or Petit Conseil [Little Council]). The Council of the Twenty-Five also dominated the Council of the Two Hundred, a political body introduced in the early sixteenth century. In De Lolme’s own era, opposition to the political power of Geneva’s ruling families typically took the form of demands for the restoration of the authority of the General Council. See De Lolme’s further discussion below, book 2, chapter 5, pp. 174–75, note a, and the editorial introduction, pp. x–xi.

[(a) ]In the beginning of the existence of the House of Commons, bills were presented to the King under the form of Petitions. Those to which the King assented, were registered among the rolls of Parliament, with his answer to them; and at the end of each Parliament, the Judges formed them into Statutes. Several abuses having crept into that method of proceeding, it was ordained that the Judges should in future make the Statute before the end of every Session. Lastly, as even that became, in process of time, insufficient, the present method of framing bills was established; that is to say, both houses now frame the Statutes in the very form and words in which they are to stand when they have received the Royal assent. [[De Lolme’s periodization of English legislative practice summarizes the fuller account set out by Matthew Hale in his History of the Common Law of England, chapter 1.

[(b) ]No popular Assembly ever enjoyed the privilege of starting, canvassing, and proposing new matter, to such a degree as the English Commons. In France, when their General Estates were allowed to sit, their remonstrances were little regarded, and the particular Estates of the Provinces dare now hardly present any. In Sweden, the Power of proposing new subjects was lodged in an Assembly called the Secret Committee, composed of Nobles, and a few of the Clergy; and is now possessed by the King. In Scotland, until the Union, all propositions to be laid before the Parliament, were to be framed by the persons called the Lords of the Articles. In regard to Ireland, all bills must be prepared by the King in his Privy Council, and are to be laid before the Parliament by the Lord Lieutenant, for their assent or dissent: only, they are allowed to discuss, among them, what they call Heads of a bill, which the Lord Lieutenant is desired afterwards to transmit to the King, who selects out of them what clauses he thinks proper, or sets the whole aside; and is not expected to give at any time, any precise answer to them. And in republican Governments, Magistrates are never at rest till they have entirely secured to themselves the important privilege of proposing; nor does this follow merely from their ambition; it is also the consequence of the situation they are in, from the principles of that mode of Government.

[1. ]De Lolme’s language here is potentially misleading. The described distribution of legislative functions between Parliament and crown emerged as a matter of developed constitutional convention. At no specific point did the king formally “renounce” the authority to propose legislation, just as the crown’s failure after 1708 to exercise its legislative veto never involved a formal renunciation of the veto power.

[(a) ]The King indeed at times sends messages to either House; and nobody, I think, can wish that no means of intercourse should exist between him and his Parliament. But these messages are always expressed in very general words; they are only made to desire the House to take certain subjects into their consideration; no particular articles or clauses are expressed; the Commons are not to declare, at any settled time, any solemn acceptation or rejection of the proposition made by the King; and, in short, the House follows the same mode of proceeding, with respect to such messages, as they usually do in regard to petitions presented by private individuals. Some member makes a motion upon the subject expressed in the King’s message; a bill is framed in the usual way; it may be dropt at every stage of it; and it is never the proposal of the Crown, but the motions of some of their own Members, which the House discuss, and finally accept or reject.

[(a) ]I particularly mean here, the circumstance of the People having entirely delegated their power to their Representatives: the consequences of which Institution will be discussed in the next Chapter.

[(a) ]See M. Rousseau’s Social Contract, chap. xv. [[De Lolme provides an incomplete reference to Rousseau’s famous dismissal of English political freedom; see The Social Contract, book 3, chapter 15.

[1. ]“Consuls, dictators, patricians, nobles.” Patricians comprised a privileged class of Roman citizens who monopolized many important religious and civic offices during the period of Rome’s early development. For the other institutions, see above, book 2, chapter 2, p. 151, note 1.

[2. ]Although Rousseau served as a special target in De Lolme’s criticism of those theorists who equated liberty with popular legislative bodies, he here makes clear that his comments were designed to address the larger body of early modern republican theorists.

[(a) ]I have used all the above expressions in the same sense in which they were used in the ancient Commonwealths, and still are by most of the Writers who describe their Governments.

[3. ]The Roman Republic contained several assemblies, or comitia, each of which had legislative power: the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa (both comprising the entire body of citizens) and the concilium plebis (comprising only plebeians).

[4. ]“Sufficient reason.”

[(a) ]Every one knows of how much importance it was in the Roman Commonwealth, to assemble the People, in one place rather than another. In order to change entirely the nature of their resolutions, it was often sufficient to hide from them, or let them see, the Capitol.

[(a) ]It was thus the Senate, at Rome, assumed to itself the power of laying taxes. They promised, in the time of the war against the Veientes, to give pay to such Citizens as would inlist; and to that end they established a tribute. The people, solely taken up with the idea of not going to war at their own expence, were transported with so much joy, that they crouded at the door of the Senate, and laying hold of the hands of the Senators, called them their Fathers—Nihil unquam acceptum à plebe tanto gaudio traditur: concursum itaque Curiam esse, prehensatasque exeuntium manus, Patres vere appellatos, &c. See Tit. Liv. book iv. [[De Lolme cites Titus Livius (Livy), Ab Urbe Condita, book 4.60.1–2. The full passage reads: “Nothing, it is said, was ever welcomed by the plebs with such rejoicing. Crowds gathered at the Curia and men grasped the hands of the senators as they came out saying that they were rightly called Fathers, and confessing that they had brought it to pass that no one, so long as he retained a particle of strength, would grudge his life’s blood to so generous a country.”

[(a) ]I might confirm all these things by numberless instances from ancient History; but, if I may be allowed, in this case, to draw examples from my own Country, & celebrare domestica facta [[“And to record events familiar to me.”, I shall relate facts which will be no less to the purpose. In Geneva, in the year 1707, a law was enacted, that a General Assembly of the People should be held every five years, to treat of the affairs of the Republic; but the Magistrates, who dreaded those Assemblies, soon obtained from the Citizens themselves the repeal of the law; and the first resolution of the People, in the first of these periodical Assemblies (in the year 1712) was to abolish them for ever. The profound secrecy with which the Magistrates prepared their proposal to the Citizens on that subject, and the sudden manner in which the latter, when assembled, were acquainted with it, and made to give their votes upon it, have indeed accounted but imperfectly for this strange determination of the People; and the consternation which seized the whole Assembly when the result of the suffrages was proclaimed, has confirmed many in the opinion that some unfair means had been used. The whole transaction has been kept secret to this day; but the common opinion on this subject, which has been adopted by M. Rousseau in his Lettres de la Montagne, is this: the Magistrates, it is said, had privately instructed the Secretaries in whose ears the Citizens were to whisper their suffrages: when a Citizen said, approbation, he was understood to approve the proposal of the Magistrates; when he said, rejection, he was understood to reject the periodical Assemblies. De Lolme refers to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1764 Lettres de la montagne (Letters from the mountain), which analyzed and attacked the same political developments in Geneva treated by De Lolme here, by which the Council of the Twenty-Five frustrated the 1707 effort to restore the political capacity of the General Assembly. For these institutions, see above, book 2, chapter 4, pp. 160–61, note a.

In the year 1738, the Citizens enacted at once into laws a small Code of forty-four Articles, by one single line of which they bound themselves for ever to elect the four Syndics (the Chiefs of the Council of the Twenty-five) out of the Members of the same Council; whereas they were before free in their choice. They at that time suffered also the word approved to be slipped into the law mentioned in the Note (a) p. 229 pp. 160–61, which was transcribed from a former Code; the consequence of which was to render the Magistrates absolute masters of the Legislature.

The Citizens had thus been successively stripped of all their political rights, and had little more left to them than the pleasure of being called a Sovereign Assembly, when they met (which idea, it must be confessed, preserved among them a spirit of resistance which it would have been dangerous for the Magistrates to provoke too far), and the power of at least refusing to elect the four Syndics. Upon this privilege the Citizens have, a few years ago, (A. 1765. to 1768.) made their last stand: and a singular conjunction of circumstances having happened at the same time, to raise and preserve among them, during three years, an uncommon spirit of union and perseverance, they have in the issue succeeded in a great measure to repair the injuries which they had been made to do to themselves, for these last two hundred years and more. (A total change has since that time been effected by foreign forces, in the Government of the Republic (A. 1782) upon which this is not a proper place to make any observation.) The 1738 legislation, Règlement de I’llustre médiation pour la pacification des troubles de la République de Genève (Settlement of the illustrious mediation for the pacification of the Republic of Geneva, or, more commonly, “Act of Mediation”), which had resulted from the political mediation of France, authorized the General Assembly to debate and vote on proposals for new laws and new taxes, though principal political authority remained with the Council of the Twenty-Five. The 1738 settlement was effectively challenged in the years 1763–70 by the party of reform. In his closing parenthetical comment, added to the 1784 edition, De Lolme refers to the events of 1782, when a league of neighboring powers, led by France, used military intervention to suppress the popular interest in Geneva.

[(a) ]If it had not been for an incentive of this kind, the English Commons would not have vindicated their right of taxation with so much vigilance as they have done, against all enterprizes, often perhaps involuntary, of the Lords.

[(b) ]All the above reasoning essentially requires that the Representatives of the People should be united in interest with the People. We shall soon see that this union really obtains in the English Constitution, and may be called the master-piece of it. [[See below, book 2, chapters 8 and 10.

[1. ]The ephori of the ancient republic of Sparta (or “Lacedaemon”) were five magistrates elected annually by the popular assembly. Like the tribunes of republican Rome, the ephori functioned to protect the interests and liberties of the populace against the power of the Spartan kings and wealthier citizens.

[(a) ]See Rousseau’s Social Contract. [[For Rousseau’s statement concerning the Roman tribunes, see The Social Contract, book 3, chapter 15.

[(b) ]Valerius Maximus relates that the Tribunes of the People having offered to propose some regulations in regard to the price of corn, in a time of great scarcity, Scipio Nasica over-ruled the Assembly merely by saying, “Silence Romans; I know better than you what is expedient for the Republic. Which words were no sooner heard by the People, than they shewed by a silence full of veneration, that they were more affected by his authority, than by the necessity of providing for their own subsistence.”—Tacete, quaeso, Quirites. Plus enim ego quam vos quid reipublicae expediat intelligo. Quâ voce auditâ, omnes pleno venerationis silentio, majorem ejus autoritatis quam alimentorum suorum curam egerunt. [[De Lolme cites and translates Valerius Maximus (ca. 20 b.c.e.–50 c.e.), Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX (Nine books of memorable deeds and sayings), book 3, chapter 7, section 3.

[(a) ]Quid enim majus est, si de jure Augurum quaerimus, says Tully, who himself was an Augur, and a Senator into the bargain, quam posse a summis imperiis & summis potestatibus Comitatus & Concilia, vel instituta dimittere, vel habita rescindere! Quid gravius, quam rem susceptam dirimi, si unus Auguralium (id est, alium diem) dixerit!—See De Legib. lib. ii. § 12. [[De Lolme quotes Marcus Tullius Cicero, De legibus, book 2, 12. The quoted passage reads: “For if we consider their legal rights, what power is greater than that of adjourning assemblies and meetings convened by the highest officials, with or without imperium, or that of declaring null and void the acts of assemblies presided over by such officials? What is of graver import than the abandonment of any business already begun, if a single augur says, ‘on another day’?”

[(b) ]Videat Consul ne quid detrimenti Respublica capiat. [[“Let the consul take heed that the Republic receive no injury.”

[(c) ]“The Tribunes of the People,” says Livy, who was a great admirer of the Aristocratical power, “and the People themselves, durst neither lift up their eyes, nor even mutter, in the presence of the Dictator.” Nec adversus Dictatoriam vim, aut Tribuni plebis, aut ipsa Plebs, attollere oculos, aut hiscere, audebant—See Tit. Liv. lib. vi. § 16. [[Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 6, 16.3–4.

[2. ]Tiberius Gracchus (163–133 b.c.e.) and his younger brother, Caius (154–121 b.c.e.), were members of a politically important Roman family. Both served as Roman tribunes, in which capacity they promoted measures in support of the plebeian citizens and earned the fierce opposition of leading patrician families. Tiberius was killed near the Roman Forum in an armed confrontation with his political adversaries. Caius’s death, by suicide, followed a failed attempt to defeat his political opponents in the Senate.

[(a) ]The reader with respect to all the above observations, may see Plutarch’s Lives, particularly the Lives of the two Gracchi. [[Plutarch (ca. 46–ca. 120 c.e.) was the Greek essayist and moral philosopher whose Parallel Lives contained paired biographies of Greek and Roman leaders. His Lives of the brothers Tiberius and Caius Gracchus described in detail the incidents and political abuses discussed by De Lolme in this chapter. I must add, that I have avoided drawing any instance from those Assemblies in which one half of the people were made to arm themselves against the other. I have here only alluded to those times which immediately either preceded or followed the third Punic war, that is, of those which are commonly called the best period of the Republic. The Third (and final) Punic War was fought between Rome and Carthage from 149 to 146 b.c.e.

[(a) ]Tully makes no end of his similes on this subject. Quod enim fretum, quem Euripum, tot motus, tantas & tam varias habere putatis agitationes fluctuum, quantas perturbationes & quantos aestus habet ratio Comitiorum? See Orat. pro Muraenâ. [[“Euripus” referred to the channel of water that separated Boeotia, on the Attic shore, from the island of Euboea. De Lolme quotes Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Muraenâ (On behalf of Muraenâ). The passage reads: “Can you think of any strait, any channel, that has the currents and variety of rough patches and changes of tide strong enough to match the upsets of the ebb and flow that accompany the working of elections?”—Concio, says he in another place, quae ex imperitissimis constat, &c. De Amicitiâ, § 25. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De amicitiâ (On friendship), 25. The full passage reads: “A public assembly, though composed of very ignorant men, can, nevertheless, usually see the difference between a demagogue—that is, a smooth-tongued, shallow citizen—and one who has stability, sincerity, and weight.”

