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pital 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 the 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, his parliament. The king of Sweden had not that power; but the states might of themselves prolong their duration as they thought proper.

Those 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 the 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 by the representatives of the people; but those who think that power,

when parceled and diffused, is never so well regressed and regulated as when it is confined to a scie indivisible seat, which keeps the natice united and awake,-those who know, that, names by no means altering the intrinsic nature of things, the representatives of the peopie, as soon as they are invested 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 intrusted with a share in the exercise of the public power those very men whose constitutiocal cEce should have been to watch and restrain in

From the indivisibility of the governing authority in England, a community of interest ukes place among all orders of men; and hence arises, as a necessary consequence, the Eberty enjoyed by all ranks of subjects. This observation has been insisted upon at length in the course of the present 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 government, 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 with sentiments very different from the selfish and ambitious dispositions which have ever been found in other countries,*

• Such regulations as may essentially 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. When the bill passed in the seventeenth century, by which it was enacted that the crown should give up its prerogative of dissolving the parliament then sitting, 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 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 ef fected by sudden open provisions for that purpose: it is very probable that the way had been paved for them by indirect regulations formerly made, the whole tendency of which scarcely any one perhaps could foresee at the time they were framed.

When the bill was in agitation for limiting the house of

But experience does not by any means allow us to entertain so pleasing an opinion. The

peers to a certain number, its great constitutional consequences 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 was not, perhaps, strictly 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 favour 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, that 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 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.

perusal of the history of this country will show us that the care of its legislators, for the welfare of the subject, always kept pace with the exigencies of their own situation. When, through 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, in the reign of Charles the First, the authority of the crown was for a while 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, it will certainly be found upon inquiry, that those laws and those abuses were of such a complexion, that from them, the members of the legislature well

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