little account of a people, with one part of which they know how to curb the other. But when the moving springs of government are placed entirely out of the body of the people, their action is thereby disengaged from all that could render it complicated, or hide it from the eye. As the people thenceforward consider things speculatively, and are, if I may be allowed the expression, only spectators of the game, they acquire just notions of things; and as these notions, amidst the general quiet, gain ground and spread themselves far and wide, they at length entertain, on the subject of their liberty, but one opinion. Forming thus, as it were, one body, the people at every instant have it in their power to strike the decisive blow which is to level every thing. Like those mechanical powers, the greatest efficiency of which exists at the instant which precedes their entering into action, it has an immense force, just because it does not yet exert any: and in this state of stillness, but of attention, consists its true momentum. With regard to those who (whether from personal privileges, or by virtue of a commission from the people) are intrusted with the active part of government, as they, in the meanwhile, see themselves exposed to public view, and observed as from a distance by men free from the spirit of party, and who place in them but a conditional trust, they are afraid of exciting a commotion, which, though it might not prove the destruction of all power, yet would surely and immediately be the destruction of their own. And if we might suppose that, through an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, they should resolve among themselves upon the sacrifice of those laws on which public liberty is founded, they would no sooner lift up their eyes towards that extensive assembly, which views them with a watchful attention, than they would find their public virtue return upon them, and would make haste to resume that plan of conduct, out of the limits of which they can expect nothing but ruin and perdition. In short, as the body of the people cannot act without either subjecting themselves to some power, or effecting a general destruction, the only share they can have in a REVOLUTIONS IN ENGLAND. 219 government, with advantage to themselves, is not to interfere, but to influence-to be able to act, and not to act. The power of the people is not when they strike, but when they keep in awe: it is when they can overthrow everything, that they never need to move; and Manlius included all in four words, when he said to the people of Rome,-Ostendite bellum, pacem habebitis. CHAPTER XV. PROOFS DRAWN FROM FACTS, OF THE TRUTH OF THE PRINCIPLES LAID DOWN IN THE PRESENT WORK.-1. THE PECULIAR MANNER IN WHICH REVOLUTIONS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CONCLUDED IN ENGLAND. IT may not be sufficient to have proved by arguments the advantages of the English constitution; it will perhaps be asked whether the effects correspond to the theory? To this question (which I confess is extremely proper) my answer is ready: it is the same which was once made, I believe, by a Lacedæmonian-Come and see. If we peruse the English history, we shall be particularly struck with one circumstance to be observed in it, and which distinguishes most advantageously the English government from all other free governments; I mean, the manner in which revolutions and public commotions have always been terminated in England. If we read with some attention the history of other free states, we shall see that the public dissensions that have taken place in them have constantly been terminated by settlements in which the interests only of a few were really provided for, while the grievances of the many were hardly, if at all, attended to. In England the very reverse has happened; and we find revolutions always to have been terminated by extensive and accurate provisions for securing the general liberty. The histories of the ancient Grecian commonwealths, and, above all, of the Roman Republic, of which more complete accounts have been left us, afford striking proof of the former part of this observation. What was, for instance, the consequence of that great revolution by which the kings were driven from Rome, and in which the senate and patricians acted as the advisers and leaders of the people? The consequence was, as we find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Livy, that the senators immediately assumed all those powers lately so much complained of by themselves, which the kings had exercised. The execution of their future decrees was intrusted to two magistrates, taken from their own body, and entirely dependent on them, whom they called consuls, and who were made to bear about them all the ensigns of power which had formerly attended the kings. Only, care was taken that the axes and fasces, the symbols of the power of life and death over the citizens, which the senate now claimed to itself, should not be carried before both consuls at once, but only before one at a time; for fear, says Livy, of doubling the terror of the people.