do, you had much better do it now in temper, in a grave, moderate, and parliamentary way: But if you think otherwise, and that you think it to be an invaluable blessing, a way fully sufficient to nourish a manly, rational, solid, and at the same time humble piety; if you find it well fitted to the frame and pattern of your civil constitution; if you find it a barrier against fanaticism, infidelity and atheism; if you find that it furnishes support to the human mind in the afflictions and distresses of the world, consolation in sickness, pain, poverty, and death; if it dignifies our nature with the hope of immortality, leaves inquiry free whilst it preserves an authority to teach where authority only can teach, communia altaria, æque ac patriam, diligite, colite, fovete. * * * * In the discussion of this subject, which took place in the year 1790, Mr. Burke declared his intention, in case the motion for repealing the test acts had been agreed to, of proposing to substitute the following test in the room of do, in the presence of God, sincerely profess what was intended to be repealed. "I, A. B. and believe, that a religious establishment in this state, is not contrary to the law of God, or disagreeable to the law of nature, or to the true principles of the Christian religion, or that it is promise and engage, before God, that I never noxious to the community; and I do sincerely will, by any conspiracy, contrivance, or political device whatever, attempt, or abet others in any attempt, to subvert the constitution of the church of England, as the same is now by law established, and that I will not employ any power or influence which I may derive from any office corporate, or any other office, which I hold, or shall hold under his majesty, his heirs and successors, to destroy and subvert the same; or, to cause members to be elected into any corporation, or into parliament, give my vote in the election of any member or members of parliament, or into any office, for, or on account of their attachment to any other, or different religious opinions or establishments, or with any hope that they may promote the same to the prejudice of the established church, but will dutifully and peaceably content myself with my private liberty of conscience, as the same is allowed by law." "So help me God." SPEECH ON THE MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, THE 7TH OF FEBRUARY, 1771, RELATIVE TO THE MIDDLESEX ELECTION.* Carry the principle on by which you expelled Mr. Wilkes, there is not a man in the house, hardly a man in the nation, who may not be disqualified. That this house should have no power of expulsion is an hard saying. That this house should have a general discretionary power of disqualification is a dangerous saying. That *This motion, which was for leave to bring in a bill to ascertain the rights of the electors in respect to the eligibility of persons to serve in parliament, was rejected by a majority of 167 against 103. the people should not choose their own representative is a saying which shakes the constitution. That this house should name the representative, is a saying which, followed by practice, subverts the constitution. They have the right of electing, you have a right of expelling; they of choosing, you of judging, and only of judging, of the choice. What bounds shall be set to the freedom of that choice? Their right is prior to ours, we all originate there. They are the mortal enemies of the house of commons, who would persuade them to think or to act, as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of the people, and unconnected with their opinions and feelings. Under a pretence of exalting the dignity, they undermine the very foundations of this house. When the question is asked here, what disturbs the people, whence all this clamour ? we apply to the treasury bench, and they tell us it is from the efforts of libellers and the wickedness of the people :—a wornout ministerial pretence. If abroad the people are deceived by popular, within we are deluded by ministerial cant. The question amounts to this, whether you mean to be a legal tribunal, or an arbitrary and despotic assembly. I see and I feel the delicacy and difficulty of the ground upon which we stand in this question. I could wish, indeed, that they who advise the crown, had not left parliament in this very ungraceful distress, in which they can neither retract with dignity, nor persist with justice. Another parliament might have satisfied the people without lowering themselves. But our situation is not in our own choice; our conduct in that situation is all that is in our own option. The substance of the question is, to put bounds to your own power by the rules and principles of law. This is, I am sensible, a difficult thing to the corrupt, grasping, and ambitious part of human nature. But the very difficulty argues and enforces the necessity of it. First, because the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. Since the revolution, at least, the power of the nation has all flowed with a full tide into the house of commons. Secondly, because the house of commons, as it is the most powerful, is the most corruptible part of the whole constitution. Our public wounds cannot be concealed; to be cured, they must be laid open. The public does think we are a corrupt body. In our legislative capacity we are in most instances esteemed a very wise body. In our judicial, we have no credit, no character at all. Our judgments stink in the nosrils of the people. They think us to be not only without virtue, but without shame. Therefore the greatness of our power, and the great and just opinion of our corruptibility and