388 CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH ELECTORAL SYSTEM.

LECTURE XV.

Philosophical examination of the electoral system in England in the fourteenth century.-The system was the natural result of facts.Who were the electors ?-Four principles which determine the solu tion of this question.

THE facts adduced in my previous lecture, prove that the electoral system of England in the fourteenth century was determined by no philosophical combination, by no general intention. This system arose naturally and spontaneously, out of facts. Its study is therefore more curious and interesting: modern times are full of science and artifice; institutions do not now become developed with simplicity and freedom; under the pretext of giving them regularity, things are distorted, to suit some particular interest, or to accommodate a theory. Nothing of this nature occurred in the formation of the British Parliament; science did not then exist, and cunning was unnecessary. The House of Commons was not of sufficient importance for the executive to be much disturbed about its origin; the office of member for a county or borough was not enough sought after to induce different interests and parties to direct all their instruments of warfare and stratagems of policy to this end. Representatives of the country were required, who were to be chosen by the method of election-but this election had no occasion to adapt itself to a theory, or to be false in any way. In such a state of society, the electoral system might be vicious and incomplete in a thousand ways; its forms might be irregular and destitute of all needful guarantees, but its general principles would be natural and sound. These principles are what I propose to seek after, and to bring to light, in the present Lectures. They were neither known or thought of in the fourteenth century, but they exist in facts; for there is a reason for every fact, and all are subject to certain laws. Before entering upon the ancient English electoral system, singly and in itself, we

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should first consider it in its relations to society in general, to the powers by which it was ruled, and to the liberties which it enjoyed.

In the present day, political science has rarely considered questions in this point of view, though it is the first and most important of all; it has operated on society and its government by a process of dissection; it has taken all powers and rights one by one, and has endeavoured to define cach separately, and with regard to itself alone; seeking first completely to disjoin them from one another, and then to make them to proceed together, confining each strictly to its own sphere. În this manner have we seen enumerated the legislative power, the executive power, the electoral power, the judicial power, and the administrative power, and every effort of science has been exerted to make these different powers co-exist, while maintaining among them a rigorous distinction, and enjoining upon them never to fall into confusion, nor even to assimilate their offices and action. The same system has been applied to the rights and liberties of citizens. It is easy here to discern the triumph of the fondness for analysis which characterized the last century. But analysis is a method of study, not of creation. The spirit of analysis is scientific, but never political. In politics, whether dealing with rights or powers, the object is to create real vital forces, capable either of enforcing obedience or resisting oppression. This can never be attained by analysis; for, in reality, actual life is a very complicated matter, requiring the union and amalgamation of a multitude of different elements, each modified and sustained by the others. Analysis elucidates and separates into parts, but never constructs. This truth is demonstrated by the political history of our own time. All these powers and rights, so carefully enumerated and distinguished by science, so narrowly enclosed within specified limits, were found in the time of action to be destitute of consistency, energy, and reality. It was decreed that the legislative power should be absofutely separated from the executive power, the judicial power from the administrative, the municipal from the electoral power: liberties and rights have been isolated and dissected just in the same way as powers; and ere long all these rights and powers, incapable of existence and action in their iso

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OBJECT OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

lated condition, have become centralized or lost in the hand of an individual or collective despotism, which alone was powerful and real, because it alone was other than a theoretic design or a scientific conception.

It may be fearlessly affirmed that rights, like public powers, will never regain reality and energy until they escape from this pretended science, which, under the pretext of classifying, enervates and nullifies them; until, united by positive ties, they mutually rest on one another, and coalesce to bring about the same results. Doubtless, the great analytical labour performed in our own time will not prove fruitless; many well grounded distinctions and necessary limitations will be maintained; all powers will not again fall into general confusion, nor will all rights become concentrated. There is some truth and usefulness in the results of the social dissection which has been performed; but if it were to be perpetuated, if rights and powers were to remain in the state of isolation and dissolution in which science has placed them at the present day, we should never possess either government or freedom.