[1. ]De Lolme refers to several techniques used by Rome’s governors to decide public matters in a manner that avoided reasoned explanations or regular procedures. Rome’s armies consulted the feeding habits of “sacred chickens” and other birds to divine their fortunes in future battles. “White or black days” is an apparent reference to days on which public records, such as the praetor’s edicts, were or were not publicly displayed on the “alba” or white tablets. The “Sibylline books” were collections of Greek oracular prophesies which, according to legend, were acquired for Rome by Tarquin II, who ruled as king from 535 b.c.e. to 510 b.c.e., and were later consulted in times of grave crisis.

[(a) ]It is moreover a settled rule in the House of Commons, that no Member is to speak more than once in the same day. When the number and nature of the clauses of a Bill require that it should be discussed in a freer manner, a Committee is appointed for that purpose, who are to make their report afterwards to the House. When the subject is of importance, this Committee is formed of the whole House, which still continues to sit in the same place, but in a less solemn manner, and under another President, who is called the Chairman of the Committee. In order to form the House again, the mace is replaced on the Table, and the Speaker goes again into his chair.

[(a) ]If any person were to mention in his speech, what the King wishes should be, would be glad to see, &c. he would be immediately called to order, for attempting to influence the debate.

[(b) ]See chap. iv. of this Book.

[(a) ]How could it be expected that Men who entertained views of being Praetors, would endeavour to restrain the power of the Praetors,—that Men who aimed at being one day Consuls, would wish to limit the power of the Consuls,—that Men whom their influence among the People made sure of getting into the Senate, would seriously endeavour to confine the authority of the Senate?

[1. ]De Lolme here returns to and expands upon a theme he first introduced in book 2, chapter 2; see p. 150, note a.

[(a) ]Without such precautions, laws must always be as Pope expresses it,

• Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.

[[De Lolme quotes Alexander Pope’s 1733 An Essay on Man, epistle 3, line 194.]]

[2. ]For Tarpeian Rock, see book 2, chapter 1, p. 148, note 3.

[3. ]The deaths of the Gracchi are described above, book 2, chapter 7, p. 181, note 2.

[4. ]The Lex Porcia (195 b.c.e.), secured by Marcus Porcius Cato, prohibited the punishment of Roman citizens by beating with rods (de tergo civium, on the back of citizens).

[5. ]Gaius Verres (ca. 120–43 bc) was a Roman magistrate and governor of Sicily, prosecuted by Cicero in 70 b.c.e., whose rule became notorious for political abuse and personal corruption.

[(a) ]If we turn our eyes to Lacedaemon, we shall see, from several instances of the justice of the Ephori, that matters were little better ordered there, in regard to the administration of public justice. [[The ephori of Sparta (or “Lacedaemon”) are described above, book 2, chapter 7, p. 179, note 1. And in Athens itself, which is the only one of the ancient Commonwealths in which the people seem to have enjoyed any degree of real liberty, we see the Magistrates proceed nearly in the same manner as they now do among the Turks: and I think no other proof needs to be given than the story of that Barber in the Piraeus, who having spread about the Town the news of the overthrow of the Athenians in Sicily, which he had heard from a stranger who had stopped at his shop, was put to the torture, by the command of the Archons, because he could not tell the name of his author.—See Plut. Life of Nicias. Plutarch’s “Life of Nicias” described the career of the Athenian politician and military commander Nicias (d. 414 b.c.e.). For Plutarch’s Lives, see above, book 2, chapter 7, p. 181, note a.

[(a) ]There are frequent instances of the Consuls taking away from the Capitol the tables of the laws passed under their predecessors. Nor was this, as we might at first be tempted to believe, an act of violence which success alone could justify; it was a consequence of the acknowledged power enjoyed by the Senate, cujus erat gravissimum judicium de jure legum [[“whose was the most solemn right of decision on the laws”, as we may see in several places in Tully. Nay, the Augurs themselves, as Tully informs us, enjoyed the same privilege. “If laws have not been laid before the people, in the legal form, they (the Augurs) may set them aside; as was done with respect to the Lex Tetia, by the decree of the College, and to the leges Liviae, by the advice of Philip, who was Consul and Augur.” Legem si non jure rogata est, tollere possunt;ut Tetiam, decreto Collegii, ut Livias, consilio Philippi, Consulis & Auguris—See De Legib. lib. ii. § 12. De Lolme quotes and translates Cicero, De legibus, 2.12.

[(b) ]Which always proves an easy thing. It is in Commonwealths the particular care of that class of Men who are at the head of the State, to keep a watchful eye over the People, in order to draw over to their own party any Man who happens to acquire a considerable influence among them; and this they are (and indeed must be) the more attentive to do, in proportion as the nature of the Government is more democratical.

The Constitution of Rome had even made express provisions on that subject. Not only the Censors could at once remove any Citizen into what Tribe they pleased, and even into the Senate, and we may easily believe that they made a political use of this privilege; but it was moreover a settled rule, that all persons who had been promoted to any public office by the People, such as the Consulship, the Edileship, or Tribuneship, became ipso facto, members of the Senate.—See Middleton’s Dissertation on the Roman Senate. [[De Lolme cites, but mistakenly titles, Conyers Middleton’s 1747 A Treatise on the Roman Senate.

[(a) ]Called Nobiles and Nobilitas.

[(b) ]It was, in several respects, a misfortune for the People of Rome, whatever may have been said to the contrary by the Writers on this subject, that the distinction between the Patricians and the Plebeians was ever abolished; though, to say the truth, this was an event which could not be prevented.

[6. ]De Lolme here returns to a theme initially considered in book 2, chapter 2, concerning the abuses which occurred when members of Rome’s plebeian ranks came to acquire political offices from which they were originally excluded; see book 2, chapter 2, p. 150, note a.

[7. ]De Lolme refers to the names of plebeian families whose members attained high public office in the Republic.

[1. ]For the importance of the writ of Habeas Corpus and of the 1679 Habeas Corpus Amendment Act, see De Lolme’s discussion above, book 1, chapter 14.

[2. ]De Lolme’s reference to the English constitution’s “ever subsisting Carthage” was likely offered as a rejoinder to Montesquieu’s more sober judgment that since “all human things have an end,” England eventually would “lose its liberty; it will perish. Rome, Lacedaemonia, and Carthage have surely perished.” See The Spirit of the Laws, book 11, chapter 6. De Lolme cites and discusses this passage, below, in book 2, chapter 18, p. 304.

[(a) ]M. de Montesquieu, and M. Rousseau, and indeed all the Writers on this subject I have met with, bestow vast encomiums on the Censorial Tribunal that had been instituted at Rome [[Montesquieu discussed Rome’s constitution and tribunes at many points in his 1734 Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness and Decline of the Romans and The Spirit of the Laws. De Lolme here may recall the passage in Spirit of the Laws, book 4, chapter 11, where Montesquieu endorsed Cicero’s judgment that “the establishment of tribunes in Rome saved the republic.” Rousseau’s most sustained discussion of Rome’s tribunes—the substance of which was more qualified than De Lolme’s note suggests—appeared in The Social Contract, book 4, chapter 5, “Of the Tribunate.”;—they have not been aware that this power of Censure, lodged in the hands of peculiar Magistrates, with other discretionary powers annexed to it, was no other than a piece of State-craft, like those described in the preceding Chapters, and had been contrived by the Senate as an additional means of securing its authority.—Sir Thomas More has also adopted similar opinions on the subject; and he is so far from allowing the people to canvass the actions of their Rulers, that in his System of Polity, which he calls An Account of Utopia (the happy Region,—εὑ̑ and τόπος) he makes it death for individuals to talk about the conduct of Government. De Lolme likely refers to the rule in Utopia, which was governed by an elected prince and elected senate: “It is a capital offence to make plans about public business outside the senate or the popular assembly.” See Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 123.

I feel a kind of pleasure, I must confess, to observe on this occasion, that though I have been called by some an advocate for Power, I have carried my ideas of Liberty farther than many Writers who have mentioned that word with much enthusiasm.

[1. ]Edward Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England, part 4 (1644), p. 64.

[2. ]Although the Licensing Act regulating publication was not renewed after 1695, Parliament continued to consider proposed legislation to regulate the press over the next decade. As De Lolme goes on to explain, the failure to renew the Licensing Acts brought to an end the system of prepublication censorship of the press. Thereafter, the content of newspaper and other writing was generally regulated by the law of blasphemy and libel.

[3. ]As in his previous treatment of this point in book 1, chapter 13, p. 128, note a, De Lolme treats as legally settled the still strongly contested issue of the jury’s authority to determine the question in law of what constituted criminal libel.

[(a) ]In actions for damages between individuals, the case, if I mistake not, is different, and the defendant is allowed to produce evidence of the facts asserted by him. [[In the case of a civil suit between private parties, the defendant would enter a plea of justification and could defeat the accusation by establishing the truth of the statement alleged to be libelous.

[(a) ]See Serjeant Glynn’s Speech for Woodfall in the prosecution against the latter, by the Attorney-General, for publishing Junius’s letter to the King. [[De Lolme quotes the sense but not the exact words of Serjeant John Glynn’s arguments in defense of Henry Woodfall during his 1770 trial for seditious libel for the publication of Junius’s “Letter to the King,” which appeared in the Public Advertiser on December 19, 1769. De Lolme earlier discussed the episode in book 1, chapter 13, p. 128, note a.

[4. ]The votes and resolutions of the House of Commons were printed in the London Gazette, which was “published by authority” and carried government information and official notices. Newspaper reports of speeches and debates within the House of Commons, however, were traditionally prohibited as a matter of well-settled parliamentary privilege. After 1771, the Commons ceased to enforce this privilege, and detailed accounts of parliamentary deliberations became a staple of England’s periodical press.

[(a) ]I shall take this occasion to observe, that the liberty of the press is so far from being injurious to the reputation of individuals, (as some persons have complained) that it is, on the contrary, its surest guard. When there exists no means of communication with the Public, every one is exposed, without defence, to the secret shafts of malignity and envy. The Man in office loses his reputation, the Merchant his credit, the private individual his character, without so much as knowing, either who are his enemies, or which way they carry on their attacks. But when there exists a free press, an innocent Man immediately brings the matter into open day, and crushes his adversaries, at once, by a public challenge to lay before the public the grounds of their several imputations.

[1. ]De Lolme cites two figures of humble origin who led famous campaigns against Rome’s armies. Viriatus (or Viriathus) (ca. 180–139 b.c.e.), a shepherd from the region of Lusitania in Iberia, led a successful resistance to Roman rule in Iberia during the period 147–139 b.c.e. He was finally defeated when the Roman general Servilius Caepio orchestrated his murder by bribing his servants. Spartacus (ca. 109–71 b.c.e.), a slave and gladiator from Thrace, commanded a major slave revolt in the years 73–71 b.c.e. He died in battle against Roman forces led by Marcus Licinius Crassus.

[(a) ]This right of publicly discussing political Subjects, is alone a great advantage to a People who enjoy it; and if the Citizens of Geneva, for instance, have preserved their liberty better than the people have been able to do in the other Commonwealths of Switzerland, it is, I think, owing to the extensive right they possess of making public remonstrances to their Magistrates. To these remonstrances the Magistrates, for instance the Council of Twenty-five, to which they are usually made, are obliged to give an answer. If this answer does not satisfy the remonstrating Citizens, they take time, perhaps two or three weeks, to make a reply to it, which must also be answered; and the number of Citizens who go up with each new remonstrance increases, according as they are thought to have reason on their side. Thus, the remonstrances which were made some years ago, on account of the sentence against the celebrated M. Rousseau, and were delivered at first by only forty Citizens, were afterwards often accompanied by about nine hundred.—This circumstance, together which the ceremony with which those remonstrances (or Representations, as they more commonly call them) are delivered, has rendered them a great check on the conduct of the Magistrates: they even have been still more useful to the Citizens of Geneva, as a preventative than as a remedy; and nothing is more likely to deter the Magistrates from taking a step of any kind than the thought that it will give rise to a Representation. [[In 1762, Geneva’s Council of the Twenty-Five (or Petit Conseil) condemned the publication and sale of Rousseau’s The Social Contract and Emile, and resolved that their author was to be arrested should he return to his native Geneva. “Representations” was the term given to the petitions Genevan citizens addressed to the government. The 1762 condemnation of Rousseau’s writings helped stimulate the publication of a large number of petitions and pamphlets, including De Lolme’s own contributions, that unsuccessfully challenged the legitimacy of the action. For De Lolme’s earlier discussion of Genevan politics, see above, book 2, chapter 4, pp. 160–61, note a; book 2, chapter 5, pp. 174–75, note a; and the editorial introduction, pp. x–xii.

[2. ]De Lolme offers the English translation of the familiar Latin aphorism “vox populi, vox dei.”

[3. ]De Lolme first discussed the constitutional significance of the reigns of Charles II and James II above, book 1, chapter 3. The last three Parliaments of Charles II, also known as the “Exclusion Parliaments” on the basis of the abortive efforts to exclude the future James II from the throne, met successively and briefly in the years 1679–81. The first of these Parliaments passed the 1679 Habeas Corpus Amendment Act, discussed and celebrated by De Lolme above, book 1, chapter 14. Charles II was forced to dissolve each of these Parliaments to prevent the passage of measures in opposition to royal policy.

