In treating of representative government, it is above all necessary to
keep in view the distinction between its idea or essence, and the
particular forms in which the idea has been clothed by accidental
historical developments, or by the notions current at some particular
period.
The meaning of representative government is, that the whole people, or
some numerous portion of them, exercise through deputies periodically
elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power, which, in every
constitution, must reside somewhere. This ultimate power they must
possess in all its completeness. They must be masters, whenever they
please, of all the operations of government. There is no need that the
constitutional law should itself give them this mastery. It does not
in the British Constitution. But what it does give practically amounts
to this: the power of final control is as essentially single, in a
mixed and balanced government, as in a pure monarchy or democracy.
This is the portion of truth in the opinion of the ancients, revived
by great authorities in our own time, that a balanced constitution is
impossible. There is almost always a balance, but the scales never
hang exactly even. Which of them preponderates is not always apparent
on the face of the political institutions. In the British
Constitution, each of the three co-ordinate members of the sovereignty
is invested with powers which, if fully exercised, would enable it to
stop all the machinery of government. Nominally, therefore, each is
invested with equal power of thwarting and obstructing the others; and
if, by exerting that power, any of the three could hope to better its
position, the ordinary course of human affairs forbids us to doubt
that the power would be exercised. There can be no question that the
full powers of each would be employed defensively if it found itself
assailed by one or both of the others. What, then, prevents the same
powers from being exerted aggressively? The unwritten maxims of the
Constitution--in other words, the positive political morality of the
country; and this positive political morality is what we must look to
if we would know in whom the really supreme power in the Constitution
resides.
By constitutional law, the crown can refuse its assent to any act of
Parliament, and can appoint to office and maintain in it any minister,
in opposition to the remonstrances of Parliament. But the
constitutional morality of the country nullifies these powers,
preventing them from being ever used; and, by requiring that the head
of the administration should always be virtually appointed by the
House of Commons, makes that body the real sovereign of the state.
These unwritten rules, which limit the use of lawful powers, are,
however, only effectual, and maintain themselves in existence on
condition of harmonising with the actual distribution of real
political strength. There is in every constitution a strongest
power--one which would gain the victory if the compromises by which
the Constitution habitually works were suspended, and there came a
trial of strength. Constitutional maxims are adhered to, and are
practically operative, so long as they give the predominance in the
Constitution to that one of the powers which has the preponderance of
active power out of doors. This, in England, is the popular power. If,
therefore, the legal provisions of the British Constitution, together
with the unwritten maxims by which the conduct of the different
political authorities is in fact regulated, did not give to the
popular element in the Constitution that substantial supremacy over
every department of the government which corresponds to its real power
in the country, the Constitution would not possess the stability which
characterizes it; either the laws or the unwritten maxims would soon
have to be changed. The British government is thus a representative
government in the correct sense of the term; and the powers which it
leaves in hands not directly accountable to the people can only be
considered as precautions which the ruling power is willing should be
taken against its own errors. Such precautions have existed in all
well-constructed democracies. The Athenian Constitution had many such
provisions, and so has that of the United States.
But while it is essential to representative government that the
practical supremacy in the state should reside in the representatives
of the people, it is an open question what actual functions, what
precise part in the machinery of government, shall be directly and
personally discharged by the representative body. Great varieties in
this respect are compatible with the essence of representative
government, provided the functions are such as secure to the
representative body the control of every thing in the last resort.
There is a radical distinction between controlling the business of
government and actually doing it. The same person or body may be able
to control every thing, but can not possibly do every thing; and in
many cases its control over every thing will be more perfect the less
it personally attempts to do. The commander of an army could not
direct its movements effectually if he himself fought in the ranks or
led an assault. It is the same with bodies of men. Some things can not
be done except by bodies; other things can not be well done by them.
It is one question, therefore, what a popular assembly should control,
another what it should itself do. It should, as we have already seen,
control all the operations of government. But, in order to determine
through what channel this general control may most expediently be
exercised, and what portion of the business of government the
representative assembly should hold in its own hands, it is necessary
to consider what kinds of business a numerous body is competent to
perform properly. That alone which it can do well it ought to take
personally upon itself. With regard to the rest, its proper province
is not to do it, but to take means for having it well done by others.
