have had a value only as possibly completing a certain symmetry of theory.

It is, however, interesting to note that the first distinctly authorized publicity of a legislative body in modern times, was that of the Massachusetts house of representatives, which adopted it in 1766.3

Publicity of speaking has its dangers, and occasionally exposes to grave inconveniences, as all guarantees do, and necessarily in a greater degree as they are of a more elementary character. It is the price at which we enjoy all excellence in this world. The science of politics and political ethics must point out the dangers, as well as the formal and moral checks which may avert or mitigate the evils arising from publicity in general, and public oral transaction of business in particular. It is not our business here. We treat of it in this place as a guarantee of liberty, and have to show its indispensableness. Those who know liberty as a practical and traditional reality, and as a true business of life, as we do, know that the question is, not whether it be better to have publicity or not, but, being obliged to have it, how we can best manage to avoid its dangers while we enjoy its fullest benefit and blessing. It is the same as with the air we breathe the question is not whether we ought to dispense with a free respiration of all-surrounding air, but

:

3 I follow the opinion of Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, late speaker of the American house of representatives, and believe him to be correct, when, in an able address before the Maine Historical Society (Boston, 1849), he says: "The earliest instance of authorized publicity being given to the deliberations of a legislative body in modern days, was in this same house of representatives of Massachusetts, on the 3d day of June, 1766, when, upon motion of James Otis, and during the debates which arose on the question of the repeal of the stamp act, and of compensation to the sufferers by the riots in Boston, to which that act had given occasion, a resolution was carried for opening a gallery for such as wished to hear the debates.' The influence of this measure in preparing the public mind for the great revolu tionary events which were soon to follow, can hardly be exaggerated."

how, with free inhalation, we may best guard ourselves against colds and other distempers caused by the elementary requisite of physical life, that we must live in the atmosphere.*

Great as the inconvenience is which arises from the abuse of public speaking, and of that sort of prolixity which in our country is familiarly called by a term understood by every one, Speaking for Buncombe, yet it must be remembered that the freest possible, and, therefore, often abused latitude of speaking, is frequently a safety-valve, in times of public danger, for which nothing else can be substituted. The debates in Congress, when lately the Union itself was in danger, lasted for entire months, and words seemed fairly to weary out the nation when every one called for action. There was no citizen capable of following closely all those lengthy and occasionally empty debates, with all their lateral issues. Still, now that the whole is over, it may well be asked whether there is a single attentive and experienced American who doubts that, had it not been for that flood of debate, we must have been exposed to civil disturbances, perhaps to the rending of the Union?

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the more popular an assembly is, the more liable it is to suffer from verbose discussions, and thus to see its action impeded. This is especially the case in a country in which, as in ours, a personal facility of public speaking is almost universal, and where an elocutional laxity coexists with a patient tenacity of hearing, and a love of listening which can never be surfeited. It has its ruinous effect upon oratory, literature, the standard of thought, upon vigorous action, on public business, and gives a wide field to dull mediocrity. This anti-Pythagorean evil has led to the adoption of the "one-hour rule" in the house of representatives in Congress, and (in 1847) in the supreme court of the United States. The one-hour rule was first proposed by Mr. Holmes, of Charleston, in imitation of the Athenian one-hour clepsydra-yes, the prince of orators had that dropping monitor by his side!-and is now renewed by every new house. The English have begun to feel the same evil, and the adoption of the same rule was proposed in the Commons, in February, 1849. But the debate concluded adversely to it, after Sir Robert Peel had adverted to Burke's glorious eloquence. Our one-hour rule, however, is not entirely new in modern times. In the year 1562 (on the 21st July), the Council of Trent adopted the rule that the fathers in delivering their opinions should be restricted to half an hour, which having elapsed, the master of ceremonies was to give them a sign to leave off. Yet, on the same day, an exception was made in favour of Salmeron, the Pope's first divine, who occupied the whole sitting (History of the Life of Reginald Pole, by T. Phillips, Oxf. 1764, page 397), very much as, in February, 1849, the whole American house called " "go on," when Governor McDowel had spoken an hour. He continued for several hours.

Having mentioned the inconvenience of prolix speaking, it may not be improper to add another passage of the address of Mr. Winthrop, already mentioned. It will be recollected that this gentleman has been speaker.

Liberty, I said, is coupled with the public word; and however frequently the public word may be abused, it is nevertheless true that out of it arises oratory-the æsthetics of liberty. What would Greece and Rome be to us without their Demosthenes and Cicero? And what would their other writers have been, had not their languages been coined out by the orator? What would England be without her host of manly and masterly speakers? Who of us could wish for a moment to see the treasures of our own civilization robbed of the words contributed by our speakers, from Patrick Henry to Webster? The speeches of great orators are a fund of wealth for a free people, from which the schoolboy begins to draw when he declaims from his Reader, and which enriches, elevates, and nourishes the souls of the old.

Publicity is indispensable to eloquence. Who can speak in secret before a few? Orators are in this respect like poets-their kin, of whom Goethe, "one of the craft," says that they cannot sing unless they are heard.

All governments hostile to liberty are hostile to publicity, and parliamentary eloquence is odious to them, because it is a great power which the executive can neither create nor control. M. de Morny, brother of Napoleon the Third, issued a circular to the prefects, He knows, therefore, the inconvenience in its whole magnitude. "Doubtless," he says, "when debates were conducted with closed doors there were no speeches for Buncombe, no claptrap for the galleries, no flourishes for the ladies, and it required no hour rule, perhaps, to keep men within some bounds of relevancy. But one of the great sources of instruction and information, in regard both to the general measures of government, and to the particular conduct of their own representatives, was then shut out from the people, and words which might have roused them to the vindication of justice or to the overthrow of tyranny were lost in the utterance. The perfect publicity of legislative proceedings is hardly second to the freedom of the press, in its influence upon the progress and perpetuity of human liberty, though, like the freedom of the press, it may be attended with inconveniences and abuses."

when minister of the interior, in 1852, in which the publicity of parliamentary government is called theatricals. It is remarkable that this declaration should have come from a government which, above all others, seems, in a great measure, to rely on military and other shows.

1

CHAPTER XIV.

SUPREMACY OF THE LAW. TAXATION. DIVISION OF

POWER.

19. THE supremacy of the law, in the sense in which it has already been mentioned, or the protection against the absolutism of one, of several, or the people (which, practically, and for common transactions, means of course the majority), requires other guarantees or checks of great importance.

It is necessary that the public funds be under close and efficient popular control, chiefly, therefore, under the supervision of the popular branch of the legislature, which is likewise the most important branch in granting the supplies, and the one in which, according to the English and American fundamental laws, all money bills must originate. The English are so jealous of this principle, that the Commons will not even allow the Lords to propose amendments affecting money grants or taxation.

If the power over the public treasury, and that of imposing taxes, be left to the executive, there is an end to public liberty. Hampden knew it when he made the trifling sum of a pound of unlawfully imposed shipmoney a great natural issue, and our Declaration of Independence enumerates, as one of the gravest grievances against the mother country, that England "has imposed taxes without our consent."