[4. ]The famous “catastrophe” was the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the crown was transferred from James II to Queen Mary and King William III.

[(a) ]Lord Lyttelton says extremely well in his Persian Letters, “If the privileges of the People of England be concessions from the Crown, is not the power of the Crown itself, a concession from the People?” It might be said with equal truth, and somewhat more in point to the subject of this Chapter,—If the privileges of the People be an encroachment on the power of Kings, the power itself of Kings was at first an encroachment (no matter whether effected by surprize) on the natural liberty of the people. [[George Lord Lyttleton, Letters from a Persian in England to His Friend at Ispahan (1735), letter 59.

[(a) ]The Bill of Rights has since given a new sanction to all these principles.

[1. ]De Lolme quotes from the “Declaration of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,” issued on February 13, 1688/89. The Parliamentary Bill of Rights, enacted soon afterward, contained a slightly altered formulation of this claim.

[2. ]William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1:140.

[(a) ]See Reports of Cases argued, debated, and adjudged in Banco Reginae, in the time of the late Queen Anne. [[De Lolme cites, with deletions and slight variations, Chief Justice Sir John Holt’s comments in the 1709 case of R. v. Tooley, Arch and Lawson. “Benefit of clergy”—a medieval privilege that originally enabled members of the clergy who had been convicted in the royal courts to receive lesser punishment from the ecclesiastical courts—in the eighteenth century typically functioned to mutate a capital felony into a noncapital offense.

[3. ]“Movement” or “power” (figurative).

[4. ]“Make but a show of war, and you shall have peace.” De Lolme quotes the statement attributed to the Roman consul Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who was credited with saving Rome from attack by the Gauls in 390 b.c.e. and who later led a rebellion of plebeian debtors against their patrician creditors. (Livy gives a slightly different version of the statement in Ab urbe condita, book 6, chapter 18.7.)

[1. ]This chapter first appeared in the original English-language edition of 1775.

[2. ]Greek historian and rhetorician of the late first century b.c.e., whose Antiquitates Romanae charted the history of Rome from its mythic beginnings to the period of the First Punic War in 264–241 b.c.e.

[3. ]On the “axes and fasces,” see above, book 2, chapter 3, p. 157, note a.

[(a) ]“Omnia jura (Regum) omnia insignia, primi Consules tenuere; id modò cautum eft ne si ambo fasces haberent, duplicatus terror videretur. Tit. Liv. lib. ii. § 1. [[Titus Livius (Livy) Ab urbe condita, book 2, chapter 18. De Lolme’s English text provides an approximate translation of the passage quoted in his note.

[(b) ]These new Senators were called conscripti: hence the name of Patres Conscripti, afterwards indiscriminately given to the whole Senate.—Tit. Liv. ibid. [[The patres conscripti, who started to be made senators at the time of the expulsion of the Tarquin kings in 510 b.c.e., were not members of the patrician class that composed the original Roman senate. The term conscripti was used to distinguish these senators from the patricians (patricii). See Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 2, chapter 1.10–11.

[4. ]“Bonds.” The term applied to persons delivered bound to their creditors, for default of payment, until satisfaction was made.

[(a) ]Their number, which was only Ten, ought to have been much greater; and they never ought to have accepted the power left to each of them, of stopping by his single opposition the proceedings of all the rest. [[On the Roman tribunes, see above, book 2, chapter 2, p. 151, note 1; book 2, chapter 3, p. 157, note a; book 2, chapter 12, p. 200, note a.

[(a) ]A number of seditions were afterwards raised upon the same account.

[(b) ]“Quod Populus in se jus dederit, eo Consulem usurum; non ipsos libidinem ac licentiam suam pro lege habituros.”—Tit. Liv. lib. iii. § 9. [[Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 3, chapter 9.5. The quoted passage reads: “Such authority over them as the people had granted the consuls, they should enjoy. But they should not make a law of their own whims and caprices.”

[5. ]De Lolme refers to legislation proposed in 462 b.c.e. by Gaius Terentilius Harsa that “five men be appointed to write down laws on the powers of consuls.” According to Livy’s account, the proposed law was not adopted; see Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 3, chapter 9.

[6. ]The decemvirs began work in 451 b.c.e. on a summation of basic legal rules and procedure that eventually resulted in the Twelve Tables. As De Lolme reports, while the decemvirs held office, other Roman magistracies—such as the office of consul and tribune—were suspended.

[7. ]See above, book 2, chapter 5, p. 170, note 3.

[8. ]“A power within a power.”

[(a) ]Acerrimum telum. [[Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 3, chapter 55.5.

[(a) ]“Ab Tribunis, velut per interregnum, concilio Plebis habito, apparuit quae ex promulgatis Plebi, quae latoribus, gratiora essent; nam de foenore atque agro rogationes jubebant, de plebeio Consulatu antiquabant (antiquis stabant): & perfecta utraque res esset, ni Tribuni se in omnia simul consulere Plebem dixissent.”—Tit. Liv. lib. vi. § 39. [[Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 6, chapter 39.1–3. De Lolme’s text provides an approximate translation of the passage quoted in his note.

[9. ]For Tiberius Gracchus and Caius Gracchus, see above, book 2, chapter 7, p. 181, note 2. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus was an ally of Caius Gracchus, with whom he served as tribune in 122 b.c.e. He was murdered by his political opponents in 121 b.c.e.

[(a) ]The Revolutions which have formerly happened in France, have all ended like those above mentioned: of this a remarkable instance may be seen in the note (a) p. 29, 30. of this Work. The same facts are also to be observed in the History of Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, &c.; but I have avoided mentioning States of a Monarchical form, till some observations are made, which the Reader will find in the XVIIth Chapter. [[See above, book 1, chapter 2, p. 37, note a; and below, book 2, chapter 17.

[10. ]In giving examples of ancient and early modern republics in which the interests of the populace were neglected by the political elites, De Lolme refers to Thucydides’ (ca. 460 b.c.e.–ca. 400 b.c.e.) History of the Peloponnesian War and to Machiavelli’s 1525 History of Florence, as well as to the previously cited writings of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

[11. ]De Lolme, here and in the paragraphs which complete the chapter, returns to the English constitutional history he set out more fully in book 1, chapters 1–3.

[(a) ]All possessors of lands took the engagement to establish in behalf of their Tenants and Vassals (erga suos) the same liberties which they demanded from the King.—Mag. Char. cap. xxxviii. [[Magna Carta, chap. 38. See above, book 1, chapter 2, pp. 35–37.

[(a) ]The disorders which took place in the latter part of the reign of that Prince, seem indeed to contain a complete contradiction of the assertion which is the subject of the present Chapter; but they, at the same time, are a no less convincing confirmation of the truth of the principles laid down in the course of this whole Work. The above mentioned disorders took rise from that day in which Charles the First gave up the power of dissolving his Parliament; that is, from the day in which the Members of that Assembly acquired an independent, personal, permanent authority, which they soon began to turn against the People who had raised them to it. [[See De Lolme’s previous discussion of this episode in book 2, chapter 3, p. 155, note a.

[1. ]This chapter first appeared in the original English-language edition of 1775.

[2. ]For Livy see above, book 2, chapter 2, p. 150, note a; for Dionysius see book 2, chapter 15, p. 221, note 2.

[3. ]See above, book 2, chapter 15, pp. 224, note 6.

[(a) ]At the time of the expulsion of the Decemvirs, a law was also enacted, that no Magistrate should be created from whom no appeal could be made to the People (Magistratus sine provocatione. Tit. Liv. book iii. § 55.) [[“A magistrate without appeal.” See Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 3, chapter 55.5. The decemvirs were expelled from Rome in 449 b.c.e. by which the people expressly meant to abolish the Dictatorship: but, from the fact that will just now be related, and which happened about ten years afterwards, we shall see that this law was not better observed than the former ones had been.

[(a) ]“Tumultuantem deinde multitudinem, incerta existimatione facti, ad concionem vocari jussit, & Maelium jure caesum pronunciavit, etiamsi regni crimine insons fuerit, qui vocatus à Magistro equitum, ad Dictatorem non venisset. Tit. Liv. lib. iv. § 15. [[Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita, book 4, chapter 15.1. De Lolme’s text provides an approximate translation of the passage cited in his note.

[(b) ]Val. Max. book ii. c. 7. [[Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX, book 2, chapter 7, section 15t. For Valerius Maximus, see above, book 2, chapter 7, p. 179, note b. This Author does not mention the precise number of those who were put to death on this occasion; he only says that they were executed fifty at a time, in different successive days; but other Authors make the number of them amount to four thousand. Livy speaks of a whole Legion.—Legio Campana quae Rhegium occupaverat, obsessa, deditione factâ, securi percussa est.—Tit. Liv. lib. xv. Epit. “The Campanian legion, which had forcibly taken possession of Rhegium, besieged there, lay down their arms, and are punished with death.” In modern editions of Livy’s Ab urbe condita, an account of the incident (but not the precise sentence quoted by De Lolme) appears in the summary to book 12.—I have here followed Polybius, who says that only three hundred were taken and brought to Rome. De Lolme refers to Polybius (ca. 203–ca. 120 b.c.e.), the Greek historian whose Historiae (Histories) covered the history of Rome from 220 to 146 b.c.e. Polybius’s account appears in book 1, chapter 7.

[4. ]For Lex Porcia, see above, book 2, chapter 9, p. 188, note 4. The Lex Sempronia de Provocatione (123 b.c.e.) strengthened the rules that granted Roman citizens the right to appeal before a popular assembly the criminal convictions and punishments imposed by a magistrate, including capital sentences.

[(a) ]The fatal forms of words (cruciatús carmina) used by the Roman Magistrates when they ordered a Man to be put to death, resounded (says Tully in his speech for Rabirius) in the Assembly of the People, in which the Censors had forbidden the common Executioner ever to appear. I Lictor, colliga manus. Caput obnubito. Arbori infelici suspendito. [[De Lolme quotes from the oration of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo. The passage reads: “Lictor, go bind his hands. Veil his head. Hang him from the tree of shame.”—Memmius being a considerable Citizen, as we may conclude from his canvassing with success for the Consulship, all the great Men in the Republic took the alarm at the atrocious action of the Tribune: the Senate, the next day, issued out its solemn mandate, or form of words, to the Consuls, to provide that the Republic should receive no detriment; and the Tribune was killed in a pitched battle that was fought at the foot of the Capitol. The killing of Gaius Memmius occurred in 99 b.c.e.

[5. ]Lex Calpurnia de repetundis was adopted in 149 b.c.e. De Lolme’s reference to the Lex Junia appears somewhat confused. The Lex Junia of 59 b.c.e. reformed the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis by extending its application to additional groups of magistrates. An earlier Lex Junia of 126 b.c.e. established the punishment of banishment, but for a different set of offenses.

[(a) ]The Judges (over the Assembly of whom the Praetor usually presided) were taken from the body of the Senate, till some years after the last Punic War; when the Lex Sempronia, proposed by Caius S. Gracchus, enacted that they should in future be taken from the Equestrian Order. The Consul Caepio procured afterwards a law to be enacted, by which the Judges were to be taken from both orders, equally. The Lex Servilia soon after put the Equestrian Order again in possession of the Judgments; and after some years, the Lex Livia restored them entirely to the Senate.—The Lex Plautia enacted afterwards, that the Judges should be taken from the three Orders; the Senatorian, Equestrian, and Plebeian. The Lex Cornelia, framed by the Dictator Sylla, enacted again that the Judges should be entirely taken from the body of the Senate. The Lex Aurelia ordered anew, that they should be taken from the three Orders. Pompey made afterwards a change in their number, which he fixed at seventy-five, and in the manner of electing them. And lastly, Caesar entirely restored the Judgments to the Order of the Senate. [[De Lolme’s survey of the changing composition of the Roman judiciary covers over seventy years of development, from the passage of the Lex Sempronia Judiciaria in 122 b.c.e. to the adoption of Julius Caesar’s Lex Judiciaria in 46 b.c.e.

[(a) ]App. de Bell. Civ. [[De Lolme refers to the work of the Roman historian Appian of Alexandria (ca. 95–ca. 165 c.e.), part of whose Roman History was devoted to the civil wars (De bello civile).

[(b) ]Act. in Verr. i. § 1. [[De Lolme cites Marcus Tullius Cicero, Verrine Orations, First Part of the Speech Against Gaius Verres at the First Hearing, 1.1. De Lolme previously treated the abuses of power in Rome exemplified in the case of Gaius Verres; see above, book 2, chapter 9, p. 188, note 5.

[(c) ]Appian.

[6. ]Mithridates VI of Pontus (132–63 b.c.e.) fought a series of wars against Rome in the years 88–84 b.c.e., 83–81 b.c.e., and 75–65 b.c.e. The massacre of Roman citizens in Anatolia led to the outbreak of the first war.

[7. ]The abuses committed by Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus in his administration of Macedonia, 57–55 b.c.e., were condemned by Cicero in two speeches to the Roman Senate, De provinciis consularibus and In Pisonem.

[(a) ]See Cic. de Off. lib. ii. § 75. [[Cicero, De officiis, book 2, section 75. Cicero, at the start of the quotation, refers to the adoption of the Lex Calpurnia in 149 b.c.e.

[8. ]Magna Carta, chapter 29.

