thus influencing the sentiments of the nation, to influence those of the legislature itself (which is sooner or later obliged to pay a deference to them), procures to him a sort of legislative authority of a much more efficacious and beneficial nature than any formal right he might enjoy of voting by a mere yea or nay, upon general propositions suddenly offered to him, and which he could have neither a share in framing, nor any opportunity of objecting to, and modifying.

A privilege which, by raising in the people a continual sense of their own security, and affording them undoubted proofs that the government, whatever may be its form, is ultimately destined to ensure the happiness of those who live under it, is both one of the greatest advantages of freedom, and its surest characteristic. The kind of security as to their persons and possessions, which subjects who are totally deprived of that privilege, enjoy at particular times, under other governments, perhaps may entitle them to look upon themselves as the well administered property of masters who rightly understand their own interests; but it is the right of canvassing without fear the conduct of those who are placed at their head, which constitutes a free nation.'

In fine, what completes all those advantages which result from the security of the supreme executive authority in England, is the nature of the means by which this security is obtained: means which are totally different from those by which the same advantage is so incompletely procured, and so dearly paid for, in other monarchies; and which have equally preserved the English from the two opposite calamities, of anarchy dignified with the name of liberty, and of total political slavery, dignified with the name of public tranquillity.

It is from a happy general arrangement of things, that the power which governs in England, derives that advantageous solidity which procures to the people both so great

If we consider the great advantages to public liberty which result from the institution of the trial by jury, and from the liberty of the press, we shall find England to be in reality a more democratical state than any other we are acquainted with. The judicial power, and the censorial power, are vested in the people.

a degree of security, and so extensive a degree of freedom. It is from the nation itself that it receives the force with which it governs the nation. Its support is harmony, and not violence; consent, and not terror; and it continues to reign through the voluntary passions of those who are subject to it.

CHAP. XVIII.

HOW FAR THE EXAMPLES OF NATIONS THAT HAVE LOST THEIR LIBERTY, ARE APPLICABLE TO ENGLAND.

ALL governments having in themselves, say those who have written upon that subject, the principle of their destruction (a principle inherent in those very causes to which they owed their prosperity) the advantages of the government of England cannot, according to these writers, exempt it from that hidden fault which is secretly working its ruin; and M. de Montesquieu, pronouncing at the same time, both concerning the effect and the cause, says, that "the constitution of England will lose its liberty-will perish. Have not Rome, Lacedæmon, and Carthage, perished? It will perish when the legislative power shall have become more corrupt than the executive."

Though I do by no means pretend that any human establishment can escape the fate to which we see every thing in nature is subject, nor am I so far prejudiced by the sense I entertain of the great advantages of the English government, as to reckon among them that of eternity, I will however observe in general, that, as it differs by its structure and resources from all those with which history makes us acquainted, so it cannot be said to be liable to the same dangers. To judge of the one from the other, is to judge by analogy, where no analogy is to be found; and my respect for the author I have quoted will not hinder me from saying, that his opinion has not the same weight with me on this occasion, that it has on many others.

Having neglected, as indeed all systematic writers upon

politics have done, attentively to inquire into the real nature of governments, of power, and of liberty among mankind, the principles he lays down are not always so clear, or even so just, as we might have expected from a man of so great a genius. When he speaks of England, for instance, his observations are much too general; and though he had frequent opportunities of conversing with men who had been personally concerned in the public affairs of this country, and had been himself an eye-witness of the operations of the English government, yet when he attempts to describe it, he rather tells us what he conjectured than what he saw.

The examples he cites, and the causes of dissolution which he assigns, particularly confirm this observation. The government of Rome, to speak of that which, having gradually, and as it were of itself, fallen to ruin, may afford matter for exact reasoning, had no relation to that of England. The Roman people were not, in the latter ages of the commonwealth, a people of citizens, but of conquerors. Rome was not a state, but the head of a state. By the immensity of its conquests, it came in time to be in a manner only an accessory part of its own empire. Its power became so great, that after having conferred it, it was at length no longer able to resume it: and from that moment it became itself subject to it, from the same reason that the provinces themselves were so.