For example, the duty which is considered as belonging more peculiarly
than any other to an assembly representative of the people is that of
voting the taxes. Nevertheless, in no country does the representative
body undertake, by itself or its delegated officers, to prepare the
estimates. Though the supplies can only be voted by the House of
Commons, and though the sanction of the House is also required for the
appropriation of the revenues to the different items of the public
expenditure, it is the maxim and the uniform practice of the
Constitution that money can be granted only on the proposition of the
crown. It has, no doubt, been felt that moderation as to the amount,
and care and judgment in the detail of its application, can only be
expected when the executive government, through whose hands it is to
pass, is made responsible for the plans and calculations on which the
disbursements are grounded. Parliament, accordingly, is not expected,
nor even permitted, to originate directly either taxation or
expenditure. All it is asked for is its consent, and the sole power it
possesses is that of refusal.
The principles which are involved and recognized in this
constitutional doctrine, if followed as far as they will go, are a
guide to the limitation and definition of the general functions of
representative assemblies. In the first place, it is admitted in all
countries in which the representative system is practically
understood, that numerous representative bodies ought not to
administer. The maxim is grounded not only on the most essential
principles of good government, but on those of the successful conduct
of business of any description. No body of men, unless organized and
under command, is fit for action, in the proper sense. Even a select
board, composed of few members, and these specially conversant with
the business to be done, is always an inferior instrument to some one
individual who could be found among them, and would be improved in
character if that one person were made the chief, and all the others
reduced to subordinates. What can be done better by a body than by any
individual is deliberation. When it is necessary or important to
secure hearing and consideration to many conflicting opinions, a
deliberative body is indispensable. Those bodies, therefore, are
frequently useful, even for administrative business, but in general
only as advisers; such business being, as a rule, better conducted
under the responsibility of one. Even a joint-stock company has always
in practice, if not in theory, a managing director; its good or bad
management depends essentially on some one person's qualifications,
and the remaining directors, when of any use, are so by their
suggestions to him, or by the power they possess of watching him, and
restraining or removing him in case of misconduct. That they are
ostensibly equal shares with him in the management is no advantage,
but a considerable set-off against any good which they are capable of
doing: it weakens greatly the sense in his own mind, and in those of
other people, of that individual responsibility in which he should
stand forth personally and undividedly.
But a popular assembly is still less fitted to administer, or to
dictate in detail to those who have the charge of administration. Even
when honestly meant, the interference is almost always injurious.
Every branch of public administration is a skilled business, which has
its own peculiar principles and traditional rules, many of them not
even known in any effectual way, except to those who have at some time
had a hand in carrying on the business, and none of them likely to be
duly appreciated by persons not practically acquainted with the
department. I do not mean that the transaction of public business has
esoteric mysteries, only to be understood by the initiated. Its
principles are all intelligible to any person of good sense, who has
in his mind a true picture of the circumstances and conditions to be
dealt with; but to have this he must know those circumstances and
conditions; and the knowledge does not come by intuition. There are
many rules of the greatest importance in every branch of public
business (as there are in every private occupation), of which a person
fresh to the subject neither knows the reason or even suspects the
existence, because they are intended to meet dangers or provide
against inconveniences which never entered into his thoughts. I have
known public men, ministers of more than ordinary natural capacity,
who, on their first introduction to a department of business new to
them, have excited the mirth of their inferiors by the air with which
they announced as a truth hitherto set at nought, and brought to light
by themselves, something which was probably the first thought of every
body who ever looked at the subject, given up as soon as he had got on
to a second. It is true that a great statesman is he who knows when to
depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them; but it is a
great mistake to suppose that he will do this better for being
ignorant of the traditions. No one who does not thoroughly know the
modes of action which common experience has sanctioned is capable of
judging of the circumstances which require a departure from those
ordinary modes of action. The interests dependent on the acts done by
a public department, the consequences liable to follow from any
particular mode of conducting it, require for weighing and estimating
them a kind of knowledge, and of specially exercised judgment, almost
as rarely found in those not bred to it, as the capacity to reform the
law in those who have not professionally studied it. All these
difficulties are sure to be ignored by a representative assembly which
attempts to decide on special acts of administration. At its best, it
is inexperience sitting in judgment on experience, ignorance on
knowledge; ignorance which, never suspecting the existence of what it
does not know, is equally careless and supercilious, making light of,
if not resenting, all pretensions to have a judgment better worth
