are not meant to denote, as I conceive, merely a proprietary interest in the state, but also, by a visible symbol, the personal circumstances of the elector as to age, discretion, and settlement in life. Neither

are they meant to imply that the non-electors have no interest in the state; because every one has an interest in the making of laws he is bound to obey: but they are adopted for the purpose of reducing the constituency to such a number as may not be greater than needs for the general protection of all. That they are not exclusively property-qualifications may be instanced in this: there are thousands of persons disfranchised though in possession of millions of income-income derived from the funds, from colonial property, from copyrights of books, from professions and trades; being affluent, it might have been thought government would have been desirous to attach these classes to its interests by granting them the suffrage: yet many of them, not being occupiers of houses, from dislike to the trouble of housekeeping or other motive, are without political power in the state; have no share in making militia laws, or laws of any other description, though bound to obey them. If the elective qualification be unjust, it is impartially so; it does not strike one class and leave another unscotched; it does not exclude all the poor and incorporate all the rich : it embraces a part of every grade of society, and omits a part; and this, in my opinion, constitutes a recommendation of the scheme; for, by means thereof, no interest is left wholly without legislative protection.

The excellence of representative government must also depend on the mode in which the elective suffrage is exercised, whether openly or covertly. The objection ordinarily made to the BALLOT is, that-it is a shelter for meanness and collusion. In this there is more of sentiment than of reason. Government at best is only a necessary evil, but having adopted such a contrivance for the general conveniency of society, the best machinery ought to be employed. The ballot is more favourable to the peace of elections, and abridges the facilities for bribery and intimidation. It imposes no restraint on the independent expression of opinion; every one is at liberty or not to avow his political predilections; but it affords protection to those whose circumstances may render an open avowal of their sentiments hurtful or inconvenient. It shelters the weak, and leaves the strong in the full enjoyment of their liberty.

Unless the free exercise of the suffrage is protected, the purpose for which it is given may be defeated. The object of the franchise is, that the elector may have a responsible organ through which his opinions and interests may be represented. But of what avail is the suffrage to a workman, leaseholder, tenant, or tradesman, if he must necessarily exercise it under the dictation of his employer, landlord, or customers. In this case the franchise is not given, it is only delegated, and the elector is merely the proxy of him who has power to control his choice of a representative. No additional interests are

represented by such mock constituents, the working of the machinery of representation is only encumbered by a useless apparatus.

There is only one point more, connected with representation, I shall notice; it is the duration of the representative body. As at an early period of our history the simple business of parliament was quickly despatched, prorogation was unfrequent, and parliament was mostly elected as often as it assembled. Later the term of duration was irregular. Charles II. protracted his second parliament to seventeen years—a term long enough to obliterate all connexion with the electoral body. In the 461 years preceding the reign of George III. there were 202 parliaments, whose average duration was two years and a half. In the sixty-nine years of the reigns of George III. and IV. there were only thirteen parliaments, averaging five years and one-third each. A three years' term, as fixed at the Revolution, appears a just medium. A lease of seven years, as Junius expresses it, gives a corrupt member six years to commit sins and one year to atone for them. Effective legislation lies between the extremes of annual and septennial parliaments. The short parliament has the inconvenience of frequent elections, and does not afford time to perfect sound measures of national improvement, or even to acquire the information which the responsibility of legislation needs; while the long parliament deprives the elector of the means of repairing the error of his choice within any reasonable period of reco

very, and gives to the representative the means of trading at will upon a trust, which should always be considered as held under constantly renewable liabilities to his constituents. The more the principles of representative government are considered, the stronger will be the conviction, that the elected legislature is as much entitled to have a sufficient period of trial, as the people are to possess a reasonable power of redemption and renewal in their own. right.

CHAP. V.

PROGRESS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE ENGLISH
CONSTITUTION.

A DISTINCTION is mostly made by political writers between constitution and government. Government has been already defined to consist of the legislature, the laws, and their administrators; and the constitution is that department of the laws which prescribes the origin, powers, and composition of the legislative body, the functions of the executive, the franchises of the people, and the form, construction, and course of judicial administration. The constitution refers almost exclusively to the acts of public functionaries; the law, more comprehensive, refers not only to these, but to the acts of the people, or that great division of the community apart from the administrative government.

Every unconstitutional act is also an illegal act,

but every illegal act is not an unconstitutional act; that is, neither the act itself nor the perpetrator may be so important as to contravene the general and fundamental provisions which the constitution has established. It would be unconstitutional in the crown to raise money by prerogative, but it is only unlawful in a person to steal, or for a judge, or magistrate, to convict contrary to established precedent or act of parliament.

Political constitutions have mostly had two origins; either they have been promulgated at once and entire in a public act emanating from the whole or a portion of a community; or they have been the gradual creation of successive emergencies and occasions, resulting from the fluctuating wants of different ages, from the contentions and interests of different orders and parties in society. America, France, and Belgium offer examples of the former description of constitutions; England of the latter.

It was a common practice with writers of the last century, to represent the British constitution as a scheme of government formally planned and established by our ancestors in some remote period of our national history. Such representations might be necessary, and even venial, at a time when antiquity was often considered to give a higher sanction to authority than principle. But a better understanding of the purposes of government dispenses with the necessity of historical fables to establish the justice and utility of popular immunities. Without fear of misconstruction it may be now affirmed, that