mercy of a few dunces, and renders completely illusory the boasted power of the people. Nay more, as this prerogative is thus placed in the very hands of the adversaries of the people, it forces the people to remain exposed to their attacks, in a condition perpetually passive, and takes from them the only legal means by which they might effectually oppose their usurpations.

To express the whole in a few words. A representative constitution places the remedy in the hands of those who feel the disorder; but a popular constitution places the remedy in the hands of those who cause it; and it is necessarily productive, in the event, of the misfortune, of the political calamity, of trusting the care and the means of repressing the invasions of power, to the men who have the enjoyment of power.

CHAP. IX.

A FARTHER DISADVANTAGE OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENTS. THE PEOPLE ARE NECESSARILY BETRAYED BY THOSE IN WHOM THEY TRUST.

HOWEVER, those general assemblies of a people who were made to determine upon things which they neither understood nor examined, that general confusion in which the ambitious could at all times hide their artifices, and carry on their schemes with safety, were not the only evils attending the ancient commonwealths. There was a more secret defect, and a defect that struck immediately at the very vitals of it, inherent in that kind of govern

ment.

It was impossible for the people ever to have faithful defenders. Neither those whom they had expressly chosen, nor those whom some personal advantages enabled to govern the assemblies, (for the only use, I must repeat it, which the people ever make of their power, is to give it away, or allow it to be taken from them) could possibly be united to them by any common feeling of the same concerns. As their influence put them, in a great measure, upon a level with those who were invested with the

executive authority, they cared little to restrain oppressions out of the reach of which they saw themselves placed. Nay, they feared they should thereby lessen a power which they knew was one day to be their own; if they had not even already an actual share in it.a

Thus, at Rome, the only end which the tribunes ever pursued with any degree of sincerity and perseverance, was to procure to the people, that is, to themselves, an admission to all the different dignities in the republic. After having obtained that a law should be enacted for admitting the plebeians to the consulship, they procured for them the liberty of intermarrying with the patricians. They afterwards got them admitted to the dictatorship, to the office of military tribune, to the censorship: in a word, the only use they made of the power of the people, was to increase prerogatives which they called the prerogatives of all, but which they and their friends alone were ever likely to enjoy.

But we do not find that they ever employed the power of the people in things really beneficial to the people. We do not find, that they ever set bounds to the terrible power of its magistrates, that they ever repressed that class of citizens who knew how to make their crimes pass uncensured; in a word, that they ever endeavoured, on the one hand to regulate, and on the other to strengthen, the judicial power; precautions these, without which men might struggle to the end of time, and never attain true liberty.b

And indeed the judicial power, that sure criterion of the goodness of a government, was always, at Rome, a mere instrument of tyranny. The consuls were at all times invested with an absolute power over the lives of the citizens. The dictators possessed the same right: so did the prætors, the tribunes of the people, the judicial

a How could it be expected, that men who entertained views of being prætors, would endeavour to restrain the power of the prætors; that men who aimed at being one day consuls, would wish to limit the power of the consuls; that men whom their interest with the people made sure of getting into the senate, would seriously endeavour to confine the authority of the senate?

Without such precautions, laws must always be, as Mr. Pope expresses it :

"Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong."

commissioners named by the senate, and so, of course, did the senate itself; and the fact of the three hundred and seventy deserters, whom it commanded to be thrown down, at one time, as Livy relates, from the Tarpeian rock, sufficiently shews that it well knew how to exert its power upon occasion.

It even may be said, that, at Rome, the power of life and death, or rather the right of killing, was annexed to every kind of authority whatever, even to that which results from mere influence, or wealth; and the only consequence of the murder of the Gracchi, which was accompanied by the slaughter of three hundred, and afterwards of four thousand unarmed citizens, whom the nobles knocked on the head, was to engage the senate to erect a temple to Concord. The lex Porcia de tergo civium, which has been so much celebrated, was attended with no other effect but that of more completely securing against the danger of a retaliation, such consuls, prætors, quæstors, &c. as, like Verres, caused the inferior citizens of Rome to be scourged with rods, and put to death upon crosses, through mere caprice and cruelty.c

In fine, nothing can more completely shew to what degree the tribunes had forsaken the interests of the people, whom they were appointed to defend, than that they had allowed the senate to invest itself with the power of taxation they even suffered it to assume to itself the power, not only of dispensing with the laws, but also of abrogat ing them.d