attending to than its own. Thus it is when no interested motives
intervene; but when they do, the result is jobbery more unblushing and
audacious than the worst corruption which can well take place in a
public office under a government of publicity. It is not necessary
that the interested bias should extend to the majority of the
assembly. In any particular case it is of ten enough that it affects
two or three of their number. Those two or three will have a greater
interest in misleading the body than any other of its members are
likely to have in putting it right. The bulk of the assembly may keep
their hands clean, but they can not keep their minds vigilant or their
judgments discerning in matters they know nothing about; and an
indolent majority, like an indolent individual, belongs to the person
who takes most pains with it. The bad measures or bad appointments of
a minister may be checked by Parliament; and the interest of ministers
in defending, and of rival partisans in attacking, secures a tolerably
equal discussion; but _quis custodiet custodes?_ who shall check the
Parliament? A minister, a head of an office, feels himself under some
responsibility. An assembly in such cases feels under no
responsibility at all; for when did any member of Parliament lose his
seat for the vote he gave on any detail of administration? To a
minister, or the head of an office, it is of more importance what will
be thought of his proceedings some time hence, than what is thought of
them at the instant; but an assembly, if the cry of the moment goes
with it, however hastily raised or artificially stirred up, thinks
itself and is thought by every body, to be completely exculpated,
however disastrous may be the consequences. Besides, an assembly never
personally experiences the inconveniences of its bad measures until
they have reached the dimensions of national evils. Ministers and
administrators see them approaching, and have to bear all the
annoyance and trouble of attempting to ward them off.
The proper duty of a representative assembly in regard to matters of
administration is not to decide them by its own vote, but to take care
that the persons who have to decide them shall be the proper persons.
Even this they can not advantageously do by nominating the
individuals. There is no act which more imperatively requires to be
performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the
nomination to employments. The experience of every person conversant
with public affairs bears out the assertion that there is scarcely any
act respecting which the conscience of an average man is less
sensitive; scarcely any case in which less consideration is paid to
qualifications, partly because men do not know, and partly because
they do not care for, the difference in qualifications between one
person and another. When a minister makes what is meant to be an
honest appointment, that is, when he does not actually job it for his
personal connections or his party, an ignorant person might suppose
that he would try to give it to the person best qualified. No such
thing. An ordinary minister thinks himself a miracle of virtue if he
gives it to a person of merit, or who has a claim on the public on any
account, though the claim or the merit may be of the most opposite
description to that required. _Il fallait un calculateur, ce fut un
danseur qui l'obtint_, is hardly more of a caricature than in the days
of Figaro; and the minister doubtless thinks himself not only
blameless, but meritorious, if the man dances well. Besides, the
qualifications which fit special individuals for special duties can
only be recognized by those who know the individuals, or who make it
their business to examine and judge of persons from what they have
done, or from the evidence of those who are in a position to judge.
When these conscientious obligations are so little regarded by great
public officers who can be made responsible for their appointments,
how must it be with assemblies who can not? Even now, the worst
appointments are those which are made for the sake of gaining support
or disarming opposition in the representative body; what might we
expect if they were made by the body itself? Numerous bodies never
regard special qualifications at all. Unless a man is fit for the
gallows, he is thought to be about as fit as other people for almost
any thing for which he can offer himself as a candidate. When
appointments made by a public body are not decided, as they almost
always are, by party connection or private jobbing, a man is appointed
either because he has a reputation, often quite undeserved, for
_general_ ability, or oftener for no better reason than that he is
personally popular.
It has never been thought desirable that Parliament should itself
nominate even the members of a cabinet. It is enough that it virtually
decides who shall be prime minister, or who shall be the two or three
individuals from whom the prime minister shall be chosen. In doing
this, it merely recognizes the fact that a certain person is the
candidate of the party whose general policy commands its support. In
reality, the only thing which Parliament decides is, which of two, or
at most three, parties or bodies of men shall furnish the executive
government: the opinion of the party itself decides which of its
members is fittest to be placed at the head. According to the existing
practice of the British Constitution, these things seem to be on as
good a footing as they can be. Parliament does not nominate any
minister, but the crown appoints the head of the administration in
conformity to the general wishes and inclinations manifested by
Parliament, and the other ministers on the recommendation of the
chief; while every minister has the undivided moral responsibility of
appointing fit persons to the other offices of administration which
are not permanent. In a republic, some other arrangement would be
necessary; but the nearer it approached in practice to that which has
long existed in England, the more likely it would be to work well.
