promiscuous and irresponsible assemblies of the people. Hence the necessity for the representative system, an improvement so manifest and so generally acknowledged in modern times, that it has been adopted even in democratic states.

The character of the representative assembly must depend in a great measure on the period for which the members are elected, and on the manner of their election.

In this country the parliament is generally dissolved shortly before the expiry of the statutory period of seven years. Of late, owing to the frequent changes of ministry and other causes, the actual duration of parliaments has been much abridged.

According to the theory of the constitution, the members of the house of commons are the representatives of the various classes of the community. The duration of parliament is such as to enable them to become conversant with public affairs, and accustomed to the forms and business of the house. They enjoy perfect liberty of speech, and are entitled to give an honest vote, after debate and according to their own judgment.

In these respects they are distinguished from mere deputies or delegates influenced by popular passions and prejudices, and pledged beforehand to vote as certain electors have dictated.

The nature and extent of the elective franchise, and the manner of voting for members of parliament in this country, are too well known to require explanation.

In the United States the houses of representatives of the several states and of Congress are chosen annually or biennially, and for the most part by universal suffrage and by ballot. Let us consider the effect of this system in America.

M. De Tocqueville has observed that owing to the

frequency of elections, society in America is kept in a continual state of excitement and agitation, and that there is a great want of system and of stability in the laws.

General Hamilton remarks,* "The facility and the excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable.......The mischievous effects of the mutability in the public councils arising from a rapid succession of new members would fill a volume. Every new election in the states is found to change one half of the representatives. From this change of men must proceed a change of opinions and of measures, which forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, poisons the blessings of liberty itself, and diminishes the attachment and reverence of the people towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity."

Mr. Madison expresses the same sentiment; and Jefferson, in a letter to Madison in 1787, wrote as follows:-"The instability of our laws is really a very serious inconvenience. I think that we ought to have obviated it by deciding that a whole year should always be allowed to elapse between the bringing in a bill, and the final passing of it," &c.

During the last thirty years most of the states have altered their constitutions. Their statute books are exceedingly voluminous. The new statesmen are chiefly desirous to do something, during their term of office, which shall please their constituents; but what their predecessors may have done, they have but little time or inclination to consider. The laws must be without system, and often inconsistent and contradictory, where the authority of the legislator is only a transient emanation from the popular will.

For, lo push'd up to power, and crown'd their cares,
In comes another set and kicketh them down stairs.

*No. 73 of the Federalist.

every

The electoral body consists of nearly the whole mass of American citizens, for in most of the states of the union male citizen of twenty-one years of age has a vote. In several of the states of the union some property qualification is required. In New Jersey, fifty pounds a year; in South Carolina and Maryland, fifty acres of land; in several states, service in the militia or payment of taxes is the qualification; in others, the privilege of voting does not depend on the property of the elector. But in that rising country the possession of some property is so general, that property and the elective franchise are almost co-extensive, for which cause, and for other reasons, the wide diffusion of the franchise is far less perilous than it would be under different circumstances elsewhere.

The very object of elections ought to be the choice of able and upright statesmen, well qualified by their character and talents to manage public affairs. Is this end attained by universal suffrage? What says M. De Tocqueville, a competent and impartial witness? "It invariably happens that, in the United States in the present day, the ablest men are seldom called to public stations; and it must be acknowledged that this has been the case in proportion as democracy has overstepped its former limits," (which by the way democracy very apt to do.) "The race of American statesmen has obviously become very degenerate during the last half century."

is

In endeavouring to account for this fact, M. De Tocqueville remarks on the difficulty of forming a just estimate of the character and qualifications proper for a high and important trust. "Men of superior minds,” he says, "may be mistaken; and can it be supposed the multitude will judge more wisely? On the contrary, the opinion of the people is usually formed on a superficial view of the question which they have to

consider, and they are attracted by what is shewy and striking, rather than by what is solid and valuable. Hence Charlatans succeed best in pleasing the multitude, whilst those who really have the public welfare at heart fail to obtain the suffrages of the people."

"Democratic institutions inflame and flatter the passion for equality which they can never satisfy, for the entire equality which the people pursue eludes their grasp and mocks them with a perpetual flight."

That, like the circle, bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet as they follow flies.

Undoubtedly it does, for although both in the old and the new world demagogues employ the doctrine of equality to delude the people, it is every where the same unreal phantom, alluring only to mislead, disappoint, or destroy.

Thus the writer of an article in the North American Review, (published at Boston in 1831) who is evidently a staunch republican, admits the fact of the inequality of conditions even in America, and labours to prove "that there is no necessary or natural connection between the existence of an army of paupers, and incompatibility with republican institutions." As to the fact, however, he says that in Boston there are at least two thousand persons "who get their living by daily begging and fraud. These must be persons of desperate fortune and of abject poverty. There is in the

same city a very wealthy class, and between the two extremes there is every intermediate degree." The North American Reviewer further observes, that “the utopian equality of condition, assumed to be necessary to a republic, does not exist in town or country in the United States." Utopian equality! We thank this candid republican for that word, and would recommend it to the consideration of all who have been accustomed

to receive from the lips of demagogues the flattering dogma of the universal equality of mankind. Whereas, on the high authority of M. De Tocqueville and of the Boston reviewer, it appears that the proposition, amended and correctly stated, should stand thus: "All men are equal―IN UTOPIA.”

Order is heaven's first law; and this confest,
Some are and must be greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.

The Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, a recent and very impartial traveller in the United States, also informs us that the distinctions of rank and station are now as much observed in Philadelphia and Boston as they are in London, or perhaps more so, "only with this difference, that being as it were illegal and unsanctioned by public opinion, they are adhered to with secret pertinacity, and owe their origin and strength principally to wealth;" and the only semblance of republican equality, he tells us, exists among the half civilized settlers in the western wilderness. And M. De Tocqueville says, that while the laws which encourage the division of property have entirely done away with hereditary ranks and distinctions, he knows no country where the love of money has a stronger hold on men's affections, and where greater contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

As a consequence of that craving insatiable desire for equality, which M. De Tocqueville calls a "democratic instinct," he says the subordinate ranks of society strive to exclude those of superior fortune, talents, and acquirements, from the management of public affairs.

"The people do not view the upper classes with hostile feelings, but they have no good will towards them, and they carefully exclude them from power;

E