48

THEORY OF A PERFECT PARLIAMENT.

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As the power and authority of a legislature thus constituted, is perfectly secure and inalienable, on the one hand, so, on the other, the moderation of its proceedings is guaranteed by a consciousness of the basis upon which this authority is founded. Every individual being aware of the extent to which his own influence is likely to reach among his constituents and dependants, is anxious that the mandates of the body shall never pass beyond that limit, within which obedience may be easily secured. He will not hazard the loss of his own power, therefore, by any attempt to enlarge that of the legislature; and feeling, at every step, the weight and resistance of the people, the whole assembly proceeds with a due regard to their opinions and prejudices, and can never do any thing very injurious or very distasteful to the majority. From the very nature of the authority with which they are invested, they are in fact consubstantiated with the people for whom they are to legislate. They do not sit loose upon them, like riders on inferior animals; nor speculate nor project experiments upon their welfare, like operators upon a foreign substance. foreign substance. They are the natural organs, in fact, of a great living body; and are not only warned, by their own feelings, of any injury which they may be tempted to inflict on it, but would become incapable of performing their functions, if they were to proceed far in debilitating the general system.

Such, it appears to us, though delivered perhaps in too abstract and elementary a form, is the just conception of a free representative legislature. Neither the English House of Commons, indeed, nor any assembly of any other nation, ever realized it in all its perfection: But it is in their approximation to such a standard, we conceive, that their excellence and utility will be found to consist; and where the conditions upon which we have insisted are absolutely wanting, the sudden institution of a representative legislature will only be a step to the most frightful disorders. Where it has grown up in a country in which personal liberty and property are tolerably secure, it naturally assumes that form which is most favourable to its beneficial influence, and has a

NATURAL ARISTOCRACY-WHAT.

49

tendency to perpetual improvement, and to the constant amelioration of the condition of the whole society. The difference between a free government and a tyrannical one, consists entirely in the different proportions of the people that are influenced by their opinions, or subjugated by intimidation or force. In a large society, opinions can only be reunited by means of representation; and the natural representative is the individual whose example and authority can influence the opinions of the greater part of those in whose behalf he is delegated. This is the natural aristocracy of a civilized nation; and its legislature is then upon the best possible footing, when it is in the hands of those who answer to that description. The whole people are then governed by the laws, exactly as each clan or district of them would have been by the patriarchal authority of an elective and unarmed chieftain; and the lawgivers are not only secure of their places while they can maintain their individual influence over the people, but are withheld from any rash or injurious measure by the consciousness and feeling of their dependence on this voluntary deference and submission.

If this be at all a just representation of the conditions upon which the respectability and security of a representative legislature must always depend, it will not be difficult to explain how the experiment miscarried so completely, in the case of the French Constituent Assembly. That assembly, which the enthusiasm of the public, and the misconduct of the privileged orders, soon enabled to engross the whole power of the country, consisted almost entirely of persons without name or individual influence; who owed the whole of their consequence to the situation to which they had been elevated, and were not able, as individuals, to have influenced the opinions of one fiftieth part of their countrymen. There was in France, indeed, at this time, no legitimate, wholesome, or real aristocracy. The noblesse, who were persecuted for bearing that name, were quite disconnected from the people. Their habits of perpetual residence in the capital, and their total independence of the good opinion of their vassals, had deprived them of

50

MEMBERS OF CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

any real influence over the minds of the lower orders; and the organization of society had not yet enabled the rich manufacturers or proprietors to assume such an influence. The persons sent as deputies to the StatesGeneral, therefore, were those chiefly who, by intrigue and boldness, and by professions of uncommon zeal for what were then the great objects of popular pursuit, had been enabled to carry the votes of the electors. A notion of talent, and an opinion that they would be loud and vehement in supporting those requests upon which the people had already come to a decision, were their passports into that assembly. They were sent there to express the particular demands of the people, and not to give a general pledge of their acquiescence in what might there be enacted. They were not the hereditary patrons of the people, but their hired advocates for a particular pleading. They had no general trust or authority over them, but were chosen as their special messengers, out of a multitude whose influence and pretensions were equally powerful.