[(a) ]The Trial by Jury was in use among the Normans long before they came over to England; but it is now utterly lost in that Province: it even began very early to degenerate there from its first institution: we see in Hale’s History of the Common Law of England, that the unanimity among Jurymen was not required in Normandy for making a verdict, a good verdict; but when Jurymen dissented, a number of them was taken out, and others added in their stead, till an unanimity was procured.—In Sweden, where, according to the opinion of the Learned in that Country, the Trial by Jury had its first origin, only some forms of that Institution are now preserved in the lower Courts in the Country, where sets of Jurymen are established for life, and have a salary accordingly. See Robinson’s State of Sweden.—And in Scotland, the vicinity of England has not been able to preserve to the Trial by Jury its genuine ancient form: the unanimity among Jurymen is not required, as I have been told, to form a Verdict; but the majority is decisive. [[Hale’s account of the Norman practice concerning jury voting appeared in chapter 6 of his History of the Common Law of England. De Lolme’s source concerning juries in Sweden is John Robinson’s 1694 An account of Sweden; together with an extract of the history of that kingdom. He correctly reports that juries in Scotland, which were used only in cases involving the most serious forms of criminal offense, were not required to reach unanimous verdicts.

[(a) ]The first operation of the Commons, at the beginning of a Session, is to appoint four grand Committees. The one is a Committee of Religion, another of Courts of Justice, another of Trade, and another of Grievances: they are to be standing Committees during the whole Session.

[9. ]De Lolme discussed these episodes, including the 1641 statute abolishing the Star Chamber, in book 1, chapter 3, pp. 47–50.

[(a) ]The individual here alluded to was one Francis Jenks, who having made a motion at Guildhall, in the year 1676, to petition the King for a new Parliament, was examined before the Privy Council, and afterwards committed to the Gate-house, where he was kept about two months, through the delays made by the several Judges to whom he applied, in granting him a Habeas Corpus.—See the State Trials, vol. vii. anno 1676. [[Francis Jenks (or Jenkes) was held by order of the Privy Council from June 29 to August 18, 1676, notwithstanding repeated legal efforts to secure his release. De Lolme refers to the report of his case in A Collection of State-Trials and Proceedings upon High-Treason and other Crimes and Misdemeanours . . ., 8 vols. (London, 1730–35), 7:468–76.

[10. ]Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 3:135. Junius’s discussion of the Habeas Corpus Act appeared in his letter of January 21, 1772, addressed to “Lord Chief Justice Mansfield.” For the Letters of Junius, see above, book 1, chapter 13, p. 127, note a.

[(b) ]Sir Ralph de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, was fined 7,000 marks; Sir Thomas Wayland, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, had his whole estate forfeited; and Sir Adam de Stratton, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was fined 34,000 marks. [[The trials and convictions occurred in 1289, under the initiative of King Edward I, who was credited by Matthew Hale and other legal historians with major reforms of English law and justice.

[(a) ]The most conspicuous among these Judges were Sir Robert Belknap, and Sir Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. The latter had drawn up a string of questions calculated to confer a despotic authority on the Crown, or rather on the Ministers above named, who had found means to render themselves entire Masters of the person of the King. These questions Sir Robert Tresilian proposed to the Judges, who had been summoned for that purpose, and they gave their opinions in favour of them. One of these opinions of the Judges, among others, tended to no less than to annihilate, at one stroke, all the rights of the Commons, by taking from them that important privilege mentioned before, of starting and freely discussing whatever subjects of debate they think proper:—the Commons were to be restrained, under pain of being punished as traitors, from proceeding upon any articles besides those limited to them by the King. All those who had had a share in the above declarations of the Judges, were attainted of high-treason. Some were hanged; among them was Sir Robert Tresilian; and the others were only banished, at the intercession of the Bishops.—See the Parl. History of England, vol. i. [[The trial and conviction of Richard II’s judges and ministers occurred in 1388, as part of the political contest between the crown and the supporters of the Duke of Gloucester. De Lolme refers to the account of these proceedings in The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England; being a faithful account of all the most remarkable transactions in Parliament . . . Collected . . . by Several Hands, 24 vols. (London, 1751–61), 1:427–35.

[11. ]Richard (not Thomas) Empson and Edmund Dudley were executed for treason in 1510 and posthumously condemned by parliamentary attainder the following year.

[12. ]Francis Bacon was impeached on charges of bribery, to which he confessed, in 1621. Sir John Finch fled to Holland following his impeachment by Parliament in 1640. The parliamentary actions against the common law judges Davenport, Crawley, and Berkeley occurred that same year and formed part of the parliamentary attack on royal ministers who supported the extension of the crown’s prerogative powers. De Lolme cites John Rushworth’s Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, which covered the period 1618–48 and originally appeared in 8 volumes from 1659 to 1701. Rushworth discussed the sentencing of Berkeley in volume 5, p. 361.

[13. ]The House of Commons prepared articles of impeachment against the judges in 1680. The following year, Scroggs was tried but not convicted by the House of Lords, and soon after he was removed from the chief justiceship of King’s Bench.

[(a) ]See Burnet’s History, vol. i. anno 1669.—An Act of Parliament was made on this occasion, for giving a farther extent to the provisions before made for the personal security of the Subject; which is still called the Coventry Act. [[Sir John Coventry, whose satiric remarks in the House of Commons angered Charles II, was attacked and injured by officers of the royal guard. The 1671 Coventry Act, enacted in response, made maiming a capital crime and specified that those who assaulted Coventry should not be eligible to receive a pardon from the crown. De Lolme’s authority for this incident is A History of My Own Time by Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), which was published posthumously in 1724–34.

[(a) ]In all cases of public offences, down to a simple breach of the peace, the Members of the House of Commons have no privilege whatever above the rest of the People: they may be committed to prison by any Justice of the peace; and are dealt with afterwards in the same manner as any other Subjects. With regard to civil matters, their only privilege is to be free from Arrests during the time of a Session, and forty days before, and forty days after; but they may be sued, by process against their goods, for any just debt during that time.

[14. ]The parliamentary impeachments of Mompesson and Bennet both occurred in 1621 (the same year as the prosecution of Francis Bacon, discussed above, p. 243, note 12). Mompesson was charged with abuses in the conduct of his office as licenser of inns. Bennet was charged with judicial abuses in his administration of intestate estates.

[15. ]“Protections” were legal documents shielding an individual from arrest or legal process. Benson was both expelled from the 1641 session and declared “unfit and uncapable ever to sit in Parliament.”

[(a) ]Other examples of the attention of the House of Commons to the conduct of their Members, might be produced, either before, or after, that which is mentioned here. The reader may, for instance, see the relation of their proceedings in the affair of the South Sea Company Scheme; and a few years after, in that of the Charitable Corporation; a fraudulent scheme particularly oppressive to the poor, for which several Members were expelled. [[The 1720 crash of shares in the South Sea Company, a financial and trading corporation licensed in 1711, caused large financial losses to many elite investors. In the subsequent public scandal and parliamentary investigation, several prominent political leaders, including company directors and others accused of accepting bribes from the company, were forced to resign their offices and expelled from the House of Commons. In 1732 three members were expelled from the House of Commons for their participation in the fraudulent scheme to divert for personal gain funds of the Charitable Corporation, which had been established “for Relief of industrious Poor.”

[16. ]Trevor was convicted and expelled, along with Hungerford, in 1695. The episode ended Trevor’s parliamentary career, though he returned to public office in 1702 under the patronage of Queen Anne.

[(b) ]In case of a public offence, or even a simple breach of the peace, a Peer may be committed, till he finds bail, by any Justice of the peace: and Peers are to be tried by the common course of law, for all offences under felony. With regard to civil matters, they are at all times free from arrests; but execution may be had against their effects, in the same manner as against those of other Subjects.

[(a) ]See page 36 of this Work. [[The testimony of Philippe de Comines, in fact, appears above in book 1, chapter 2, p. 37, note a, and p. 43, note a.

[(b) ]A little after I came to England for the first time (if the Reader will give me leave to make mention of myself in this case) an action was brought in a Court of Justice against a Prince very nearly related to the Crown; and a Noble Lord was also, much about that time, engaged in a law-suit for the property of some valuable lead-mines in Yorkshire. I could not but observe that in both these cases a decision was given against the two most powerful parties; though I wondered but little at this, because I had before heard much of the impartiality of the law proceedings in England, and was prepared to see instances of that kind. But what I was much surprised at, was that nobody appeared to be in the least so, not even at the strictness with which the ordinary course of the law had, particularly in the former case, been adhered to,—and that those proceedings which I was disposed to consider as great instances of Justice, to the production of which some circumstances peculiar to the times, at least some uncommon virtue or spirit on the part of the Judges, must have more or less co-operated, were looked upon by all those whom I heard speak about it, as being nothing more than the common and expected course of things. This circumstance became a strong inducement to me to enquire into the nature of a Government by which such effects were produced. [[The first law case De Lolme mentions was the extensively publicized 1770 case of Richard Lord Grosvenor versus Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, before the Court of King’s Bench, in which the brother of King George III was found guilty of “criminal conversation” for his adulterous relationship with Lady Grosvenor. De Lolme’s second case has not been identified.

[(a) ]The assertion above made with respect to the impartiality with which Justice is, in all cases, administered in England, not being of a nature to be proved by alledging single facts, I have entered into no particulars on that account. However, I have subjoined here two cases which, I think, cannot but appear remarkable to the Reader.

The first is the case of the prosecution commenced in the year 1763, by some Journeymen Printers, against the King’s Messengers, for apprehending and imprisoning them for a short time, by virtue of a General Warrant from the Secretaries of State; and that which was afterwards carried on by another private individual, against one of the Secretaries themselves.—In these actions, all the ordinary forms of proceeding used in cases of actions between private Subjects, were strictly adhered to; and both the Secretary of State, and the Messengers, were, in the end, condemned. Yet, which it is proper the Reader should observe, from all the circumstances that accompanied this affair, it is difficult to propose a case in which Ministers could, of themselves, be under greater temptations to exert an undue influence to hinder the ordinary course of Justice. Nor were the Acts for which those Ministers were condemned, Acts of evident oppression, which nobody could be found to justify. They had done nothing but follow a practice of which they found several precedents established in their Offices; and their case, if I am well informed, was such, that most individuals, under similar circumstances, would have thought themselves authorised to have acted as they had done. [[General Warrants, effectively made illegal in a series of famous cases before the Courts of Common Pleas and King’s Bench in the 1760s and condemned in a 1766 resolution of the House of Commons, were issued for the arrest of unnamed persons or for the seizure of unspecified papers. De Lolme appears to refer to the case of Entick v. Carrington, which was decided in the Court of Common Pleas in 1765. John Entick, a printer involved in the publication of several seditious numbers of the journal The Monitor, or British Freeholder, brought the case against Nathan Carrington, who had entered his home and seized his property under the authority of a General Warrant. In dating the case to 1763, De Lolme may have confused this litigation with the well-known General Warrants case of that year, Rex v. Wilkes, which grew out of the government prosecution of John Wilkes for seditious libel in connection with his authorship and publication of issue no. 45 of the journal North Britain.

The second case I propose to relate, affords a singular instance of the confidence with which all Subjects in England claim what they think their just rights, and of the certainty with which the remedies of the law are in all cases open to them. The fact I mean, is the Arrest executed in the reign of Queen Anne, in the year 1708, on the person of the Russian Ambassador, by taking him out of his Coach for the sum of fifty pounds—And the consequences that followed this fact are still more remarkable. The Czar highly resented this affront, and demanded that the Sheriff of Middlesex, and all others concerned in the Arrest, should be punished with instant death. “But the Queen,” (to the amazement of that despotic Court, says Justice Blackstone, from whom I borrow this fact) “the Queen directed the Secretary of State to inform him that she could inflict no punishment upon any, the meanest, of Her Subjects, unless warranted by the law of the land.”—An act was afterwards passed to free from arrests the persons of foreign Ministers, and such of their servants as they have delivered a list of, to the Secretary of State. A copy of this Act elegantly engrossed and illuminated, continues Judge Blackstone, was sent to Moscow, and an Ambassador extraordinary commissioned to deliver it. Blackstone’s account of this episode appears in Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1:246–47.

[(a) ]The common manner in which the Senate ordered Citizens to be put to death, was by throwing them head-long from the top of the Tarpeian Rock. The Consuls, or other particular Magistrates, sometimes caused Citizens to expire upon a cross; or, which was a much more common case, ordered them to be beaten to death, with their heads fastened between the two branches of a fork; which they called cervicem furcae inserere [[“to put the neck upon the fork”.

[17. ]The legal compilation of Draco (ca. 621 b.c.e.), a legislator of ancient Athens, was written “with blood” on account of the notorious severity of its penal sanctions.

[(b) ]Caesar expressly reproaches the Greeks with this fact, in his speech in favour of the accomplices of Catiline, which Sallust has transmitted to us.—Sed eodem illo tempore, Graeciae morem imitati, (Majores nostri) verberibus animadvertebant in cives, de condemnatis ultimum supplicium sumptum. [[“In that early period, and with that generous disposition, they looked toward Greece, and from that nation imported the custom of punishing some offenses by the lictor’s rod, and in capital cases they pronounce judgment of death.” De Lolme cites the account of the Cataline conspiracy of 63 b.c.e.(Bellum Catilinae), published by Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–34 b.c.e.).

[(a) ]Historians take notice that the Commons, in the reign of Charles II. made haste to procure the abolition of the old Statute, De Haeretico comburendo, (For burning Heretics) as soon as it became to be publicly known that the presumptive Heir to the Crown was a Roman Catholic. [[Parliament repealed De Haeretico comburendo in 1677. Perhaps they would not have been so diligent and earnest, if they had not been fully convinced that a Member of the House of Commons, or his friends, may be brought to trial as easily as any other individuals among the people, so long as an express and written law may be produced against them,

[(b) ]The Reader may on this subject see again the Note in page 181 [[p. 130 of this Work, where the opposition is mentioned, that was made to the Earl of Suffolk, and the Duke of Exeter, when they attempted to introduce the practice of Torture: this even was one of the causes for which the latter was afterwards impeached.—The Reader is also referred to the Note following that which has just been quoted, in which the solemn declaration is related, that was given by the Judges against the practice of Torture, in the case of Felton, who had assassinated the Duke of Buckingham. See above, book 1, chapter 13, p. 130, note b, and p. 131, note a.

