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feature of the reign of George I., Mr. Hallam seems inclined to temporize. The denial of the power of Parliament to prolong their own existence, is said to be an extravagant assertion" confidently bolted out by the ignorant." Yet he admits, that if its continuance could thus be extended, from three to seven years, the natural course of those in power, or some momentary circumstances like those which then existed, might lead to fresh prolongations, and gradually to an entire repeal of what had been thought so important a safeguard of its purity. In both these views he is right. The British Parliament unquestionably has an absolute command over all that is called their Constitution. Every member of the House of Commons, is chosen with a full grant of power from his constituents, to do every act within the sphere of parliamentary cognizance, and every political regulation is within that sphere. He may even concur in disfranchising his own constituents, and disabling them from afterwards sending up himself, or another in his place. It is the established theme of English lawyers, and the mistaken pride of the English nation, that Parliament is omnipotent; the people, the commons, periodically assemble to choose those who, in concurrence with the monarch and the peers, may tear their Constitution in pieces. This single and favourite word, omnipotence, admits of no qualification; nothing is too general for its comprehension; nothing is too great for its power. It can alter, modify, or destroy the course of succession to the throne, or it can enable the monarch himself to do so; it can render the judicial authority either dependent or independent of the former; of which predicaments the Lord Chancellor and the judges of the Courts of Admiralty, still continue instances; it can grant a permanent indefeasible revenue to the crown; it can substitute proclamations for laws; it can deprive a man of his estate and life by a bill of attainder; in short, without continuing the enumeration, it may destroy what is fondly considered the Constitution by piecemeal, and leave its scattered fragments the mere subjects of historical inquiry. Possessing such transcendent power, how can it be denied, that the Act of 1 Geo. I., by which it was declared that "this present Parliament, and all Parliaments that shall at any time hereafter be called, shall and may respectively have continuance for seven years,' was perfectly legal, and of course perfectly constitutional? No question, in our recollection, has ever been raised in judicial tribunals, on the validity of the Acts they passed during the residue of the session. That it might still further protract its own existence, is an obvious corollary from the preceding position; and our author refers to Coxe's Life of Walpole, to show that this measure was in contemplation by Sir Robert, in 1721; but it seems to have been relinquished, merely from a doubt of its expediency at the moment. If occasional

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eircumstances should have a different influence on the minister of the day, the commons, instead of being tenants for years, might at once be made tenants for life, with power, like borough corporations, to renew their own members. The experiment might not indeed be without danger to the Crown; feeling themselves thus independent, they would be less manageable by the premier, and the terrible example exhibited in the reign of Charles I. might be renewed. But if another suppletory course were pursued, and the vacancies were filled up by the nomination of the crown, an adequate portion of ductility and subordination would be secured. That these are merely speculative views must be admitted, but that such proceedings are impossible, ought not to be asserted. The great leading principle, the unlimited power of Parliament, is an authority in favour of the possibility of much more than we have advanced. At what time was this principle first recognised? This inquiry will lead us into a view of the source from which the Constitution itself has proceeded; and if in recurring to an early period of their history, we find that the English owe all their freedom to the donations of their monarchs, we shall find the absolute power of Parliament, to be but a modification of the power by which they were governed, before Parliaments were called into existence. Military conquest, when full and entire, vests absolute power in the conqueror.

We have before observed, that William of Normandy was that full and complete conqueror. He was absolute master of all the property of the kingdom. He imposed taxes at his own pleasure. The income from those domains which he had wrested from the conquered and humiliated English, and retained in his own hands, was so ample, that the danegelt seems to have been revived by him, rather as a mark of subjection, than as a necessary portion of revenue. If his successors had possessed equal vigour and good fortune, we should not have heard of Parliaments. The omnipotence of the Crown would ever have prevented the theory of the omnipotence of Parliament. We all know that this despotism was resisted, not by the people, but by the Barons. Between the monarch and the powerful and factious nobility, the people were crushed and despised. Nearly an hundred years elapsed, from the time of the conquest, before they were summoned to attend those great councils, which, in moments of exigency, the King had been in the habit of convening. Down to the 49th year of Henry III., the absolute power of government resided either in the King alone, or in the King concurrently with the higher Ecclesiastics and the Barons. Whatever they did, they could undo; and it may easily be conceived, that their own relative interests formed the chief objects of their legislation. The admission of the third order divided, but did not impair, this absolute power. There existed no antecedent positive restrictions upon legislation, whe

ther it was the act of one, or of two, or three bodies. Whatever we may be told of the excellent institutions which prevailed before the Battle of Hastings; whatever promise may have been made by the Norman to be governed by them, we know that they were utterly extinguished by the conquest.

