Page:A View of the Constitution.djvu/19

Rh one of two consequences must follow; either the whole body must be assembled and act together, or a few, who may have possessed themselves of sufficient force, will undertake to dictate and give laws to the whole. But a wise people sees and dreads its own danger in large assemblies. Experience tells them that they cannot trust themselves when thus collected together; that sudden bursts of feeling are likely to predominate over their own judgment; that facts and causes are often misrepresented or misunderstood, and the deliberate judgment, which alone ought to be solely exercised, is overpowered by unaccountable excitement and precipitate impulse. It was forcibly said in reference to the popular assemblies of Athens, that if every Athenian were a Socrates, still every Athenian assembly would be a mob.

A people sagacious enough to discover this imperfection in itself, avoids the danger by selecting a suitable number to act for it, upon full consideration and with due caution; and while it authorizes them to express what are to be considered its own sentiments, it gives to that expression the same effect as if it proceeded immediately from itself. The virtue of this salutary principle is impaired if it be divided. If it extend only to a part of the government; if there are other component parts which have an equal or superior power, independent of the representative principle, the benefit is partial.

In England, of three co-ordinate parts, one only is supposed by the constitution to represent the authority of the people, and at what time this representation was introduced among them, is not clearly settled by their own jurists and antiquarians. That it existed before the Norman Conquest in some form, now not exactly ascertained, is indeed agreed; but on the