Our Conftitution. "The popular election of magiftrates, and popular difpofition of rewards and honours, is one of the first advantages of a free ftate. Without it, or fomething equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the fubftance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good government. The frame of our commonwealth did no admit of fuch an actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the fpirit of the conftitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the method of fuffrage in any democratic ftate whatsoever. It had always, until of late, been held the first duty of parliament, to refufe to support government until power was in the hands of perfons who were acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated in the court in which the nation had no confidence. Thus all the good effects of popular election were fupposed to be fecured to us, without the mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for every particu lar office throughout the body of the people. This was the moft noble and refined part of our conftitution. The people, by their reprefentatives and grandees, were intrufted with a deliberative power in making laws; the king with the controul of his negative. The king was intrufted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the people had the negative in a parliamentary refusal to fupport. Formerly this power of controul was what kept minifters in awe of parliaments, and parliaments in reverence with the people. If the ufe of this power of controul on the fyftem and perfons of adminiftration is gone, every thing is loft, parliament and all. We may affure ourfelves, that if parliament will tamely fee evil men take poffeffion of all the ftrong holds of their country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures will not be better than their morals; fuch a parliament will give countenance to their meafures alfo, whatever that parliament may pretend, and whatever those measures may be. "Every good political inftitution must have a preventive operation as well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men from government, and not to tru trust for the safety of the state to subsequent punishment alone: punishment, which has ever been tardy and uncertain; and which, when power is fuffered in bad hands, may chance to fall rather on the injured than the criminal. "Before men are put forward into the great trufts of the ftate, they ought by their conduct to have obtained fuch a degree of ettimation in their country, as may be fome fort of pledge and fecurity to the public, that they will not abuse thofe trufts. It is no mean fecurity for a proper ufe of power, that a man has fhewn by the general tenor of his actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his fellow citizens have been among the principal objects of his life; and that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a fettled contempt, or occafional forfeiture of their esteem. "That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming into power is obliged to defert his friends, or who lofing it, has no friends to fympathize with him; he who has no fway among any part of the landed or commercial intereft, but whofe whole importance has begun with his office, and is fure to end with it; is a person who ought never to be fuffered by a controuling parliament to continue in any of thofe fituations which confer the lead and direction of all our public affairs; because such a man has no connection with the intereft of the people. "Thofe knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any public principle, in order to fell thei conjunct iniquity at a higher rate, and are therefore univerfally odious, ought never to be fuffered to domineer in the state; because they have no connection with the fentiments and opinions of the people.". "The house of commons was fuppofed originally to be no part of the standing government of this country. It was confi. dered as a controul, iffuing immediately from the people, and fpeedily to be refolved into the mafs from whence it arofe. In this refpect it was in the higher part of government what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistrate being tranfitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity it was hoped would of course preponderate in all difcuffions, not only between the people and the ftanding authority of the crown, but between the people and the fleeting authority of the hous house of commons itself. It was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and government, they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest every thing that concerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts of legiflature. "Whatever alterations time and the neceffary accommodation of business may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the house of commons fhall be made to bear fome ftamp of the actual difpofition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes) be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the house of commons fhould be infected with every epidemical phrenfy of the people, as this would indicate fome confanguinity, fome fympathy of nature with their constituents, than that they should in all cafes be wholly untouched by the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of fympathy they would ceafse to be an houfe of commons. For it is not the derivation of the power of that houfe from the people, which makes it in a diftinct fenfe their reprefentative. The king is the representative of the people; fo are the lords; fo are the judges. They all are trustees for the people, as well as the commons; because no power is given for the fole fake of the holder; and although government certainly is an inftitution of divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who administer it, all originate from the people. "A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical diftinction of a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of government, and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and effence of a house of commons, confifts in its being the exprefs image of the feelings of the nation. It was not inftituted to be a controul upon the people, as of late it has been taught by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency. It was defigned as a controul for the people. Other inftitutions have been formed for the purpose of checking popular exceffes; and they are, I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If not, they ought to be made fo. The house of commons, as it was never intended for the support of peace and fubordination, is miferably appointed for that service; having no stronger weapon than its mace, and no better officer than its ferjeant at arms, which it can command of its own proper authority. A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magiftracy; an anxious care of public money, an opennefs, approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these feem to be the true characteristics of an house of commons. But an addreffing house of commons, and a petitioning nation; an house of commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with minifters, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in all difputes between the people and adminiftration, prefume against the people; who punish their diforders, but refuse even to enquire into the provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous fiate of things in this conftitution. Such an affembly may be a great, wife, awful fenate; but it is not to any popular purpose an house of commons. This change from an immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular magiftracies in the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is indeed thei greatest and fometimes their incurable corruption. For there is a material distinction between that corruption by which par ticular points are carried against reafon, (this is a thing which cannot be prevented by human wifdom, and is of lefs confequence) and the corruption of the principle itself. For then the evil is not accidental, but fettled. The distemper becomes the natural habit." With this paffage, which in the main is fo highly and juftly wrought, a few questions must intrude on the impartial mind. If we accede to the whole defcription, the houfe of commons may, indeed, be a reprefentative, but hardly a deliberative body. Is it then to keep no check on popular frenzy, while it watches with a becoming eye the windings of an intriguing adminiftration? It is happily placed betwixt popular outrage and minifterial artifice; and fo long as it fhall last, unaffected by both, it will effentially preferve our con. ftitutional vigour. Reform. Reform. "The firft ideas which generally suggest themselves, for the cure of parliamentary diforders, are to fhorten the duration of parliaments; and to difqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a feat in the house of commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in thofe remedies, I am fure in the present ftate of things it is impoffible to apply them. A restoration of the right of free election is a preliminary indispensable to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made in this conftitution, is a matter of deep and difficult refearch. "If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as little troublesome to me as to another, to extol thofe remedies, fo famous in fpeculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never attempted seriously to refort in practice. I confefs, then, that I have no fort of reliance upon either a triennial parliament, or a place-bill. With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather ferve to counteract, than to promote the ends that are propofed by it. To fay nothing of the horrible diforders among the people attending frequent elections, I fhould be fearful of committing, every three years, the independent gentlemen of the country into a conteft with the treafury. It is eafy to fee which of the contending parties would be ruined first. Whoever has taken a careful view of public proceedings, fo as to endeavour to ground his fpeculations on his experience, muft have obferved how prodigiously greater the power of miniftry is in the first and laft feffion of a parliament, than it is in the intermediate period, when members fit a little firm on their feats. The perfons of the greatest parliamentary experience, with whom I have converfed, did conftantly, in canvaffing the fate of queftions, allow fomething to the court fide, upon account of the elections depending or imminent. The evil complained of, if it exifts in the present state of things, would hardly be removed by a triennial parliament: for, unless the influence of government in elections can be entirely taken away, the more frequently they return, the more they will harass private independence; the more generally men will be compelled to fly to the fettled fyf tematic |
