and where they intended to copy, have often failed to do it from not understanding the model. In the UNITED STATES We have brought, as we suppose, the forms of government to still greater perfection; have cleared away many abuses, avoided many errors, and introduced great improvements in the details of administration; but we are still proud and happy to look to GREAT BRITAIN as the source from which we derive the spirit and the love of liberty; and from which we have drawn all our political institutions with the alterations necessary to accommodate them to our situation and habits. British islands, therefore, whatever may be the future fate of their inhabitants, will always be reckoned as classical and sacred ground by the friends of liberty; and their history and constitution will ever be studied with singular attention, by all who wish to attain correct notions of political science (11).”

The

Shall we look to Switzerland for an example of the advantages to be derived from a republic; if we do, we shall find a despotic government under the supreme control of the burgher. It is true, the nobility are destroyed, and, as a consequence, the peasant and the labourer have become slaves without any possible chance of their condition being bettered. The state of society is all rich and all poor, the mighty and the weak. In fine, it is an aggregation of petty despotisms, and the governing power is attained only by riches.

It is impossible to establish in this country the government of ancient Athens. Democracy has never

(11) See also De Torqueville's View of the Political Institutions of America.

been allowed to exist for any time in any of the principal countries of Europe; the influence of property has always overturned it.

The small republics of modern Italy are wholly dependent upon the government of the capital, though frequently opposed to it. The Wat Tylers and Jack Cades of England, the Stephen Marcels and the Jacquerie of France, the Cola Rienzie's and Massaniello's of Italy, were all eminently unsuccessful and short-lived; and although large towns and even cities have set up a democracy, the weight of property has never allowed it to be established. All the revolutions that have originated with the Jack Cades, or the dregs of the people, have proved abortions; while all such as have originated with the higher classes, (as in the cases of the Rebellion in 1640, and the Revolution of 1688), have maintained their ground.

In all popular states, certain qualifications have been necessarily imposed upon electors, by which the independence of the members may be established; persons without any property, it is not unrighteous to suppose, may be very easily brought under the influence and control of persons having property, and, consequently, to have no will of their own. The principle upon which the constitution of suffrage is framed, is to combine as much as possible both numbers and property: every individual now being a ten pound householder has a vote in some part of the kingdom. The richest man has but one vote in one place, though, in right of his property being situate in different places returning members, he has also a vote in those places.

members, he his new constitution of suffrage is

Whether or not

for the benefit of the peo

le at large, or whether or not

it has placed too much power in the hands of the people, is not a matter for inquiry in this work: they are practical questions, which the people can themselves resolve. It is beyond doubt, that the interest of property, and the necessity of giving a place to the aristocracy to vindicate the rights of the people equally with their own, will overthrow every constitution which pretends to act by the mere unbalanced will of the people.

It was the opinion of the Emperor Napoleon, upon the necessity of giving a place to the aristocracy in every constitution, that, to make a constitution in a country which should have no kind of aristocracy, would be attempting to navigate in a single element; and that the French Revolution undertook a problem as insoluble as that of giving a direction to balloons (12).

Every lover of real liberty, who possesses any property in the country, who has any intelligence, and who wishes the government to be so constituted that one man be not afraid of another, which, in few words, is the true political liberty of the subject, must see, that any further reform, beyond what has been obtained, must end in the establishment of democracy, and the destruction of our institutions. Any attempt, beyond wholesome improvements in the established laws, such as have followed the passing of the Reform Act, will be subversive of the constitution, and end in anarchy.

Absolute stability is not to be expected in anything human; for that which exists immortally exists alone necessarily; and this attribute of the Supreme

(12) Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France sous Napoleon, écrits à St. Helena sous la dicter de l'Empereur.-Lib. i. p. 145.

BEING can neither belong to man nor to the works of man. The best instituted governments, like the best constituted animal bodies, carry in them the seeds of their destruction; and though they grow and improve for a time, they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour they live is an hour the less they have to live. All that can be done, therefore, to prolong the duration of a good government, is to draw it back on every favourable occasion to the first good principles on which it was founded. When those occasions happen often, and are well improved, such governments are prosperous and durable. When they happen seldom, or are ill improved, then political bodies live in pain or in languor, and will die soon (13).

In conclusion, it may be held as an axiom, that democracy in England will become supreme, when the people shall refuse to support the constitution as by law established, in church and state, formed of the three estates of the kingdom. Sever but one of the links, and the whole is destroyed.

(13) Lord Bolingbroke's Patriot King.

U

CHAPTER VI.

The Advantages that accrue to the People from appointing Representatives, and entrusting them with their Legislative Authority.

How then shall the people remedy the disadvantages that necessarily attend their situation? How shall they resist the phalanx of those who have engrossed to themselves all the honours, dignities, and power in the state?

It will be by employing for their defence the same means by which their adversaries carry on their attack: it will be by using the same weapons as they do, the same order,—the same kind of discipline.

257 They are a small number, and consequently easily united; a small number must therefore be opposed to them, that a like union may also be obtained. It is because they are a small number, that they can deliberate on every occurrence, and never come to any resolutions but such as are maturely weighed; it is because they are few, that they can have forms which continually serve them for general standards to resort to, approved maxims, to which they invariably adhere, and plans which they never lose sight of:-here, therefore, oppose to them a small number, and you will obtain the like advantages.

Besides, those who govern, as a farther consequence of their being few, have a more considerable share, and