2. Its Advantages.

An assembly chosen by the people will consist, for the most part, of men of pre-eminent knowledge and talent; or in other words, of men who surpass the bulk of the people in the ability of discerning right from wrong, and making each appear. They will be men educated on terms of equality with others, contesting their opinions, and having their own subjected to the most severe scrutiny, and therefore fitted, in the highest degree, to understand the maxims and principles by which the nation, at that particular period of its history, is influenced. No individual passion can command the nation's resources to its gratification. Neither revenge, nor lust, nor prejudice, the motives which may, perhaps, sway the individuals composing the assembly, can ever be expected simultaneously to urge that assembly, in its corporate capacity, into untimely or illconsidered actions. There is the best guarantee for the reception of TRUTH, because discussion must be allowed, and this is the best possible assurance of the detection of the sophistry and intrigue of evil-intentioned men. If irregular motives of action lead some into error, the same class of motives will induce others to expose and rectify it. There will be the highest security against violent and mischievous changes, because the real inclinations of those with whom the actual power rests, will always be known.-Ignorance of the popular mind has ever been at the root of all revolutionary changes. In addition, such an assembly is never of doubtful birth or inheritance never engages in wars from relationship-is never in a state of infancy, nor sickness, nor dotage-is never obstinate, nor timid, nor jealous-nor has it any of those defects, moral or otherwise, to which may be ascribed the greater part of all that men agree in calling misgovernment. Above all, when any members of such an assembly neglect the true end of their appointment, the public welfare, the people have an easy and efficacious remedy, in the quiet, yet irresistible exercise of their proper prerogatives. -Anon.

It is true, that the people in the mass are not always the best judges of their own welfare. Though rarely so, they have sometimes decided adversely to their real interests; but they have been uniformly right when left to themselves,

in selecting those who are most likely to decide the best for them. The people, as a body, always must intend their own happiness, but they are not always in a situation to see the farthest, prospectively or otherwise. They have, however, a marvellous sagacity in discovering who are the worthiest trustees for managing their affairs. So that, in a body of men, chosen from the mass of the people, by the people themselves, there will be an amount of intelligence and aptness for government, very far exceeding the average proportion of the bulk of the people, and there will be a corresponding probability of wise and beneficial measures. If, indeed, it were otherwise, democracy would still be the best chance for the people: because, in that case, they have only ignorance to contend with; in all other forms they may have ignorance and bad intentions too.-Anon.

3. Its Power and Jurisdiction.

The power and jurisdiction of Parliament, says Sir Edward Coke, is so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds..... It hath sovereign and uncontrollable authority in the making, confirming, enlarging, restraining, abrogating, repealing, reviving, and expounding of laws, concerning matters of all possible denominations, ecclesiastical or temporal, civil, military, maritime, or criminal: this being the place where that absolute despotic power, which must in all governments reside somewhere, is intrusted by the constitution of these kingdoms. All mischiefs, any grievances, operations, and remedies, that transcend the ordinary course of the laws, are within the reach of this extraordinary tribunal. It can regulate or new-model the succession to the crown; as was done in the reign of Henry VIII. and William III. It can alter the established religion of the land; as was done in a variety of instances, in the reigns of King Henry VIII. and his three children. It can change and create afresh even the constitution of the kingdom, and of parliaments themselves; as was done by the act of union, and the several statutes of triennial and septennial elections. It can, in short, do every thing that is not naturally impossible; and therefore some have not scrupled to call its power, by a

figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of Parliament. True it is, that what the Parliament doth, no authority upon earth can undo.*-Blackstone.

When we say that the legislature is supreme, we mean, that it is the highest power known to the constitution; that it is the highest in comparison with the other subordinate powers established by the laws. In this sense, the word supreme is relative, not absolute. The power of the legislature is limited, not only by the general rules of natural justice, and the welfare of the community, but by the forms and principles of our particular constitution. If this doctrine be not true, we must admit, that king, lords, and commons, have no rule to direct their resolutions, but merely their own will and pleasure. They might unite the legislative and executive power in the same hands, and dissolve the constitution by an act of parliament.-Junius.

