house of commons of England called a popular representative?19 A more insolent and preposterous abuse of language is not to be found in the vocabulary of tyrants. The criterion that distinguishes laws from dictates, freedom from servitude, rightful government from usurpation, the law being an expression of the general will is wanting. This is the grievance which the admirers of the revolution in 1688, desire to remedy according to its principles. This is that perennial source of corruption, which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. If the general interest is not the object of the government, it is, it must be, because the general will does not govern. We are boldly challenged to produce our proofs: our complaints are asserted to be chimerical, and the excellence of our government is inferred from its beneficial effects. Most unfortunately for us, most unfortunately for our country, these proofs are too ready, and too numerous. We find them in that monumental debt, the bequest of wasteful, and profligate wars, which wrings from the peasant something of his hard-earned pittance which already has punished the industry of the useful and upright manufacturer, by robbing him of the asylum of his house, and the judgment of his peers; to which the madness of political quixotism adds a million for every farthing that the pomp of ministerial empyricism pays; and which menaces our children with convulsions and calamities, of which no age has seen the parallel. We find them in the bloody roll of persecuting statutes that are still suffered to stain our code; a list so execrable, that were there no monument to be preserved of what England was in the eighteenth century, but her statute-book, she might be deemed still plunged in the deepest gloom of superstitious barbarism. We find them in the ignominious exclusion of great bodies of our fellow citizens from political trusts, by tests which reward falsehood, and punish probity, which profane the rites of the religion they pretend to guard, and usurp the dominion of the God, they profess to receive. We find them in the growing corruptions of those who administer the government, in the venality of a house of commons which has become only a cumbrous and expensive chamber for registering ministerial edicts … in the increase of a nobility arrived to a degradation, by the profusion and prostitution of honors, which the most zealous partisans of democracy would have spared them. We find them, above all, in the rapid progress which has been made to silence the great organ of public opinion, the Press, which is the true control on ministers and parliaments who might else, with impunity, trample on the impotent formalities, that form the pretended bulwark of our freedom. … The mutual control, the well-poised balance of the several members of our legislature, are the visions of theoretical, or the pretexts of practical politicians. It is a government not of check, but of conspiracy … a conspiracy which can only be repressed by the energy of popular opinion.”
If this be a true picture of the government of Great Britain (and whether it is or not, I shall leave it to others to inquire and determine,) the epoch can not be far distant, which Judge Blackstone hints at in the introduction of his commentaries. “If ever it should happen,” says that enlightened author, “that the independence of any one of the three branches of the legislature should be lost, or that it should become subservient to the views of either of the other two, there would soon be an end of the constitution.” In which case, according to Sir Matthew Hale,20 the subjects of that kingdom are left without all manner of remedy.
Such, then, being this history of the British constitution, the most perfect model of these mixed governments, (as agreed on all hands by their admirers, and advocates,) that the world ever saw, we may apply to them generally, the observations of an excellent politician21 of the last century. “If all the parts of the state do not with their utmost power promote the public good; if the prince has other aims than the safety and welfare of his country; if such as represent the people do not preserve their courage and integrity; if the nation’s treasure is wasted; if ministers are allowed to undermine the constitution with impunity; if judges are suffered to pervert justice, and wrest the law; then is a mixed government the greatest tyranny in the world: it is tyranny established by law; and the people are bound in fetters of their own making. A tyranny that governs by the sword, has few friends but men of the sword; but a legal tyranny (where the people are only called to confirm iniquity with their own voices) has on its side the rich, the timid, the lazy, those that know law, and get by it, ambitious churchmen, and all whose livelihood depends upon the quiet posture of affairs: and the persons here described compose the influencing part of most nations; so that such a tyranny is hardly to be shaken off.”
SECTION XI.
I cannot better conclude what relates to the several kinds of government of which we have been speaking, whether simple, or complex, than by a summary of their several characters, corruptions, and transitions from one to another, for which I am indebted to the pen of a most intimate friend,22 from who I have borrowed several passages in the preceding part of this essay.
“In a democratical government all authority is derived from the people at large, held only during their pleasure, and exercised only for their benefit. The constitution is a social covenant entered into by express consent of the people upon the footing of the most perfect equality with respect to civil liberty. No man has any privilege above his fellow citizens, except whilst in office, and even then, none but what they have thought proper to vest in him solely for the purpose of supporting him in the effectual performance of his duty to the public.
“In every other form of government, authority is acquired more by usurpation than by appointment of the people; it serves to give dignity and grandeur to a few, and to degrade the rest and it is exercised more for the benefit of the rulers, than of the nation. The constitution is established upon a compromise of differences between two or more contending parties, each according to the means it possesses, extorting from the other every concession that can possibly be obtained, without the smallest regard to justice, or the common rights of mankind. It is a truce, by which the people are always compelled to surrender some, and generally a very large portion of their freedom; and of course they have a right to reclaim it, whenever more favorable circumstances put it in their power. If the prince, at the head of an armed force, reduces them to unconditional submission, he becomes a despotic monarch, and the people are in the most deplorable state of slavery. They have no longer the presumption to imagine themselves created for any other purpose than to be subservient to his will, and to administer to his pleasures and ambition. They even think it an honor to be made the base instruments of his tyranny. They look up to him with a reverential awe surpassing what they feel for the almighty parent of the universe. Such is the servility of man degraded by oppression.
“If the people retain still some resources which may render the issue of the contest doubtful, the prince for his own safety, most humanely grants them some privileges, and is then a limited monarch. They are often deluded into an opinion, that what liberties they enjoy are entirely derived from his bounty; and taught to consider themselves as the happiest of mankind in having a sovereign who graciously condescends to allow them the possession of what happily he had not the power to wrest out of their hands.
“A despotic government is often both quiet and durable, because the tyrant having an army at command, is thereby enabled to keep the people in awe and subjection, and to deprive them of all opportunity of communicating their complaints, or deliberating on the means of relief. Conspiracies happen often among the troops, the reigning prince is murdered, or dethroned, but another tyrant takes his place, and the nation remains in peaceable servitude, scarcely sensible of the revolution. … When the government is less despotic, the people have more both of power and inclination to resist oppression. They are not so thoroughly stripped of the means of defense, they have more opportunity of concerting measures, and their mental faculties retain more of their natural activity. Such a government must generally be contentious and changeable. The rulers can not be long satisfied with a limitation of prerogative, or the people with the abridgment of their privileges. The same is also true in all mixed governments, the component, or balancing powers being ever at variance, until corruption, intrigue, or faction, establishes in one branch, a permanent superiority and influence over the others, or finally destroys them.
“Often it happens that the contest for power is between the prince and nobles, the people having been previously enslaved. In this case the form