:

c If we turn our eyes to Lacedæmon, we shall see, from several instances of the justice of the ephori, that matters were little better ordered there, in regard to the administration of public justice. And in Athens itself, which is the only one of the ancient commonwealths in which the people seem to have enjoyed any degree of real liberty, we see the magistrates proceed nearly in the same manner as they now do among the Turks: and I think no other proof needs be given of this than the story of the barber in the Piræus, who having spread about the town the news of the overthrow of the Athenians in Sicily, which he had heard from a stranger who had stopped at his shop, was put to the torture, by command of the archons, because he could not tell the name of his author.-See Plut. Life of Nicias.

a There are frequent instances of the consuls taking away from the capitol the tables of the laws passed under their predecessors. Nor was this, as we might at first be tempted to believe, an act of violence which success alone could justify; it was a consequence

In a word, as a necessary consequence of the communicability of power, a circumstance essentially inherent in the republican form of government, it is impossible for it ever to be restrained within certain rules. Those who are in a condition to controul it, from that very circumstance become its defenders. Though they may have risen, as we may suppose, from the humblest stations, and such as seemed totally to preclude them from all ambitious views, they have no sooner reached a certain degree of eminence, than they begin to aim at higher. Their endeavours had at first no other object, as they professed, and perhaps with sincerity, than to see the laws impartially executed: their only view now is to set themselves above them; and seeing themselves raised to the level of a class of men who possess all the power, and enjoy all the advantages, in the state, they make haste to associate themselves with them.e

Personal power and independence on the laws being, in such states, the immediate consequence of the favour of the people, they are under an unavoidable necessity of being betrayed. Corrupting, as it were, every thing they

of the acknowledged power enjoyed by the senate, cujus erat gravissimum judicium de jure legum, as we may see in several places in Tully. Nay, the augurs themselves, as Tully informs us, enjoyed the same privilege." If laws have not been laid before the people, in the legal form, they, the augurs, may set them aside; as was done with respect to the lex Tetia by the decree of the college, and to the leges Livia, by the advice of Philip, who was consul and augur." "Legem, si non jure rogata est, tollere possunt; ut Tetiam, decreto collegii; ut Livias, consilio Philippi, consulis et auguris.—See De Legib. lib. ii. § 12.

e Which always proves an easy thing. It is in commonwealths the particular care of that class of men who are at the head of the state, to keep a watchful eye over the people, in order to draw over to their own party any man who happens to acquire a considerable influence among them; and this they are, and indeed must be, the more attentive to do, in proportion as the nature of the government is more democratical.

The constitution of Rome had even made express provisions on that subject. Not only the censors could at onee remove any citizen into what tribe they pleased, and even into the senate, (and we may easily believe that they made a political use of this privilege,) but it was also a settled rule, that all persons who had been promoted to any public office by the people, such as the consulship, the edileship, or tribuneship, became ipso facto members of the senate.-See Middleton's Dissertation on the Roman Senate..

touch, they cannot show a preference to a man, but they thereby attack his virtue; they cannot raise him, without immediately losing him, and weakening their own cause; nay, they inspire him with views directly opposite to their own, and send him to join and increase the number of their enemies.

Thus, at Rome, after the feeble barrier which excluded the people from offices of power and dignity had been thrown down, the great plebeians, whom the votes of the people began to raise to those offices, were immediately received into the senate, as has been just now observed. From that period, their families began to form, in conjunction with the ancient patrician families, a new com bination, or political association of persons; and, as this combination was formed of no particular class of citizens, but of all those in general who had influence enough to gain admittance into it, only a single overgrown head was now to be seen in the republic, which, consisting of all those who had either wealth or power of any kind, and dispos ing at will of the laws and the power of the people,' soon lost all regard to moderation and decency.

Every constitution, therefore, whatever may be its form, which does not provide for inconveniences of the kind above mentioned, is a constitution essentially imperfect. It is in man himself that the source of the evils to be remedied lies; general precautions therefore can alone prevent them. If it be a fatal error entirely to rely on the justice and equity of those who govern, it is an error no less fatal to imagine, that, while virtue and moderation are the constant companions of those who oppose the abuses of power, all ambition, all love of dominion, have retired to the other party.

Though wise men sometimes may, led astray by the power of names and the heat of political contentions, lose sight of what ought to be their real end, they nevertheless know that it is not against the Appii, the Coruncanii, the Cethegi, but against all those who can influence the execution of the laws, that precautions ought to be taken; that

f It was, in several respects, a misfortune for the people of Rome, whatever may have beeu said to the contrary by the writers on this subject, that the distinction between the patricians and plebeians was ever abolished; though, to say the truth, this was an event which could not be prevented.