our corruption, render it necessary to fix some bound, to plant some landmark which we are never to exceed. This is what the bill proposes. First, on this head, I lay it down as a fundamental rule in the law and constitution of this country, that this house has not by itself alone a legislative authority in any case whatsoever. I know that the contrary was the doctrine of the usurping house of commons which threw down the fences and bulwarks of law, which annihilated first the lords, then the crown, then its constituents. But the first thing that was done on the restoration of the constitution, was to settle this point. Secondly, I lay it down as a rule, that the power of occasional incapacitation on discretionary grounds is a legislative power. In order to establish this principle, if it should not be sufficiently proved by being stated, tell me what are the criteria, the characteristics, by which you distinguish between a legislative and a juridical act. It will be necessary to state shortly the difference between a legislative and a juridical act. A legislative act has no reference to any rule but these two, original justice and discretionary application. Therefore it can give rights, rights where no rights existed before; and it can take away rights where they were before established. For the law which binds all others, does not and eannot bind the lawmaker; he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice, nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiours. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other, but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the application to the case. The power assumed by the house neither is nor can be judicial power exercised according to known law. The properties of law are, first, that it should be known; secondly, that it should be fixed, and not occasional. First, this power cannot be according to the first property of law; because no man does or can know it, nor do you yourselves know upon what grounds you will vote the incapacity of any man. No man in Westminister Hall, or in any court upon earth, will say that is law upon which, if a man going to his counsel should say to him, What is my tenure in law of this estate? he would answer truly, sir, I know not, the court has no rule but its own discretion; they will determine. It is not a fixed law-because you profess you vary it according to the occasion, exercise it according to your discretion; no man can call for it as a right. It is argued that the incapacity is not originally voted, but a consequence of a power of expulsion: but if you expel, not upon legal, but upon arbitrary, that is, upon discretionary grounds, and the incapacity is er vi termini, and inclusively comprehended in the expulsion, is not the incapacity voted in the expul sion? Are they not convertible terms? And if incapacity is voted to be inherent in expulsion, if expulsion be arbitrary, incapacity is arbitrary also. I have therefore shown, that the power of incapacitation is a legislative power, I have shown that legislative power does not belong to the house of commons; and therefore it follows that the house of I know not the origin of the house of commons, but am very sure that it did not create itself; the electors were prior to the elected: whose rights originated either from the ple at large, or from some other form of legislature, which never could intend for the chosen a power of superseding the choosers. peo If you have not a power of declaring an incapacity simply by the mere act of declaring it, it is evident to the most ordinary reason you cannot have a right of expulsion, inferring or rather including an incapacity. For as the law, when it gives any direct right, gives also as necessary incidents all the means of acquiring the possession of that right, so where it does not give a right directly, it refuses all the means by which such a right may by any mediums be exercised, or in effect be indirectly acquired. Else it is very obvious that the intention of the law in refusing that right might be entirely frustrated, and the whole power of the legislature baffled. If there be no certain invariable rule of eligibility, it were better to get simplicity, if certainty is not to be had, and to resolve all the franchises of the subject into this one short proposition-the will and pleasure of the house of commons. The argument drawn from the courts of law applying the principles of law to new cases as they emerge, is altogether frivolous, inapplicable, and arises from a total ignorance of the bounds between civil and criminal jurisdiction, and of the separate maxims that govern these two provinces of law that are eternally separate. Undoubtedly the courts of law, where a new case comes before them, as they do every hour, then, that there may be no defect in justice, call in similar principles, and the example of the nearest determination, and do every thing to draw the law to as near a conformity to general equity and right reason as they can bring it with its being a fixed principle. Boni judicis est ampliare justitiam that is, to make open and liberal justice. But in criminal matters this parity of reason and these analogies ever have been, and ever ought to be shunned. Whatever is incident to a court of judicature is necessary to the house of commons, as judging in elections. But a power of making incapacities is not necessary to a court of judicature-therefore a power of making incapacities is not necessary to the house of commons. Incapacity, declared by whatever authority, Se We stands upon two principles: First, an incapacity arising from the supposed incongruity of two duties in the