[(a) ]A very singular instance occurs in the History of the year 1605, of the care of the English Legislature not to suffer precedents of cruel practices to be introduced. During the time that those concerned in the Gun-powder plot were under sentence of death; a motion was made in the House of Commons to petition the King, that the execution might be staid, in order to consider of some extraordinary punishment to be inflicted upon them: but this motion was rejected. A proposal of the same kind was also made in the House of Lords, where it was dropped.—See the Parliamentary History of England, vol. v. anno 1605. [[De Lolme refers to parliamentary discussions reported in Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England, 5:143–45.

[18. ]De Lolme here exaggerates the mildness of England’s legal sanctions; see above, book 1, chapter 13, p. 134, note 10.

[(b) ]See the Bill of Rights, Art. x.—“Excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” [[On the 1688/89 Bill of Rights, see above, book 1, chapter 3, p. 53, note a.

[(c) ]Those same dispositions of the English Legislature, which have led them to take such precautions in favour even of convicted offenders, have still more engaged them to make provisions in favour of such persons as are only suspected and accused of having committed offences of any kind. Hence the zeal with which they have availed themselves of every important occasion, such for instance as that of the Revolution, to procure new confirmations to be given to the institution of the Trial by Jury, to the laws on imprisonments, and in general to that system of criminal Jurisprudence of which a description has been given in the first part of this Work, to which I refer the Reader. [[See above, book 1, chapters 12–14.

[19. ]De Lolme quotes, with slight alteration, the 1689 “Act for Establishing the Coronation Oath.” The clause and phrase did not, in fact, constitute one of the several changes to the Coronation Oath introduced by the statute.

[1. ]This chapter first appeared in the original English-language edition of 1775 and was considerably expanded in the 1784 edition.

[(a) ]Henry VIII. the most absolute Prince, perhaps, who ever sat upon a Throne, kept no standing army. [[The absence of a large standing army in England was conventionally associated with the preservation of English liberty. Given its increasing involvement in Continental and overseas wars throughout the period after 1688, England in fact regularly maintained a large land force. However, the parliamentary legislation which funded the army and provided for its military discipline through the Mutiny Act was enacted and renewed on a temporary basis, usually for the period of one year.

[(b) ]As was the case in the several Kingdoms into which the Spanish Monarchy was formerly divided; and, in not very remote times, in France itself.

[(c) ]Or than the Kings of Sweden were allowed to enjoy, before the last Revolution in that Country. [[De Lolme refers to the political events in Sweden in 1772, when the new king, Gustavus III, successfully restored much of the monarchic power that had been surrendered in the constitutional settlement of 1720; see below, pp. 264–65 and p. 265, note 7. The doges of Venice and of Genoa served as the chief magistrates in a system where political power was principally held by an oligarchy of leading families.

[(a) ]I have not flattered myself, in writing this Chapter that it would be perfectly understood, nor is it designed for the generality of readers.

[2. ]See De Lolme’s earlier reference to these conflicts and to the Lords’ order concerning “tacking” bills, at book 1, chapter 6, p. 66, note a.

[3. ]Exclusion bills, designed to exclude from the royal succession the Catholic heir, James, Duke of York (later James II), were passed by the House of Commons in 1679, 1680, and 1681. The legislation of 1680 was rejected by the House of Lords. The two other bills failed because of the dissolution of Parliament.

[(a) ]They, besides, proposed to have all money bills stopped in their House, till they had procured the right of taxing, themselves, their own estates; and to have a Committee of Lords, and a certain number of the Commons, appointed to confer together concerning the State of the Nation; “which Committee (says Bishop Burnet) would soon have grown to have been a Council of State, that would have brought all affairs under their inspection, and never had been proposed but when the Nation was ready to break into civil wars.”—See Burnet’s History, anno 1693. [[De Lolme refers to a variety of measures proposed in the years immediately following the 1688 Glorious Revolution, and often initiated by Whig leaders in the House of Lords, that would have further strengthened the political independence of Parliament by constraining the prerogatives of the crown. For Burnet’s History, see above, book 2, chapter 16, p. 245, note a.

[(b) ]Nov. 28, 1693.

[4. ]The unsuccessful legislation was introduced in 1719. George I’s predecessor, Queen Anne, in 1711 created twelve new peers in order to ensure majority support in the House of Lords for the government peace policy that led to the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.

[5. ]“Place bills” were designed to secure the independence of the House of Commons by disqualifying any member who held a profitable office (or “place”) under crown appointment. De Lolme’s discussion is slightly misleading. Opposition by the House of Lords prevented the passage of several place bills in the period 1710–15, but a limited measure was enacted in 1716.

[6. ]Maria Christina Alexandra became queen of Sweden in 1632. She was forced to abdicate in 1654 in favor of her cousin Charles Gustavus.

[(a) ]The Senate had procured a Seal to be made, to be affixed to their official resolutions, in case the King should refuse to lend his own. The reader will find a few more particulars concerning the former government of Sweden, in the nineteenth Chapter.

Regulations of a similar nature had been made in Denmark, and continued to subsist, with some variations, till the Revolution which in the last Century, placed the whole power in the State, into the hands of the Crown, without controul. The different Kingdoms into which Spain was formerly divided, were governed in much the same manner.

And in Scotland, that Seat of anarchy and aristocratical feuds, all the great offices in the State were not only taken from the Crown; but they were moreover made hereditary in the principal families of the Body of the Nobles:—such were the offices of High Admiral, High Stewart, High Constable, Great Chamberlain, and Justice General; this latter office implied powers analogous to those of the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, united.

The King’s minority, or personal weakness, or in general the difficulties in which the State might be involved, were circumstances of which the Scotch Leaders never failed to avail themselves for invading the governing authority: a remarkable instance of the claims they were used to set forth on those occasions, occurs in a Bill that was framed in the year 1703, for settling the Sucession to the Crown, after the demise of the Queen, under the title of An Act for the Security of the Kingdom.

The Scotch Parliament was to sit by its own authority, every year, on the first day of November, and adjourn themselves as they should think proper.

The King was to give his assent to all laws agreed to, and offered by, the Estates; or commission proper officers for doing the same.

A Committee of one and thirty Members, chosen by the Parliament, were to be called the King’s Council, and govern during the recess, being accountable to the Parliament.

The King not to make any foreign Treaty without the consent of Parliament.

All places and offices, both civil and military, and all pensions formerly given by the King, shall ever after be given by Parliament. See Parliamentary Debates. A. 1703. [[In treating the case of Denmark, De Lolme refers to the “revolution” that secured royal absolutism in the period 1660–65. The Scottish legislation of 1703, designed to ensure a Scottish heir to the Scottish throne following the death of Queen Anne, formed part of the political maneuvering between Scotland and England that preceded the 1707 Act of Union.

[7. ]Sweden’s Charles XII died without a direct male heir in 1718. A new constitutional order, which sharply reduced the power of the crown in favor of the Council of Estates, was consolidated in 1720.

[(a) ]It may not be improper to observe here, as a farther proof of the indivisibility of the power of the Crown (which has been above said to result from the peculiar frame of the English Government) that no part of the Executive authority of the King is vested in his Privy Council, as we have seen it was in the Senate of Sweden: the whole business centers in the Sovereign; the votes of the Members are not even counted, if I am well informed: and in fact the constant style of the Law, is the King in Council, and not the King and Council. A proviso is indeed sometimes added to some Bills, that certain acts mentioned in them are to be transacted by the King in Council: but this is only a precaution taken in the view that the most important affairs of a great Nation may be transacted with proper solemnity, and to prevent, for instance, all objections that might, in process of time, be drawn from the uncertainty whether the King has assented, or not, to certain particular transactions. The King names the Members of the Privy Council; or excludes them, by causing their names to be struck out of the Book. [[A Royal Council—or more commonly, Privy Council—was a regular institution of royal government from the medieval period. The size and membership of the council was generally under the discretion of the crown. By the time of De Lolme’s writing, the council’s most important government functions had been replaced by the smaller committee of royal ministers and advisors referred to as the cabinet.

[8. ]The 1688/89 Bill of Rights settled the crown on Anne of Denmark (the future Queen Anne) in the absence of a biological heir of William and Mary. The 1701 Act of Settlement settled the crown on the House of Hanover in the absence of a biological heir of Queen Anne.

[(a) ]He assented a few years afterwards to that Bill, after several amendments had been made in it. [[William assented to the Triennial Act of 1694, which limited the time between parliamentary elections to a maximum of three years. The legislation he vetoed in 1692 restricted even further the crown’s control over the timing of parliamentary sessions and elections. The final exercise of the royal legislative veto occurred in 1708, when Queen Anne vetoed a bill for a Scottish militia.

[9. ]This paragraph and the succeeding discussion to the end of part 1 (p. 274) first appeared in the fourth edition of 1784.

[10. ]See book 1, p. 138, note a.

[(a) ]I will mention another instance of this real disinterestedness of the Parliament in regard to the power of the Crown,—nay, of the strong bent that prevails in that Assembly, to make the Crown the general depository of the executive authority in the Nation; I mean to speak of the manner in which they use to provide for the execution of those resolutions of an active kind they may at times come to: it is always by addressing the Crown for that purpose, and desiring it to interfere with its own executive authority. Even, in regard to the printing of their Journals, the Crown is applied to by the Commons, with a promise of making good to it the necessary expences. Certainly, if there existed in that Body any latent anxiety, any real ambition (I speak here of the general tenor of their conduct) to invest themselves with the executive authority in the State, they would not give up the providing by their own authority at least for the object just mentioned: it might give them a pretence for having a set of Officers belonging to them, as well as a Treasury of their own, and in short for establishing in their favour some sort of beginning or precedent: at the same time that a wish on their part, to be the publishers of their own Journals, could not be decently opposed by the Crown, nor would be likely to be found fault with by the Public. To some readers the fact we are speaking of may appear trifling; to me it is not so: I confess I never happen to see a paragraph in the newspapers, mentioning an address to the Crown for borrowing its executive prerogative in regard to the inconsiderable object here alluded to, without pausing for half a minute on the article. Certainly there must needs exist causes of a very peculiar nature which produce in an Assembly possessed of so much weight, that remarkable freedom from any serious ambition to push their advantages farther,—which inspire it with the great political forbearance we have mentioned, with so sincere an indifference in general, in regard to arrogating to themselves any branch of the executive authority of the Crown:—they really seem as if they did not know what to do with it after having acquired it, nor of what kind of service it may be to them.

[11. ]On Marlborough’s removal from office in 1711, see above, book 2, chapter 1, p. 149, note a. De Lolme’s source is Jonathan Swift’s History of the Last Four Years of the Queen, which was published posthumously in 1758.

[(a) ]We might also mention here the case of the Emperor Ferdinand II. and the Duke of Valstein, which seems to have at the time made a great noise in the world.—The Earls of Douglas were sometimes attended by a retinue of two thousand horse. See Dr. Robertson’s History of Scotland.—The Duke of Guise was warned some hours before his death, of the danger of trusting his person into the King’s presence or house; he answered, On n’ oseroit;—They durst not.

If Mary, Queen of Scots, had possessed a power analogous to that exerted by Queen Anne, she might perhaps have avoided being driven into those instances of ill-conduct which were followed by such tragical consequences. [[In his note and corresponding text, De Lolme cites celebrated cases in which monarchs resorted to force and assassination to subdue powerful rivals. The Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, was held responsible for the 1634 assassination of the Duke of Wallenstein (or Valstein). The French monarch, Henry III, orchestrated the 1588 assassination of the Duke of Guise. The 1440 execution of the Earl of Douglas and his brother occurred under the minority rule of James II of Scotland. Mary Queen of Scots was charged with the 1567 death of her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. De Lolme’s source for the reign of James II is William Robertson’s 1758 History of Scotland.

[12. ]The “late King” is Louis XV. De Lolme refers to the events of 1771, when the king issued lettres de cachet exiling magistrates who resisted the recent campaign under the direction of Chancellor Maupeou to curb the authority of the Parlements. On the “Lit de Justice,” see above, book 1, chapter 4, p. 60, note a.

[(a) ]He who stopt the army of King Antiochus. [[According to Livy and other classical authors, Popilius convinced Antiochus to abandon his military campaign in Egypt against Rome’s ally, Ptolemy. His “wand” was a stick he used to draw a circle in the sand around Antiochus, ordering him to remain in the circle until he finished delivering his message from Rome.

[(a) ]Nor has London post-horses enough to drive them far and near into the Country, in case the declaration by which the Parliament is dissolved, also mentions the calling of a new one.

A Dissolution, when proclaimed by a common Crier assisted by a few Beadles, is attended by the very same effects.

To the account of the expedient used by the late King of France, to effect the dismission of the Parliament of Paris, we may add the manner in which the Crown of Spain, in a higher degree arbitrary perhaps than that of France, undertook, some years ago, to rid itself of the religious Society of the Jesuits, whose political influence and intrigues, had grown to give it umbrage. They were seized by an armed force, at the same minute of the same day, in every Town or Borough of that extensive Monarchy where they had residence, in order to their being hurried away to ships that were waiting to carry them into another Country: the whole business being conducted with circumstances of secrecy, surprize, and of preparation, far superior to what is related of the most celebrated conspiracies mentioned in History.