The fall of Rome, therefore, was an event peculiar to its situation; and the change of manners which accelerated this fall, had also an effect which it could not have had but in that same situation. Men who had drawn to themselves all the riches in the world, could no longer content themselves with the supper of Fabricius, and the cottage of Cincinnatus. The people, who were masters of all the corn of Sicily and Africa, were no longer obliged to plunder their neighbours for theirs. All possible enemies, besides, being exterminated, Rome, whose power was military, became to be no longer an army; and that was the æra of her corruption; if, indeed, we ought to give that name to what was the inevitable consequence of the nature of things.

In a word, Rome was destined to lose her liberty when she lost her empire; and she was destined to lose her empire, whenever she should begin to enjoy it.

But England forms a society founded upon principles absolutely different. All liberty, and power, are not accumulated, as it were, in one point, so as to leave, every where else, only slavery and misery, consequently only seeds of division, and secret animosity. From the one end of the island to the other the same laws take place, and the same interests prevail: the whole nation, besides, equally concurs in the formation of the government: no part, therefore, has cause to fear that the other parts will suddenly supply the necessary forces to destroy its liberty; and the whole have, of course, no occasion for those ferocious kinds of virtue which are indispensably necessary to those who, from the situation in which they have brought themselves, are continually exposed to such dangers, and after having invaded every thing, must abstain from every thing.

The situation of the people of England, therefore, essentially differs from that of the people of Rome. The form of the English government does not differ less from that of the Roman republic; and the great advantages it has over the latter for preserving the liberty of the people from ruin, have been described at length in the course of this work.

Thus, for instance, the total ruin of the Roman republic was principally brought about by the exorbitant power to which several of its citizens were successively enabled to rise. In the latter age of the commonwealth, those citizens went so far as to divide among themselves the dominions of the republic, in much the same manner as they might have done lands of their own. And to them, others in a short time succeeded, who not only did the same, but who even proceeded to that degree of tyrannical insolence, as to make cessions to each other, by express and formal compacts, of the lives of thousands of their fellow-citizens. But the great and constant authority and weight of the crown, in England, prevent, in their very beginning, as we have seen, all misfortunes of this kind; and the reader may recollect what has been said before on that subject.

At last the ruin of the republic, as every body knows, was completed. One of those powerful citizens we mentioned, in process of time found means to exterminate all his competitors: he immediately assumed to himself the

whole power of the state; and established for ever after an arbitrary monarchy. But such a sudden and violent establishment of a monarchical power, with all the fatal consequences that would result from such an event, are calamities which cannot take place in England: that same kind of power, we see, is already in being; it is ascertained by fixed laws, and established upon regular and well-known foundations.

Nor is there any great danger that that power may, by the means of those legal prerogatives it already possesses, suddenly assume others, and at last openly make itself absolute. The important privilege of granting to the crown its necessary supplies, we have before observed, is vested in the nation: and how extensive soever the prerogatives of a king of England may be, it constantly lies in the power of his people either to grant, or deny him, the means of exercising them.

This right possessed by the people of England, constitutes the great difference between them, and all the other nations that live under monarchical governments. It likewise gives them a great advantage over such as are formed into republican states, and confers on them a means of influencing the conduct of the government, not only more effectual, but also (which is more in point to the subject of this chapter) incomparably more lasting and secure, than those reserved to the people in the states we mention.

In those states, the political rights which usually fall to the share of the people, are those of voting in general assemblies, either when laws are to be enacted, or magistrates to be elected. But as the advantages arising from these general rights of giving votes, never are very clearly ascertained by the people, so neither are the consequences attending particular forms or modes of giving these votes, generally and completely understood by them. They, in consequence, never entertain any strong and constant preference for one method rather than another; and it hence always proves but too easy a thing in republican states, either by insidious proposals made at particular times to the people, or by well-contrived precedents, or other means, first to reduce their political privileges to mere ceremonies and forms, and at last, entirely to abolish them.

Thus, in the Roman republic, the mode which was constantly in use for about one hundred and fifty years,