Either, as in the American republic, the head of the executive must be
elected by some agency entirely independent of the representative
body; or the body must content itself with naming the prime minister,
and making him responsible for the choice of his associates and
subordinates. In all these considerations, at least theoretically, I
fully anticipate a general assent; though, practically, the tendency
is strong in representative bodies to interfere more and more in the
details of administration, by virtue of the general law, that whoever
has the strongest power is more and more tempted to make an excessive
use of it; and this is one of the practical dangers to which the
futurity of representative governments will be exposed.
But it is equally true, though only of late and slowly beginning to be
acknowledged, that a numerous assembly is as little fitted for the
direct business of legislation as for that of administration. There is
hardly any kind of intellectual work which so much needs to be done
not only by experienced and exercised minds, but by minds trained to
the task through long and laborious study, as the business of making
laws. This is a sufficient reason, were there no other, why they can
never be well made but by a committee of very few persons. A reason no
less conclusive is, that every provision of a law requires to be
framed with the most accurate and long-sighted perception of its
effect on all the other provisions; and the law when made should be
capable of fitting into a consistent whole with the previously
existing laws. It is impossible that these conditions should be in any
degree fulfilled when laws are voted clause by clause in a
miscellaneous assembly. The incongruity of such a mode of legislating
would strike all minds, were it not that our laws are already, as to
form and construction, such a chaos, that the confusion and
contradiction seem incapable of being made greater by any addition to
the mass. Yet even now, the utter unfitness of our legislative
machinery for its purpose is making itself practically felt every year
more and more. The mere time necessarily occupied in getting through
bills, renders Parliament more and more incapable of passing any,
except on detached and narrow points. If a bill is prepared which even
attempts to deal with the whole of any subject (and it is impossible
to legislate properly on any part without having the whole present to
the mind), it hangs over from session to session through sheer
impossibility of finding time to dispose of it. It matters not though
the bill may have been deliberately drawn up by the authority deemed
the best qualified, with all appliances and means to boot; or by a
select commission, chosen for their conversancy with the subject, and
having employed years in considering and digesting the particular
measure: it can not be passed, because the House of Commons will not
forego the precious privilege of tinkering it with their clumsy hands.
The custom has of late been to some extent introduced, when the
principle of a bill has been affirmed on the second reading, of
referring it for consideration in detail to a select committee; but it
has not been found that this practice causes much less time to be lost
afterwards in carrying it through the committee of the whole House:
the opinions or private crotchets which have been overruled by
knowledge always insist on giving themselves a second chance before
the tribunal of ignorance. Indeed, the practice itself has been
adopted principally by the House of Lords, the members of which are
less busy and fond of meddling, and less jealous of the importance of
their individual voices, than those of the elective House. And when a
bill of many clauses does succeed in getting itself discussed in
detail, what can depict the state in which it comes out of committee!
Clauses omitted which are essential to the working of the rest;
incongruous ones inserted to conciliate some private interest, or some
crotchety member who threatens to delay the bill; articles foisted in
on the motion of some sciolist with a mere smattering of the subject,
leading to consequences which the member who introduced or those who
supported the bill did not at the moment foresee, and which need an
amending act in the next session to correct their mischiefs. It is one
of the evils of the present mode of managing these things, that the
explaining and defending of a bill, and of its various provisions, is
scarcely ever performed by the person from whose mind they emanated,
who probably has not a seat in the House. Their defense rests upon
some minister or member of Parliament who did not frame them, who is
dependent on cramming for all his arguments but those which are
perfectly obvious, who does not know the full strength of his case,
nor the best reasons by which to support it, and is wholly incapable
of meeting unforeseen objections. This evil, as far as government
bills are concerned, admits of remedy, and has been remedied in some
representative constitutions, by allowing the government to be
represented in either House by persons in its confidence, having a
right to speak, though not to vote.
