288 can contribute to society. The most that can be expected from the best education, is to increase the number of the wise and virtuous; to make all mankind so is impossible by this means, tho' the power of the vicious may not be wholly overcome, it will be considerably lessened, and many serious evils corrected and reformed. A FEW WORDS ON THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. THE British constitution is the result of gradual experience, it is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which some men have called the completion of human wisdom, and others a mere compound of folly. The fundamental principle on which it rests, is older than the Saxons, for the right of the people to deliberate personally in all public affairs, can be traced to the Germans. Whether the people were represented in the Saxon Wiltanagemet has been much disputed among antiquarians, and it is now merely an antiquarian question, for the right rests not on its antiquity but on its justice. I am inclined to think that the Saxon senate was partly representative. The distinct powers which belong to the three different branches of which our government is composed, are the result of time and information, tho' it is somewhat sin 290 gular that they were almost as accurately defined before the Norman conquest as they have ever been since, and all that has been subsequently gained is chiefly the restitution of the antient Saxon laws and government—for William the Norman wished to render himself arbitrary and so did his successors, but such was the spirit of the people and the power of the barons, that they forced from one of the fiercest tyrants of the Norman race, the restoration of that representative government which is the foundation of our liberty. The first power in the British government is the people, for them are the laws enacted by their representatives, by the lords, and by the crown, and of these three powers does the constitution consist. The king possesses a double or mixed power, it is chiefly executive, but partly legislative, inasmuch as his sanction is requisite to the formation of the laws. The power of the lords is judicial as well as legislative. The representation of the people is the fundamental article of the constitution, the lords may be voted useless, and the king may be dethroned, but the people can never be annihilated, and to be free they must be freely represented. v. Magna Charta, cap. 14. The king may in some cases temper the severity of the law by the exercise of mercy, but the House of Commons alone, can redress the grievances of the people, or become their greatest grievance; they are the grand inquest of the nation for relieving the wants, and removing the oppressions of the people; it is their duty and privilege to impose such burdens on them as may be requisite for their internal government and external defence, and to see that these contributions are honestly employed. Whenever they cease to exercise these functions, and become the mere servile instruments of the crown or the aristocracy, their popular qualities are extinct, and they render themselves (under the forms of liberty), the active agents of oppression. Tho' the king is the head of the constitution, by convention and consent, yet the people are the sovereign by nature and by right, for all power is exercised for their good and by their permission. The physical strength resides with the governed, and therefore all authority is derived from them, but for the sake of unity, dispatch, and convenience, they have invested the king with the supreme executive power, and to avoid the confusion, intrigue, and danger of an elective supremacy, they have rendered his power he 292 reditary; still reserving to themselves the right of changing the succession whenever the misconduct of their kings requires their interference. A principle most clearly established at the revolution. That the king can do no wrong is one of those maxims by which the nature of the kingly power is defined, and to a certain extent it has its uses, for in ordinary cases it prevents a vexatious and needless enquiry into the conduct of the executive, and throws the king's responsibility upon his ministers, but whenever either of these presume to trench upon the grand principles of the constitution, to violate the laws, or to attempt an alteration of the government, that maxim has been disregarded, and the king has been punished both for his own misdeeds, and those of his ministers, and as kings are but men, a king, who has manifestly transgressed the bounds of his authority, is as much the subject of punishment as a highwayman or an assassin. I am sorry to say that there is at present such a disposition in the higher powers to encroach upon the provisions of the constitution, that perpetual vigilance is requisite on the part of the people to preserve their rights, privileges, and liberties inviolate, and this vigilance must be exercised in popular assemblies le |