It is very evident that nothing of this kind occurred at the period of the formation of the British Parliament. Politics did not wear so scientific a character, nor lay claim to such consideration, as at present. It was necessary to summon together the principal men in the kingdom-merchants, landowners, and others-that they might assist in particular public business. But this was never imagined to be the creation of a new right, or of a new power. Established rights and existing powers were called upon to exercise this new function, and to appear under this new form. The freeholders, that is to say, every free and veritable landowner, used to assemble in the county-courts, to administer justice and to treat together of common interests; and these county-courts were charged with the nomination of representatives. In towns of any importance, the citizens, under forms more or less liberal, regulated their own affairs, chose their own magistrates, and exercised in common certain rights and powers; and these municipal corporations were required to send members to Parliament. Thus, the assemblies which we now designate electoral colleges were never at that period, as they now are, special and isolated

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assemblies, invested with a temporary duty, and in all other respects unconnected with the administration of the country. County courts and municipal corporations, which were already firmly planted and established, and possessed inherent strength, were constituted into electoral colleges. Thus the electoral system from its origin was united with every right and institution, and with almost every local and real power. It was the extension and development of existing liberties, a powerful force added to other forces previously in action and exercising government over other interests. It was not that in one place there were merely electors, in another administrators, and elsewhere judges; but there was a body of citizens who participated in the administration of local affairs, and in rendering justice; and who elected deputies for the transaction of general business. It is easily understood that, -being thus deeply rooted in the community at large, and closely united to all other powers-the electoral power (to employ the language of the present day) was defended from every vicissitude through which we have seen it pass, when attempts have been made to establish it, by itself, in some particular aspect or combination.

This then is the first characteristic of the electoral system which occupies our attention. We need not hesitate to elevate this characteristic into a principle, and to assert that where it is not met with, election, that is to say, representative government itself, will be either powerless or harassed by continual storms.

It is an error in modern politics immoderately to fear power, whatever may be its form or situation. It is divided and subdivided infinitesimally, until it no longer exists, so to speak, except as powder. This is not the way to establish liberty. Liberty cannot exist except by the possession of rights, and rights are worthless if they are not themselves powers-vital and strongly constituted powers. Placing right on one side and power on the other is not constituting free government, but establishing a permanent tyranny, sometimes under the name of despotism, and sometimes under that of revolution; the problem is to place power everywhere in the hands of right, which can only be done by organizing or accepting at once, in the very centre of the government, and in every stage of its action, authority

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INDEPENDENCE OF PUBLIC RIGHTS.

and resistance. Now resistance is only real and effectual when capable on all occasions of opposition to authority, when authority is compelled to treat with it at all times, to conquer or to yield. What then is the electoral right or power, if so it is called, when isolated from every other power? Its exercise is transient and infrequent; it is the crisis of a day imposed upon actual authority, which may, it is true, be defeated, but which, if it escapes, is afterwards perfectly free, and continues its course without the least obstruction, or sleeps in blind security. If, on the other hand, the electoral right is supported by other rights of more direct and frequent occurrence, if the electoral system is closely interwoven with the whole government, if the same citizens who have nominated the members, interfere in the affairs of the country under other forms but by the same title, if the central authority needs on other occasions their assent and support, if it finds them elsewhere also grouped and united for the exercise of other functions of power, then all rights serve as guarantees to one another; the electoral system is no longer suspended in air, and it becomes difficu... to violate it in principle, or to elude it in its consequences

It is impossible to doubt that to this close union of elec toral rights, with a multitude of other public and local rights, the electoral system is indebted in England for its strength and permanence. One fact among a thousand others will prove this. When the central power, finding itself threatened by the elections, has endeavoured to rid itself of their influence, it has been compelled to withdraw from the towns and corporations, their charters and liberties. Without this nothing could have been done. But by this also, everything was attacked, and liberty and right being everywhere emperilled, the nation put forth its efforts not only to re-establish & House of Commons, but also to regain a multitude of other rights which had no reference to the election of representatives. It is the secret of good constitutional legislation, thus to unite all rights with each other in such a manner that it is impossible to weaken any one of them without endangering all.

This characteristic of the British electoral system has also produced, in regard to the elections themselves, other consequences no less felicitous, which I shall presently indicate.