If that, as yet considerable, majority of the House of Commons who
never desire to move an amendment or make a speech would no longer
leave the whole regulation of business to those who do; if they would
bethink themselves that better qualifications for legislation exist,
and may be found if sought for, than a fluent tongue, and the faculty
of getting elected by a constituency, it would soon be recognized
that, in legislation as well as administration, the only task to which
a representative assembly can possibly be competent is not that of
doing the work, but of causing it to be done; of determining to whom
or to what sort of people it shall be confided, and giving or
withholding the national sanction to it when performed. Any government
fit for a high state of civilization would have as one of its
fundamental elements a small body, not exceeding in number the members
of a cabinet, who should act as a Commission of Legislation, having
for its appointed office to make the laws. If the laws of this country
were, as surely they will soon be, revised and put into a connected
form, the Commission of Codification by which this is effected should
remain as a permanent institution, to watch over the work, protect it
from deterioration, and make further improvements as often as
required. No one would wish that this body should of itself have any
power of _enacting_ laws; the Commission would only embody the element
of intelligence in their construction; Parliament would represent that
of will. No measure would become a law until expressly sanctioned by
Parliament; and Parliament, or either house, would have the power not
only of rejecting but of sending back a bill to the commission for
reconsideration or improvement. Either house might also exercise its
initiative by referring any subject to the commission, with directions
to prepare a law. The commission, of course, would have no power of
refusing its instrumentality to any legislation which the country
desired. Instructions, concurred in by both houses, to draw up a bill
which should effect a particular purpose, would be imperative on the
commissioners, unless they preferred to resign their office. Once
framed, however, Parliament should have no power to alter the measure,
but solely to pass or reject it; or, if partially disapproved of,
remit it to the commission for reconsideration. The commissioners
should be appointed by the crown, but should hold their offices for a
time certain, say five years, unless removed on an address from the
two Houses of Parliament, grounded either on personal misconduct (as
in the case of judges), or on refusal to draw up a bill in obedience
to the demands of Parliament. At the expiration of the five years a
member should cease to hold office unless reappointed, in order to
provide a convenient mode of getting rid of those who had not been
found equal to their duties, and of infusing new and younger blood
into the body.
The necessity of some provision corresponding to this was felt even in
the Athenian Democracy, where, in the time of its most complete
ascendancy, the popular Ecclesia could pass psephisms (mostly decrees
on single matters of policy), but laws, so called, could only be made
or altered by a different and less numerous body, renewed annually,
called the Nomothetæ, whose duty it also was to revise the whole of
the laws, and keep them consistent with one another. In the English
Constitution there is great difficulty in introducing any arrangement
which is new both in form and in substance, but comparatively little
repugnance is felt to the attainment of new purposes by an adaptation
of existing forms and traditions. It appears to me that the means
might be devised of enriching the Constitution with this great
improvement through the machinery of the House of Lords. A commission
for preparing bills would in itself be no more an innovation on the
Constitution than the Board for the administration of the Poor Laws,
or the Inclosure Commission. If, in consideration of the great
importance and dignity of the trust, it were made a rule that every
person appointed a member of the Legislative Commission, unless
removed from office on an address from Parliament, should be a peer
for life, it is probable that the same good sense and taste which
leave the judicial functions of the peerage practically to the
exclusive care of the law lords would leave the business of
legislation, except on questions involving political principles and
interests, to the professional legislators; that bills originating in
the Upper House would always be drawn up by them; that the government
would devolve on them the framing of all its bills; and that private
members of the House of Commons would gradually find it convenient,
and likely to facilitate the passing of their measures through the two
houses, if, instead of bringing in a bill and submitting it directly
to the house, they obtained leave to introduce it and have it referred
to the Legislative Commission; for it would, of course, be open to the
House to refer for the consideration of that body not a subject
merely, but any specific proposal, or a Draft of a Bill _in extenso_,
when any member thought himself capable of preparing one such as ought
to pass; and the House would doubtless refer every such draft to the
commission, if only as materials, and for the benefit of the
suggestions it might contain, as they would, in like manner, refer
every amendment or objection which might be proposed in writing by any
member of the House after a measure had left the commissioners' hands.
The alteration of bills by a committee of the whole House would cease,
not by formal abolition, but by desuetude; the right not being
abandoned, but laid up in the same armoury with the royal veto, the
right of withholding the supplies, and other ancient instruments of
political warfare, which no one desires to see used, but no one likes
to part with, lest they should any time be found to be still needed in
an extraordinary emergency. By such arrangements as these, legislation
would assume its proper place as a work of skilled labor and special
study and experience; while the most important liberty of the nation,
that of being governed only by laws assented to by its elected
representatives, would be fully preserved, and made more valuable by
being detached from the serious, but by no means unavoidable drawbacks
which now accompany it in the form of ignorant and ill-considered
legislation.
Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit,
the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control
the government; to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel
a full exposition and justification of all of them which any one
considers questionable; to cinsure them if found condemnable, and, if
the men who compose the government abuse their trust, or fulfill it in
a manner which conflicts with the deliberate sense of the nation, to
expel them from office, and either expressly or virtually appoint
their successors. This is surely ample power, and security enough for
the liberty of the nation. In addition to this, the Parliament has an
office not inferior even to this in importance; to be at once the
nation's Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinions; an
arena in which not only the general opinion of the nation, but that of
every section of it, and, as far as possible, of every eminent
individual whom it contains, can produce itself in full light and
challenge discussion; where every person in the country may count upon
finding somebody who speaks his mind as well or better than he could
speak it himself--not to friends and partisans exclusively, but in the
face of opponents, to be tested by adverse controversy; where those
whose opinion is overruled, feel satisfied that it is heard, and set
aside not by a mere act of will, but for what are thought superior
reasons, and commend themselves as such to the representatives of the
majority of the nation; where every party or opinion in the country
can muster its strength, and be cured of any illusion concerning the
number or power of its adherents; where the opinion which prevails in
the nation makes itself manifest as prevailing, and marshals its hosts
in the presence of the government, which is thus enabled and compelled
to give way to it on the mere manifestation, without the actual
employment of its strength; where statesmen can assure themselves, far
more certainly than by any other signs, what elements of opinion and
power are growing and what declining, and are enabled to shape their
measures with some regard not solely to present exigencies, but to
tendencies in progress. Representative assemblies are often taunted by
their enemies with being places of mere talk and _bavardage_. There
has seldom been more misplaced derision. I know not how a
representative assembly can more usefully employ itself than in talk,
when the subject of talk is the great public interests of the country,
and every sentence of it represents the opinion either of some
important body of persons in the nation, or of an individual in whom
some such body have reposed their confidence. A place where every
interest and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause even
passionately pleaded, in the face of the government and of all other
interests and opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply,
or state clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no
other purpose, one of the most important political institutions that
can exist any where, and one of the foremost benefits of free
government. Such "talking" would never be looked upon with
disparagement if it were not allowed to stop "doing"; which it never
would, if assemblies knew and acknowledged that talking and discussion
are their proper business, while _doing_, as the result of discussion,
is the task not of a miscellaneous body, but of individuals specially
trained to it; that the fit office of an assembly is to see that those
individuals are honestly and intelligently chosen, and to interfere no
further with them, except by unlimited latitude of suggestion and
criticism, and by applying or withholding the final seal of national
assent. It is for want of this judicious reserve that popular
assemblies attempt to do what they can not do well--to govern and
legislate--and provide no machinery but their own for much of it, when
of course every hour spent in talk is an hour withdrawn from actual
business. But the very fact which most unfits such bodies for a
council of legislation, qualifies them the more for their other
office--namely, that they are not a selection of the greatest
political minds in the country, from whose opinions little could with
certainty be inferred concerning those of the nation, but are, when
properly constituted, a fair sample of every grade of intellect among
the people which is at all entitled to a voice in public affairs.
Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for popular demands,
and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions relating to public
matters, both great and small; and, along with this, to check by
criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those high
public officers who really conduct the public business, or who appoint
those by whom it is conducted. Nothing but the restriction of the
function of representative bodies within these rational limits will
enable the benefits of popular control to be enjoyed in conjunction
with the no less important requisites (growing ever more important as
human affairs increase in scale and in complexity) of skilled
legislation and administration. There are no means of combining these
benefits except by separating the functions which guaranty the one
from those which essentially require the other; by disjoining the
office of control and criticism from the actual conduct of affairs,
and devolving the former on the representatives of the Many, while
securing for the latter, under strict responsibility to the nation,
the acquired knowledge and practiced intelligence of a specially
trained and experienced Few.
The preceding discussion of the functions which ought to devolve on
the sovereign representative assembly of the nation would require to
be followed by an inquiry into those properly vested in the minor
representative bodies, which ought to exist for purposes that regard
only localities. And such an inquiry forms an essential part of the
present treatise; but many reasons require its postponement, until we
have considered the most proper composition of the great
representative body, destined to control as sovereign the enactment of
laws and the administration of the general affairs of the nation.