The Witenagemot, which scarcely could be deemed a legislative body, was never convened after the cessation of the Saxon dynasties. Whatever may have anciently been the case, the benefit of a written constitution has, since the conquest, been unknown to them. Hence the Constitution of England has ever been the "Cynthia of the minute ;" and it is absurd to suppose, that there is any thing fixed and unalterable in it. Notwithstanding the laws which require a Parliament to be called every three or every seven years, if from great economy of disbursement, or from extraneous sources of supply, the reigning monarch should be enabled to carry on the executive government without the assistance of Parliament, there are no means provided to compel him to convene one. The provisions of the Act of 16 Charles I. were excellent. They would have secured to the people the benefits of frequent convention, and thus have rendered them integral substantial parts of the government. In the rejection of this Bill by the Lords, we may discover a faint, lingering trace of the baronial austerity. We are carried back to Runnymede. The massy castle, the armed bands, the bearded visages, have disappeared; but in the midst of modern elegance and apparent equality, we find the spirit of the Warrennes, the De Burghs, and the Salisburys. The people are still kept under. But independent of the absence of all means of compelling the Crown to convene a Parliament at stated periods, and admitting that a nominal compliance with this supposed duty should be deemed politic and decorous, there is still a formidable and destructive power derived from the earliest times, which never has been doubted or denied, and which holds up the Royal prerogative, in' a great and dangerous elevation. We mean the unquestioned right to prorogue, or dissolve the Parliament at pleasure. The people, when the King thinks proper, assemble, elect their representatives, and return immediately into their own inefficient capacities. They are absolutely nothing, till the next election. The depositaries of all the popular share of the government, assemble at the time and place required by their sovereign. Here they have to wait till he meets them, either personally, or by commission. They can do nothing, till this has taken place. When his communications are made, they retire and deliberate,-they may propose laws, or remonstrate against the measures of royalty; but if their proceedings excite alarm in the Court, a mandate arrives, by which they are compelled to suspend them till some future period. In the interval, they may return to their consti

tuents "solicitous and blank;" and condole with them on the fruitlessness of their mission. Another course, however, may be pursued; and we want not the authority of Mr. Hallam, to be informed that those who are sent forward by the people to vindicate their rights, and to regulate and appropriate the amount of money which is to be extracted from them, are sometimes base enough to receive from the ministers of the Crown, a share of that very money which has been extracted from the people. It is possible, that the rule of originating all money bills in the House of Commons, of which that body began about the year 1661 to be so tenacious, had some reference to such secret views.

The rejection of the slightest alteration by the Lords, of a bill of this character, may have been originally founded on an aversion to unfold the secret links and combinations between the ministry, and the leading members of the Lower House. This, however, may be termed an uncharitable thought; but no adequate reason is assigned for such a jealous restriction on the Lords. When the Commons and the Lords separately granted supplies, as originally was the usage, it was reasonable that one body should not interfere with the proceedings of the other; and after it became the practice that both should unite, it was convenient, as a matter of finance, that the transactions relative to the general revenue should originate only in one house. But that the other, whose members had in many cases to bear an equal proportion of the burthens, should be denied the right of making the slightest alteration, is less easy to account for. It must be admitted, that the suggestion we have made will not carry us through the difficulty, since a peer, as well as a commoner, may be impoverished or avaricious, and accessible to bribery; and we must therefore leave the question among the mysteries of the British Constitution.

Of the practice of bribing the House of Commons, Mr. Hallam gives some curious particulars. He represents it to have existed so long back as Mary:

"There is reason to believe that the court, or rather the imperial ambassador, did homage to the power of the commons, by presents of money, in order to procure their support of the unpopular marriage with Philip; and if Noailles, the ambassador of Henry II., did not make use of the same means to thwart the grants of subsidy and other measures of the administration, he was at least very active in promising the succour of France, and animating the patriotism of those unknown leaders of that assembly, who withstood the accursed design of a besotted woman and her unprincipled counsellors to transfer this kingdom under the yoke of Spain."

After observing that the Parliament was rendered subservient, by bestowing places and pensions during pleasure, or by means of more clandestine corruption, he informs us that William (his

favourite hero) "fell into the worst part of this management, which it was most difficult to prevent," he should have said, the most difficult to discover. "The tory patriot, Sir Christopher Musgrave, trod in the steps of the whig patriot, Sir Thomas Lee. A large expenditure appeared every year, under the head of secret service money, which was pretty well known, and sometimes proved, to be disposed of in great part among the members of both houses." Burnet's well known account of Sir John Trevor, which is quoted in a note, with some other instances, shows that the venality of the members of both houses was sometimes gratified from other sources than the secret service money. "But no one seriously called in question the reality of a systematic distribution of money, by the Crown, among the representatives of the people; nor did the corrupters themselves disguise it in private!" The practice long continued; but our author, with an appearance of honest simplicity, informs us, that it is generally supposed to have ceased about the termination of the American War. How this may be, we, distant and rude republicans, have no means nor any interest to ascertain. If the author means the war of our Revolution, we may partly account for the large majorities which continued to support the administration till the capture of Lord Cornwallis; but if our last war is intended, the purity of the two houses is yet in its infancy, and, with the kindest feelings, we wish it may be perpetuated.

If, however, the Commons should be found incorruptible and inflexible, the healing medicine for endangered royalty is to dissolve them. It is unnecessary to assign any reasons. The pleasure of majesty is sufficient. Two of the great estates of the kingdom remain independent and self existent. One, indeed, with very little generical power, but ready at all times to resume its highest functions when called on by the sovereign; while the third estate, the most numerous, and to the people the most important, is wholly annihilated and extinguished. In what manner the power of legislation shall be executed, depends upon the three branches; but whether there shall be any legislation at all, is determined by one alone. In this there surely is great imperfection. How much superior is the regulation of the United States; and, indeed, of every one of the individual states of this country!Their Constitutions irrevocably fix the times when the legislature shall assemble, and how long the functions of the members shall continue. No president or governor has power to prorogue or to dissolve them. Nor can the chief magistrate, by the artifice of delaying to give his assent to the bills presented to him, indirectly defeat their passage. The effectual cure for such disgraceful attempts is, that if the bill is not returned in a given time, it becomes a law. On the other hand, the legislature can by no means,

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