The Dissolution of the Parliament which Charles the Second had called at Oxford, is an extremely curious event: a very lively account of it is to be found in Oldmixon’s History of England. [[The Jesuits were forcibly expelled from Spain in April 1767 in the sudden and clandestine manner described by De Lolme. The abortive Oxford Parliament was abruptly dismissed by Charles II after sitting for one week in April 1681. De Lolme refers to the antiroyalist account in John Oldmixon’s 1729 History of England, During the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart.

If certain alterations, however imperceptible they may perhaps be, at first, to the public eye, ever take place, the period may come at which the Crown will no longer have it in its power to dissolve the Parliament; that is to say, a Dissolution will no longer be followed by the same effects that it is at present.

[(a) ]One more observation might be made on the subject; which is, that, when the kingly dignity has happened in England to be wrested from the possessor, through some revolution, it has been recovered, or struggled for, with more difficulty than in other Countries: in all the other Countries upon earth, a King de jure (by claim) possesses advantages in regard to the King in being, much superior to those of which the same circumstance may be productive in England. The power of the other Sovereigns in the World, is not so securely established as that of an English King; but then their character is more indelible; that is to say,—till their Antagonists have succeeded in cutting them off and their families, they possess in a high degree a power to renew their claims, and disturb the State. Those family pleas or claims of priority, and in general those arguments to which the bulk of Mankind have agreed to allow so much weight, cease almost entirely to be of any effect, in England, against the person actually invested with the Kingly office, as soon the constitutional parts and springs have begun to move, and in short as soon as the machine of the Government has once begun to be in full play. An universal national ferment, similar to that which produced the former disturbances, is the only time of real danger. [[De Lolme refers obliquely to the failure of the two Jacobite rebellions to restore the Stuart dynasty in 1715–16 and 1745–46.

The remarkable degree of internal national quiet which, for very near a century past, has followed the Revolution of the year 1689, is a remarkable proof of the truth of the observations above made; nor do I think, that, all circumstances being considered, any other Country can produce the like instance.

[(a) ]It may, if the reader pleases, belong to the Science of Metapolitics; in the same sense as we say Metaphysics; that is, the Science of those things which lie beyond physical, or substantial, things. A few more words are bestowed upon the same subject, in the Advertisement, or Preface, at the head of this Work.

[(a) ]I should be very well satisfied though only the more reflecting class of readers were fully to understand the tendency of this Chapter: in the mean time it is considerably illustrated beyond what it was in the former Editions.

[13. ]De Lolme here and in the following paragraphs summarizes themes he explored at length above (book 1, chapters 6–14, and book 2, chapter 16) concerning the English government’s exceptional avoidance of arbitrary acts of executive power and equally rare fidelity to legal norms securing individual liberty.

[(a) ]At the times of the invasions of the Pretender, assisted by the forces of hostile Nations, the Habeas Corpus Act was indeed suspended (which by the bye may serve as one proof, that in proportion as a Government is any how in danger, it becomes necessary to abridge the liberty of the subject); but the executive power did not thus of itself stretch its own authority; the precaution was deliberated upon and taken by the Representatives of the People; and the detaining of Individuals in consequence of the suspension of the Act, was limited to a certain fixed time. [[The Habeas Corpus Act was temporarily suspended by Parliament in 1715 and in 1746 in response to the Jacobite invasions. Notwithstanding the just fears of internal and hidden enemies which the circumstances of the times might raise, the deviation from the former course of the law was carried no farther than the single point we have mentioned: Persons detained by order of the Government, were to be dealt with in the same manner as those arrested at the suit of private individuals: the proceedings against them were to be carried on no otherwise than in a public place: they were to be tried by their Peers, and have all the usual legal means of defence allowed to them, such as calling of witnesses, peremptory challenge of Juries, &c.

[14. ]De Lolme here and in the following paragraphs returns to themes he explored more fully above, book 2, chapters 12–13.

[(a) ]The Law of the Twelve Tables had established the punishment of death against the author of a Libel: nor was it by a Trial by Jury that they determined what was to be called a Libel. Si quis carmen occentassit, actitassit, condidissit, quod alteri flagitium faxit, capital esto. [[“If anyone should sing, act, or compose a song, which shall cause dishonor or disgrace to another, he shall suffer a capital penalty.” For the Twelve Tables, see above, book 1, chapter 10, p. 95, and note 8.

[(a) ]Of this I have myself seen a proof somewhat singular, which I beg leave of the Reader to relate. Being, in the year 1768, at Bergamo, the first Town of the Venetian State, as you come into it from the State of Milan, about an hundred and twenty miles distant from Venice, I took a walk in the evening in the neighbourhood of the Town; and wanting to know the name of several places which I saw at a distance, I stopped a young Countryman to ask him information. Finding him to be a sensible young Man, I entered into some farther conversation with him; and as he had himself a great inclination to see Venice, he asked me, whether I proposed to go there? I answered, that I did: on which he immediately warned me when I was at Venice not to speak of the Prince (del Prencipe) an appellation assumed by the Venetian Government, in order, as I suppose, to convey to the People a greater idea of their union among themselves. As I wanted to hear him talk farther on the subject, I pretended to be entirely ignorant in that respect, and asked for what reason I must not speak of the Prince? But he, (after the manner of the common People in Italy, who, when strongly affected by any thing, rather choose to express themselves by some vehement gesture, than by words) ran the edge of his hand, with great quickness, along his neck, meaning thereby to express, that being strangled, or having one’s throat cut, was the instant consequence of taking such liberty.

[(a) ]If we consider the great advantages to public liberty which result from the institution of the Trial by Jury, and from the Liberty of the Press, we shall find England to be in reality a more Democratical State than any other we are acquainted with. The Judicial power, and the Censorial power, are vested in the People. [[For De Lolme’s fuller exposition of this point, see above, book 1, chapter 13, and book 2, chapters 12–13.

[(b) ]And which they do actually perform, till they are able to throw off the restraints of impartiality and moderation; a thing which, being Men, they never fail to do when their influence is generally established, and proper opportunities offer. Sovereigns know these things, and dread them.

[15. ]This paragraph and the succeeding discussion through p. 302 first appeared in the fourth edition of 1784.

[(a) ]They were to have sat five months; but Cromwell pretended that the months were to consist of only twenty-eight days; as this was the way of reckoning time used in paying the army, and the fleet. [[De Lolme refers in this note to the premature dissolution of the first Parliament of the Cromwellian Protectorate in 1655. In the paragraph to which his note refers, De Lolme discusses the 1648 purge of Parliament by Colonel Pride, which removed those opposed to the trial of Charles I; the Barebones’ Parliament of 1653 (named after the London radical, Praise-God Barebones); the 1653 appointment of Cromwell as Lord Protector; and the second and final meeting of the Parliament of the Protectorate in 1656–57.

[(a) ]The history of the conduct of the deliberating and debating Assemblies we are alluding to, in regard to the Monarchs, or single Rulers, of any denomination, who summon them together, may be expressed in a very few words. If the Monarch is unarmed, they over-rule him so as almost entirely to set him aside: if his power is of a military kind, they form connections with the army.

[16. ]De Lolme earlier in the chapter discussed Louis XV’s efforts to combat the authority of the Parlements; see note 11 in this chapter. Louis XVI first summoned the Parlements within weeks of coming to the throne in 1775.

[17. ]See above, book 2, chapter 15.

[(a) ]I mean, before the introduction of those numerous standing armies which are now kept by all the Crowns of Europe: since that epoch, which is of no very ancient date, no Treaty has been entered into by those Crowns with any Subjects.

[(a) ]As a remarkable instance of such a Treaty may be mentioned that by which the War for the Public good was terminated in France. It is quoted in page 30 of this Work. [[See above, book 1, chapter 2, p. 37, note a.

[(a) ]Lex magna est & praevalebit.

[(b) ]I remember, during the time after my first coming to this Country, I took notice of the boards set up from place to place behind the inclosure of Richmond park, “Whoever trespasses upon this ground will be prosecuted.”

[(c) ]An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Book V. Chap. I. Vol. II. p. 313, 314. [[De Lolme quotes Adam Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, book 5, chapter 1, part 1, paragraph 41 (emphasis added by De Lolme).

[(a) ]The Author’s design in the whole passage, is to shew that standing armies, under proper restrictions, cannot be hurtful to public liberty; and may in some cases be useful to it, by freeing the Sovereign from any troublesome jealousy in regard to this liberty.

[(a) ]In the beginning of the passage which is here examined, the Author says, “Where the Sovereign is himself the General, and the principal Nobility and Gentry of the Country, the chief Officers of the army,—where the military force is placed under the command of those who have the greatest interest in the support of the civil authority, because they have the greatest share of that authority, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. On the contrary, it may in some cases be favourable to liberty, &c. &c.” [[Wealth of Nations, book 5, chapter 1, part 1, paragraph 41.—In a Country so circumstanced, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty: no, not the liberty of those principal Nobility and Gentry, especially if they have wit enough to form combinations among themselves against the Sovereign. Such an union as is here mentioned, of the civil and military powers, in the Aristocratical body of the Nation, leaves both the Sovereign and the People without resource. If the former Kings of Scotland had imagined to adopt the expedient of a standing army, and had trusted this army thus defrayed by them, to those Noblemen and Gentlemen who had rendered themselves hereditary Admirals, hereditary High Stewarts, hereditary High Constables, hereditary great Chamberlains, hereditary Justices General, hereditary Sheriffs of Counties, &c. they would have but badly mended the disorders under which the Government of their Country laboured: they would only have supplied these Nobles with fresh weapons against each other, against the Sovereign, and against the People.

If those Members of the British Parliament who sometimes make the whole Nation resound with the clamour of their dissensions, had an army under their command which they might engage in the support of their pretensions, the rest of the People would not be the better for it. Happily the swords are secured, and force is removed from their Debates.

The Author we are quoting, has deemed a Government to be a simpler machine, and an army a simpler instrument, than they in reality are. Like many other persons of great abilities, while struck with a certain particular consideration, he has overlooked others no less important.

[18. ]De Lolme quotes, with minor alteration, the concluding sentence of Smith, Wealth of Nations, book 5, chapter 1, part 1, paragraph 41.

[19. ]“Burden of proof.”

[(a) ]I shall take the liberty to mention another fact respecting myself, as it may serve to elucidate the above observations; or at least my manner of expressing them. I remember when I was beginning to pay attention to the operations of the English Government, I was under a prepossession of quite a contrary nature to that of the Gentleman whose opinions have been above discussed: I used to take it for granted that every article of liberty the Subject enjoys in this Country, was grounded upon some positive law by which this liberty was insured to him. In regard to the freedom of the press I had no doubt but it was so, and that there existed some particular law, or rather series of laws or legislative paragraphs, by which this freedom was defined and carefully secured: and as the liberty of writing happened at that time to be carried very far, and to excite a great deal of attention, (the noise about the Middlesex Election had not yet subsided) I particularly wished to see those laws I supposed, not doubting but there must be something remarkable in the wording of them. I looked into those Law Books I had opportunities to come at, such as Jacob’s and Cunningham’s Law Dictionaries, Wood’s Institutes, and Judge Blackstone’s Commentaries. I also found means to have a sight of Comyn’s Digest of the Laws of England, and I was again disappointed: this Author, though his Work consists of five folio Volumes, had not had, any more than the Authors just mentioned, any room to spare for the interesting law I was in search of. [[The “Middlesex Election” refers to the political controversies of 1768–70, when the House of Commons refused to seat John Wilkes, who had been elected to represent the county of Middlesex in a series of elections and special by-elections. For the publications by Blackstone, Jacob, and Cunningham, respectively, see above, book 1, chapter 4, p. 60, note 6, and chapter 10, p. 98, note a, and p. 99, note a. De Lolme refers also to Thomas Wood’s 1720 An Institute of the Laws of England and to John Comings’s Digest of the Laws of England, which was published posthumously in 1762–67. At length it occurred to me, though not immediately, that this Liberty of the press was grounded upon its not being prohibited,—that this want of prohibition was the sole, and at the same time solid, foundation of it. This led me, when I afterwards thought of writing something upon the Government of this Country, to give the definition of the freedom of the press which is contained in p. 296, 297 see book 2, chapter 12, p. 202: adding to it the important consideration of all actions respecting publications being to be decided by a Jury.

[(a) ]A number of instances, some even of a ludicrous kind, might be quoted in support of the above observation. Even only a trifling flaw in the words of an Indictment, is enough to make it void. The reader is also referred to the fact mentioned in the note, p. 180 [[see book 1, chapter 13, p. 130, note a, and to that in p. 317, 318 see book 2, chapter 14, p. 216, of this Work.

I do not remember the name of that party Writer who, having published a treasonable writing in regard to which he escaped punishment, used afterwards to answer to his friends, when they reproached him with his rashness, I knew I was writing within an inch of the gallows. The law being both ascertained and strictly adhered to, he had been enabled to bring his words and positions so nicely within compass.

[(a) ]It might perhaps also be proved, that the great lenity used in England in the administration of criminal Justice, both in regard to the mildness, and to the frequent remitting, of punishments, is essentially connected with the same circumstance of the stability of the Government. Experience shews that it is needless to use any great degree of harshness and severity in regard to Offenders; and the Supreme governing authority is under no necessity of shewing the subordinate Magistracies any bad example in that respect.

[(b) ]. . . Nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium vel per legem terrae. Cap. XXIX. [[“. . . nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.” Magna Carta, chapter 29; and see above, book 1, chapter 2, p. 36, note a.

