第53章 Letter XIII(2)

That this bargain may not be broken,on the part of the representative body,with the collective body of the nation,it is not only a principal,declared right of the people of Britain,that the election of members to sit in Parliament shall be free,but it hath been a principal part of the care and attention of Parliaments,for more than three hundred years,to watch over this freedom,and to secure it,by removing all influence of the crown,and all other corrupt influence,from these elections.This care and this attention have gone still farther.They have provided,as far as they have been suffered to provide hitherto,by the constitutional dependency of one House on the other,and of both on the crown,that all such influence should be removed from the members after they are chosen.Even here the providence of our constitution hath not stopped.Lest all other provisions should be ineffectual to keep the members of the House of Commons out of this unconstitutional dependency,which some men presume,with a silly dogmatical air of triumph,to suppose necessary to support the constitutional independency of the crown,the wisdom of our constitution hath thought fit that the representatives of the people should not have time to forget that they are such;that they are empowered to act for the people,not against them.In a word,our constitution means,that the members of this body should be kept,as it were,to their good behaviour,by the frequent returns of new elections.It does all that a constitution can do,all that can be done by legal provisions,to secure the interests of the people,by maintaining the integrity of their trustees:

and lest all this should fail,it gives frequent opportunities to the people to secure their interests themselves,by mending their choice of their trustees;so that as a bad King must stand in awe of an honest Parliament,a corrupt House of Commons must stand in awe of an honest people.

Between these two estates,or branches of the legislative power,there stands a third,the house of peers;which may seem in theory,perhaps,too much under the influence of the crown,to be a proper control upon it,because the sole right of creating peers resides in the crown;whereas the crown hath no right to intermeddle in the electing commoners.This would be the case,and an intolerable one indeed,if the crown should exercise this right often,as it had been exercised sometimes with universal and most just disapprobation.

It is possible too that this may come to be the case,in some future age,by the method of electing peers to sit in Parliament,for one part of the same kingdom,by the frequent translations of bishops,and by other means,if the wisdom and virtue of the present age,and the favourable opportunity of the present auspicious and indulgent reign do not prevent it.But in all other respects,the persons who are once created peers,and their posterity,according to the scheme of the constitution,having a right to sit and debate,and vote in the house of peers,which cannot be taken from them,except by forfeiture;all influence of the kind I have mentioned seems to be again removed,and their share in the government depending neither on the King nor the people,they constitute a middle order,and are properly mediators between the other two,in the eye of our constitution.

It is by this mixture of monarchical,aristocratical and democratical power,blended together in one system,and by these three estates balancing one another,that our free constitution of government hath been preserved so long inviolate,or hath been brought back,after having suffered violations,to its original principles,and been renewed,and improved too,by frequent and salutary revolutions.It is by this that weak and wicked princes have been opposed,restrained,reformed,punished by Parliaments;that the real,and perhaps the doubtful,exorbitancies of Parliaments have been reduced by the crown,and that the heat of one House hath been moderated,or the spirit raised,by the proceedings of the other.Parliaments have had a good effect on the people,by keeping them quiet;and the people on parliaments,by keeping them within bounds,which they were tempted to transgress.A just confidence in the safe,regular,Parliamentary methods of redressing grievances hath often made the freest,and not the most patient people on earth,bear the greatest grievances much longer than people held under stronger restraints,and more used to oppression,who had not the same confidence,nor the same expectation,have borne even less.The cries of the people,and the terror of approaching elections,have defeated the most dangerous projects for beggaring and enslaving the nation;and the majority without doors hath obliged the majority within doors to truckle to the minority.In a word,two things may be said with truth of our constitution,which I think neither can,nor ever could be said of any other.It secures society against the miseries which are inseparable from simple forms of government,and is liable as little as possible to the inconveniencies that arise in mixed forms.It cannot become uneasy to the prince,or people,unless the former be egregiously weak or wicked;nor be destroyed,unless the latter be excessively and universally corrupt.But these general assertions require to be a little better explained.