A government, on the principles on which constitutional governments, arising out of society, are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution. The act by which the English Parliament empowered itself to sit for seven years, shows there is no constitution in England. It might, by the same selfauthority, have sat any greater number of years, or for life. The bill which Mr. Pitt brought into parliament, to reform parliament, was on the same erroneous principle. The right of reform is in the nation, in its original character; and the constitutional method would be, by a general convention, elected for the purpose. There is, moreover, a paradox in the idea of vitiated bodies reforming them selves.-Paine.

Many of the positions in this article, are successfully controverted in those that follow.

94

CHAPTER VII.

THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.*

SECTION I.

ITS CONSTITUENT CHARACTER.

Is our constitution a good one? It will gain in our esteem by the severest inquiry. Is it bad? Then its imperfections should be laid open and exposed. Is it, as is generally confessed, of a mixed nature, excellent in theory, but defective in its practice? Freedom of discussion will be still requisite to point out the nature and source of its corruptions, and apply suitable remedies. If our constitution be that perfect model of excellence it is represented, it may boldly appeal to the reason of an enlightened age, and need not rest on the report of an implicit faith.Robert Hall.

Most of those who treat of the British constitution, consider it as a scheme of government formally planned and contrived by our ancestors, in some certain era of our national history, and as set up in pursuance of such regular plan and design. Something of this sort is secretly supposed, or referred to, in the expressions of those who speak of the "principles of the constitution," of bringing back the constitution to its "first principles," of restoring it to its "original purity," or "primitive model." Now, this appears to me an erroneous conception of the subject. No such plan was ever formed, consequently no such first principles, original model, or standard, exist: I mean, there never was a date or point of time in our history, when the government of England was to be set up anew, and when it was referred to any single person, or assembly, or committee, to frame a charter for

* It is obvious that in a work like the present, an outline of the leading features of the English Constitution, is all that could be attempted. I have some idea of publishing a separate work on the British Constitution, which will embrace a view of the whole theory of the British Polity.

the future government of the country; or when a constitution so prepared and digested, was, by common consent, received and established. In the time of the civil wars, or rather between the death of Charles the First and the restoration of his son, many such projects were published, but none were carried into execution. The Great Charter, and the Bill of Rights, were wise and strenuous efforts to obtain security against certain abuses of regal power, by which the subject had been formerly aggrieved: but these were, either of them, much too partial modifications of the constitution, to give it a new original. The constitution of England, like that of most countries of Europe, hath grown out of occasion and emergency; from the fluctuating policy of different ages; from the contentions, successes, interests, and opportunities, of different orders and parties of men in the community. It resembles one of those old mansions, which, instead of being built all at once, after a regular plan, and according to the rules of architecture, at present established, has been reared in different ages of the art, has been altered from time to time, and has been continually receiving additions and repairs suited to the taste, fortune, or conveniency, of its successive proprietors. In such a building, we look in vain for the elegance and proportion, for the just order and correspondence of parts, which we expect in a modern edifice; and which external symmetry, after all, contributes much more, perhaps, to the amusement of the beholder, than the accommodation of the inhabitant.

In the British, and possibly in all other constitutions, there exists a wide difference between the actual state of the government and the theory. The one results from the other: bnt still they are different. When we contemplate the theory of the British government, we see the king invested with the most absolute personal impunity; with a power of rejecting laws, which have been resolved upon by both houses of parliament; of conferring by his charter, upon any set or succession of men he pleases, the privilege of sending representatives into one house of parliament, as by his immediate appointment he can place whom he will in the other. What is this, a foreigner might ask, but a more circuitous despotism? Yet, when we turn our attention from the legal extent to the actual exercise of royal authority in England, we see these formid