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THE EXECUTIVE AND THE LAWS.

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In fine, even though we were to suppose that the new lord might, after his exaltation, have preserved all his interest with the people, or, what would be no less difficult, that any lord whatever could, by dint of his wealth and high birth, rival the splendour of the crown itself, all these advantages, how great soever we may suppose them, as they would not of themselves be able to confer on him the least executive authority, must for ever remain mere showy unsubstantial advantages. Finding all the active powers of the state concentred in that very seat of power which we suppose him inclined to attack, and there secured by formidable provisions, his influence must always evaporate in ineffectual words; and after having advanced himself, as we suppose, to the very foot of the throne, finding no branch of independent power which he might so far appropriate to himself, as at last to give a reality to a political importance, he would soon see it, however great it might have at first appeared, decline and die away.

God forbid, however, that I should mean that the people of England are so fatally tied down to inaction, by the nature of their government, that they cannot, in times of oppression, find means of appointing a leader! No; I only meant to say that the laws of England open no door to those accumulations of power, which have been the ruin of so many republics; that they offer to the ambitious no means of taking advantage of the inadvertence or even the gratitude of the people, to make themselves their tyrants; and that the public power, of which the king has been made the exclusive depository, must remain unshaken in his hands, so long as things continue in the legal order; which, it may be observed, is a strong inducement to him constantly to endeavour to maintain them in it.*

* Several events in English history put in a very strong light this idea of the stability which the power of the crown gives to the

state.

One is, the facility with which the great Duke of Marlborough, and his party at home, were removed from their employments.-Hannibal, in circumstances nearly similar, had continued the war against the will of the senate of Carthage: Cæsar had done the same in Gaul: and when at last he was expressly required to deliver up his commission, he marched his army to Rome, and established a military despotism. But the

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 consuls, bear an absolute sway: sometimes patricians usurp every

Duke, though surrounded, as well as the above-named generals, by a victorious army, and by allies, in conjunction with whom he had carried on such a successful war, did not even hesitate to surrender his com-. mission. He knew that all his soldiers were inflexibly prepossessed in favour of that power against which he must have revolted: he knew that the same prepossessions were deeply rooted in the minds of the whole nation, and that every thing among them concurred to support the same power: he knew that the very nature of the claims he must have set up would instantly have made all his officers and captains turn themselves against him, and, in short, that, in an enterprise of this nature, the arm of the sea he had to repass was the smallest of the obstacles he would have to encounter.

The other event I shall mention here, is that of the revolution of 1689. If the long-established power of the the crown had not beforehand prevented the people from accustoming themselves to fix their eyes on some particular citizens, and in general had not prevented all men in the 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.

[This remark is just, and the wisdom of the Convention Parliament, in the contract which they made with William of Orange before they

UNITY OF THE EXE CUTIVE POWER.

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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.

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

conferred upon him the powers of Sovereignty (which, in fact, they did, for he had no inherent right to the Crown), can never be too highly or too gratefully extolled.]-Ed.

*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 those 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.

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.

What

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. 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;

* 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.

DIVISION OF THE LEGISLATIVE POWER.

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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 it is one, which Archimedes objected against his moving the earth.*

Nor does such a division of the legislature only render it possible for it to be restrained, since each of those parts into which it is divided can then serve as a bar to the motions of the others, but it even makes it to be actually so restrained. If it has been divided into only two parts, it is probable that they will not in all cases unite, either for doing or undoing : -if it has been divided into three parts, the chance that no changes will be made is greatly increased. Nay more; as a kind of point of honour will naturally take place between these different parts of the legislature, they will therefore be led to offer to each other only such propositions as will at least be plausible; and all very prejudicial changes will thus be prevented, as it were, before their birth.

If the legislative and executive powers differ so greatly with regard to the necessity of their being divided, in order to their being restrained, they differ no less with regard to the other consequences arising from such division.

The division of the executive power necessarily introduces actual oppositions, even violent ones, between the different parts into which it has been divided; and that part which in the issue succeeds so far as to absorb, and unite in itself, all the others, immediately sets itself above the laws. But those oppositions which take place, and which the public

* He wanted a spot whereupon to fix his instruments.

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