acquisition of foreign dominions, acquire a fatal independency on the people: and if, without entering into any farther particulars on this subject, I were required to point out the principal events which would, if they were ever to happen, prove immediately the ruin of the English government, I would say-The English government will be no more, either when the crown shall become independent on the nation for its supplies, or when the representatives of the people shall begin to share in the executive authority.t

CHAP. XIX.

A few additional thoughts on the attempts that at particular times may be made to abridge the power of the crown, and some of the dangers by which such attempts may be attended.

THE power of the crown is supported by deeper and more numerous roots than the generality of people are aware of, as has been observed in a former chapter; and there is no cause to fear that the wresting any capital branch of its prerogative may be effected, in common peaceable times, by the mere theoretical speculations of politicians. However, it is not equally impracticable, that some event of the kind we mention may be brought about through a conjunction of several circumstances. Advantage may, in the first place, be taken of the minority, and even of and principles, from which no useful consequence could be drawn. Thus, in order to ground particular assertions, they have much used the word Constitution in a personal sense, the constitution loves, the constitution forbids, and the like. At other times they have had recourse to luxury, in order to explain certain events; and at others, to a still more occult cause, which they have called corruption; and abundance of comparisons, drawn from the human body, have been also used for the same purposes: continued instances of such defective arguments and considerations occur in the works of M. De Montesquieu, though a man of so much genius, and from whose writings so much information is nevertheless to be derived. Nor is it only the obscurity of the writings of politicians, and the impossibi ity of applying their speculative doctrines to practical uses, which prove that some peculiar and uncommon difficulties lie in the way of the investigation of political truths; but the remarkable perplexity which men in general, even the ablest, labour under, when they attempt to descant and argue upon abstract questions in politics, also justifies this obser vation, and proves that the true first principles of this science, whatever they are, lie deep both in the human feelings and understanding. And if at any time dangerous changes were to take place in the English constitution, the pernicious tendency of which the people were not able at first to discover, restrictions on the liberty of the press, and on the power of juries, will give them the first information."

the inexperience or the errors of the person invested with the kingly authority. Of this a remarkable instance hap-, pened in the reign of George the First, while that bill, by which the order of peers was in future to be limited to a certain number, was under consideration in the House of Commons, to whom it had been sent by the lords. So unacquainted was the king at that time with his own interest, and with the constitution of the English government, that, having been persuaded by the party who wished success to the bill, that the commons only objected to it from an opinion of its being disagreeable to him, he was prevailed upon to send a message to them, to let them know, that such an opinion was ill-grounded, and that, should the bill pass in their house, it would meet with his assent. Considering the prodigious importance of the consequences of such a bill, the fact is certainly very remarkable.

With those personal disadvantages under which the sovereign may lie for defending his authority, other causes of difficulty may concur-such as popular discontents of long continuance in regard to certain particular abuses of influence or authority. The generality of the public, bent, at that time, both upon remedying the abuses complained of, and preventing the like from taking place in future, will perhaps wish to see that branch of the prerogative which gave rise to them taken from the crown: a general disposition to applaud such a measure, if effected, will be manifested from all quarters; and, at the same time, men may not be aware, that the only material con. sequence that may arise from depriving the crown of that branch of power which has caused the public complaints, will perhaps be the having transferred that branch of power from its former seat to another, and having intrusted it to new hands, which will be still more likely to abuse it, than hose in which it was formerly lodged.

In general, it may be laid down as a maxim, that power under any form of government must exist, and be intrusted somewhere. If the constitution does not admit of a king, the governing authority is lodged in the hands of magi strates, If the government, at the same time that it is a limited one, bears a monarchical form, those portions of power that are retrenched from the king's prerogative will

most probably continue to subsist, and be vested in a senate or assembly of great men, under some other name of the like kind.

Thus, in the kingdom of Sweden, which, having been a limited monarchy, may supply examples very applicable to the government of this country, we find that the power of convoking the general states (or parliament) of that kingdom, had been taken from the crown; but at the same time we also find, that the Swedish senates had invested themselves with that essential branch of power which the crown had lost; I mean here the government of Sweden, as it stood before the last revolution..

The power of the Swedish king to confer offices and employments had been also very much abridged. But what was wanting to the power of the king the senate enjoyed: it had the nomination of three persons for every vacant office, out of whom the king was to choose one.

The king had but a limited power in regard to pardoning offenders; but the senate likewise possessed what was wanting to that branch of his prerogative, and it appointed two persons, without the consent of whom the king could not remit the punishment of any offence.