commonwealth. condly, an incapacity arising from unfitness by infirmity of nature or the criminality of conduct. As to the first class of incapacities, they have no hardship annexed to them. The persons so incapacitated, are paid by one dignity for what they abandon in another, and for the most part the situation arises from their own choice. But as to the second, arising from an unfitness not fixed by nature, but superinduced by some positive acts, or arising from honourable motives, such as an occasional personal disability, of all things it ought to be defined by the fixed rule of law-what Lord Coke calls the golden metwand of the law, and not by the crooked cord of discretion. Whatever is general is better borne. take our common lot with men of the same description. But to be selected and marked out by a particular brand of unworthiness among our fellow-citizens, is a lot of all others the hardest to be borne; and consequently is of all others that act which ought only to be trusted to the legislature, as not only legislative in its nature, but of all parts of legislature the most odious. The question is over, if this is shewn not to be a legislative act. But what is very usual and natural, is to corrupt judicature into legislature. On this point it is proper to inquire whether a court of judicature, which decides without appeal, has it as a necessary incident of such judicature, that whatever it decides is de jure law. Nobody will, I hope, assert this, because the direct consequence would be the entire extinction of the difference between true and false judgments. For if the judgment makes the law, and not the law directs the judgment, it is impossible there should be such a thing as an illegal judgment given. But instead of standing upon this ground, they introduce another question, wholly foreign to it, whether it ought not to be submitted to as if it were law. And then the question isBy the constitution of this country, what degree of submission is due to the authoritative acts of a limited power? This question of submission, determine it how you please, has nothing to do in this discussion and in this house. Here it is not how long the people are bound to tolerate the illegality of our judgments, but whether we have a right to substitute our occasional opinion in the place of law; so as to deprive the citizen of his franchise. * * * SPEECH ON A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIA MENTS.* It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into the foundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to resort to the theory of your government, whenever you propose any alteration in the frame of it, whether that alteration means the revival of some former antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or the introduction of some new improvement in the commonwealth. The object of our deliberation is, to promote the good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited to your disease-your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sort of approach to perfection. There is not, there never was, a principle of government under heaven that does not in the very pursuit of the good it proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into some inconvenience, which makes it absolutely necessary to counterwork and weaken the application of that first principle itself; and to abandon something of the extent of the advantage you proposed by it, in order to prevent also the inconveniences which have arisen from the instrument of all the good you had in view. To govern according to the sense, and agreeably to the interests of the people, is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election; and popular election is a mighty evil. It is such, and so great an evil, that though there are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, very few are now elected. They are the distempers of elections that have destroyed all free states. This speech was delivered upon one of those motions which for many successive years were made by Mr. Sawbridge for shortening the duration of Parliaments; but the precise date cannot be ascertained. To cure these distempers is difficult, if not impossible; the only thing therefore left to save the commonwealth, is to prevent their return too frequently. The objects in view are, to have parliaments as frequent as they can be, without distracting them in the prosecution of public business; on one hand, to secure their dependence upon the people; on the other, to give them that quiet in their minds, and that ease in their fortunes, as to enable them to perform the most arduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency, with independency, and with experience, as real public counsellors, not as the canvassers at a perpetual election. It is wise to compass as many good ends as possibly you can, and seeing there are inconveniences on both sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit to soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable, because the disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the constitution to its latest possible hour, and may it be a very late one! This bill, I fear, would precipitate one of two consequences, I know not which most likely, or which most dangerous; either that the crown, by its constant stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear out all opposition in elections, or that a violent and furious popular spirit would arise. I must see, to satisfy me, the remedies; I must see, from their operation in the cure of the old evil, and in the cure of those new evils which are inseparable from all remedies, how they balance each other, and