When these men found themselves, as it were by accident, in possession of the whole power of the state, and invested with the absolute government of the greatest nation that has existed in modern times, it is not to be wondered at if they forgot the slender ties by which they were bound to their constituents. The powers to which they had succeeded were so infinitely beyond any thing that they had enjoyed in their individual capacity, that it is not surprising if they never thought of exerting them with the same consideration and caution. Instead of the great bases of rank and property, which cannot be transferred by the clamours of the factious, or the caprice of the inconstant, and which serve to ballast and steady the vessel of the state in all its wanderings and perils, the assembly possessed only the basis of talent or reputation; qualities which depend upon opinion and opportunity, and which may be attributed in the same proportion to an inconvenient multitude at once. The whole legislature may be considered, therefore, as composed of adventurers, who had already

WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE.

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attained a situation incalculably above their original pretensions, and were now tempted to push their fortune by every means that held out the promise of immediate success. They had nothing, comparatively speaking, to lose, but their places in that assembly, or the influence which they possessed within its walls; and as the authority of the assembly itself depended altogether upon the popularity of its measures, and not upon the intrinsic authority of its members, so it was only to be maintained by a succession of brilliant and imposing resolutions, and by satisfying or outdoing the extravagant wishes and expectations of the most extravagant and sanguine populace that ever existed. For a man to get a lead in such an assembly, it was by no means necessary that he should have previously possessed any influence or authority in the community; that he should be connected with powerful families, or supported by great and extensive associations. If he could dazzle and overawe in debate; if he could obtain the acclamations of the mob of Versailles, and make himself familiar to the eyes and the ears of the assembly and its galleries, he was in a fair train for having a great share in the direction of an assembly exercising absolute sovereignty over thirty millions of men. The prize was too tempting not to attract a multitude of competitors; and the assembly for many months was governed by those who outvied their associates in the impracticable extravagance of their patriotism, and sacrificed most profusely the real interests of the people at the shrine of a precarious popularity.

In this way, the assembly, from the inherent vices of its constitution, ceased to be respectable or useful. The same causes speedily put an end to its security, and converted it into an instrument of destruction.

Mere popularity was at first the instrument by which this unsteady legislature was governed: But when it became apparent, that whoever could obtain the direction or command of it, must possess the whole authority of the state, parties became less scrupulous about the means they employed for that purpose, and soon found

52

INSECURITY OF MERE POPULARITY.

out that violence and terror were infinitely more effectual and expeditious than persuasion and eloquence. The people at large, who had no attachment to any families or individuals among their delegates, and who contented themselves with idolizing the assembly in general, so long as it passed decrees to their liking, were passive and indifferent spectators of the transference of power which was effected by the pikes of the Parisian multitude; and looked with equal affection upon every successive junto which assumed the management of its deliberations. Having no natural representatives, they felt themselves equally connected with all who exercised the legislative function; and, being destitute of a real aristocracy, were without the means of giving effectual support even to those who might appear to deserve it. Encouraged by this situation of affairs, the most daring, unprincipled, and profligate, proceeded to seize upon the defenceless legislature, and, driving all their antagonists before them by violence or intimidation, entered without opposition upon the supreme functions of government. They soon found, however, that the arms by which they had been victorious, were capable of being turned against themselves; and those who were envious of their success, or ambitious of their distinction, easily found means to excite discontent among the multitude, now inured to insurrection, and to employ them in pulling down those very individuals whom they had so recently exalted. The disposal of the legislature thus became a prize to be fought for in the clubs and conspiracies and insurrections of a corrupted metropolis; and the institution of a national representative had no other effect, than that of laying the government open to lawless force and flagitious audacity.

It is in this manner, it appears to us, that from the want of a natural and efficient aristocracy to exercise the functions of representative legislators, the National Assembly of France was betrayed into extravagance, and fell a prey to faction; that the institution itself became a source of public misery and disorder, and converted a civilized monarchy, first into a sanguinary democracy, and then into a military despotism.