The king of England has an exclusive power in regard to foreign affairs, war, peace, treaties;-in all that relates to military affairs, he has the disposal of the existing army, of the fleet, &c. The king of Sweden had no such extensiye powers; but they nevertheless existed: every thing relating to the above-mentioned objects was transacted in the assembly of the senate; the majority decided; the king was obliged to submit to it; and his only privilege consisted in his vote being accounted two.*

The Swedish senate was fully composed of sixteen members. In regard to affairs of smaller moment they formed themselves into two divisions; in either of these, when they did sit, the presence of seven members was required for the effectual transacting of business: in affairs of importance, the assembly was formed of the whole senate; and the presence of ten members was required to give force to the resolutions. When the king could not, or would not, take his seat, the senate proceeded nevertheless, and the majority continued to be equally decisive.

As the royal seal was necessary for putting in execution the resolutions of the senate, king Adolphus Frederic tried, by refusing to lend the same, to procure that power which he had not by his suffrage, and to stop the proceedings of the senate. Great debates, in consequence of that pretension, arose, and continued for a while; but, at last, in the year 1756, the king was overruled by the senate, who ordered

If we pursue farther our inquiry on the subject, we shall find that the king of Sweden could not raise whom he, pleased to the office of senator, as the king of England can in regard to the office of member of the privy council: but the Swedish states, in the assembly of whom the nobility enjoyed most capital advantages, possessed a share of the power we mention, in conjunction with the king; and in cases of vacancies in the senate, they elected three persons, out of whom the king was to return one.

The king of England may, at all times, deprive the ministers of their employments. The king of Sweden could remove no man from his office; but the states enjoyed the power that had been denied to the king; and they might deprive of their places both the senators and those persons in general who had a share in the administration.

The king of England has the power of dissolving, or keeping assembled, his parliament. The king of Sweden had not that power; but the states might of themselves prolong their duration as they thought proper.

Those who think that the prerogative of a king cannot be too much abridged, and that power loses all its influence on the dispositions and views of those who possess it, according to the kind of name used to express the offices by which it is conferred, may be satisfied, no doubt, to behold those branches of power that were taken from a king distributed to several bodies, and shared by the representatives of the people; but those who think that power, when parcelled and diffused, is never so well repressed and regulated as when it is confined to a sole indivisible seat, which keeps the nation united and awake -those who know that, names by no means altering the intrinsic nature of things, the representatives of the people, as soon as they are invested with independent authority, become, ipso facto, its masters-those persons, I say, will not think it a very happy regulation in the former constitution of Sweden, to have deprived the king of prerogatives formerly attached to his office, in order to vest the same either in a senate or in the deputies of the people, and thus to have intrusted with a share in the exer

a seal to be made, that was named the king's seal, which they affixed to their official resolutions when the king refused to lend his own.

cise of the public power those very men whose constitutional office should have been to watch and restrain it.

From the indivisibility of the governing authority in England, a community of interest takes place among all orders of men; and hence arises, as a necessary consequence, the liberty enjoyed by all ranks of subjects. This observation has been insisted upon at length in the course of the present work. The shortest reflection on the frame of the human heart suffices to convince us of its truth, and at the same time manifests the danger that would result from making any changes in the form of the existing government, by which this general community of interest might be lessened-unless we are at the same time also determined to believe, that partial nature forms men in this island with sentiments very different from the selfish and ambitious disposition which have ever been found in other countries.

Such regulations as may essentially effect, through their consequences, the equipoise of a government, may be brought about, even though the promoters themselves of those regulations are not aware of their tendency. When the bill passed in the seventeenth century, by which it was enacted that the crown should give up its prerogative of dissolving the parliament then sitting, the generality of the people had no thought of the calamitous consequences that were to follow: very far from it. The king himself certainly felt no very great apprehension on that account, else he would not have given his assent: and the commons themselves, it appears, had very fa nt notions of the capital changes which the bill would speedily effect in their political

situation.

When the crown of Sweden was, in the first instance, stripped of all the different prerogatives we have mentioned, it does not appear that those measures were effected by sudden open provisions for that purpose: it is very probable that the way had been paved for them by indirect regulations formerly made, the whole tendency of which scarcely any one, perhaps, could foresee at the time they were framed. When the bill was in agitation for limiting the house of peers to a certain number, its great constitutional consequences were scarcely attended to by any body. The king himself certainly saw no harm in it, since he sent an open message to promote the passing of it; a measure which was not, perhaps, strictly regular. The bill was, it appears, generally approved out of doors. Its fate was for a long time doubtful in the House of Commons; nor did they acquire any favour with the bulk of the people by finally rejecting it: and judge Biackstone, as I find in his Commentaries, does not seem to have thought much of the bill, and its being rejected, as he only observes that the commons wished to keep the door of the House of Lords as open as possible. Yet no bill of greater constitutional importance was ever agitated in parliament; since the consequences of Its being passed would have been the freeing the House of Lords, both in their judicial and legislative capacities, from all constitutional check whatever, either from the crown or the nation. Nay, it is not to be doubted, that they would have acquired, in time, the right of clecting their own