what is the total result. The excellence of mathematics and metaphysics, is to have but one thing before you; but he forms the best judgment in all moral disquisitions, who has the greatest number and variety of considerations in one view before him, and can take them in with the best possible consideration of the middle results of all. We of the opposition, who are not friends to the bill, give this pledge at least of our integrity and sincerity to the people, that in our situa tion of systematic opposition to the present ministers, in which all our hope of rendering it effectual depends upon popular interest and favour, we will not flatter them by a surrender of our uninfluenced judgment and opinion; we give a security, that if ever we should be in another situation, no flattery to any other sort of power and influence would induce us to act against the true interests of the people. All are agreed that parliament should not be perpetual; the only question is, What is the most convenient time for their duration? On which there are three opinions. We are agreed too, that the term ought not to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, and to augment the already overgrown influence of the crown. On these principles I mean to debate the question. It is easy to pretend a zeal for liberty. Those who think themselves not likely to be incumbered with the performance of their promises, either from their known inability or total indifference about the performance, never fail to entertain the most lofty ideas. They are certainly the most specious, and they cost them neither reflection to frame, nor pains to modify, nor management to support. The task is of another nature to those who mean to promise nothing that it is not in their intention or may possibly be in their power to perform; to those who are bound and principled no more to delude the understandings than to violate the liberty of their fellow-subjects. Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of the people. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought, is to give them information, and not to receive it from them; we are not to go to school to them to learn the principles of law and government. In doing so, we should not dutifully serve, but we should basely and scandalously betray the people, who are not capable of this service by nature, nor in any instance called to it by the constitution. I reverentially look up to the opinion of the people, and with an awe that is almost superstitious. I should be ashamed to show my face before them, if I changed my ground, as they cried up or cried down men, or things, or opinions; if I wavered and shifted about with every change, and joined in it, or opposed, as best answered any low interest or passion; if I held them up hopes, which I knew I never intended, or promised what I well knew I could not perform. Of all these things they are perfect sovereign judges without appeal; but as to the detail of particular measures, or to any general schemes of policy, they have neither enough of speculation in the closet, nor of experience in business to decide upon it. They * * * * * * can well see whether we are tools of a court or their honest servants. Of that they can well judge, and I wish that they always exercised their judgment; but of the particular merits of a measure I have other standards. * That the frequency of elections proposed by this bill has a tendency to increase the power and consideration of the electors, not lessen corruptibility, I do most readily allow; so far it is desirable; this is what it has, I will tell you now what it has not. 1st. It has no sort of tendency to increase their integrity and public spirit, unless an increase of power has an operation upon voters in elections that it has in no other situation in the world, and upon no other part of mankind. 2d. This bill has no tendency to limit the quantity of influence in the crown, to render its operation more difficult, or to counteract that operation which it cannot prevent in any way whatsoever. It has its full weight, its full range, and its uncontrouled operation on the electors exactly as it had before. 3d. Nor, thirdly, does it abate the interest or inclination of ministers to apply that influence to the electors: on the contrary, it renders it much more necessary to them, if they seek to have a majority in parliament, to increase the means of that influence, and redouble their diligence, and to sharpen dexterity in the application. The whole effect of the bill is therefore the removing the application of some part of the influence from the elected to the electors, and further to strengthen and extend a court interest already great and powerful in boroughs; here to fix their magazines and places of arms, and thus to make them the principal, not the secondary theatre of their manoeuvres for securing a determined majority in parliament. I believe nobody will deny that the electors are corruptible. They are men; it is saying nothing worse of them; many of them are but ill informed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easily over-reached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruption are the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible and hypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there is already no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blind fury and interested faction among the electors in many parts of this kingdom: nor is it surprising or at all blameable in that class of private men, when they see their neighbours aggran dized and themselves poor and virtuous without that eclat or dignity which attends men in higher situations. |