OBSTACLES TO FREEDOM.

9

manifold functions of a free constitution, is to entrust valuable, delicate, and abstruse mechanism, to the rudest skill and the grossest ignorance.—[E. R. 1803.]

OBSTACLES TO FREEDOM IN FRANCE.

THE want of all the true elements of constitutional government must retard, for a very long period, the practical enjoyment of liberty in France, and present very serious obstacles to her prosperity; obstacles little dreamed of by men who seem to measure the happiness and future grandeur of France by degrees of longitude and latitude, and who believe she might acquire liberty with as much facility as she could acquire Switzerland or Naples.—[E. R. 1803.]

SUDDEN FREEDOM.

A NATION grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendour.-[E. R. 1803.]

L

VALUE OF ELECTIONS.

THE only foundation of political liberty is the spirit of the people and the only circumstance which makes a lively impression upon their senses, and powerfully reminds them of their importance, their power, and their rights, is the periodical choice of their representatives. [E. R. 1803.]

10 POPULAR ELECTIONS REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT,

POPULAR ELECTIONS.

THE uproar even, and the confusion and the clamour of a popular election in England, have their use: they give a stamp to the names, Liberty, Constitution, and People. -[E. R. 1803.]

ENGLISH MOBS.

AN English mob, which, to a foreigner, might convey the belief of an impending massacre, is often contented by the demolition of a few windows. -[E. R. 1803.]

EXTENSION OF THE FRANCHISE.

No person considers himself as so completely deprived of a share in the government, who is to enjoy it when he becomes older, as he would do, were that privilege deferred till he became richer; time comes to all, wealth to few. [E. R. 1803.]

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.

THE sea-ports, the universities, the great commercial towns, should all have their separate organs in the parliament of a great country. There should be some means of bringing in active, able, young men, who would submit to the labour of business from the stimulus of honour and wealth. Others should be there, expressly to speak the sentiments, and defend the interests, of the executive. Every popular assembly must be grossly imperfect, that is not composed of such heterogeneous materials as these. Our own parliament may perhaps contain within itself too many of that species of representatives, who could never have arrived at the dignity under a pure and perfect system of election; but, for all

DIVISION OF POWER-AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS. 11

the practical purposes of government, amidst a great majority fairly elected by the people, we should always wish to see a certain number of the legislative body representing interests very distinct from those of the people. [E. R. 1803.]

SECOND CHAMBERS.

THE institution of two assemblies constitutes a check upon the passion and precipitation by which the resolutions of any single popular assembly may occasionally be governed.-[E. R. 1803.]

DIVISION OF POWER.

THE prize of supreme power is too tempting to admit of fair play in the game of ambition; and it is wise to lessen its value by dividing it: at least it is wise to do so, under a form of government that cannot admit the better expedient of rendering the executive hereditary; an expedient (gross and absurd as it seems to be) the best calculated, perhaps, to obviate the effects of ambition upon the stability of governments, by narrowing the field on which it acts, and the object for which it contends. [E. R. 1803.]

AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS IN 1803.

AMERICA presents such an immediate, and such a seducing species of provision to all its inhabitants, that it has no idle discontented populace; its population amounts only to six millions, and it is not condensed in such masses as the population of Europe. After all, an experiment of twenty years is never to be cited in

12

SALIC LAW-LIFE PEERAGES.

politics; nothing can be built upon such a slender inference. Even if America were to remain stationary, she might find that she had presented too fascinating and irresistible an object to human ambition: of course, that peril is increased by every augmentation of a people, who are hastening on, with rapid and irresistible pace, to the highest eminences of human grandeur. Some contest for power there must be in every free state: but the contest for vicarial and deputed power, as it implies the presence of a moderator and a master, is more prudent than the struggle for that which is original and supreme. — [E. R. 1803.]

THE SALIC LAW.

A MOST sensible and valuable law, banishing gallantry and chivalry from Cabinets, and preventing the amiable antics of grave statesmen.-[E. R. 1803.]

LIFE PEERAGES.

THE partial creation of peers for life only, would appear to remedy a very material defect in the English constitution. An hereditary legislative aristocracy not only adds to the dignity of the throne, and establishes that gradation of ranks which is perhaps absolutely necessary to its security, but it transacts a considerable share of the business of the nation, as well in the framing of laws as in the discharge of its juridical functions. But men of rank and wealth, though they are interested by a splendid debate, will not submit to the drudgery of business, much less can they be supposed conversant in all the niceties of law questions. It is therefore necessary to add to their number a certain portion of novi homines, men of established character for talents, and upon whom

the previous tenor of their lives has necessarily impressed the habits of business. The evil of this is that the title descends to their posterity, without the talents and the utility that procured it; and the dignity of the peerage is impaired by the increase of its numbers: not only so, but as the peerage is the reward of military, as well as the earnest of civil services, and as the annuity commonly granted with it is only for one or two lives, we are in some danger of seeing a race of nobles wholly dependent upon the Crown for their support, and sacrificing their political freedom to their necessities. These evils are effectually, as it should seem, obviated by the creation of a certain number of peers for life only. The most useless and offensive tumour in the body politic, is the titled son of a great man whose merit has placed him in the peerage. The name, face, and perhaps the pension, remain. The dæmon is gone: or there is a slight flavour from the cask, but it is empty.[E. R. 1803.]

DR. PARR.

WHOEVER has had the good fortune to see Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the anterior parts, it scorns even episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless convexity of frizz, the μéya Javμa of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig, the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man since the beginning of the world.-E. R. 1802.]