[(a) ]The Court of Star Chamber was like a Court of Equity in regard to criminal matters: it took upon itself to decide upon those cases of offence upon which the usual Courts of Law, when uninfluenced by the Crown, refused to decide, either on account of the silence of the laws in being, or of the particular rules they had established within themselves; which is exactly the office of the Court of Chancery (and of the Exchequer) in regard to matters of property. (See back, p. 138 [[p. 105). For the court of Star Chamber, see above, book 1, chapter 3, p. 50, note a. For the equity jurisprudence of the Courts of Chancery and Exchequer, see above, book 1, chapter 11, p. 110, note a. The great usefulness of Courts of this kind, has caused the Courts of Equity in regard to civil matters, to be supported and continued; but experience has shewn, as is above observed, that no essential inconvenience can arise from the Subject being indulged with the very great freedom he has acquired by the total abolition of all arbitrary or provisional Courts in regard to criminal matters.

[20. ]De Lolme refers, in turn, to military forces of the Roman emperors, Ottoman sultans, and Russian czars.

[21. ]For De Lolme’s more detailed discussion of the critical constitutional developments under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, which he summarizes in the following paragraphs, see above, book 1, chapter 3.

[22. ]“Domitians or Commoduses” refers to Roman emperors of the first and second centuries; “Amuraths [or ‘Murads’] or Bajazets [or ‘Beyazids’]” refers to Ottoman sultans from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.

[(a) ]Mr. Hume is rather too anxious in his wish to exculpate James the Second. He begins the conclusive character he gives of him, with representing him as a Prince whom we may safely pronounce more unfortunate than criminal. If we consider the solemn engagements entered into, not by his predecessors only, but by himself, which this Prince endeavoured to break, how cool and deliberate his attack on the liberties and religion of the People was, how unprovoked the attempt, and in short how totally destitute he was of any plea of self-defence or necessity, a plea to which most of the Princes who have been at variance with their Subjects had some sort of more or less distant claim, we shall look upon him as being perhaps the guiltiest Monarch that ever existed. [[David Hume’s judgment of James II appeared in the final chapter (chap. 71) of his multivolume The History of England, which was first published in 1754–62.

[(a) ]The generality of the People have from early times been so little accustomed to see any display of force used to influence the debates of the Parliament, that the attempt made by Charles the First to seize the five Members, attended by a retinue of about two hundred Servants, was the actual spark that set in a blaze the heap of combustibles which the preceding contests had accumulated. The Parliament, from that fact, took a pretence to make military preparations in their turn; and then the civil war began. [[The incident, in which the king attempted the arrest of five parliamentary opponents in the chamber of the House of Commons, occurred in January 1642.

[(a) ]A great number of instances might be produced to prove the above mentioned subjection of the Civil to the Military power, I shall introduce one which is particularly remarkable: I meet with it in the periodical publications of the year 1746.

A Lieutenant of Marines, whose name was Frye, had been charged, while in the West Indies, with contempt of orders, for having refused, when ordered by the Captain, to assist another Lieutenant in carrying another Officer prisoner on board the Ship: the two Lieutenants wanted to have the Captain give the order in writing. For this Lieutenant Frye was tried at Jamaica by a Court Martial, and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, besides being declared incapable of serving the King. He was brought home; and his case, after being laid before the Privy Council, appearing in a justifiable light, he was released. Some time after he brought an action against Sir Chaloner Ogle, who had sat as President to the above Court Martial, and had a verdict in his favour for one thousand pounds damages (it was also proved that he had been kept fourteen months in the most severe confinement before he was brought to his Trial). The Judge moreover informed him that he was at liberty to bring his action against any of the Members of the said Court Martial he could meet with. The following part of the affair is still more remarkable.

Upon application made by Lieutenant Frye, Sir John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, issued his Writ against Admiral Mayne, and Captain Rentone, two of the persons who had sat in the above Court Martial, who happened to be at that time in England, and were Members of the Court Martial that was then sitting at Deptford, to determine on the affair between Admirals Mathews and Lestock of which Admiral Mayne was moreover President; and they were arrested immediately after the breaking up of the Court. The other Members resented highly what they thought the insult: they met twice on the subject; and came to certain Resolutions, which the Judge Advocate was directed to deliver to the Board of Admiralty, in order to their being laid before the King. In these resolutions they demanded “satisfaction for the high insult on their President, from all persons, how high soever in office, who have set on foot this arrest, or in any degree advised or promoted it:”—moreover complaining, that, by the said arrest, “the order, discipline and government of his Majesty’s armies by Sea was dissolved, and the Statute 13 Car. II. made null and void.”

The altercations on that account lasted some months. At length the Court Martial thought it necessary to submit; and they sent to Lord Chief Justice Willes, a letter signed by the seventeen Officers, Admirals and Commanders, who composed it, in which they acknowledged that “the resolutions of the 16 and 21 May were unjust and unwarrantable, and do ask pardon of his Lordship, and the whole Court of Common Pleas, for the indignity offered to him and the Court.”

This letter Judge Willes read in the open Court, and directed the same to be registered in the Remembrance Office, “as a memorial to the present and future ages, that whoever set themselves above the Law, will, in the end, find themselves mistaken.” The letter from the Court Martial, together with Judge Willes’s acceptation, were inserted in the next Gazette, 15th November 1746. [[De Lolme correctly dates the legal contests that followed Frye’s court martial. The “Statute 13 Car. II” is a reference to 1661 legislation concerning naval discipline and the punishment of offenders by courts martial.

[(a) ]The Reader may see in the publications of the year 1770, the clamour that was raised on account of a General in the army (Gen. Gansell) having availed himself of the vicinity of his Soldiers to prevent certain Sheriff’s Officers from executing an arrest upon his person, at Whitehall. It however appeared that the General had done nothing more than put forth a few of his Men in order to perplex and astonish the Sheriff’s Officers; and in the mean time he took an opportunity for himself to slip out of the way. The violent clamour we mention, was no doubt owing to the party spirit of the time; but it nevertheless shews what the notions of the bulk of the People were on the subject.

[(a) ]The army made loud rejoicings on the day of the acquittal of the Bishops, even in the presence of the King, who had purposely repaired to Hounslow Heath on that day. He had not been able to bring a single regiment to declare an approbation of his measures in regard to the Test and penal Statutes. The celebrated ballad lero lero lillibulero, which is reported to have had such an influence on the minds of the people at that time, and of which Bishop Burnet says, “never perhaps so slight a thing had so great an effect” originated in the army: “the whole army, and at last people both in City and Country, were perpetually singing it.” [[De Lolme describes incidents in the summer of 1688 which preceded James II’s flight from England.

To a King of England engaged in a project against public liberty, a numerous army, ready formed before hand, must, in the present situation of things, prove a very great impediment: he cannot possibly give his attention to the proper management of it: the less so, as his measures for that purpose must often be contradictory to those he is to pursue with the rest of the People.

If a King of England, wishing to set aside the present Constitution, and to assimilate his power to that of the other Sovereigns of Europe, was to do me the honour to consult me as to the means of obtaining success, I would recommend to him, as his first preparatory step, and before his real project is even suspected, to disband his army, keeping only a strong guard, not exceeding twelve hundred Men. This done, he might, by means of the weight and advantages of his place, set himself about undermining such constitutional laws as he dislikes; using as much temper as he can, that he may have the more time to proceed. And when at length things should be brought to a crisis, then I would advise him to form another army, out of those friends or class of the People whom the turn and incidents of the preceding contests, will have linked and rivetted to his interest: with this army he might now take his chance: the rest would depend on his generalship: and even in a great measure on his bare reputation in that respect.

This advice to the King of England I suppose, I would however conclude with observing to him, that his situation is as advantageous, to the full, as that of any King upon earth, and upon the whole, that all the advantages that can possibly arise from the success of his plan, cannot make it worth his while to undertake it.

[(a) ]There is a number of circumstances in the English Government which those persons who wish for speculative meliorations, such as Parliamentary reform, or other changes of a like kind, do not perhaps think of taking into consideration. If so, they are, in their proceedings, in danger of meddling with a number of strings, the existence of which they do not suspect. While they only mean reformation and improvement, they are in danger of removing the Talisman on which the existence of the Fabric depends, or, like King Nisus’s daughter, of cutting off the fatal hair with which the fate of the City is connected. [[In Greek mythology, the daughter of Nisus of Megara cut off the king’s lock of red hair, which had kept him and his city invincible.

[(b) ]Many persons, satisfied with seeing the elevation and upper parts of a building, think it immaterial to give a look under ground, and notice the foundation. Those Readers therefore who choose, may consider the long Chapter that has just been concluded, as a kind of foreign digression, or parenthesis, in the course of the Work.

[1. ]De Lolme cites, with some variations, a concluding paragraph of Montesquieu’s celebrated exposition of the English constitution; see The Spirit of the Laws, book 11, chapter 6.

[2. ]Caius Fabricius Luscinus (d. 250 b.c.e.) and Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (b. 519 b.c.e.) were Roman generals and political leaders distinguished for their virtue and poverty.

[3. ]De Lolme refers to Julius Caesar and the establishment of the emperorship.

[4. ]Before the period of the Republic, the Roman people were made up of three tribes, each of which contained ten curiae, or courts. Under Servius Tullius, who ruled as king 578–534 b.c.e., a census was introduced, which organized the citizenry into six classes and each class into centuries (centuriae), or groups of a hundred. In the political assembly called comitia centuriata, votes were cast by hundreds; in the comitia tributa, votes were cast by tribes; and in the comitia auriata, votes were cast by whole courts.

[5. ]De Lolme here describes the 1720 constitution of Sweden; see above, book 2, chapter 17, pp. 264–65 and p. 265, note 7.

[(a) ]I might have produced examples of a number of Republican States in which the People have been brought, at one time or other, to submit to the loss of their political privileges. In the Venetian Republic, for instance, the right, now exclusively vested in a certain number of families, of enacting laws, and electing the Doge and other Magistrates, was originally vested in the whole People.

[(a) ]“Ye free Nations, remember this maxim: Freedom may be acquired, but it cannot be recovered.” Rousseau’s Social Compact, Chap. VIII. [[De Lolme quotes, with slight variation, Rousseau, The Social Contract, book 2, chapter 8.

[6. ]“Resist innovations.”

[(a) ]The case of the General Warrants may also be mentioned as an instance. The issuing of such Warrants, with the name of the persons to be arrested left blank, was a practice that had been followed in the Secretaries of State’s office for above sixty years. In a Government differently constituted, that is, in a Government in which the Magistrates, or Executive power, should have been possessed of the Key of Legislation, it is difficult to say how the contest might have been terminated: these Magistrates would have been but indifferently inclined to frame and bring forth a declaration by which to abridge their assumed authority. In the Republic of Geneva, the Magistracy, instead of rescinding the judgment against M. Rousseau, of which the Citizens complained, had rather openly to avow the maxim, that standing Uses were valid derogations to the written Law, and ought to supersede it. This rendered the clamour more violent than before. [[See above, book 2, chapter 16, p. 251, note a, for De Lolme’s previous discussion of General Warrants; and book 2, chapter 13, p. 209, note a, for his discussion of the condemnation of Rousseau by Genevan authorities. In the paragraph to which the note refers, De Lolme mentions previously treated constitutional episodes: see above, book 1, chapter 7, p. 69, note a (Statute of Proclamations); book 1, chapter 8, p. 73, note d (Star Chamber); book 1, chapter 3, pp. 49–50, and note 3 (Petition of Right); and book 1, chapter 3, p. 51, and note 5 (Habeas Corpus Act).

[7. ]Christopher Columbus sent his younger brother Bartholomew (Bartolomeo) to the court of Henry VII in hopes of securing English support for the famous trans-Atlantic voyage of 1492, which eventually occurred under Spanish patronage. Bartholomew, however, never actually reached England.

[(a) ]As affairs are situated in England, the dissolution of a Parliament on the part of the Crown, is no more than an appeal either to the People themselves, or to another Parliament.

[(a) ]He might have added,—“As we will not seek to counteract nature, but rather to follow it, we shall be able to procure ourselves a mild Legislation. Let us not be without cause afraid of the power of one Man: we shall have no need either of a Tarpeian rock, or of a Council of Ten. Having expresly allowed to the People a liberty to enquire into the conduct of Government, and to endeavour to correct it, we shall need neither State-prisons, nor secret Informers.” [[The Council of Ten, a major political institution of the republic of Venice in the medieval and Renaissance periods, operated in secret and exercised wide discretionary powers for preserving the security of the state.

[(a) ]Instead of looking for the principles of Politics in their true sources, that is to say, in the nature of the affections of Mankind, and of those secret ties by which they are united together in a state of Society, Men have treated that science in the same manner as they did natural Philosophy in the times of Aristotle, continually recurring to occult causes and principles, from which no useful consequence could be drawn, Thus, in order to ground particular assertions, they have much used the word Constitution, in a personal sense, the Constitution loves, the Constitution forbids, and the like. At other times, they have had recourse to Luxury, in order to explain certain events; and at others, to a still more occult cause, which they have called Corruption: and abundance of comparisons drawn from the human Body, have been also used for the same purposes: continual instances of such defective arguments and considerations occur in the Works of M. de Montesquieu; though a man of so much genius, and from whose writings so much information is nevertheless to be derived. Nor is it only the obscurity of the writings of Politicians, and the impossibility of applying their speculative Doctrines to practical uses, which prove that some peculiar and uncommon difficulties lie in the way of the investigation of political truths; but the remarkable perplexity which Men in general, even the ablest, labour under when they attempt to descant and argue upon abstract questions in politics, also justifies this observation, and proves that the true first principles of this Science, whatever they are, lie deep both in the human feelings, and understanding.

[(a) ]And if at any time, any dangerous changes were to take place in the English Constitution, the pernicious tendency of which the People were not able at first to discover, restrictions on the Liberty of the Press, and on the Power of Juries, will give them the first information.

[1. ]This chapter first appeared in the 1781 edition.

