Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business
may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless
the House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual
disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes)
be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should
be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this
would indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their
constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by
the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of
sympathy they would cease to be a house of commons. For it is not the
derivation of the power of that house from the people, which makes it in
a distinct sense their representative. The king is the representative of
the people; so are the lords, so are the judges. They all are trustees
for the people, as well as the commons; because no power is given for
the sole sake of the holder; and although government certainly is an
institution of Divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who
administer it, all originate from the people.
A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction
of a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of
government, and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a house
of commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of
the nation. It was not instituted to be a control UPON the people, as of
late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency.
It was designed as a control FOR the people. Other institutions have
been formed for the purpose of checking popular excesses; and they are,
I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If not, they ought to be
made so. The House of Commons, as it was never intended for the support
of peace and subordination, is miserably appointed for that service;
having no stronger weapon than its mace, and no better officer than its
serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of its own proper authority.
A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an
anxious care of public money; an openness, approaching towards facility,
to public complaint; these seem to be the true characteristics of a
house of commons. But an addressing house of commons, and a petitioning
nation; a house of commons full of confidence, when the nation is
plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with ministers, whom the
people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the
public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant,
when the general voice demands account; who, in all disputes between the
people and administration, presume against the people; who punish their
disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them;
this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this constitution.
Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful senate; but it is not, to
any popular purpose, a house of commons. This change from an immediate
state of procuration and delegation to a course of acting as from
original power, is the way in which all the popular magistracies in
the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is indeed their
greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For there is a
material distinction between that corruption by which particular points
are carried against reason (this is a thing which cannot be prevented
by human wisdom, and is of less consequence), and the corruption of the
principle itself. For then the evil is not accidental, but settled. The
distemper becomes the natural habit.