* Nor was this all: the senators drew over to their party those men who had the most interest at that time among the people, and admitted them as members into their own body; which, indeed, was a precaution they could not prudently avoid taking. But the interests of the great men in the republic being thus provided for, the revolution ended. The new senators, as well as the old, took care not to lessen, by making provisions for the liberty of the people, a power which was now become their own. Nay, they presently stretched this power beyond its former tone; and the punishments which the consul inflicted, in a military manner, on a number of those who still adhered to the former mode of government, and even upon his own children, taught the people what they had to expect for the future, if they presumed to oppose the power of those whom they had thus unwarily made their masters. * "Omnia jura (regum), omnia insignia, primi consules tenuere; id modò cautum est, ne, si ambo fasces haberent, duplicatus terror videretur."-Tit. Liv. lib. ii. § 1. + These new senators were called conscripti: hence the name of patres conscripti, afterwards indiscriminately given to the whole senate.—Tit. Liv. ibid. ANCIENT REVOLUTIONS. 221 Among the oppressive laws or usages which the senate, after the expulsion of the kings, had permitted to continue, what were most complained of by the people were those by which such citizens as could not pay their debts, with the interest (which at Rome was enormous), at the appointed time, became slaves to their creditors, and were delivered over to them, bound with cords: hence the word nexi, by which slaves of that kind were denominated. The cruelties exercised by creditors on those unfortunate men, whom the private calamities, caused by the frequent wars in which Rome was engaged, rendered very numerous, at last roused the body of the people: they abandoned both the city and their inhuman fellow-citizens, and retreated to the other side of the river Anio. But this second revolution, like the former, only procured the advancement of particular persons. A new office was created, called the tribuneship. Those whom the people had placed at their head when they left the city, were raised to it. Their duty, it was agreed, was, for the future, to protect the citizens; and they were invested with a certain number of prerogatives for that purpose. This institution, it must however be confessed, would have, in the issue, proved very beneficial to the people, at least for a long course of time, if certain precautions had been taken with respect to it, which would have much lessened the future personal importance of the new tribunes:* but these precautions the latter did not think proper to suggest; and in regard to those abuses themselves, which had at first given rise to the complaints of the people, no farther mention was made of them.† As the senate and patricians, in the early ages of the commonwealth, kept themselves closely united, the tribunes, for all their personal privileges, were not able, during the first times after their creation, to gain an admittance either to the consulship, or into the senate, and thereby to *Their number, which was only ten, ought to have been much greater; and they never ought to have accepted the power left to each of them, of stopping, by his single opposition, the proceedings of all the rest. Many other seditions were afterwards raised upon the same account. separate their condition any farther from that of the people. This situation of theirs, in which it was to be wished they might always have been kept, produced at first excellent effects, and caused their conduct to answer, in a great measure, the expectation of the people. The tribunes complained loudly of the exorbitancy of the powers pos sessed by the senate and consuls: and here we must observe that the powers exercised by the latter over the lives of the citizens had never been yet subjected (which will probably surprise the reader) to any known laws, though sixty years had already elapsed since the expulsion of the kings. The tribunes therefore insisted that laws should be made in that respect, which the consuls should thenceforward be bound to follow, and that they should no longer be left, in the exercise of their power over the lives of the citizens, to their own caprice and wantonness.* Equitable as these demands were, the senate and patricians opposed them with great warmth, and, either by naming dictators, or calling in the assistance of the priests, or other means, they defeated for nine years together all the endeavours of the tribunes. However, as the latter were at that time in earnest, the senate was at length obliged to comply; and the Lex Terentilla was passed, by which it was enacted, that a general code of laws should be made. These beginnings seemed to promise great success to the cause of the people. But, unfortunately for them, the senate found means to have it agreed, that the office of tribune should be set aside during the whole time that the code should be framing. They, moreover, obtained that the ten men, called decemvirs, to whom the charge of composing this code was to be given, should be taken from the body of the patricians. The same causes, therefore, produced again the same effects; and the power of the senate and consul was left in the new code, or laws of the Twelve Tables, as undefined as above. As to the laws above mentioned, concerning debtors, which never had ceased to be bitterly complained of by the people, and in regard to which some satisfaction ought, in common justice, to have been given * "Quod populus in se jus dederit, eo consulem usurum; non ipsos libidinem ac licentiam suam pro lege habituros."-Tit. Liv. lib. iii. § 9. |