[(a) ]See the Collection of Parliamentary Debates; I do not remember exactly what Volume. [[In a message conveyed to the House of Lords on March 2, 1719, George I reported that he was “willing that his prerogative stand not in the way” of the passage of the proposed Peerage Bill; see A Collection of the Parliamentary Debates in England . . ., 21 vols. (London, 1739–42), 7:113–14.

[(b) ]This Bill has been mentioned in page 398. [[For De Lolme’s fuller account of the proposed legislation and its constitutional dangers, see above, book 2, chapter 17, pp. 262–63 and p. 263, note 4.

[2. ]That is, before the revolution of 1772, under the constitution of 1720. See above, book 2, chapter 17, p. 258, note c; pp. 263–65; and p. 265, note 7.

[(a) ]The Swedish Senate was usually composed of sixteen Members. In regard to affairs of smaller moment, they formed themselves into two divisions: in either of these when they did sit, the presence of seven Members was required for the effectual transacting of business: in affairs of importance, the assembly was formed of the whole Senate; and the presence of ten Members was required to give force to the resolutions. When the King could not, or would not, take his seat, the Senate proceeded nevertheless, and the majority continued to be equally decisive.

As the Royal Seal was necessary for putting in execution the resolutions of the Senate, King Adolphus Frederic, father to the present King, tried by refusing to lend the same, to procure that power which he had not by his suffrage, and to stop the proceedings of the Senate. Great debates, in consequence of that pretension, arose, and continued for a while; but, at last, in the year 1756, the King was over-ruled by the Senate, who ordered a seal to be made, that was named the King’s Seal, which they affixed to their official resolutions, when the King refused to lend his own. [[Adolphus Frederick ruled as king of Sweden in 1751–71, under the limited royal authority established by the 1720 constitution. The “present king” was his son, Gustavus III.

[(a) ]Such regulations as may capitally affect, through their consequences, the equipoise of a Government, may be brought about, even though the promoters themselves of those regulations, are not aware of their tendency. At the time the Bill was passed in the last century, by which it was enacted that the Crown should give up its prerogative of dissolving the Parliament then sitting [[De Lolme refers to the Triennial Act of 1641; see his earlier discussion at book 2, chapter 3, p. 155, note a, the generality of People had no thought of the calamitous consequences that were to follow: very far from it. The King himself certainly felt no very great apprehension on that account; else he would not have given his assent: and the Commons themselves, it appears, had but very faint notions of the capital changes which the Bill would speedily effect in their political situation.

When the Crown of Sweden was, in the first instance, stripped of all the different prerogatives we have mentioned, it does not appear that those measures were effected by sudden, open provisions for that purpose: it is very probable they had been prepared by indirect regulations formerly made, the whole tendency of which scarcely any body perhaps could foresee at the time they were framed.

When the Bill was in agitation, that has been mentioned in page 398 see pp. 262–63, and 499 see p. 320, by which the House of Peers was in future to be limited to a certain number that was not to be exceeded, the great constitutional consequences of the Bill were scarcely attended to by any body. The King himself certainly saw no harm in it, since he sent an open message to promote the passing of it: a measure which I cannot say how far it was in itself regular. The Bill was, it appears, generally approved out of doors. Its fate was for a long time doubtful in the House of Commons; nor did they acquire any glory with the bulk of the People by finally rejecting it: and Judge Blackstone, as I find in his Commentaries, does not seem to have thought much of the Bill and its being rejected, as he only observes that the Commons “wished to keep the door of the House of Lords as open as possible.” Yet, no Bill of greater constitutional importance was ever agitated in Parliament; since the consequences of its being passed, would have been the freeing the House of Lords, both in their Judicial and Legislative capacities, from all constitutional check whatever, either from the Crown, or the Nation. Nay, it is not to be doubted they would have acquired, in time, the right of electing their own Members: though it would be useless to point out here by what series of intermediate events the measure might have been brought about. Whether there existed any actual project of this kind, among the first framers of the Bill, does not appear: but a certain number of the Members of the House we mention, would have thought of it soon enough, if the Bill in question had been enacted into a law; and they would certainly have met with success, had they been but contented to wait, and had they taken time. Other equally important changes in the substance, and perhaps the outward form, of the Government, would have followed. De Lolme again returns to the 1719 legislative proposal concerning the House of Lords; see above, book 2, chapter 17, pp. 262–63 and p. 263, note 4, as well as chapter 19, p. 320, notes a and b. He quotes, with some variation, Blackstone’s comments in Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1:153.

[3. ]Cits was a shortened form of the word “citizen,” generally used to denote an inhabitant of a town or city of inferior social rank.

[4. ]See above, book 2, chapter 9, p. 190.

[(a) ]Such new forms as may prove destructive of the real substance of a Government, may be unwarily adopted, in the same manner as the superstitious notions and practices described in my Work, intitled Memorials of Human Superstition, may be introduced into a Religion, so as to entirely subvert the true spirit of it. [[De Lolme’s Memorials of Human Superstition, which first appeared in 1784, was a revised version of his 1777 The History of the Flagellants; or, the advantages of the Discipline; being a Paraphrase and Commentary on the Historia Flagellantium of the Abbé Boileau.

[5. ]In 1730 an infestation of “paal worms” (Teredo limmoria) threatened the wooden pilings that supported Holland’s sea dikes, which were then replaced with stone embankments.

[1. ]This chapter first appeared in the 1781 edition.

[2. ]See above, book 1, chapter 3, p. 46.

[3. ]For a discussion of this legislation, see above, book 1, chapter 7, p. 69, note a.

[(a) ]An idea of the manner in which the business of granting supplies to the Crown, was conducted by the States of the province of Britanny, under the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth, may be formed from several lively strokes to be met with in the Letters of Mad. de Sévigné, whose Estate lay in that Province, and who had often assisted at the holding of those States. The granting of supplies was not, it seems, looked upon as any serious kind of business. The whole time the States were sitting, was a continued scene of festivity and entertainment: the canvassing of the demands of the Crown was chiefly carried on at the table of the Nobleman who had been deputed from Court to hold the States; and every thing was commonly decided by a kind of acclamation. In a certain Assembly of those States, the Duke of Chaulnes, the Lord Deputy, had a present of fifty thousand crowns made to him, as well as a considerable one for his Duchess besides obtaining the demand of the Court: and the Lady we quote here, commenting somewhat jocularly on these grants, says, Ce n’est pas que nous soyons riches;mais nous sommes honnêtes, nous avons du courage, & entre midi & une heure, nous ne savons rien refuser à nos amis. “It is not that we are rich; but we are civil, we are full of courage, and, between twelve and one o’clock, we are unable to deny any thing to our friends.”

The different Provinces of France, it may be observed, are liable to pay several taxes besides those imposed on them by their own States. Dean Tucker, in one of his Tracts, in which he has thought proper to quote this Work, has added to the above instance of the French Provinces, that of the States of the Austrian Netherlands, which is very conclusive. And examples to the same purpose might be supplied by all those Kingdoms of Europe in which Provincial States are held. [[De Lolme’s French source is Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626–96), whose letters “to her daughter and her friends” were published in French and in English translation. The work of Josiah Tucker, to which he next refers, is likely A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages, Which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain (1749), where the discussion of tax rates figured as one of the “principal disadvantages of France with regard to Trade.”

[4. ]Sovereignty over Corsica, which enjoyed a brief period of independence after 1755, was transferred to France under the terms of the 1768 Treaty of Versailles.

[(a) ]Doctor Franklin. [[Benjamin Franklin, in his service as a colonial agent, was based in London during the mid-1760s. His 1766 testimony to the House of Commons occurred at the time that Parliament debated its recent fiscal policy in North America, including the repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act and the adoption of the Declaratory Act.

[(a) ]Being with Doctor Franklin at his house in Craven-street, some months before he went back to America, I mentioned to him a few of the remarks contained in this Chapter, and, in general, that the claim of the American Colonies directly clashed with one of the vital principles of the English Constitution. The observation, I remember, struck him very much: it led him afterwards to speak to me of the examination he had undergone in the House of Commons; and he concluded with lending me the volume of the Collection of Parliamentary Debates, in which an account of it is contained. Finding the constitutional tendency of the claim of the Americans to be a subject not very generally understood, I added a few paragraphs concerning it, in the English Edition I some time after gave of this work; and being now about to give a third Edition of the same, I have thought it might not be amiss to write something more compact on the subject, and have accordingly added the present new Chapter, into which I have transferred the few additional paragraphs I mention, leaving in the place where they stood (pag. 45.) only the general observations on the right of granting subsidies, which were formerly in the French work. Several of the ideas, and even expressions contained in this Chapter, made their appearance in the Public Advertiser, about the time I was preparing the first Edition: I sent them myself to that Newspaper, under the signature of Advena. I mention this for the sake of those persons who may perchance remember having seen the sketch I allude to. [[To clarify De Lolme’s report in this note: many of the materials for this chapter were first composed before 1775, though they did not appear in his text until the 1781 edition. For his earlier and briefer treatment of this issue, see above, book 1, chapter 3, p. 46.

[(a) ]For instance, the complaints made in regard to the pensions on the Irish establishment.

[5. ]It is not fully clear to which politicians De Lolme refers in this paragraph. The most likely candidates are William Pitt and his parliamentary allies, who provided the strongest statements in defense of the resistance in North America to the Stamp Act and related tax legislation. But he may refer instead to Lord Rockingham and his Parliamentary Ministry, which secured the 1766 repeal of the controversial tax legislation and the enactment of the Declaratory Act confirming the legislative supremacy of the king and Parliament over the American colonies.

[(b) ]When I observe that no Man who wished for the preservation of the form and spirit of the English Constitution, ought to have desired that the claim of the American Colonies might be granted them, neither do I mean to say that the American Colonies should have given up their claim. [[The “claim of the American Colonies” to which De Lolme refers here and in his text (pp. 331–34 above) was the assertion made during the 1765–66 resistance to the Stamp Act that the colonial assemblies in North America (and not the British Parliament) enjoyed authority, with the British crown, to legislate on matters concerning the internal governance of the colonies. The wisdom of Ministers, in regard to American affairs, ought to have been constantly employed in making the Colonies useful to this Country, and at the same time, in hiding their subjection from them (a caution which is, after all, more or less used in every Government upon earth); it ought to have been exerted in preventing the opposite interests of Britain, and of America, from being brought to an issue, to any such clashing dilemma as would render disobedience on the one hand, and the resort to force on the other, almost surely unavoidable. The generality of people fancy that Ministers use a great depth of thought, and much forecast in their operations; whereas the truth is, that Ministers in all Countries, never think but of providing for present, immediate, contingencies; in doing which they constantly follow the open track before them. This method does very well for the common course of human affairs, and even is the safest; but whenever cases and circumstances of a new and unknown nature occur, sad blunders and uproar are the consequences. The celebrated Count Oxenstierna, Chancellor of Sweden, one day when his Son was expressing to him his diffidence of his own abilities, and the dread with which he thought of ever engaging in the management of public affairs, made the following Latin answer to him; Nescis, mî filî, quam parvâ cum sapientiâ regitur mundus (You do not know, my son, with what little wisdom the World is governed). De Lolme cites the maxim of Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna (1583–1654), who served as chancellor of Sweden during the period of the Thirty Years’ War.

Matters having come to an eruption, it was no longer to be expected they could be compromised by the palliative offers sent at different times from this Country to America. When the Earl of Carlisle solicited to be at the head of the solemn Commission that failed for the purpose we mention, he did not certainly shew modesty equal to that of the Son of Chancellor Oxenstierna. It has been said that, in that stage of the contest, the Americans could not think that the proposals thus sent to them, were seriously meant: however, this cannot have been the principal cause of the miscarriage of the commission. The fact is, that, after the Americans had been once made to open their eyes on their political situation, and rendered sensible of the local advantages of their Country, it was become in a manner impossible to have struck with them any bargain at which either Nation would have afterwards cause to rejoice, or even to have made any bargain at all. It would be needless to say here any thing more on the subject of the American contest.

The motto of one of the English Nobility, should have been that of Ministers, in their regulations for rendering the Colonies useful to the Mother Country,—Faire sans dire. “Actions rather than words.”

[1. ]The intensity and the vehemence of partisan debate in England were frequently viewed as a dangerous product of the nation’s political system; see, for example, Montesquieu’s cautious strictures in The Spirit of the Laws, book 19, chapter 27.

[2. ]Publius Vatinius, a contemporary of Cicero and Julius Caesar who held several important political offices in the years 63–47 b.c.e., was famous for his contempt of the vices and corruption of the Romans.

[(a) ]“Statuo esse optimè constitutam Rempublicam quae ex tribus generibus illis, regali, optimo, & populari, modicè confusa,”—Cic. Fragm. [[“(In my judgment,) that is the best constituted form of government, which, in moderation, is compounded of these three constituent parts: the royal, the aristocratical, and the popular.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, De re publica, II.xxiii.

[(a) ]“Cunctas Nationes & Urbes, Populus, aut Priores, aut Singuli, regunt. Delecta ex his & constituta Reipublicae forma, laudari facilius quàm evenire; vel si evenit, haud diuturna esse potest.”—Tac. Ann. lib. iv. [[“For every nation or city is governed by the people or the nobility, or by individuals: a constitution selected and blended from these types is easier to commend than to create; or, if created, its tenure of life is brief.” Tacitus, Annals, book 4, chapter 33; see above, book 1, chapter 3, p. 45, note a.

[3. ]De Lolme refers to Edward Chamberlayne’s 1669 Angliae notitia; or, The Present State of England, part 2, chapter 2, which likened England to “a huge Fortress or garrisoned Town” protected by “a wide and deep Ditch the sea,” “the strongest and best built Ships of War,” and “abundantly furnished within with Men and Horses.”