CHAPTER II. The Subject concluded.-The Executive Power is more. easily confined when it is ONE. ANOTHER great advantage, and which one would not at first expect, in this unity of the public power in England,-in this union, and, if I may so express myself, in this coacervation, of all the branches of the executive authority,—is the greater facility it affords of restraining it. In those states where the execution of the laws is intrusted to several hands, and to each with different titles and prerogatives, such division, and the changeableness of measures which must be the consequence of it, constantly hide the true cause of the evils of the state: in the endless fluctuation of things, no political principles have time to fix among the people and public misfortunes happen, without ever leaving behind them any useful lesson. At some times military tribunes, and at others state from attaining too considerable a degree of power and greatness, the expulsion of James II. might have been followed by events similar to those which took place at Rome after the death of Cæsar. consuls, bear an absolute sway sometimes patricians usurp every thing, and at other times. those who are called nobles*: at one time the people are oppressed by decemvirs, and at another by dictators. Tyranny, in such states, does not always beat down the fences that are set around it; but it leaps over them. When men think it confined to one place, it starts up again in another;—it mocks the efforts of the people, not because it is invincible, but because it is unknown ;-seized by the arm of a Hercules, it escapes with the changes of a Proteus. But the indivisibility of the public power in England has constantly kept the views and efforts of the people directed to one and the same object; and the permanence of that power has also given a permanence and a regularity to the precautions they have taken to restrain it. *The capacity of being admitted to all places of public trust (at length gained by the plebeians) having rendered useless the old distinction between them and the patricians, a coalition was then effected between the great plebeians, or commoners, who got into these places, and the ancient patricians. Hence a new class of men arose, who were called nobiles and nobilitas. These are the words by which Livy, after that period, constantly distinguishes those men and families who were at the head of the state. Constantly turned towards that ancient fortress, the royal power, they have made it for seven centuries the object of their fear; with a watchful jealousy they have considered all its parts: they have observed all its outlets; they have even pierced the earth to explore its secret avenues and subterraneous works. United in their views by the greatness of the danger, they regularly formed their attacks. They established their works, first at a distance; then brought them successively nearer; and, in short, raised none but what served afterwards as a foundation or defence to others. After the Great Charter was established, forty successive confirmations strengthened it. The act called the Petition of Right, and that passed in the sixteenth year of Charles the First, then followed: some years after, the Habeas Corpus act was established; and the Bill of Rights at length made its appearance. In fine, whatever the circumstances may have been, the people always had, in their efforts, that inestimable advantage of knowing with certainty the general seat of the evils they had to defend themselves against; and each calamity, each particular eruption, by pointing out some weak place, served to procure a new bulwark for public liberty. To conclude in a few words;-the executive power in England is formidable, but then it is for ever the same; its resources are vast, but their nature is at length known; it has been made the indivisible and inalienable attribute of one person alone, but then all other persons, of whatever rank or degree, become really interested to restrain it within its proper bounds*. CHAPTER III. A second Peculiarity. The Division of the Legislative Power. THE second peculiarity which England, as an individual state and a free state, exhibits in its constitution, is the division of its legislature. That the reader may be more sensible of the advantages of this division, he is desired to attend to the following considerations. * This last advantage of the greatness and indivisibility of the executive power, viz. the obligation it lays upon the greatest men in the state, sincerely to unite in a common cause with the people, will be more amply discussed hereafter, when a more particular comparison between the English government and the republican form shall be offered to the reader. It is, without doubt, absolutely necessary, for securing the constitution of a state, to restrain the executive power: but it is still more necessary to restrain the legislative. What the former can only do by successive steps (I mean subvert the laws), and through a longer or shorter train of enterprises, the latter can do in a moment. As its bare will can give being to the laws, so its bare will can also annihilate them; and, if I may be permitted the expression, the legislative power can change the constitution, as God created the light. In order, therefore, to ensure stability to the constitution of a state, it is indispensably necessary to restrain the legislative authority. But here we must observe a difference between the legislative and the executive powers. The latter may be confined, and even is the more easily so, when undivided: the legislative, on the contrary, in order to its being restrained, should absolutely be divided. For, whatever laws it may make to restrain itself, they never can be, relatively to it, any thing more than simple resolutions: as those bars which it might erect to stop its own motions must then be within it, and rest upon it, they can be no bars. In a word, the same kind of impossibility is found, to fix the legislative power when |