Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/171

Ch. 2. each other. In the legilature, the people are a check upon the nobility, and the nobility a check upon the people; by the mutual privilege of rejecting what the other has reolved: while the king is a check upon both, which preerves the executive power from encroachments. And this very executive power is again checked and kept within due bounds by the two houes, through the privilege they have of enquiring into, impeaching, and punihing the conduct (not indeed of the king, which would detroy his contitutional independence; but, which is more beneficial to the public) of his evil and pernicious counellors. Thus every branch of our civil polity upports and is upported, regulates and is regulated, by the ret; for the two houes naturally drawing in two directions of oppoite interet, and the prerogative in another till different from them both, they mutually keep each other from exceeding their proper limits; while the whole is prevented from eparation, and artificially connected together by the mixed nature of the crown, which is a part of the legilative, and the ole executive magitrate. Like three ditinct powers in mechanics, they jointly impel the machine of government in a direction different from what either, acting by itelf, would have done; but at the ame time in a direction partaking of each, and formed out of all; a direction which contitutes the true line of the liberty and happines of the community.

us now conider thee contituent parts of the overeign power, or parliament, each in a eparate view. The king’s majety will be the ubject of the next, and many ubequent chapters, to which we mut at preent refer.

next in order are the piritual lords. Thee conit of two arch-bihops, and twenty four bihops; and, at the diolution of monateries by Henry VIII, conited likewie of twenty ix mitred abbots, and two priors : a very coniderable body, and in thoe times equal in number to the temporal nobility. Rh